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Bloodletting was the ritualized practice of self-cutting or piercing of an individual's body that served a number of ideological and cultural functions within ancient Mesoamerican societies, in particular the Maya. When performed by ruling elites, the act of bloodletting was crucial to the maintenance of sociocultural and political structure.
The importance of sacrifice in Classic Maya culture can be seen in Structure O-13 at Piedras Negras where vessels of obsidian blades, stingray spines, and other bloodletting utensils lined the pathway along the structure. [3] These materials increased in count along the pathway, leading to a main room in which sacrifice rituals took place. [3]
It is during this nine-day period that the Maya believed they could die by the soul who has returned home. [5] The Maya associated the color red with death and rebirth and often covered graves and skeletal remains with cinnabar. The bodies of the dead were wrapped in cotton mantles before being buried. Burial sites were oriented to provide ...
Sacrifice was a religious activity in Maya culture, involving the killing of humans or animals, or bloodletting by members of the community, in rituals superintended by priests. Sacrifice has been a feature of almost all pre-modern societies at some stage of their development and for broadly the same reason: to propitiate or fulfill a perceived ...
Important rituals such as the dedication of major building projects or the enthronement of a new ruler required a human sacrificial offering. The sacrifice of an enemy king was the most prized offering, and such a sacrifice involved the decapitation of the captive ruler in a ritual reenactment of the decapitation of the Maya maize god by the Maya death gods. [1]
In the Classic period some Maya art that depict the extraction of children's hearts during the ascension to the throne of the new kings, or at the beginnings of the Maya calendar have been studied. [4] In one of these cases, Stela 11 in Piedras Negras, Guatemala, a sacrificed boy can be seen. Other scenes of sacrificed boys are visible on ...
Pages for logged out editors learn more. Contributions; Talk; Bloodletting rituals in Maya culture
This is a list of deities playing a role in the Classic (200–1000 CE), Post-Classic (1000–1539 CE) and Contact Period (1511–1697) of Maya religion. The names are mainly taken from the books of Chilam Balam, Lacandon ethnography, the Madrid Codex , the work of Diego de Landa , and the Popol Vuh .