Who did the Maya sacrifice?

THE SACRED CENOTEAD, a sink hole in the limestone of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, pictured above, looks beautiful. But it holds a dark secret. Between about 600 and 900 the Mayan inhabitants of the nearby city of Chichén Itzá, believing it to be a gateway to the underworld, filled the pool with sacrificial riches to the gods: gold, jade, incense, pottery—and people. Those victims, judging by their bones, were often young (half being under 18), and, though more often male than female, were well representative of both sexes.On the assumption that few of those sacrificed were volunteers, their origin has long been a matter of interest to archaeologists. Some suggest they would have come from afar, perhaps being war captives (as was usually the case with sacrificial victims of the later, Aztec civilisation) or tribute of some sort from conquered lands. Others hypothesise that they were plucked from the local population, perhaps being slaves sold for the purpose by their owners. To try to shed some light on the matter, Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, looked at 40 human teeth recovered from different people cast into the Sacred Cenote. He and his colleagues have just published their results in the .