Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS FEATURE

Maya bones bring a lost civilization to life

Trained in both medicine and archaeology, Vera Tiesler has revealed how the human body was deeply woven into the religion, tradition and politics of the Maya world.
  1. Erik Vance

    1. Erik Vance is a science journalist in Baltimore, Maryland.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

The Autonomous University of the Yucatán, in the Mexican city of Mérida, holds one of the most comprehensive libraries on Earth. But few books line the shelves on the bottom floor of the anthropological sciences building. Instead, boxes are stacked from floor to ceiling in almost every corner of the laboratory, with labels naming Calakmul, Pomuch or Xcambo and other ancient Maya ruins. Inside every box is a set of human bones.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 566, 168-171 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00517-y

References

  1. Tiesler, V. The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and its Meanings in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond Chapter 10, 239–256 (Springer, 2014).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Tiesler, V. Child. Past 4, 117–132 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Tiesler, V. & Cucina, A. (eds) Janaab’ Pakal of Palenque: Reconstructing the Life and Death of a Maya Ruler (Univ. Arizona Press, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Tiesler, V., Cucina, A., Stanton, T. W. & Freidel, D. A. Before Kukulkán: Bioarchaeology of Maya Life, Death, and Identity at Classic Period Yaxuná (Univ. Arizona Press, 2017).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links