Creation myths that people in the Mayan civilization believe include a story on how gods made humans from corn. A news study on a Mayan site in Belize proved how the story of the civilization's origin connects with the real-world occurrence that gave birth to their history.
Mayan Civilization's Origin
circa 1955: The Temple of Kukulcan, the Mayan god of rain, at Chichen Itza, near Valladolid.
According to the latest anthropological find, more than half of the Maya ancestry have links with migrants that traveled from South America approximately 5,600 years ago.
Experts say that the same group was most likely responsible for bringing new agricultural techniques and maize seeds that served as the strongest foundations in one of the great cultures that existed in Mesoamerica.
Northern Arizona University archeology specialist, co-author of the study, and native Belizean Jaime Awe explained that the unknown immigrants were probably the 'first pioneers' who literally planted seeds of the Maya.
The Mayans would not exist if there were no corn, Awe continued.
About 4,000 years ago, civilization was discovered to emerge in the Central Americas, all with their political system, infrastructure, and agriculture.
The latest discovery suggests a clearer track of lineage that could show the earliest ancestors of the Mayans. Their ancient civilization, including their monuments and cities, stretched to about one-third of the central regions of the continent and parts of Mexico.
Maya is currently the ethnolinguistic group of approximately seven million indigenous groups residing in Central America. The research adds that similar to the arrival of farming in the European countries from the Middle East, the agricultural methods in the Americas were most likely brought by travelers and migrants, instead of being just knowledge that was passed down to generations.
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Mayan's Corn Farming and Culture Brought by Immigrants
Belize Institute of Archaeology archaeology expert and former director Awe had been previously baffled by how the Mayan civilization was connected to the early farmers and hunter-gatherers equipped with chiles and maniocs and maizes to the place known today as Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.
The question was prolonged due to the limiting pieces of evidence excavated in previous studies.
The recent findings were made possible through the help of samples collected from southwest Belize's Bladen Nature Reserve. The collaborative team had already excavated over 85 sets of skeletons from the burial grounds beneath the site since 2014.
About 50 individuals were examined and dated with radiocarbon from the total sets of remains, allowing experts to find that the ancient bodies lived between 1,000 to 9,600 years ago.
From the DNA analysis, experts found that living Maya descendants, who also speak Chibchan languages, inherited over half of the DNA they contain from the migrations in the southern regions. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications, titled "South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region."
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) archaeology expert and author of a separate study Logan Kistler explained that 5,300 years ago, farmers in the ancient Mayan territories developed larger, more nutritious cobs that have strains still existing in modern Mexico until today.
The separate research on corn development in Maya was published in the journal Science, titled "Multiproxy evidence highlights a complex evolutionary legacy of maize in South America."
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