Jade gems decorated these Mayan kids’ teeth

The MAYA Prehispanic has loved its dental accessories. During the classic and postclassical periods (250–1550 CE), adults commonly wore decorative inlays, engravings and deposits. To obtain the desired effects, dental craftsmen generally relied on a stone tool to deliberately sculpt a cavity in the tooth, then placed a jewel in shape or a mineral like the obsidian inside before sealing it with an organic cement.

Archaeologists have already discovered a handful of these dental additions to Mayan adolescents. However, a trio of teeth recently examined and decorated with Jade is some of the youngest examples to date, according to researchers from the Popol Vuh museum from Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala. Some children as young as eight years have received dental gems, based on detailed evidence in a study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Previously, the only inlaid of dental known in Belize came from Belize, but the experts think that the toddler received the accessories after their death as part of his burial. Based on this example, the bioarchaeologist and co -author of the Andrea Cucina study has hypothesized that the latest discoveries can illustrate a much more specific and geography trend – possible signifiers of a transition to adulthood.

“This is an interesting question,” he told Phys.org. “Since so far, the archaeological file in meso-American has not pointed out any pre-adolescent with inlays (very few young cases begin at the age of 15), this makes me think that this could indeed be a regional and localized tradition.”

Cucina’s hypothesis is also supported by the fact that the skeletal remains Maya pre -adolescents are not uncommon. It is simply that none of them offer the same dental work and more specimens must be discovered to draw more important conclusions.

There are still certain details that the team can still glean from these particular teeth. They probably belonged to more than one child, perhaps even three distinct individuals. It is estimated that a subject died nine or 10 years old, while the other two teeth belonged to at least another from 8 to 9 years old.

However, the team theorized that skills differences also indicate that the teeth potentially came from three distinct children, noting the range of crafts through jade inlays. For example, the most precise work is in a left side incisor, where the craftsman’s cavity only entered the tooth enamel. Meanwhile, the encrustation for a maxillary left central incisor was deeper in the dentin layer, but stopped in addition to the pulp chamber.

For the moment, the final stories behind the teeth of these children (and the broader societal context) will remain archaeological mysteries. With more time and research, additional archaeological discoveries can possibly fill our knowledge cavities.

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