Sacred secrets of the caves

Science News, Jan 24, 1998 by Bruce Bower

They eventually established that there are at least 22 caves, with underground passages extending about 7 miles, in and around the site. Major structures were aligned with caves that the former inhabitants had imbued with deep meaning and power, according to Brady, who described this research in the September 1997 American Anthropologist.

For example, an almost 1-mile-long cave passes directly beneath the huge El Duende Pyramid, a temple built on top of a hill. Recent sinking of the earth beneath the structure offered excavators their first peek at the cave's entrance. An underground lake, the largest body of water in the Dos Pilas area, lies inside.

The ancient Maya knew that a cave existed under the hill, Brady argues. They even named the temple after the cave's water source, the El Duende River. Abundant artifacts and pieces of human bone in the cave attest to its regular ritual use by Dos Pilas residents, he says.

Another hilltop building, known as the Bat Palace, contains a shrine that covered the mouth of an adjoining cave. A passageway in this cave connected the Bat Palace, which served as the political center of the site from A.D. 725 to A.D. 761, to the El Duende Pyramid cave.

The last two kings of Dos Pilas appropriated the sacred power of a large hill with a cave running through it by building the Bat Palace there and aligning its features with the axis of the cave, Demarest proposes.

"After some initial doubts, I'm now convinced that [Brady's] right about the central role of caves in site placement, building alignment, and Maya sacred geography," he says.

Brady expects that caves will be discovered at every major Classic Maya site, including those located in areas devoid of the limestone that formed natural caves at Dos Pilas.

Man-made caves have been discovered at a number of Maya sites and at non-Maya locations from the same period in central Mexico, Brady notes. The practice of incorporating caves into settlement layout appears as early as A.D. 100 and continues to the time of Spanish conquest, he maintains.

This architectural imperative apparently reflected the importance of underground spiritual activities during the Classic era. Accumulating evidence raises the likelihood that shamans took charge of cave rituals, contends Keith Prufer of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. An archaeological project in the Maya Mountains of southern Belize has located nearly 2 dozen caves containing evidence of small group ceremonies in deeply recessed chambers; carved blades and other specialized artifacts suggest that shamans were present.

Three of the caves, which contain material from throughout the Classic period, hold stools or benches of a type still used by Maya shamans, says Prufer. Historical accounts and Classic Maya hieroglyphics also identify shamans as the owners of these items, which were believed to rest between the surface world and the underworld.

Cave investigations conducted independently by Prufer and Brady have uncovered numerous pieces of rock crystal, which both investigators suspect were used by shamans in ritual ceremonies. The ethnographic record documents crystal use by shamans throughout the area inhabited by modern Maya groups, often in ceremonies designed to heal physical ailments or to foretell the future.