We climbed deeper into the cave, approaching a site of a Mayan ritual. Here – Abel, our half Mayan guide explained – in this pitch-black underground chamber in one of Belize’s countless limestone caves, ancient Mayans performed gruesome bloodletting rituals, slicing women’s tongues and men’s genitals to entice gods to relieve dry, parched fields with life-giving rains. He pointed to razor-thin slivers of obsidian laying among shards of broken clay pots. In the light of my headlamp I could see a few piles of ash that looked as if the fire went out only a few hours ago, but in fact they had burned hundreds, perhaps over a thousand years before I was born, and the complete lack of air movement, or any other disturbance, preserved them perfectly. Leer más.
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