00:00.43 kinkella Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 114 I am your host Dr Andrew Kingkella and we are talking about me and what I did for my research and that is the angel Maya Sinotess and in our last little bit there I talked about how I kind of got into this and and you know I kind of expanded on it over the years and even though my first attempt at getting a master's thesis was successful. Getting a job from that was not so I went onward I worked for years more I got a ph d and that was successful and now I'm a big super important college professor at Moo Park College in Southern California now in terms of the maya and their relationship to sanotes. There's there's a lot there so we already talked about how the whole area is limestone which enables sinotess to be formed in the first place Maya sites are sometimes built not caring about sanottes at all a lot of times maya cities are. Located based on fertile soil that can be the biggest thing because corn is the big prime mover here. You always got to remember that when in doubt, it's all about corn. But of course sannotes are such unique. 01:31.25 kinkella Places on the landscape and basically give you water almost no matter what that they're going to be important, you know either for direct access to water or for ritual now when did the maya first start exploiting cinottas and in this manner. Definitely during the classic period. The classic period is from eighty two fifty to nine hundred a d um we see a lot of it in the lake classic. That's when all the little sites that I worked out that were right next to the pools like all the broken pot shirts and that kind of stuff that we would find would. All date between like 70980 maybe 60900 a d that's that's like prime late classic an inde terminal classic right? there at the end around 900 a d or so that's the classic maya collapse and. We do have pretty good data that there was a series of droughts right? at that time too. So a lot of this stuff kind of makes sense sense right? that the ancient maya would go to these nodes of water ritual when there was drought. Right? They would ramp up. You see the same kind of thing in the cave world too that you get a lot more of this during like the terminal classic period and same kind of thing you know things are going poorly you're going to double down on the ritual and hope for the best. 03:04.68 kinkella Now the classic period wasn't the only time that the c sinnotas were used by them. Ma they're definitely used by them in the post classic the most famous ah sinotte of them all is the sacred sinnote at cheitza and that has. A lot of history that goes back to kind of the early post-classic period you know like a thousand 900000 a d even into the um classic a little bit like the latest classic chee chi its is such a huge site. It's it's known for its early post-classic component again from like oh. You know, nine fifty to twelve fifty a d or so give or take plus or minus but there was an earlier form there too. Ah and it has such an iconic sinnote. It's the one if you've ever seen a photo of an ancient maya sinote chances are it is the one at chichiniza where it has the steep sides. Water doesn't start until like sixty feet below you know it's got kind of a sheer drop in the waters down below I've been there before to check it out. It really is very majestic and very breathtaking in that natural world kind of way very impressive. Now in terms of the pre-classic earlier times you know did the maya use sinotes. So you know the thousand bc or 500 bc or that kind of thing I'm sure they did but there's very very little. 04:34.91 kinkella Research or data that shows that now it might just be that we haven't really found it yet. Um, there might be a few bits and bobs out there. But I just I don't really see it. Ah maybe I'm sure they use cinnotes for stuff but maybe not in an organized fashion. Maybe that only comes in by the time we get to the classic period you know, maybe maybe they don't build like little water shrine buildings right? next to the sinote until that time I don't think I've ever seen one that's older than you know 600 a d or something like that. Now in terms of this show being the psudoreology podcast I mean the 1 big question. We want to ask of course is how much human sacrifice was there King Ke I mean come on didn't they like cut people up and. Chop their hearts out and then throw them in the sin. Oh day I mean come on. You need to produce here can kea okay I'll produce for you so in this whole sinnota world in this waterr ritual and again, there's many aspects to it but the one that of course everyone wants to know about it. Was their human sacrifice and the answer is yes there absolutely was we have very very good data for that I believe in the sacred sinnote at chichaitza. 06:03.69 kinkella Believe they found 57 sets of human remains now that doesn't mean they were full skeletons but they had enough of each one to show that there were 57 separate separate individuals I may have that number wrong, but it's it's like that. It's not for you know it's dozens and dozens. Now. Don't think that that happened every Sunday right? This is a place these sinottes are places that people came to for hundreds and hundreds of years. So I don't want you guys to think that human sacrifice happened like every. Yeah, every weekend Sunday Sunday Sunday come to the soot day. You know it wasn't like that. It's a very special time and a very um, just important deep ritual that's going to happen at that moment. So yes. There is humanac rice now where the pseudo archeology crowd gets it wrong is the way that they show it. You've probably heard aspects of human sacrifice at the soot days and lots of what you heard is probably wrong or probably a little bit weird or off now. In terms of most of our pseudoareology stories this one. It's not really focused. It's just kind of lazy and what I mean by that is your classic kind of false story about this in up days is that. 07:31.36 kinkella They sacrificed a young woman like a virginal maiden and threw her in there to placate the gods and that is actually in terms of human sacrifice almost perfectly 100 % wrong from the actual data and. Where does this come from this story of the young virginal female being thrown into the sonote you know I think it's just it comes from early twentieth century movies culture pop culture. You know how many thousand times have we seen the the ah. Young woman in distress that the hero has to save right? So the the sort of King Kong aspect of things the throwing the woman into the volcano kind of thing you know it's it's comes from hollywood narratives I think. Because I haven't seen I haven't seen a definitive spot of the whole throw the woman in the sin out day thing of like where it came but you just you have a lot of this and it's just sort of been lazily taken up in in culture over time. Oh didn't they sacrifice the young virginal woman. No how do we know this because. We can sex the skeletons that have come out of the sacred sinnote and in other contexts like this and they are overwhelmingly male and it really looks like that there were 2 types of. 09:03.11 kinkella People who were sacrificed those are captives from warfare which totally makes sense right? You're warring with the the other city state down the way you take some captives and you sacrifice them into the sinotte and bastard children. I know it's sad I know it's a bummer just reporting the news but that is what we see now I know your follow up question is like hey cankela how can you tell from their skeleton that they're bastard children. You can't but the spanish. Did give us some accounts of some of this when they first interacted with the maya in the early mid fifteen hundreds they did notice took note of ah of a handful of these of these rituals. So specifically what would happen. To the person who's going to be sacrificed. They are going to be basically brought to the edge. There's going to be lots of pomp and circumstances be lots of ritual that goes with this. They are going to be sliced through the chest now this doesn't mean that you're going to take the heart. Out or anything like that. This is another sort of psud archeology thing. It's not where you rip the heart out and it's still beating and the shamans there you know with incantations. It's not like that you slice across the chest and then of course there's just a ton of bleeding and then after sort of. 10:31.54 kinkella The person has bled for a while. They're ultimately thrown into the sinote now remember this is a ritual sacrifice so it has to be real right? It has to hurt and I don't even mean just hurt the person. It's like hurt the community. You know you have to. Give to the god because the the blood from the gaping wound in the chest must flow as rain right? That's the idea because ultimately it's a time of drought you're calling for rain rain for the. Horn K . It's always about corn. It's always about the harvest so that's why you're going to do something like this and that's the idea behind it. So it's a serious thing right? It's not frivolous. It's not kind of silly It's not overwrought. It's. There's specifics there. Now in terms of the belief system. There's the maya had a pantheon of gods right? And there's all kinds of deep mythology and you talk about the hero twins and all this kind of great stuff in this moment since we're talking about water. 11:49.59 kinkella The 2 gods that are going to be ah important here are chack chalk is the rain god and so you're sort of sacrificing to him and lots of people know chalk have heard of that god it is the same god as for the Aztec Clolllock you can sort of hear the same term right? You got to realize there's hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of years between when that word is first used the name and then by the time the aztec come around many many many generations later. So Chuck is great. You know the bringer of rain and thunder and all that kind of good stuff. But my favorite god is actually the other guy who doesn't get nearly as much press the water lily serpent the water lily serpent is the god of standing water right? The god of water on the ground springs and rivers and lakes and that kind of stuff and sinote so the water lily serpent is going to be much more interrelated. To the sonote so we're hoping like that gods like chalk and the water lily serpent will give us rain will help us control rain will help us have the rain come and these kind of belief systems. You still see some of these in Maya Villages today in terms of the idea of of a serpent that goes with the sonote and also of the water of a sanote being sacred of the water being used by the village like being. 13:21.94 kinkella Being collected from the Sonote and brought back to the village to be used in important Rituals. It's really great right? You see this still occurring in in modern times this idea of sacred Water. So sinotess are a high stakes spot right? and I know this isn't the world's most scientific thing to say but when you come across Them. You can just feel it just about and I don't mean feel it in terms of feeling. The. Spirits or anything like that I actually mean kind of literally as you walk through the jungle since they are a body of water that area is cooler. The air is a bit Cooler. You can feel them as you come across them and when you're living in a hot tropical environment that feeling of. Cool is just fantastic and majestic and the idea of fresh water that you can just drink is just an amazing thing especially during the dry season of course so the location of sanottes are always going to be. Known by the maya and oh Maya communities right? there I'm sure they were always ah claimed by the local maya cities in town right? Everyone knew where the soot days were everyone knew the ones that were the. 14:48.41 kinkella Important ritual ones. Everyone knew the ones that were more public that you could just go to and get water and this is going to be a major thing for Maya society and culture and that was one of the great joys for me in studying it and speaking of my studying. Of it when we return some select silly things that happened to me in the Maya jungle.