Hello, I'm new to this subreddit. I just joined because I learned about the children buried at Chichén Itzá and the consensus that they were victims of sacrifice, but to me that doesn't line up very well. I am not an expert on the Mayan civilisation so I could be wrong here but from what I know:
.The Children buried were all related to one another.
None of the children show signs of physical trauma commonly associated with Mayan sacrifices.
.The children were all moved there and buried there after dying.
.The Mayans typically sacrificed adults, not children.
.The children all died over the course of about 200 years.
.The children were buried with offerings, but I cant find any information on what these offerings were to verify whether they were commonly associated with ritual sacrifice or just regular burial.
.All children were boys.
Is it not more likely that the children were children from an influential family who died in non-ritual related ways and Chichén Itzá was just used as a place to bury male children by this family? Im genuinely curious, if I'm wrong then Id like to know why, this is just bothering me because Ive never heard of a sacrifice that didnt leave some form of evidence, let alone 64 seperate sacrifices leaving zero physical evidence. Even something like being choked to death or being drowned or other methods of murder that dont seem to leave a physical trace, do usually leave some kind of evidence. Heck, we can usually find evidence of this sort of thing in million year old fossils.
