Psychoactive and other ceremonial plants from a 2,000-year-old Maya ritual deposit at Yaxnohcah, Mexico.

ABSTRACT: For millennia, healing and psychoactive plants have been part of the medicinal and ceremonial fabric of elaborate rituals and everyday religious practices throughout Mesoamerica. Despite the essential nature of these ritual practices to the societal framework of past cultures, a clear understanding of the ceremonial life of the ancient Maya remains stubbornly elusive. Here we record the discovery of a special ritual deposit, likely wrapped in a bundle, located beneath the end field of a Late Preclassic ballcourt in the Helena complex of the Maya city of Yaxnohcah. This discovery was made possible by the application of environmental DNA technology. Plants identified through this analytical process included Ipomoea corymbosa (xtabentun in Mayan), Capsicum sp. (chili pepper or ic in Mayan), H

SUBMITTER: Lentz DL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11051596 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature