Sac Uayum and San José, the taboo cenotes of Mayapán

 

Sac Uayum and San José,

the taboo cenotes of Mayapán.

I met Professor Bradley Russell at the end of 2014; introduced to me by Bil Phillips, I was Bradley's instructor for his cave diving course.

To complete his current study he had to learn the basics of cave diving since his research in the fortified city of Mayapán had led him to discover numerous human remains submerged in the waters of the taboo cenotes of Sac Uayum and San Josè .

Mayapán was one of the most important political capitals of the Maya civilization in its Post Classic period, between 1150 and 1450 AD. and its study was carried out by an international group of archaeologists from Mexico and the United States.

The curiosity regarding the two cenotes, Sac Uayum and San Josè, is that they are located outside the city walls; a strange fact if you consider that for the Maya the cenotes were sacred places: sources of life, the only points where it was possible to stock up on water throughout the year, as well as entrances to Xibalba, the underworld inhabited by the dead.

Bradley had the goal of being able to reach the second chamber of the Sac Uayum cenote, where some divers had found perfectly preserved human bones, but to access it it is necessary to pass, at a depth of 10.5 meters, through a restriction just under 10 meters long , then go down to depth, up to 18 metres deep, and then go back up a few metres.

How could these bones have gotten there? Did they belong to people who lived in the Post Classic period? Or were they prehistoric individuals who died in the caves when they were dry? And if this last hypothesis had been correct, why so many remains, given that 14 human skulls had been counted?

The scenario of the San Josè cenote was very different, where the human remains were even more numerous and covered the bottom from just a few centimeters deep up to the deepest area farthest from the access.

I was in the Mayapán area for the first time in July 2015; together with my friend and colleague David Mayor I accepted the task of creating a detailed cartography of the Sac Uayum cenote.

As soon as we arrived in the village of Telchaquillo we were greeted by oppressive heat. During the day it was an arduous task to wash your hands due to the temperature that the water reaches when flowing through the pipes outside. For those who are not used to it, it is difficult to even sleep with these levels of heat and humidity, but luckily they invented beer and the refrigerator.

Over the course of a few days of diving we collected a sufficient amount of data to be able to represent the cave on the plane, while Bradley, thanks to his successfully completed speleo-diving training, was finally able to admire firsthand what until then he had only seen thanks to a series of photographs.

All this is not without risk: local legend tells of a monster with a snake's body and a horse's head guarding the cenote, ready to kill and devour anyone who dares to venture inside. We therefore had to request the intervention of a local shaman to carry out the ritual and to convince the supernatural forces that we were animated by scientific intentions; strictly speaking it must be said that the shaman carried out his task without flaw and consequently David, Bradley and I emerged unscathed from our dives.

Access to the water is quite complex. The entrance to the cave is a hole in the ground with a diameter of about 4 meters, from which you have to descend vertically for about ten meters until you reach the surface. A system of ropes was essential to be able to go up and down; fortunately there was no shortage of anchor points, made up of the trees that grew on the edge of the opening.

Collecting the data was an almost surgical operation: the bottom of the first chamber, exposed to the external environment, is completely covered by a thick layer of organic sediment, dark and very light. Any movement of the fins, made close to the bottom, drastically reduces visibility, even if for a short time and in a localized way, due to the absence of water flow.

The seabed of the second chamber and the innermost part of the cave, however, is covered by a thick layer of clay, microscopic particles deposited over the millennia. Here, a poorly executed movement can reduce or eliminate visibility for hours, giving the sensation of being immersed in milk & coffee.

Thanks to the data collected we were able to reveal the mystery linked to the presence of human remains in what seemed to be a difficult to reach area of ​​the cave; in reality the second chamber is located almost underneath the first, and it is evident, seen from below, the fissure from which the bones slowly sank and which later, over the centuries, was blocked by the sediment.

The strong emotion felt by Bradley was also evident in finally finding himself in front of the best preserved skull in the cave, magically positioned "upright", which belonged to a young woman; after this dive Bradley began referring to this find as "My Girlfriend".

The second time I was in the Mayapán area dates back to May 2018; Bradley Russell and his team of researchers had finally received authorization from the Mexican government to extract the skulls found in the Sac Uayum cenote, in order to carry out dating tests and try to shed some light on the mystery that surrounds the two cenotes.

Bradley, on that occasion too, decided to continue with the same team and again asked for David Mayor's participation and mine. While I would have taken care of the removal of the skulls found in the first chamber together with the archaeologist, David would have gone down to the second chamber alone to take all the necessary photographs of "Bradley's girlfriend" to then be able to create the photogrammetry and the 3D model .

Skull 3D

In the three years that have passed since our first stay in Telchaquillo, the heat has not diminished and, thanks to our experience, we brought a decent quantity of beer and made sure that the refrigerator was working well.

After an accurate course regarding all the things not to do during the extraction of archaeological finds and human remains, we started with the diving and with all possible attention Bradley and I began to extract the skulls and package them in appropriate plastic cases containing the same water of the cenote and to transport them to the surface, where other project participants were responsible for hoisting them through the opening of the cenote.

Surprises did not take long to appear when, by lifting some skulls, the sediment that partially covered them was also removed and others appeared under them which were now no longer hidden from view, so much so that from the 14 skulls previously inventoried, the number of those extracted from the cenote has almost doubled.

I remember that Bradley's eyes shone with emotion: one of the most important projects of his career as an archaeologist had reached a crucial point and, honestly, I felt honored to be part of it.

The analyzes carried out confirmed the date of the finds to be around 1350 AD.

Bradley and the other researchers deduced that the deaths were most likely associated with famine and disease during a drought in the mid-1300s, and that the cenote was used to avoid or limit contagion or, more simply, as a mass burial.

The team is currently waiting to obtain funding to carry out studies on DNA from dental tartar/plaque deposits and consequently detect disease pathogens.

Another four years had to pass before we could return to Telchaquillo which, in the meantime, remained as warm as it was before.

A French production company, linked to the National Geographic Channel, decided to create a documentary on the Post Classic period of the Mayan civilization and, in the research of experts in the sector, they came across the name of Bradley Russell and his team.

Bradley seizes the opportunity and proposes to the producers to include in the documentary the mapping of the San Josè cenote, a major absentee from the project.

The producers like the idea: filming an underwater cartographer while surveying data from a submerged cave, in an environment linked to the main subject of the documentary.

Unfortunately, they say, they don't have a video operator expert in cave diving available. Bradley proposes what for him is the ideal solution, having both the cartographer and the video operator at hand.

And this is how David Mayor, Bradley Russell and I meet again to fit another piece into the puzzle of Mayapán and its cenotes.

The San Josè cenote is characterized by modest dimensions; the entrance is a chimney, 14 meters of vertical descent, which gives access to the aerial area of ​​the cave. Here the air has very little oxygen and breathing is difficult.

The flooded part of the cave is a descent partly covered with organic sediment, partly with rock steps up to a maximum depth of 15 metres.

Bones are everywhere, both human and animal, so much so that it is difficult to classify them; obviously with the exception of human skulls, of which there are 13 visible.

Here too the data collection work required obsessive attention, both to avoid moving the bottom as much as possible and to avoid damaging the finds; unfortunately it was not possible to avoid the percolation of dust from the ceiling due to the bubbles.

Although there were no problems with poor visibility, in the aerial part of the cave the data collection work was made difficult due to the lack of oxygen. The characteristics of the entrance do not favor ventilation and for the entire time spent in the cave I suffered from "air hunger".

On the second day the water was still cloudy, as there was not the slightest flow that could carry away the suspended particles, and drawing with the data reported on the slate was not as "simple" as in my other works: I suffered terribly from the lack of depth visual. Having to travel the same distances back and forth, often several times, only made the already poor visibility worse each time.

In some places, rather than drawing, I limited myself to taking notes; thanks to the three-dimensional reconstruction of the data I was able to "extrapolate" the space of the cave.

David only came in with the camera to film when the work was practically finished, to avoid it further worsening the visibility.

As always, working on the computer required more hours than those spent in the cave. Apart from having to redraw all the notes taken underwater, the visual impact and ease of reading the map cannot be missing, things that require examining various representations to decide the one that best conveys the idea.

James Coke IV was generous with advice this time too. Having a critic of his experience makes the work of reviewing infinitely easier.

Thanks to David Mayor, we never had to repeat scenes. Being an excellent diver is essential to already have the result in mind before even picking up the camera.

Thanks to Bradley Russell for inviting me onto the research team. More and more often I think that the exploration and cartographic work I have completed has led me to meet excellent professionals.

And, as always, my thanks cannot be missed to Bil Phillips, who made me understand what I wanted to do when I grew up.

Bil was the cave diver I would like to be.