In many Mesoamerican ritual traditions, the sacrifice of children was understood not as loss but as a specific kind of offering — the most precious and therefore the most powerful gift that could be made to the supernatural forces that governed the world.

Whether the families of the children in the chultún understood their contribution in this way, or in some other framework that we cannot now reconstruct, is not accessible from any archaeological method.

Chultúns Across the Maya World

The specific type of subterranean feature that held the children’s remains — the chultún — is widely distributed across the Maya archaeological landscape.

Chultúns of various forms and sizes are found at many Maya sites, and their functions were varied: storage of water, storage of food, workshop spaces, and eventually, as at Chichén Itzá, mortuary and ritual use.

The limestone bedrock of the Maya lowlands is relatively soft and easily worked with stone tools, making the excavation of subterranean chambers a practical option for communities that needed storage or other enclosed spaces.