The ancient individuals in the Chichén Itzá chultún are not representatives of a vanished civilization.

They are ancestors of living people.

The Maya communities of the Yucatán Peninsula — speaking Maya languages, maintaining cultural practices that draw on ancient traditions, navigating the specific challenges of life in contemporary Mexico and the Maya diaspora beyond — are the continuation of the same human population that built Chichén Itzá, that deposited children in the underground chamber near the Sacred Cenote, that maintained the ritual and ceremonial life of one of the greatest cities in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

The genetic continuity between the ancient chultún individuals and the modern Maya of Tixcacaltuyub is not just a scientific finding.