Actun Tunichil Muknal
Interesting facts
- The cave was first explored in the 1980s by the geomorphologist Thomas Miller, and archaeologists excavated it between 1993 and 1998.
- More than 1,400 artefacts have been catalogued in the main chamber alone, ranging from pottery to stone tools and obsidian blades.
- Of the fourteen people found in the cave, half were children, most of them very young, and the adults were mostly between 20 and 40.
- About 400 of the vessels were water containers, linking the rituals to the rain god Chaac during droughts of roughly 800 to 1000 AD.
- The bodies were never buried: they were left on the cave floor, and marks of trauma on the bones indicate that the victims were sacrificed.
- Almost all the offerings date from the Late Classic period, suggesting that ritual use of the cave lasted only about a century or a century and a half.
- A separate Stela Chamber holds engraved slate slabs together with pottery fragments and obsidian blades.
- The cave and its visitors are the main setting of The Actual Star, a 2021 science fiction novel by Monica Byrne.
Why it is worth it
Deep inside a river cave in the forests of western Belize, the bones of the ancient Maya lie where they were left more than a thousand years ago, slowly sealed to the rock by sparkling mineral crusts. Actun Tunichil Muknal, the Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre, is known locally simply as ATM. It is both a natural wonder, a long passage of flowing water and dripstone, and one of the most vivid Maya ritual sites anywhere.
The cave lies within the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve. Its main system runs for about 5 km: a river passage of roughly 3 km ends at a flooded sump, and a series of upper passages continues beyond it through huge fallen boulders and broad chambers, finally opening into a collapsed sinkhole in the jungle. The upper levels are richly hung with formations, and the cave is home to bats, freshwater crabs, crayfish, catfish and large whip spiders.
For the Maya, caves were openings to the underworld, and this one was a place of offering. In its dry upper chambers archaeologists have recorded fourteen sets of human remains among scatters of pottery and stone tools. Many vessels bear deliberately punched kill holes, read as a way of releasing the spirit of the object, which marks them as ceremonial. One vessel, the Monkey Pot, is among only four of its kind known in Central America. The Maya also reshaped some formations into altars, and it has been suggested, though not proven, that certain stones were placed to throw shadows resembling faces and animals. The most famous skeleton, the Crystal Maiden, is thought to be that of a teenager, probably a sacrificial victim, whose bones have been coated in calcite until they glitter. National Geographic once placed the cave at the top of its list of the world's sacred caves.
Getting there
The cave lies near San Ignacio in the Cayo District, about 19 km from Belmopan. The nearest airport is the small Dangriga Airport (DGA), about 69 km away across the Maya Mountains; the country's international airport, Philip S. W. Goldson International (BZE) near Belize City, is about 75 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Actun Tunichil Muknal, also known locally as ATM, is a cave in Belize, near San Ignacio, Cayo District, notable as a Maya archaeological site that includes skeletons, ceramics, and stoneware. There are several areas with skeletal remains in the main chamber. The best known is "The Crystal Maiden", the skeleton of what is believed to be a 17-year-old boy, possibly a sacrifice victim, whose bones have been calcified to a sparkling, crystallized appearance.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
17.11413, -88.86235per Wikidata