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Shark teeth
shark , both existent and imagined , had an authoritative place in the mythology of the ancient Maya , according to Sarah Newman , an archaeologist at James Madison University and author of a Modern archaeological work into shark stiff and shark - based art found at Mayan sites in Central America .
Shark tooth and other nautical token such as seashell , stingray spines and coral are often find out in buried offering at Maya sanctified sites , where they were used to represent the oceans in a ceremonial model of the Mayan concept of the universe .
The cache of sacred artefact point here was buried at a Maya pyramid at El Zotz in Guatemala between 725 A.D. and 800 A.D. It let in 47 teeth from the upper jaw of what was belike a unmarried coronach shark . [ learn full narration about how giant sharks may have influenced Mayan monster myths ]
Trade and ceremony
Newman ’s research notes that shark remains are often find at ancient Maya sites at comparatively foresightful distances from the seacoast , where the sharks were hunted .
It ’s likely that shark tooth and other marine item made their way to the inland Maya cities , show on this mathematical function , as trade items for ceremonial exercise .
Sacred caches
The fossilized giant tooth of extinct megalodon shark have also been found in consecrated stash bury at several ancient Maya site .
This image shows a fossilized megalodon tooth , with the tooth of agreat ashen shark(center ) and a Irish bull shark .
Predators
Megalodon sharks were an peak piranha in the oceans from 23 million class ago until they died out around 2.6 million years ago .
The gargantuan shark could weigh up to 110 tons and turn over up to 65 feet ( 20 meters ) in length – about 30 times large than a great white shark .
This exposure from 1909 shows the American zoologist Bashford Dean sit in a Reconstruction Period of the jaws of a megalodon that were incur in South Carolina .
Myth from truth
Sea monstrosity from Mayan mythology such as Sipak ( bonk as Cipactli in the Aztec voice communication ) were often portrayed with a single giant tooth , which Newman think could have been exhort by the fossilized megalodon teeth found at ancient Mayan hallowed internet site .
This depiction of a shark - like sea monster is drawn from a glazed ceramic plate dated to the Early Classic Maya period ( 250 A.D. - 350 A.D. ) , find in the Petén Basin neighborhood of Northern Guatemala . [ scan full story about how elephantine sharks may have mold Mayan monster myth ]
Power and defeat
Maya sites in Central America where megalodon teeth were used as sacred offerings admit the metropolis of Palenque in southerly Mexico ’s Chiapas State , which hand the height of its powers under king Pakal the Great between 615 A.D. and 683 A.D.
Palenque was at war with rival Maya city states in the 8th C , and by the end of the ninth century , it was mostly abandoned .
Awe-filled images
The Mayan name for sharks and sea monsters is the word " xook , " shown in writing by this logograph .
Researchers think the glyph may represent a stylized bull shark , a common shark coinage in Central America .
Xook and its shark - like logograph were also used as part of the sweep up name of several famous top executive and queens in Mayan chronicle – perhaps signifying a mythical or totemic connection to the horrific sea creatures .
Gods and sharks
Shark - comparable feature and references to mythologic sea - monsters also appear in personation of other Mayan gods .
In one rendering of the Maya creation myth , the Maize God is born from the open jaws of the dying ocean - goliath Sipak .
In this image from a cut up slab at the Copán Maya situation in Honduras , a non-Christian priest personate the Maize God wears the jaws of a shark over his breakwater . [ Read full account about how giant shark may have tempt Mayan freak myths ]
