Abstract

RODRIGUEZ, Lizbeth de las Mercedes. The Peculiar Maya Death God under the Gaze of Current Forensic Biological Sciences. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2014, vol.44, pp.41-58. ISSN 0185-2574.

The various names of the Maya god of Death seems to and its related iconography refer to an accurate record of certain cadaveric phenomena, which are analyzed in this paper from the perspective of the forensic biological sciences. Further than the mere symbolic representation of death in the Maya cosmogony and religion, the remarkable description of the cadaveric phenomena and the processes of human cadaveric decomposition shown in an image is unique for this culture, as compared to deities associated to death in other Mesoamerican peoples. A life and death dualism is also represented in this unusual Mayan deity, which records, in a single icon, the disintegration of the physical body -probably moving through the underworld- and the skeletal reduction. Under this forensic and criminalistic biological approach, the aim of this paper is to give a different perspective of the cult of dead among Maya.

Keywords : deity; death; Maya; cadaveric phenomena; forensic.

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