Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

Chapter 4
1. My family and our club looked on cave divers as a particularly nutty kind
of daredevil. I was severely admonished that I would probably die if I
ever attempted it. It was unlikely, in Springfield, Missouri, that I ever
would attempt it, but I took their warnings to heart.
2. Allen J. Christenson, trans., Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Quiché
Maya People (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007),
https://www.mesoweb.com/publications/Christenson/PopolVuh.pdf.
3. My memories of visiting this cave are a bit shaky after 20 years; I
therefore relied upon numerous project reports from the Western Belize
Regional Cave Project’s 1997 and 1998 reports. In particular, I drew
upon these articles: Holley Moyes, and Jaime J. Awe, “Spatial Analysis
of Artifacts in the Main Chamber of Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize:
Preliminary Results,” in The Western Belize Cave Project: A Report of
the 1997 Field Season, edited by Jaime J. Awe (University of New
Hampshire, 1998); pp. 22–38; Sherry A. Gibbs, “Human Skeletal
Remains from Actun Tunichil Muknal and Actun Uayazba Kab,” in The
Western Belize Cave Project: A Report of the 1997 Field Season, edited
by Jaime J. Awe (University of New Hampshire, 1998), pp. 71–95.
4. At the time that I visited this cave, I was 20 years old and training at my
first archaeological field school—not experienced enough to identify the
injuries on the human skeletons or understand their implications. As
research for this section, I went back and read the formal archaeological
description of the remains. I must confess that I really struggled with
writing this section—trying to balance writing sensitively about this topic
while providing an accurate description of cultural practices. If I have
failed to achieve this balance, I offer my sincere apologies.
5. Jaime J. Awe, Cameron Griffith, and Sherry Gibbs, “Cave Stelae and
Megalithic Monuments in Western Belize,” in The Maw of the Earth
Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, edited by James E. Brady and
Keith M. Prufer (University of Texas Press, 2005), pp. 223–248.
6. The connection between Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac and the
sacrifice of children to Tlaloc has been discussed by Viviana Díaz
Balsera, “A Judeo-Christian Tlaloc or a Nahua Yahweh? Domination,
Hybridity, and Continuity in the Nahua Evangelization Theater,”