Mayan Priestess

Until the present day, one fact about the Mayans was still remaining unexplained. That is the very slight deformations in the shapes of the lower back's vertebrae in some ancient Mayan cadavers that always puzzled the scientists. For a long time it was considered that the deformations appeared in the process of construction of the famous Mayan ziggurats, as the Mayans had to lift heavy blocks, possibly in some unhealthy way which caused the deformities to grow over the years of hard work.

However, the paradox that this hypothesis could not explain fully was that the figures of those whose backbones possessed these specific deformations were very delicate, and most of them were females, thus making the "hard-working theory" illogical. For a long time the theory's protectors tried to prove, and did so quite successfully, that the Mayans used all the working power they could get, including women. These theories created the false vision of the Mayans as a cruel, barbaric society where slavery prospered. However, many scientists kept doubting that the Mayans truly lacked the working power and abused their people to that extent.

In September, 2012, the famous anthropologist, Prof. Yuni Muhamaru of the Yuniversity of Caliph'hornia has finally brought some light onto the subject of the mysterious Mayan spines...

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"After spending several years on studying the logic and culture of the Mayans, we ran into a dead end and were ready to give up trying to understand this very strangest phenomenon.

But one day during a coffee break I saw a video on the internet which suddenly turned our whole research completely upside down! In this video, a young female acrobat was displaying her ability of flexing her spine to the most unbelievable angles, and while I was dazedly watching her performance, a thought appeared in my mind: it looks completely impossible, her vertebrae should be all deformed to let her practice such extreme contortions of her torso. Suddenly a Newton's apple fell on my very head: that was it!

We turned entirely to the study of the human spine itself, and specifically the acrobatic achievements of several subjects very similar in their physical abilities to the abovementioned performer. We have tested and chosen the most notably flexible subjects and analyzed thoroughly the x-rays of their spinal columns.

The results shocked us all: the similarities to the Mayan spines were too obvious to ignore. All these years we were digging in a completely wrong direction, so to speak! The truth was always so close but our feeble Western minds were unable to grasp it, and we were ready to assume everything: social factors, slavery, hard work... everything except the possibility that the Mayans in fact strived to control their bodies to that extent that we couldn't even have imagined.

Based on this discovery, we have developed a completely new theory about the Mayan life and habits that put the Mayans and their social values at an incredibly far distance from the Western lifestyle that we know. It is outlined very well in our publication in the "America's Got Scientists" journal, but I'll try to retell it very briefly here.

We think that the Mayans believed in a spiritual connection between people and their deities. The gods were considered to be something beyond the human world, something magical that the humans could not reach. Thus, people with extraordinary abilities were seen by commoners as coming from the places beyond the human reach and possessing god-like powers. Such people would often become priests, the hands of gods in this world.

For example, someone who received a special ability because of a physical trauma or a traumatizing habit, would most likely become a priest, simply by demonstrating this ability to the crowd as a proof of the divine rank. As the traumas causing the abilities to appear became more repetitive, the priests were able to categorize and systematize them, their discoveries led to the formation of a whole system of training these abilities on purpose.

For example, a Mayan girl would undergo special daily exercises giving her the ability to twist her torso 180 degrees along the spinal axis. According to our research, such an ability would take up to 10 years to master, making very little daily progress to make sure the body adapts itself to this hyperextension of the spinal discs in a way that is the least risky for her health in a long run. If started early enough, by the time of reaching her adulthood, she would almost automatically become a priestess and gain a very high social status which was more than worth the effort.

Needless to mention, such artificial training techniques were only passed by priests to their own children or to their special apprentices whom they wanted to inherit the line. The training was sacred and completely hidden from the prying eyes of simple commoners, thus to them the priestess' extreme flexibility was a feat of magic and the most vivid visual proof of her high spiritual status."

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Prof. Muhamaru, also being an artist, has made a scientific reconstruction of what a typical Mayan priestess might look like. The study was based on several female cadavers possessing the aforementioned vertebra deformities. A special computer program helped to reconstruct the degree at which their spinal columns could twist at their time of life. None of the talented participants involved with the research could reproduce this position in real life yet, which puts in awe of how marvelous the Mayans were at controlling their bodies, if the calculations are correct.