Spider Monkey Fossil Discovery Sheds Light on… Americas’ Diplomacy
Tulum archeological zone, Mexico
The discovery marks the earliest evidence of a primate held in captivity in the Americas.Archaeologists found the 1,700-year-old skeleton of a spider monkey buried alongside an eagle and rattlesnakes at the base of a pyramid in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. It is presumed that it was some sort of a gift from the Maya.Unearthed in 2018 at the base of a pyramid in Teotihuacan, the monkey’s skeleton lays beside the corpses of other animals in an area of the city where visiting Maya elites may have resided.
While scientists have already found evidence of animal sacrifices, “up to that point, we did not have any instances of sacrificed primates in Teotihuacan,” says Nawa Sugiyama, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of California, Riverside.
Researchers have conducted chemical analysis on the spider monkey’s bones and teeth and discovered that the animal was female and was captured in humid environment at a young age, approximately in the third century. The monkey then lived in captivity for a few years before it died at some point in between 250 and 300 AD.The highlands around Mexico City aren’t the natural habitat of spider monkeys. Based on this fact, as well as the presence of Maya murals and vessels, Sugiyama and her colleagues suggest that the spider monkey could have been a gift from the Mayan elite to the people of Teotihuacan.Moreover, the discovery prompted the scientists to suggest that there were diplomatic relations between the Maya and Teotihuacan before the ‘war of 378 [AD]’, when military forces from Teotihuacan invaded the Mayan city of Tikal, thus starting a roughly 70-year period of violent clashes.
This “striking” discovery shows that “the war of 378 had a long history leading up to it,” says David Stuart, an archaeologist and epigraphist at the University of Texas at Austin. “The monkey is a really compelling illustration of this long relationship.”
