Centuries in the past, Maya kids as younger as 7 had “tooth gems” — jade inlays of their enamel that doubtless symbolized social maturity or a ceremony of passage, a brand new examine finds.
Archaeologists already knew that pre-Hispanic Maya adults typically sported tooth inlays. However “what’s tantalizing is the younger age of the people” analyzed within the new analysis, the authors wrote within the examine.
However a brand new examine within the November 2025 challenge of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Studies examined three remoted enamel with jade inlays housed on the Popol Vuh Museum in Guatemala. Primarily based on the diploma of every tooth’s root formation, the researchers decided that every tooth had come from a baby between 7 and 10 years outdated.
Tooth style
One of many adorned enamel was an higher central left incisor — one of many higher entrance enamel — and one other was a proper higher canine. The third tooth was a decrease incisor. It is unknown if all of them got here from a single baby.
“Sadly, these enamel should not related to bony skeletal stays,” the authors wrote within the examine, “so we can’t state for sure their origin and whether or not or not they belong to a single particular person or to as much as three totally different ones.”
In response to the examine, the Maya typically intentionally formed their enamel by submitting or engraving them. It was additionally widespread for artisans to make use of stone instruments to carve synthetic holes within the surfaces of distinguished enamel and to position gems there — normally jade, but in addition obsidian or pyrite — that have been mounted in place with natural glue.
There may be some proof that adolescents between 10 and 15 years outdated had enamel that have been filed or engraved, however these people did not have dental inlays, the examine famous. There may be additionally “a really restricted quantity” of Maya between the ages of 15 and 20 who had dental inlays within the archaeological document, they wrote.
It is doable that the Maya did not put dental inlays on youthful people as a result of it may have broken rising enamel. One thought is that “inlays may need been too invasive a process to be carried out on such younger people,” the workforce wrote within the examine. Nonetheless, X-rays of the three enamel within the new examine indicated that the innermost layer, often known as the dental pulp, wasn’t broken and that the enamel didn’t have pure caries, or cavities.
Mysteries stay
An evaluation of the three enamel means that the inlays have been put in whereas the kids have been alive, the authors wrote.
This is a crucial discovery as a result of two enamel with jade inlays present in Belize might have been from a baby as younger as 3. Nonetheless, that discover is “controversial,” partly as a result of the inlays might have been created after dying as a part of a burial ritual, the authors of the brand new examine wrote.
Additionally they cautioned that the brand new discovery may mirror a regional or native custom that was not widespread all through the Maya world or that the dental inlays have been an indication {that a} baby had begun taking over grownup duties, resembling house responsibilities or laboring.
Till extra dental inlays are discovered within the enamel of Maya kids, it will likely be difficult to find out why these children had them.
“Until extra circumstances are documented, any doable interpretation of the explanations behind performing these everlasting modifications in such younger people stays on the stage of assumptions and can’t be generalized to the entire Maya realm,” the authors wrote within the examine.
