The Index
Frontera Comalapa’s 165 Skulls: What INAH’s New Analysis Shows
INAH’s latest analysis counts 165 skulls from a Chiapas cave. Here is what the bones establish, and why a ritual skull display remains an interpretation.
Topics: Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, Archaeology, Maya, Human Remains
INAH’s latest analysis identifies 165 skulls from a cave in Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas: an estimated 83 female, 79 male and three too fragmentary to classify. The October 28, 2026 announcement concerns remains discovered in 2012, not a newly opened cave.
What the new count can tell us
Researchers Cristell Delesma Pérez and Abigail Reyes López assessed sex from cranial morphology. Pelvic bones were unavailable. These are osteological estimates, not identified individuals.
The four-skull difference is small. The count alone cannot tell us how these people were selected.
The researchers report cut marks on three individuals, heat exposure on bones and soot visible in archival cave photographs. A pilgrimage site involving torchlit ceremonies and petitions for rain is a proposed explanation. It does not establish that any particular ceremony took place. INAH’s October announcement
Why archaeologists discuss a skull display
INAH’s earlier account, published in January 2025, describes aligned wooden rods and the absence of complete burials. Together, those observations support its interpretation of a skull altar, or tzompantli. The account places the remains around AD 900–1200, drawing on their characteristic cranial modification.
It also identifies a practical difference from familiar Mexica examples: these skulls lack the perforations used to mount skulls on a rack. The proposed Comalapa arrangement used wooden supports without piercing them. That is a reconstruction of how a display might have worked, not evidence that every practice associated with other tzompantlis occurred here. INAH’s cave documentation
What remains unresolved
Cut marks on three individuals cannot establish a cause of death for all 165 people. Nor does a proposed ritual function recover their names or motives. The distinction matters when human remains become a striking headline: the physical evidence supports some conclusions more directly than others.
A similar limit applies to the Parabita double burial, where sharing a grave does not establish the relationship implied by the nickname “the lovers.”
