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                                       Thighbones Were Scepters for Ancient Zapotec Men?






Charles Q. Choi
for National Geographic News
July 15, 2009

For men of the ancient Zapotec civilization, ancestral thighbones may have been carried as status symbols.

Based on centuries-old stone carvings in southern Mexico, archaeologists had long suspected that Zapotec men brandished human femurs.
 
"The thought was that the femurs are those of the ancestors of the rulers, serving like staffs of office or symbols of legitimacy," explained archaeologist Gary Feinman of the Field Museum in Chicago.

Now grave excavations have confirmed the practice, according to a new study. What's more, it seems that commoners got a leg up too.

Flourishing from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 1000 in the Valley of Oaxaca, the Zapotec were contemporaries of the ancient Maya and Aztec. (See "Zapotec Digs in Mexico Show Clues to Rise and Fall.")

Prior excavations had revealed a Zapotec tomb where nine femurs were missing. But the skeletons were a bit of a jumble, so it wasn't clear whether the bones had been taken or had simply gone missing.