Dr. James Fitzsimmons

What kinds of marks will it leave?

And so that's one thing that we could sort of view in terms of the kind of knowledge of how this sort of stuff is done.

In reality, though, the difference between sacrifice and murder is really difficult to sort of to determine, right?

So there's a difference between like, I've killed this person, right?

And you've got sort of forensics and you'd be like, oh, this person's killed.

And like sacrifice, like I've, you know, I did it in a ritual, right?

So it's hard to tell.

I can't in my mind figure out how they got the stuff in Midnight Terror Cave, but what I would say is that child sacrifice in the Maya area was dying out over the course of the classic period.

So if you look at the central area where Tikal was, sort of central Paten, they give that up sort of early classic-wise, I think.

Um, and it's really in the Western part of the Baten, uh, actually at Piedras Negras where I used to work, where that sort of persists.

It's almost like the guys in the Central Baten, like, did this and they were like, at a certain point, they were like, no, this is bad.

We shouldn't do this.

And they stop.

They actually stop doing it.

And the ones in the West, they must have, like, looked at the folks in the West and been like, oh, those guys, like,

Those guys are crazy.

Don't go west, guys.

How about, you know, stay away from those guys.

Those guys creep me out, right?

We don't know.