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[Narrator] It's the dawn of the 16th century, and Europe stands on the cusp of a scientific revolution. Among the most bizarre is the use of the ground remains of ancient mummies. [Anthropologist] For hundreds of years, many Europeans were essentially engaging in a form of cannibalism. [Historian] It's a mainstream medicine. [Narrator] For hundreds of years, a small community hidden in the Austrian Alps defies conventional wisdom by turning toxin to treatment.
[Neuroscientist] How does this practice of regularly ingesting poison persist for so long? [Narrator] And, in the ancient jungles of Guatemala, the ruins of a wellness facility reveal sophisticated health practices that blur the line between science and spirituality. [Expert] These Maya practitioners were more than just healers. They were the guardians of medical knowledge. [Narrator] In 1995, archeologists venture into the depths of the tomb of KV5, the largest ever found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
The labyrinth is rumored to contain the dozens of corpses of Ramses the Great's sons. Yet as each room is opened, the sons of Ramses, it seemed, had possibly been plundered, ground to dust, and consumed in a medicinal fat, an afterlife none could have foreseen. [Natasha Billson] For centuries, many Europeans were essentially engaging in a form of cannibalism. [Nicholas Everett] From the 11th century onwards in Europe, right up to the 19th century, mummy was considered a legitimate medicinal product.
[Mazyar Fallah] In modern times, it seems crazy to think that people thought there was medicinal value in eating mummified human remains, or even fresh human remains. [James Vincent] Though it may send a shiver down the spine of modern medical professions, this was once considered one of the most beneficial treatments available. [Narrator] Revered as more than historical treasures, the mummies of ancient Egypt are torn from their tombs to be probed and processed in the name of medicine, their bodies consumed in a misguided quest for health.
This practice persists for centuries, eventually expanding to include a grotesque array of human-derived ingredients, from pulverized bones to fresh blood. But what drives Europeans to believe that ingesting the remains of the dead can cure their ailments? The answer lies in a series of misunderstandings and a dash of exotic allure. [Fallah] There's always been this allure to cultures and times where things were more mystical and more powerful. And ancient Egypt is one of the biggest ones. There was so much that was found once they first started digging into the sand and unearthing the Valley of the Kings. It's ensconced in mysticism from the powers of the pharaohs.
[Rachel Honeyghan-Williams] This misguided practice is a prime example of how misinformation can take root and persist, even amongst those who considered themselves educated. [Narrator] Human remains have been recorded in pharmaceutical applications in Europe since at least the times of ancient Rome, when bodily byproducts were considered some of the most potent cures available. [Madeleine Mant] The foundation of Greco-Roman medicine rests on the foundation that humans and the environment share the same elements, and so this ends up with various elements of the human body being integrated into medicinal cures.
[Anthea Nardi] And this leads to the belief that either human parts or human excrement can be used to treat human disease. We've heard that Romans have used bodily fluids in different medicine such as breast milk, urine, and fecal matter. There are reports that one potential cure for epilepsy was to drink the blood of a slain gladiator. [Mant] It's important to note also that the use of human remains in various forms of medicinal cures is not at all unique to Europe.
We see this in ancient China. [Narrator] Throughout much of history, these cannibalistic cures have teetered the line between acceptance and taboo, that is, until around the 12th century. [Billson] As ancient tombs in Egypt are opened and looted, news of a dark, waxy, and seemingly familiar substance begins to spread up through Europe. [Narrator] This dark substance, intended to preserve the dead for eternity, instead captures the interest of Europeans, who see it rather as an elixir for the living, a miraculous new source of nature's wonder drug-- bitumen.
[Nardi] Bitumen is a naturally occurring, sticky hydrocarbon, and it's created when organic material decomposes over the span of millennia. [Mant] We think of bitumen today most commonly when we think about things like asphalt. But it was being used in the ancient world not only for engineering and for agriculture, but also for medicine. [Fallah] Bitumen was known to actually have some medicinal properties, but it was coming out of natural formations in certain places. When people were finding these mummies in Egypt and finding something that looked just like bitumen,
it's not surprising to think if it'll preserve a body from decomposing, maybe it can help a body that's ill. [Narrator] For centuries, this coveted ingredient is commonly sourced from natural deposits in the Middle East, where it's often referred to as mumia. From here, it's exported across the known world, making its way into the ancient records that survive to this day. [Everett] Pliny the Elder, who wrote A Natural History and left us a lot of information about medical practice in his day, does actually talk about mumia, and he does refer to it in several recipes. [Narrator] Some scholars suggest mumia to be a key ingredient of embalming in ancient Egypt, its preservative quality ideal for protecting flesh from moisture, bacteria, and decay.
As natural stores in the Middle East dwindle over time, these fragile remains of antiquity promise the world a new yet morbid supply. Travelers and healers alike spread tales of its abundance, including the renowned Baghdad physician Abd al-Latif. [Mant] Figures like Abd al-Latif talk about how mummies might actually be so rich in mumia that maybe they could become a replacement for these natural stores. [Narrator] Soon, mumia finds its way from the desolate tombs of Egypt to the shelves of European apothecaries. For the next 500 years, it will be ground into tinctures and folded into topical balms,
becoming a staple of medieval medicine. [Nardi] As the allure of ancient Egypt grips Europe, it lends credence to the belief of mumia to be used as a medicine. [Fallah] We get into an interesting point where the cultures that are taking the mummies out of their tombs and shipping them back to England are also cultures that wouldn't stand for their own graves being robbed. And that's where you get that disconnect. If I wouldn't want it done to my culture, well, it's not my culture, so the same rules don't apply. [Honeyghan-Williams] For the people involved in the sale of bitumen, this is not an ethical issue about taking bitumen from mummies; it's a logistical one.
How are we going to get the bitumen from these mummies into dispensaries? [Narrator] Rather than carefully scraping the aged bitumen from each body, purveyors sell the cadavers whole, leaving not a gram of this precious residue to waste. However, eventually, the vast necropolises of Egypt seemed to near their limit, and merchants are forced to get creative to satisfy demand. [Everett] The demand for mummy becomes so intense that they begin to sort of fake them, baking up bodies and wrapping them up and pretending that they've come from very far away in order to satisfy this huge demand for this incredibly important medicine.
[Narrator] Merchants move any bodies they can get their hands on, regardless of whether they died of natural causes. In some cases, these human corpses are even swapped out for animal remains in order to meet consumer appetite. [Honeyghan-Williams] Although there's growing awareness of these kind of fraudulent practices, the belief in the medicinal properties and cures branded as mumia persists and continues to be pushed by physicians. [Mant] Cannibalism is not only accepted, it's actually promoted. [Narrator] As European pharmacopeia expands to include the blood, fat, organs, and excrement sourced from the freshly deceased, citizens are no longer concerned
about whether they should consume human-derived medicine, but rather what type of human-derived medicine they should consume. [Mant] There's a doctrine at this time that "like cures like," so the treatment should actually mirror the ailment that it's trying to treat. To cure a headache, for instance, you might take a tincture that actually has ground-up human skull in it. If you have eye issues, you might need to consume a human eye. If you have a blood disease, maybe you need to be drinking blood.
Now, was any of this effective? Probably not. But of course, we always need to think about medicinal cures in the past under the explanatory frameworks of the time. People are doing the best they can with the knowledge they have at hand. [Narrator] In the medieval era, many European healers attribute disease to mystical causes, and their remedies often carry spiritual justification. Central to this belief is the concept of the vital spirit, the life force of a human's body. [Nardi] If you're consuming somebody else's body part, you are then also consuming part of their soul.
You can imagine the types of bodies that are going to be sought after for consumption. [Vincent] Think warriors, virgins, and members of the elite who would meet a sudden end. [Fallah] If you're looking at the pharaohs, you're looking to ingest mummies that had higher social status, that had higher religious status, that were more valuable members of the society. But that's not what they were necessarily getting. There were lots of tombs. There's only a certain number of pharaohs over those thousands of years, and who knows what they were actually being given?
[Narrator] In 1649, these beliefs culminate in a gruesome scene as King Charles I of England, convicted of treason, kneels before the executioner's block. According to court records, a crowd quickly gathers, their eyes fixed not on the spectacle of justice, but on the promise of healing. As the ax falls and the king's blood is spilled, spectators rush forward, scrambling to mop up the royal residue, which some will reportedly store in their personal medicine cabinets. However, it will be King Charles' son, King Charles II, that would lend a royal endorsement to the practice of cannibal cures.
[Nardi] King Charles II is known as an intellectual. He's interested in chemistry and alchemy. He even has his own laboratory. [Everett] He also founded the Royal Society, and he was very interested in a lot of scientific and medical practices of his day and investigating. He was a, a very scientific figure. [Narrator] From this Royal Society, a key figure of corpse medicine emerges, Jonathan Goddard, a reputable English physician who devises a concoction known as Goddard's Drops.
[Honeyghan-Williams] Jonathan Goddard believes that the most potent medical ingredient you can use is the ground skull of someone who suffered a traumatic death. [Mant] He takes that theory and puts it into Goddard's Drops, using the skulls of individuals who suffered a traumatic death. Goddard's Drops start being touted as a miracle cure for everything from headaches all the way to epilepsy. [Narrator] After suffering a seizure himself, King Charles II reportedly becomes desperate for a cure and offers the physician up to 6,000 pounds
to purchase his ingestible recipe. [Fallah] He gets the opportunity to provide his Goddard's Drops to the king. The king takes it. If the king is having Goddard's Drops, then that's the best that there is out there, and so I want the same, if I can afford it. [Narrator] This widespread acceptance of human-laced treatments stands in contrast to the continent's professed horror at reports of cannibalism in other corners of the globe. [Honeyghan-Williams] At this time, Europeans are seeing cannibalism occurring in other parts of the world, including parts they are actively colonizing, as an act itself of barbarity. While back in Europe, the elite are eagerly consuming
human blood, fat, bones derived from the dead. [Billson] The most incredible part of this entire century-spanning story is the fact that mummy medicine is based on a miscommunication of what mumia actually is. [Narrator] The linguistic confusion begins around the 12th century, when the term mumia, derived from the Persian word "mum," meaning "wax," is incorrectly translated by European scholars. Originally referring to the natural black bitumen found in ancient rocks, the word is misinterpreted to be a general reference for mummified bodies. And the waxy bituminous substance covering ancient remains is thought to be a substance
produced by the corpses themselves. [Everett] What was originally a natural product that bubbled up through the ground gets confused and conflated with dead bodies, and that actually becomes the most dominant meaning of the term mummy. In some ways, the original meaning is completely lost. We now have a completely different conception of what mummy is. It's now actually parts of a dead body. [Nardi] It's most likely that this black substance on the mummies was a combination of oil and resins that was part of the mummification process.
[Honeyghan-Williams] In the end, this misinformation based on a mispronunciation, leads to centuries-long practice of consuming humans as medicine. [Narrator] Despite the efforts of Renaissance scholars to debunk the mumia myth, its use persists well into the 19th century. Its popularity is only compounded by a renewed era of mummy mania, as colonial explorers loot the growing cache of ancient tombs that contained cadavers to be exploited for far more than pharmaceuticals.
[Mant] By the 19th century, the mummy craze takes on some bizarre new dimensions. First of all, we see artists craving the pigment "mummy brown," which is actually made by ground-up mummified individuals. [Nardi] England sees these mummy unwrapping parties that become this macabre entertainment for the elite. [Billson] Several industries take advantage of the cache of mummified bodies and use them for everything from fuel to fertilizer to papermaking. [Vincent] It's a chilling thought that the scarcity of mummies today is partly due to Europeans consuming them in the masses centuries ago.
[Fallah] This isn't about the sanctity of a buried individual anymore. It's that there's no thought that this is desecration, whether it's eating or unwrapping. [Narrator] It's not until the 20th century that the exploitation of ancient corpses finally begins to wane. Yet, even as mumia disappears from apothecary shelves, humanity's call for a cure-all panacea endures. [Mant] We can hear echoes of the mummy craze in modern wellness cures. It's hard to go through Instagram without finding a celebrity-backed tummy tea or some sort of toxin blast.
We're still searching for this cure-all, for this panacea. Of course, we haven't stopped using human body parts in medicine, but we're using them more ethically and with consent. We see blood transfusions, organ transplants, and skin grafts as some really key examples. So in this much more modern biomedical way, the dead can certainly still give some life to the living. [Narrator] While some seek healing through human flesh, others find it in some of the most dangerous substances known to history. In the year 1851, a strange revelation ripples through the Western medical community, the existence of toxicophagi.
The term, introduced by Swiss physician Johann Jakob von Tschudi, describes a secluded community in the Austrian countryside who deliberately consume one of the deadliest substances known to man--arsenic. And, to the surprise of many scholars, they do so in the name of health. [Christian Knudsen] The toxicophagi are a group of people that are said to be arsenic eaters. And in fact, according to legend, they have been eating arsenic for centuries with no ill effects. Who are these people? [Sarah Duignan] Arsenic is one of those poisons that is incredibly potent. It can kill you even with the smallest dose of a pea-sized amount.
[Narrator] Since ancient times, arsenic has been wielded as a potent yet largely untraceable weapon, a toxin used against enemies, criminals, and even one's own blood, dooming its victims to a slow, painful death. This dangerous substance is infamously known as the King of All Poisons. [Billson] The recorded story of human civilization is one that is laced with arsenic. It's a lethal drug that's been used for millennia. [Duignan] When Victorian scholars were exposed to this community in Austria, the natural questions really are how much arsenic's being consumed?
How are these people able to do this for such prolonged periods? And why are there no ill effects on their community? [Narrator] Arsenic is a naturally occurring element found nearly everywhere on Earth, from deep within the planet's crust to the very air that we regularly breathe. In its organic form, this element poses minimal risk. But when it bonds with other elements like oxygen or sulfur, it transforms into a lethal brew of molecules. [Fallah] Arsenic in the form that causes the most amount of toxicity and problems in humans is arsenic trioxide. Arsenic trioxide resembles phosphates.
Phosphates are a key part of how our cells live and work. When you put a phosphate on something, it'll work. When you take the phosphate off, it won't work. And this is how we regulate or control how much we make of different things in the cells, for example, is one part of metabolism. [Honeyghan-Williams] So you can imagine, inside the body, now arsenic trioxide is replacing phosphate. These cells don't have a source of energy. They can't clear waste. These are the critical processes that keep us alive, and they're being completely sabotaged by this arsenic.
[Narrator] Arsenic trioxide is just one of many toxic forms that this element can assume. A mere 0.1 grams of this compound can be immediately fatal if ingested. At lower doses, it can accumulate over time, leading to a slow and agonizing demise. [Billson] The very term arsenic has almost become synonymous with poison, as history has proven just how hazardous this substance can be. [Knudsen] Arsenic becomes incredibly popular as a poison, partially because it's so difficult to tell that it has even been used.
It induces symptoms that could be any number of ailments-- vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. It's just a pea-sized amount, which is all it takes to bring death upon your enemies. [Narrator] Arsenic's insidious nature earns it a dark reputation throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, when it becomes known as both the King of Poisons and the Poison Of Kings. [Everett] If we think about the High Renaissance period of the Borgia family, they were famous for their poisonings, and often they depicted one of the daughters, Lucrezia, as the poisoner in some of their famous portraits that come from that period.
[Billson] In the 17th century, an Italian woman named Giulia Tofana sells a homemade cosmetic containing arsenic. Her customers? Mainly women who are intent on killing their husbands. Hundreds of men are rumored to fall victim to her recipe. [Knudsen] In France, arsenic earns the nickname "poudre de succession" because of its frequent use of ensuring the succession and inheritance of young people when their parents don't, you know, kick the bucket soon enough.
[Narrator] But not all use white arsenic as a tool of sinister ambition. In the rural mountains of Styria, in modern-day Austria, generations of Alpine peasants reportedly consume this deadly substance as a tonic for strength and vitality. The Styrians feed this potent substance to their horses, convinced it will enhance their muscular strength and appearance. Soon, however, this treatment is only deemed effective if the farmer consumes the remedy as well. Many villagers begin mixing this deadly element into their schnapps or sprinkling it over their morning meal.
[Everett] So these arsenic eaters claim they gain extra amounts of energy and ruggedness in order to cope with their mountainous terrain. The women claim that it enhances their beauty and they get a shine to their face. And they also use it as a prophylactic to keep away disease and other things from them. So they really see it as a sort of an all-round health product. [Narrator] In 1851, Swiss explorer Johann Jakob von Tschudi causes a stir in the medical community when he publishes a report on this precarious practice in a Viennese journal.
He claims the arsenic eaters begin this habit by ingesting a lentil-sized dose of arsenic several times per week. As their bodies adapt over time, however, they increase their intake, some allegedly consuming up to eight times that amount on a regular basis, a quantity that anywhere else would surely prove lethal. [Duignan] One of the most pressing questions is how can this community ingest a compound that has killed so many people before them? [Billson] Has this community stumbled upon a miraculous new arsenic compound? [Narrator] The Styrians employ a method that in modern terms is known as titration.
[Honeyghan-Williams] The process of drug titration is really useful for starting certain medicines. You start with a small dose, the lowest clinical dose that you can take, and slowly, over time, you increase it depending on the body's reaction. [Billson] Could the arsenic eaters have developed an immunity to this poison over time? [Narrator] Von Tschudi's detailed reports on Styria send the medical community into a frenzy, igniting a fierce debate across Europe.
[Honeyghan-Williams] All of this is taking place during the Victorian era in Europe. This is the time where science is typically done by well-off, well-educated men who have a real sense of hubris and pride and just do not believe that poor, uneducated peasants in rural villages could ever outsmart them by finding a way to safely prescribe arsenic. [Narrator] Amid the chorus of skepticism, some medical scholars begin to embrace Von Tschudi's findings as truth, a move that will inadvertently spark a sensational fad in Victorian wellness.
[Knudsen] The general public had a very different reaction to these stories, and instead, they took the reports of women experiencing brighter complexions, rosier cheeks from their use of arsenic as being a green light to try it themselves. And in fact, it's credited as sparking a general enthusiasm and craze towards having arsenic in women's cosmetics in the Victorian era. [Narrator] Chemists across the West lean into this dangerous trend. Yet, even as the market value of arsenic soars, the academic community remains fixated on the validity of Von Tschudi's report.
[Fallah] These institutionalized medical practitioners likely just don't believe that this rural community is doing this. They haven't seen it for themselves. They don't believe that it can actually happen because it goes against everything they know about arsenic and its levels. [Narrator] But it's not until putting a revolutionary new test to use that the composition of this substance is finally confirmed.
[Honeyghan-Williams] In the 19th century, an English chemist named James Marsh perfects a chemical analysis test for arsenic. If you have a presumed sample of arsenic, you mix it with zinc and acid and heat it. If arsenic is present, you get a silver substance accumulating in the test vial. No arsenic, no silver substance. [Narrator] In 1860, at a natural science conference in Graz, Austria, a doctor ascends the stage with two volunteer arsenic eaters from the rural Styria before a live audience. One man is given and consumes 300 milligrams of yellow orpiment, arsenic in its mineral form.
The other ingests 400 milligrams of the more distilled white arsenic trioxide. Both survive. The volunteers then provide urine samples to chemist Henry Roscoe, who employs the Marsh test to determine definitive results. Both Styrian men had, in fact, digested toxic arsenic. [Billson] This much arsenic is enough to kill the average human, and these citizens are apparently taking this dose on a regular basis. How exactly are they doing this? [Honeyghan-Williams] Another theory suggests that the Styrians may have undergone a unique genomic adaptation in their gut microbiome, and perhaps these Styrians have a protein that enables them
to turn arsenic from a toxic form to something less dangerous. [Knudsen] To this day, we still don't actually have any answers about how this community had been consuming arsenic for so long. It remains a mystery. [Duignan] When you're using arsenic as part of your beauty practices, you will see your complexion's getting better initially, because what's happening is the bacteria in the blemish is being attacked by the arsenic. But with prolonged use, that begins to attack the rest of your body as well. Unfortunately, there are a lot of women who, in the practice of adding arsenic to their beauty routines, end up dying as a result.
[Narrator] Yet, even as the grim consequences are revealed, arsenic will continue to find its way into homes across the Western world. [Billson] In fact, by the late 19th century, English wallpaper is laced with poison. It takes thousands of seemingly random deaths until European chemists finally uncover the deadly connection. [Knudsen] Moreover, many of these toxic goods remained on shelves until the 1930s. [Narrator] By the 20th century, advancements in tools like the Marsh test finally slows the prevalence of arsenic in consumer goods
and helps the detection of its use in criminal poisonings, leading to a reduction in such cases. Despite sweeping regulations and strict bans, however, careful use of this elusive element still exists today. [Honeyghan-Williams] Arsenic trioxide, this infamous poison, is still used today, but remember, we now have the precision of dosage and the precision of administration. [Duignan] Remarkably, it's also still used in some medical treatments, although it's for cancer treatments. Given the scenario where it's a very remote community that's been stigmatized for their practices, we still don't have a lot of answers.
[Narrator] As modern science continues to probe this poisonous tale, in the ancient Maya ruin of Guatemala, another lost practice is slowly being revived. [Narrator] In 2012, a team of archeologists begins to unearth a mysterious Maya structure at the historical site of Xultun. Amid large plazas, sporting courts, and water reservoirs sits a hidden health facility built approximately 1,500 years ago during the Early Classic period.
[Nardi] What the team finds here is extraordinary. It's believed that it's an ancient Mayan sweat bath. This is a sauna-like facility that would have been used for medicinal benefits. [Mant] Sweat baths are quite common across the ancient Mesoamerican world, but Los Sapos really stands out. [Narrator] Excavations reveal a facade marked by the carving of an amphibian-like goddess. Iguanas and toads writhe across her legs, which straddled the building's entrance. Later, researchers make a peculiar discovery among scorched samples of ceramic and stone.
They find the remains of birds, puppies, and even a human child. [Nardi] There's still so much that remains unknown about this site. Why is this place that's dedicated to health adorned with a strange image above its door? Could this have been more than a sweat bath? Could this have some symbolic significance as well? [Duignan] What you can see at this site is that there is an interplay between medicine and spirituality.
You find these sweat baths in association with different deities at the time, and even though they're not always complete, there is that relationship starting to form in what we're seeing. [Narrator] The Classic period of ancient Maya civilization, lasting from 250 to 900 A.D., is the golden age of this Mesoamerican empire, stretching from the lowlands of modern-day Mexico to the northern regions of Central America. The Maya inhabit a diverse array of environments, yet within them, face a pantheon of natural ailments. [Duignan] Given the landscape that Maya society lived in and inhabited on a daily basis, there's obviously the potential
for a lot of different diseases that, from a Western perspective, we may not be familiar with. But on the flip side, it's this beautiful rainforest with abundant ecosystems and this huge natural pharmacy at your disposal, too. [Narrator] Those in charge of gathering and employing such wisdom are the ah-men, guardians of medicinal knowledge passed down by generations before them. [Mant] The ancient ah-men have a range of skills. We know they were involved in setting fractures, even in performing delicate cranial surgeries.
The ah-men are approaching health from a holistic perspective, so there's this integration of the spiritual with the physical, and they are certainly calling upon all the natural pharmacopeia. [Narrator] But perhaps one of their most potent tools is found in structures across Maya territory, the sacred vapors of the sweat bath. [Nardi] Sweat chambers have been used from as far as Alaska, down to the southern reaches of Central America. The characteristics of these ancient sweat baths have a lot of the same characteristics we see in modern saunas.
A participant would walk into one of these small chambers. There would be a small fire with rocks, and you could pour water over these rocks to create steam. [Narrator] Peeling back layers of earth and time, researchers have rediscovered a vast network of both modest and monumental sweat baths across the ancient Maya world. It's believed these facilities can treat a wide variety of maladies, from indigestion to paralysis, essentially any condition deemed cold, which would require the transformative power of heat to attain a thermal balance.
Evidence to support the synergy of heat and herbal remedy emerges in the 1930s, when a team of researchers undergoes a series of excavations along the banks of the Usumacinta River in northern Guatemala. The site, known as Piedras Negras, was once the thriving capital of an ancient Maya kingdom, complete with palaces, pyramids, and, most intriguingly, a collection of communal sweat baths. [Knudsen] Why would the Maya people expend so much resources and effort into building these sweat baths? Why were they so central to their culture?
[Narrator] The artifacts discovered at the Piedras Negras in the decades that follow may paint a picture of a sophisticated health-care system. Fragments of disease, teeth, and medicinal plants found near the facilities suggest these weren't just places of royal relaxation, but multifaceted medical centers likely overseen by ancient ah-men. [Nardi] The evidence that we find gives us some clues that perhaps their knowledge of medicine was far more advanced than we'd anticipated.
What specific conditions were treated here? What would these rituals have looked like? [Narrator] There may be clues traced to the very walls of another ancient sweat bath. In the nearby Petén Rainforest, the archeological site of Xultun conceals another sweat bath that has long mystified modern historians. [Narrator] At the crumbling remains of Los Sapos, the image of an amphibian goddess looms above the structure's entrance, revealing a profound link between wellness and Maya cosmology. [Knudsen] One of the more interesting and mysterious examples of a Maya sweat bath is Los Sapos, which means "the toad" in Spanish.
It's called that because of this large ornamental statue of a goddess, which exhibits toad-like features, which adorns the top of the sweat bath. What goddess was this? [Duignan] Our understanding of Los Sapos is incomplete. The deity is missing her head, so we don't fully know who she is. [Narrator] For over a decade, researchers have been piecing together historical records to uncover the identity of this sacred figure. Although her true name remains unknown, evidence suggests it may be a representation
of the goddess tentatively labeled Ix.Tzutz.Sak. [Mant] We think that this amphibious goddess might have actually been in charge of human gestation and life and time. Her position there, straddling this facade, might actually indicate that we're entering a stone womb by entering this space. So potentially the space has to do with woman's reproductive health, with gynecological concerns, maybe even with childbirth. [Narrator] Across ancient Mesoamerica, sweat bathing has long been intertwined with the ritual of childbirth. In some Aztec societies, women will sit in these chambers for several days following the delivery of a newborn.
In other Maya regions, both mothers and children are given postpartum steam sessions to thwart potential illnesses. [Duignan] Could Los Sapos potentially have functioned as one of these early centers for women's reproductive health? [Narrator] For nearly three centuries, the Los Sapos sweat bath serves as a sacred healing center for the ancient Maya of Xultun until around 600 A.D., when it's closed, buried, and seemingly forgotten. [Knudsen] After 300 years of continual use, Los Sapos is suddenly, unceremoniously just abandoned. It's buried. [Narrator] Approximately 300 years later, the people of Xultun unexpectedly reopen the sealed sweat bath with new offerings in hand.
Recent archeological discoveries reveal a cache of stone tools, juvenile animals, and even the bones of a human child left on-site during this era. [Mant] Why then, this sudden resurgence of interest in this place? Why reopen this and also leave these offerings? [Knudsen] At the exact same time that we now know there was a general collapse of Maya civilization across Mesoamerica, we have these offerings being made to this unusual toad goddess. The leading theory is that she oversaw the general cycle of life and renewal in Maya society, in which case, perhaps this was a desperate, last-ditch effort
to appease the goddess and to prevent the inevitable end. [Narrator] Though their true intentions are lost to time, we know these lands are abandoned soon after, coinciding with the collapse of classic Maya civilization around the year 900 A.D. [Knudsen] The Los Sapos sweat bath once again reminds us that for most of human history, there is not a clear demarcation between the medicinal and the spiritual. They are all intertwined. Clearly, for the Maya people, the Los Sapos sweat bath held great importance not just as a medicinal center, but as a spiritual one, too.
[Narrator] The revival of this ancient healing center perhaps hints at medical wisdom buried beneath centuries of forgotten knowledge from these sacred baths to the poison that promised vitality, and the cannibalistic cure that endured for centuries. Though the true effect of these remedies remains a mystery, each reveals the pursuit to not just heal the human body but to unlock its greatest potential.
