Beheaded Maya Massacre Victims FoundTwo dozen Maya war captives were beheaded, dismembered, and buried unceremoniously some 1,400 years ago at the site of Uxul, an international teamreported on Tuesday.

The victims were likely rulers of nearby towns at war with Uxul, located in southern Mexico, or the dethroned rulers of the town itself, according to the researchers. The discovery of the mass burial in an artificial cave adds to the evidence that the brutal warfare, torture, and sacrifice of captives widely depicted in ancient Maya artwork were real practices, says discovery team archaeologist Nicolaus Seefeld of Germany's University of Bonn.

Of the two dozen skeletons discovered at the site earlier this year, the team was able to determine that at least 13 were men and 2 were women. Their ages at death ranged from 18 to 42. "Some of them had jade inserts in their teeth, which we think means they were high-status members of the ruling class," says Seefeld.

"All of them were decapitated, and the bones were scattered," Seefeld adds. The neck bones of the victims exhibit hatchet cuts, and several of the skulls bear unhealed marks from hatchet and cudgel blows. The skulls were piled some distance away from the skeletons in the burial chamber, a 344-square-foot (32-square-meter) rectangular cave once used to store water.