Centuries ago, Maya children as young as 7 had “tooth gems” — jade inlays in their teeth that likely symbolized social maturity or a rite of passage, a new study finds.
Archaeologists already knew that pre-Hispanic Maya adults often sported tooth inlays. But “what is tantalizing is the young age of the individuals” analyzed in the new research, the authors wrote in the study.
But a new study in the November 2025 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports examined three isolated teeth with jade inlays housed at the Popol Vuh Museum in Guatemala. Based on the degree of each tooth’s root formation, the researchers determined that each tooth had come from a child between 7 and 10 years old.
Tooth fashion
One of the decorated teeth was an upper central left incisor — one of the upper front teeth — and another was a right upper canine. The third tooth was a lower incisor. It’s unknown if they all came from a single child.
“Unfortunately, these teeth are not associated with bony skeletal remains,” the authors wrote in the study, “so we cannot state for certain their origin and whether or not they belong to a single individual or to up to three different ones.”
According to the study, the Maya often deliberately shaped their teeth by filing or engraving them. It was also common for artisans to use stone tools to carve artificial holes in the surfaces of prominent teeth and to place gems there — usually jade, but also obsidian or pyrite — that were fixed in place with organic glue.
There is some evidence that adolescents between 10 and 15 years old had teeth that were filed or engraved, but these individuals didn’t have dental inlays, the study noted. There is also “a very limited number” of Maya between the ages of 15 and 20 who had dental inlays in the archaeological record, they wrote.
It’s possible that the Maya didn’t put dental inlays on younger individuals because it could have damaged growing teeth. One idea is that “inlays might have been too invasive a procedure to be performed on such young individuals,” the team wrote in the study. However, X-rays of the three teeth in the new study indicated that the innermost layer, known as the dental pulp, wasn’t damaged and that the teeth did not have natural caries, or cavities.
Mysteries remain
An analysis of the three teeth suggests that the inlays were put in while the children were alive, the authors wrote.
This is an important discovery because two teeth with jade inlays found in Belize may have been from a child as young as 3. However, that find is “controversial,” in part because the inlays may have been created after death as part of a burial ritual, the authors of the new study wrote.
They also cautioned that the new discovery might reflect a regional or local tradition that was not widespread throughout the Maya world or that the dental inlays were a sign that a child had begun taking on adult responsibilities, such as housework or laboring.
Until more dental inlays are found in the teeth of Maya children, it will be challenging to determine why these youngsters had them.
“Unless more cases are documented, any possible interpretation of the reasons behind performing these permanent modifications in such young individuals remains at the level of assumptions and cannot be generalized to the whole Maya realm,” the authors wrote in the study.
