Workers digging gas pipes in Peru find the 2,000-year-old gravesite
The AFP reports that workers laying a new gas pipe in the La Victoria district of the city of Lima discovered a 2,000-year-old grave containing some 40 ceramic vessels.
A work crew laying a natural gas pipe under a street in Lima, Peru stumbled across a 2,000-year-old burial site, including the remains of six people and ceramic vessels.
Workers laying gas pipes on a street in the Peruvian capital Lima stumbled on the remains of a pre-Hispanic gravesite that included 2,000-year-old ceramic burial vessels, an archaeologist said Thursday.
“This find that we see today is 2,000 years old,” archaeologist Cecilia Camargo told AFP at the site.
“So far, there are six human bodies that we have recovered, including children and adults, accompanied by a set of ceramic vessels that were expressly made to bury them.”
Experts believe the site in the Lima district of La Victoria may be linked to the culture known as “Blanco sobre Rojo,” or “White on Red,” which settled on the central coast of Peru in the valleys of Chillon, Rimac and Lurin, the three rivers that cross Lima.
“So far, we have recovered about 40 vessels of different shapes related to the White on Red style,” said Camargo, head of the cultural heritage department at the natural gas company Calidda.
“Some bottles are very distinctive of this period and style, which have a double spout and a bridge handle,” Camargo said.
As finds of ancient artefacts and remains occur frequently in Peru, all public service companies that do excavations have in house archaeologists, including Calidda, a Colombian-funded company that distributes natural gas in Lima and in the neighboring port of Callao.
Specialists work around the ancient burial site found by a crew laying a natural gas pipe under a street in Lima, Peru on November 04, 2021.
New Horrifying Secrets of Peru’s Ancient Civilizations Unearthed in The Andes
The foothills of the Andes mountains are revealing their bloody secrets: the ancient skeletons of sacrificed children. Archaeologists have unearthed 29 human bodies entombed approximately 1,000 years ago at Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucalá, an archaeological site in the Lambayeque region of northwestern Peru.
An overhead view of the excavation site.
Four of the skeletons – belonging to two children, a teenager and one adult – date to the Wari culture.
These four skeletons represent the region’s first known examples of human offerings from the Wari civilization, Edgar Bracamonte Lévano, the excavation’s director and research archaeologist with the Royal Tombs of Sipán museum, told Live Science in an email.
In addition to human remains, the excavation uncovered skeletons from eight guinea pigs, as well as several alpacas and llamas, all of which were likely sacrificed. They also uncovered pots, bottles, and a knife with a half-moon-shaped blade.
Bracamonte Lévano recognized the tombs as Wari because they were surrounded by three distinctive, D-shaped enclosures typical of the culture’s religious spaces.
The human offerings may have been “part of a possible ritual carried out at the time of starting the construction of these Wari-style religious spaces,” he said.
In addition to the four human offerings, the archaeological team uncovered a fifth individual who had undergone secondary burial. “That is to say, he was buried elsewhere and [then] reburied inside the D-shaped enclosure,” Bracamonte Lévano said.
A human skeleton unearthed at Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucalá
The Wari civilization flourished along the mountains and coasts of modern-day Peru from around AD 500 to 1000.
Wari people were known for their finely woven textiles and sculpted pottery, as well as their roads and terraced agriculture, according to the World History Encyclopedia. These roads would later be incorporated into parts of the Inca Empire.
While the exact structure of Wari society remains open to debate, archaeologists have found evidence suggesting that religion was deeply intertwined with politics and that women were included at the highest levels of governance, as Live Science previously reported.
The other 25 skeletons found buried – though not sacrificed – at the site belonged to the Mochica, or Moche, culture. This civilization thrived in what is now Lambayeque from around AD 100 to 700, and would later be supplanted by the Wari.
Unlike Wari art, which tends toward abstract shapes and patterns, Moche art is famous for its more literal, naturalistic style. That makes artefacts from the two cultures easily distinguishable, Bracamonte Lévano said.
Among the most significant Moche discoveries in recent years is the Lady of Cao mummy, a tattooed noblewoman whose forensic reconstruction was the subject of a 2017 National Geographic documentary.
The Lord of Sipán, another famous Moche mummy discovered in 1987, resides in the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum under Bracamonte Lévano’s watchful eye.
193-million-year-old nesting ground with more than 100 dinosaur eggs offers evidence that they lived in herds
A 193-million-year-old nesting ground containing more than 100 dinosaurs eggs is upending paleontologists’ understanding of an early dinosaur species. Research published Thursday describes a collection of eggs and juvenile and adult skeletons from a dinosaur called Mussaurus patagonicus, which were found in Patagonia, Argentina.
An artist’s reconstruction of a Mussaurus patagonicus nest.
The dino is an ancestor of long-necked herbivores called sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus. Most of the chicken-sized eggs were discovered in clusters of eight to 30, suggesting they resided in nests as part of a common breeding ground.
Scientists also found Mussaurus skeletons of similar sizes and ages buried together. Combined, these patterns offer evidence that the dinosaurs lived in herds.
“I went to this site aiming to find at least one nice dinosaur skeleton. We ended up with 80 skeletons and more than 100 eggs (some with embryos preserved inside!)” Diego Pol, a researcher with the Egidio Feruglio paleontology museum in Patagonia and the lead author of the new study, told Insider via email.
He called the site “one of a kind.”
Before this discovery, researchers thought herding behavior was restricted to dinosaurs that came much later, in the very late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. That’s because the earliest fossil evidence of sauropod herds only dates back 150 million years. This nesting ground, however, pushes that timeline back more than 40 million years. It’s the earliest known evidence of social groups among dinosaurs, the study authors said.
X-rays offer a peek into fossilized dinosaur eggs
A fossilized Mussaurus egg that’s more than 190 million years old, found in southern Patagonia, Argentina.
Argentine paleontologists discovered the first Mussaurus skeletons at this Patagonian site in the late 1970s. The dinosaurs they found were no more than 6 inches long. Unaware that they’d uncovered newborns, the researchers named the creature “mouse lizard” because of the skeletons’ tiny size.
Pol decided to reexplore the area starting in 2002, and by 2013, he’d helped find the first adult Mussaurus fossils there. Those bones revealed that full-grown versions of these “mouse lizards” were closer in size to modern-day hippos. They grew to weigh about 1.5 tons, reaching lengths of 26 feet from nose to tail tip. But infants could fit in the palm of a human hand.
A screen shot from a video showing how scientists like Diego Pol used high-energy X-rays to peek inside a Mussaurus egg without destroying it.
Since then, Pol’s team has also uncovered and studied the contents of the nesting ground, which measures just under half a square mile. In 2017, he took 30 of the eggs to a lab in France, and his group then used X-ray technology to peek inside and confirm the species of the embryos without breaking the shells.
By analyzing the sizes and types of bones in the nesting ground, the researchers determined that the animals were buried near counterparts of a similar age. Some clusters had juveniles less than a year old, others consisted of individuals that were slightly older but not yet fully grown, and finally, there were smatterings of adults that had died solo or in pairs.
That type of age segregation, the researchers said, is a key sign of herds: Juveniles hung out with others their age while adults looked for food and protected the community.
“They were resting together and likely died during a drought,” Pol said. “This is compatible with a herd that stays together during many years and within which the animals get close to each other to rest, or to forage, or do other daily activities.”
Another strong indication of herd behavior is a nesting ground itself: If Mussaurus lived as a community, it would make sense that they’d lay eggs in a common area.
Living in herds may have helped Mussaurus survive
Nest with Mussaurus eggs dated to more than 190 million years ago, found in Patagonia. Diego Pol
To figure out the fossils’ ages, researchers examined minerals in volcanic ash that was scattered around the eggs and skeletons, and determined that the fossils were about 193 million years old.
Previously, scientists thought this type of dinosaur lived during the late Triassic period, about 221 million to 205 million years ago. But the new date suggests instead that Mussaurus thrived during the early Jurassic period. That, in turn, is evidence that Mussaurus’ ancestors survived a mass extinction event 200 million years ago.
The key to that survival, the study suggests, may have been their herding behavior.
“These were social animals and we think this may be an important factor to explain their success,” Pol said.
An artist’s depiction of the nesting ground of a Mussaurus herd of in what is now Argentina.
Communal living likely helped Mussaurus find enough food, perhaps by making it easier for them to forage over larger areas. Mussaurus of the same size would likely “group together to coordinate their activities,” Pol said, given that larger adults and tinier juveniles moved at different speeds.
He added that given the size difference between newborns and adults, it probably took these dinosaurs many years to reach full size. So young Mussaurus might have been vulnerable to predation.
By staying in herds, adults could better protect their young.
Red paint on 1,000-year-old gold mask from Peru contains human blood proteins
Thirty years ago, archaeologists excavated the tomb of an elite 40–50-year-old man from the Sicán culture of Peru, a society that predated the Incas. The man’s seated, the upside-down skeleton was painted bright red, as was the gold mask covering his detached skull.
Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research have analyzed the paint, finding that, in addition to a red pigment, it contains human blood and bird egg proteins.
The Sicán was a prominent culture that existed from the ninth to 14th centuries along the northern coast of modern Peru.
During the Middle Sicán Period (about 900–1,100 A.D.), metallurgists produced a dazzling array of gold objects, many of which were buried in tombs of the elite class. In the early 1990s, a team of archaeologists and conservators led by Izumi Shimada excavated a tomb where an elite man’s seated skeleton was painted red and placed upside down at the centre of the chamber.
The skeletons of two young women were arranged nearby in birthing and modifying poses, and two crouching children’s skeletons were placed at a higher level.
Among the many gold artefacts found in the tomb was a red-painted gold mask, which covered the face of the man’s detached skull. At the time, scientists identified the red pigment in the paint as cinnabar, but Luciana de Costa Carvalho, James McCullagh and colleagues wondered what the Sicán people had used in the paint mix as a binding material, which had kept the paint layer attached to the metal surface of the mask for 1,000 years.
To find out, the researchers analyzed a small sample of the mask’s red paint. Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy revealed that the sample contained proteins, so the team conducted a proteomic analysis using tandem mass spectrometry.
A red paint sample taken from a 1,000-year-old mask excavated from a Sicán tomb in Peru contains human blood and bird egg proteins, in addition to a red pigment.
They identified six proteins from human blood in the red paint, including serum albumin and immunoglobulin G (a type of human serum antibody). Other proteins, such as ovalbumin, came from egg whites. Because the proteins were highly degraded, the researchers couldn’t identify the exact species of bird’s egg used to make the paint, but a likely candidate is the Muscovy duck.
The identification of human blood proteins supports the hypothesis that the arrangement of the skeletons was related to a desired “rebirth” of the deceased Sicán leader, with the blood-containing paint that coated the man’s skeleton and face mask potentially symbolizing his “life force,” the researchers say.
The authors do not acknowledge any funding sources.
The abstract that accompanies this article is available here.
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A private collector is returning a Mayan artefact to Guatemala
A private collector has returned a Mayan artefact to Guatemala after it was initially slated for auction in 2019. The stone fragment depicts a bird headdress belonging to an ancient ruler of Piedras Negras, the capital of a Mayan kingdom that flourished between the 4th century BC and 9th century AD and is located in what’s now northwestern Guatemala.
The artefact disappeared from the Mayan site of Piedras Negras in the 1960s
Hundreds of Mayan artefacts were discovered along train construction routes in Mexico.
The object was likely looted from a Mayan archaeological site in the 1960s and eventually ended up in the hands of a prominent Los Angeles art dealer, the Los Angeles Times reported.
From there, it was bought by another art dealer in Paris and ultimately acquired by private collectors Manichak and Jean Aurance, according to the newspaper. Then in 2019, it was included as part of an auction of pre-Columbian artefacts in Paris, estimated to fetch $27,000 to $39,000.
Guatemala and Mexico objected to some of the items in the auction being put up for sale, arguing that they had been stolen and demanding their return.
Though the auction continued mostly as planned, the carving of the bird headdress was withdrawn from the sale after Guatemala was able to prove its provenance with drawings and pictures dating back to its discovery in 1899, a spokesperson for UNESCO wrote in an email to CNN.
Negotiations took place between Guatemala, the French government, UNESCO and the private collector, the spokesperson said, and the collector ultimately decided to return the artefact to Guatemala. On Monday, UNESCO held a ceremony to mark the return.
The artefact disappeared from the Mayan site of Piedras Negras in the 1960s
“The voluntary handover of this fragment of a Mayan stela to its homeland in Guatemala showcases the evolution of the international environment in favour of the return of emblematic cultural objects and artefacts to their homelands under UNESCO’s guidance over the last 50 years,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.
“It also shows the importance of the UNESCO 1970 Convention in fighting the illicit trafficking of cultural objects. This success story has been possible thanks to international cooperation and a private collector’s goodwill; it is a model for others to follow.”
The artefact will soon be sent to the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Guatemala City where visitors will be able to view it and learn about its history, according to UNESCO.
The stone carving’s return to Guatemala comes at a time of wider reckoning for museums, galleries and other institutions.
In recent years, several such institutions have taken steps to repatriate historical objects to their places of origin — Cambridge University is set to return a Benin bronze looted during British colonial rule to Nigeria this week, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced earlier this year it was returning three treasures of African art to Nigeria as well.
Meanwhile, the pressure on museums continues to mount — Cambodia recently began pushing the Met to review the provenance of a number of items, asserting that they were looted from the country’s ancient sites during decades of war and tumult.
The Discovery of ancient Peruvian burial tombs sheds new light on Wari culture
A team of archaeologists in northern Peru discovered the remains of 29 people, including three children, that could help experts rewrite the history of the pre-Incan Wari civilization, the lead researcher said on Friday.
The skeletons were buried more than 1,000 years ago in Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucala, an ancient ceremonial centre in the coastal region of Lambayeque, 750 kilometres to the north of Lima.
The burials of the three children and a teenager at the front of the temple indicated they were human sacrifices from the Wari culture, Edgar Bracamonte, the lead researcher, told AFP.
An undated handout picture released by the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum of one of the 29 human remains discovered at an ancient ceremonial site in Lambayeque
It is the first time a discovery linked to the Wari civilization has been made this far from their area of influence, said Bracamonte.
“These discoveries allow us to rethink the history of the Lambayeque region, especially the links to Wari and Mochica occupations in the area,” said Bracamonte.
The Wari culture flourished in the central Peruvian Andes from the seventh to 13th centuries.
The Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucala enclosure, in the form of the letter ‘D’, was built between 800 and 900 AD.
“We found a ceremonial temple with 29 human remains, 25 belonging to the Mohica era and four to the Wari culture,” said Bracamonte.
The Mochica, or Moche, culture developed from 100 to 700 AD on the northern Peruvian coast.
The 25 Mochica remains were found in clay tombs and burial chambers in a temple. Researchers also found pieces of pottery and the remains of camelids—such as llamas and alpacas—and guinea pigs.
One of the most significant discoveries related to the Mochica culture was in 2006 with the unearthing of the fifth century Lady of Cao mummy, which showed the civilization included female leaders.
The 1987 discovery of another mummy, the third century Lord of Sipan, is considered by experts one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the last few decades, as the main tomb was found intact and untouched by thieves.
Discovery of ancient Peruvian burial tombs sheds new light on Wari culture
A team of archaeologists in northern Peru discovered the remains of 29 people, including three children, that could help experts rewrite the history of the pre-Incan Wari civilization, the lead researcher said on Friday.
An undated handout picture was released by the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum of one of the 29 human remains discovered at an ancient ceremonial site in Lambayeque.
The skeletons were buried more than 1,000 years ago in Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucala, an ancient ceremonial centre in the coastal region of Lambayeque, 750 kilometres to the north of Lima.
The burials of the three children and a teenager at the front of the temple indicated they were human sacrifices from the Wari culture, Edgar Bracamonte, the lead researcher, told AFP.
It is the first time a discovery linked to the Wari civilization has been made this far from their area of influence, said Bracamonte.
“These discoveries allow us to rethink the history of the Lambayeque region, especially the links to Wari and Mochica occupations in the area,” said Bracamonte.
The Wari culture flourished in the central Peruvian Andes from the seventh to 13th centuries.
The Huaca Santa Rosa de Pucala enclosure, in the form of the letter ‘D’, was built between 800 and 900 AD.
“We found a ceremonial temple with 29 human remains, 25 belonging to the Mohica era and four to the Wari culture,” said Bracamonte.
The Mochica, or Moche, culture developed from 100 to 700 AD on the northern Peruvian coast.
The 25 Mochica remains were found in clay tombs and burial chambers in a temple. Researchers also found pieces of pottery and the remains of camelids—such as llamas and alpacas—and guinea pigs.
One of the most significant discoveries related to the Mochica culture was in 2006 with the unearthing of the fifth century Lady of Cao mummy, which showed the civilization included female leaders.
The 1987 discovery of another mummy, the third century Lord of Sipan, is considered by experts one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the last few decades, as the main tomb was found intact and untouched by thieves.
Researchers say fossil shows humans, dogs lived in C. America in 10,000 BC
San Jose, Costa Rica: The fossil of a jaw bone could prove that domesticated dogs lived in Central America as far back as 12,000 years ago, according to a study by Latin American scientists. The dogs, and their masters, potentially lived alongside giant animals, researchers say.
The presence of dogs is a sign that humans were also living in a place (Representational)
A 1978 dig in Nacaome, northeast Costa Rica, found bone remains from the Late Pleistocene. Excavations began in the 1990s and produced the remains of a giant horse, Equus sp, a glyptodon (a large armadillo), a mastodon (an ancestor of the modern elephant) and a piece of the jaw from what was originally thought to be a coyote skull.
“We thought it was very strange to have a coyote in the Pleistocene, that is to say, 12,000 years ago,” Costa Rican researcher Guillermo Vargas told AFP.
“When we started looking at the bone fragments, we started to see characteristics that could have been from a dog.
“So we kept looking, we scanned it… and it showed that it was a dog living with humans 12,000 years ago in Costa Rica.”
Researchers believe this fossil of a jaw bone found in Costa Rica belongs to a dog that lived 12,000 years ago.
The presence of dogs is a sign that humans were also living in a place.
“We thought it was strange that a sample was classified as a coyote because they only arrived in Costa Rica in the 20th century.”
– First of its kind –
The coyote is a relative of the domestic dog, although with a different jaw and more pointed teeth.
“The dog eats the leftovers from human food. Its teeth are not so determinant in its survival,” said Vargas.
“It hunts large prey with its human companions. This sample reflects that difference.”
Humans are believed to have emigrated to the Americas across the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the last great ice age.
“The first domesticated dogs entered the continent about 15,000 years ago, a product of Asians migrating across the Bering Strait,” said Raul Valadez, a biologist and zooarcheologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“There have never been dogs without people,” Valadez told AFP by telephone.
The presence of humans during the Pleistocene has been attested in Mexico, Chile and Patagonia, but never in Central America, until now.
“This could be the oldest dog in the Americas,” said Vargas.
So far, the oldest attested dog remains were found in Alaska and are 10,150 years old.
Oxford University has offered to perform DNA and carbon dating tests on the sample to discover more genetic information about the animal and its age.
The fossil is currently held at Costa Rica’s national museum but the sample cannot be re-identified as a dog without validation by a specialist magazine.
“This dog discovery would be the first evidence of humans in Costa Rica during a period much earlier” than currently thought, said Vargas.
“It would show us that there were societies that could keep dogs, that had food surpluses, that had dogs out of desire and that these weren’t war dogs that could cause damage.”
