Peru archaeology: Ancient mummy found under a rubbish dump
Archaeology students discovered the mummy during a dig in Lima
Archaeologists in Peru conducting a dig at the site of a rubbish dump in the capital Lima have found a mummy they think is around 3,000 years old.
Students from San Marcos University, who are helping with the dig, first spotted the mummy’s hair and skull.
Archaeologist Miguel Aguilar said they had removed eight tonnes of rubbish from the location before their careful search for historic remains began.
The mummy is thought to date back to the times of the Manchay culture.
The Manchay lived in the area around modern-day Lima from around 1500 BC to 1000 BC.
The body had been laid out flat inside a U-shaped temple
They are known for building U-shaped temples oriented towards the rising sun.
Mr Aguilar explained that the mummy had been placed in a tomb in the centre of such a U-shaped temple. He said the body had been laid out flat, which is characteristic of the Manchay culture of the “formative era”, around 3,000 years ago.
The body was wrapped in cloth made from cotton and vegetable fibre.
The archaeological site was underneath a rubbish dump in the Rímac neighbourhood in the capital, Lima
The archaeologist said that the person “had been left or offered [as a sacrifice] during the last phase of construction of this temple”.
Mummification was practised by a variety of cultures in what is now Peru before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors – people who travelled to the Americas as part of the Spanish conquest.
Some mummies were buried, many in a foetal position, while others were brought out and paraded during key festivals.
Cal Orcko: A 300 Feet Wall With Over 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints
There’s a wall in Bolivia that’s covered in thousands of dinosaur footprints, and it’s becoming a major tourist attraction
On the outskirts of the city of Sucre, in Bolivia, is a large cement plant, and when the quarry it uses was being expanded, workers discovered a huge vertical wall of rock with thousands of dinosaur footprints.
The site is called Cal Orcko (also spelled Cal Orko) and it´s the largest concentration of dinosaur tracks in the world.
The slab of limestone is enormous – 1.2 km long and 80 meters high, and has more than 5,000 footprints, with 462 individual trails made during the second half of the Cretaceous period.
The location used to be the shore of a former lake, that attracted a large number of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs.
The creatures’ feet sank into the soft shoreline in warm damp weather, leaving marks that were solidified by later periods of drought. Wet weather then returned, sealing the prints below mud and sediment.
The wet-dry pattern was repeated seven times, preserving multiple layers of prints. Tectonic upheaval then pushed the flat ground up at the brilliant viewing angle that it is today.
Dinosaur footprints were first discovered in Cal Orcko by miners in 1985, but it was only between 1994 and 1998 that its importance was fully realized when a scientific team led by Swiss paleontologist Christian Meyer investigated the wall and certified the bed.
According to Christian Meyer, the discovery is an enormous contribution to humanity and to science, revealing data heretofore unknown and “documenting the high diversity of dinosaurs better than any other site in the world”.
The study of these footprints provided much information about the social behavior of dinosaurs. For example, it is possible to observe two lines of big footprints, with small footprints between them indicating that some baby dinosaurs were growing with their parents who protected their offspring.
The most spectacular track, however, is a 347 meters long line of prints belonging to a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex nicknamed “Johnny Walker” by researchers.
For the preservation of this site, a Cretaceous Park was opened in 2006 where there are exact replicas of the different species of dinosaurs that left their mark on the place, a museum, and a viewing platform 150 meters from the rock face.
It’s from this vantage point that you truly grasp the sheer scale and magnitude of Cal Orko.
Scientists discover 4 new Nazca Geoglyphs using AI deep learning
Scientists from Japan used AI deep learning to discover new geoglyphs in the Arid Peruvian coastal plain, in the northern part of Peru’s Nazca Pampa.
The research has been ongoing since 2004 by a team from Yamagata University, led by Professor Makato Sakai. Yamagata University has been conducting geoglyph distribution surveys using satellite imagery, aerial photography, airborne scanning LiDAR, and drone photography to investigate the vast area of the Nazca Pampa covering more than 390 km2.
The Nazca Lines are thought to have been made over centuries, starting around 100 BC by the Nazca people of modern-day Peru. They were first studied in detail in the 1940s, and by the time they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, around 30 were identified.
They’re remarkably well-preserved considering their age, helped by the desert’s dry climate and winds that sweep away the sand but are being obscured by floods and human activity.
Archaeologists discovered 142 new designs in the desert over the course of ten years by manually identifying them using aerial photography and on-site surveying. Then, in collaboration with IBM Japan researchers, they used machine learning to search the data for designs that had been missed in previous studies.
Geoglyphs can be categorized into three main types: figurative, geometric, and lineal. (A) “Line-type figurative geoglyphs” were made by removing black stones in a linear pattern exposing the white sand underneath. (B to E) “Relief-type figurative geoglyphs” are often located on slopes and comprise a combination of black stone and white sand surfaces.
In order to create a thorough survey of the area in 2016, the researchers used aerial photography with a ground resolution of 0.1 m per pixel.
The team has identified numerous geoglyphs over time, but because the process takes a long time, they have turned to AI deep learning to analyze the images much more quickly.
A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science revealed the discovery of four new Nazca geoglyphs using this new method by developing a labelling approach for training data that identifies a similar partial pattern between the known and new geoglyphs.
The four new geoglyphs depict a humanoid figure, a pair of legs, a fish, and a bird.
The humanoid geoglyph is shown holding a club in his/her right hand and measures 5 metres in length. The fish geoglyph, shown with a wide-open mouth measures 19 metres, while the bird geoglyph measures 17 metres and the pair of legs 78 metres.
Four new Nasca geoglyphs identified by Deep Learning. (A) A humanoid, relief-type. (B) A pair of legs, line-type. (C) A fish, relief-type. (D) A bird, line-type. (B to D) are presented to the public for the first time in this paper. Science Direct
“We have developed a DL pipeline that addresses the challenges that frequently arise in the task of archaeological image object detection,” the study’s authors write.
Our method enables the discovery of previously unattainable targets by enabling DL to learn representations of images with better generalization and performance.
Additionally, by speeding up the research process, our approach advances archaeology by introducing a novel paradigm that combines field research and AI, resulting in more effective and efficient investigations.
These results serve as yet another illustration of how machine learning can be useful to scientists, particularly when tackling tasks involving sizable datasets. Just like humans, algorithms can be taught to sift through specific types of data looking for patterns and anomalies.
Although creating these tools can be challenging, once trained, such algorithms are tireless and consistent.
1,200-year-old remains of sacrificed adults, and kids unearthed in Peru
Peruvian archeologists have unearthed eight children and 12 adults apparently sacrificed around 800-1,200 years ago, they said on Tuesday, in a major dig at the pre-Incan Cajamarquilla complex east of Lima.
A Peruvian archeologist works at an excavation site to recover the remains of one of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
Peruvian archeologists show ceramic pieces found it with 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru
A Peruvian archeologist works at an excavation site to recover the remains of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
A view shows a tomb at an excavation site where archeologists work to recover the remains of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
The remains were outside an underground tomb where the team from Peru’s San Marcos University found November an ancient mummy thought to be a VIP bound with ropes, in a fetal position.
Archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen said the bodies, some mummified and others skeletons, were wrapped in various layers of textiles as part of ancient pre-Hispanic ritual, and had likely been sacrificed to accompany the main mummy.
“For them, death was not the end, but rather a transition to a parallel world where the dead lived,” Van Dalen told a news conference. “They thought that the souls of the dead became protectors of the living.”
Van Dalen said the burial pattern was familiar, citing the tomb of the Lord of Sipán, a ruler from 1,700 years ago found along with children and adults sacrificed to be buried with him.
A Peruvian archeologist works at an excavation site to recover the remains of 14 pre-Incan mummies, six children and eight adults which are nearly 1000 years old, at the archeological complex in Cajamarquilla, Peru.
A pre-Incan mummy unearthed at the Cajamarquilla archaeological site and believed to be between 800 and 1,200 years old is exhibited at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru.
A member of the media takes a picture of a pre-Incan mummy unearthed at the Cajamarquilla archaeological site and believed to be between 800 and 1,200 years old, at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru.
“This is precisely what we think and propose in the case of the mummy at Cajamarquilla, which would have been buried with these people,” he said. “As part of the ritual, evidence of violence has been found in some of the individuals.”
Yomira Huamán, part of the team, said that along with funeral items, there were musical artifacts such as the “zampoña,” a wind instrument of Andean origin with several wooden tubes in the form of flutes.
“Our investigations suggest the mummy of Cajamarquilla would be a man of approximately 35 years. This character did not have any organs, meaning he was eviscerated after death,” she said.
Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites of cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which 500 years ago dominated the southern part of the continent, ranging from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.
“The complex has only been excavated 1%,” Huamán said. “I think Cajamarquilla has much more to say, much more to tell us.”
Archeologists in Peru found a 1,000-year-old adolescent mummy wrapped in a bundle
Archaeologists have unearthed a more than 1,000-year-old mummy on the outskirts of Peru’s capital, Lima.
The mummified adolescent was wrapped in a funerary bundle, with ceramic objects, rope, bits of skin, and hair nearby, and found in an underground tomb.
Archaeologists believe the mummy, found at an archaeological site in Cajamarquilla, is one of 20 buried in the area likely killed as a ritual sacrifice.
The mummified adolescent was found in a “good state of conservation,” said archaeologist Yomira Huaman, in charge of the Cajamarquilla research project affiliated with the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
The adolescent lived between 1,100 and 1,200 years ago, and might have belonged to the Lima or Ichma cultures.
The mummy was discovered about 220 yards from where the first mummy of Cajamarquilla was found, explained Huaman, referring to another mummy found nearby last year.
A worker wraps skeletal remains and parts of the funerary bundle of a mummy found by Peruvian archeologists in the ruins of Cajarmarquilla, in the outskirts of Lima, Peru.
‘From the ceramic analysis, we have identified that it was mostly occupied by the coastal presence, the late Lima culture, also a strong influence of the Ichma culture,’ said Huaman.
The way the teen was buried was unlike other mummies that have been discovered in the past.
Most bodies in Cajamarquilla have been found in simple tombs or funeral chambers, while the adolescent was found in what appeared to be a storage container.
Archaeologists, also they have uncovered the ruins of four pyramid-shaped temples and walls laid out almost like a maze.
Ceramic objects and rope were found near the burial bundle.
While best known for the mountaintop Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, Peru was home to a number of pre-Hispanic cultures that flourished in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, primarily along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.
The Lima civilization was known for its ceramic artwork, which included styles such as Maranga and interlocking patterns that reflected the nearby Moche culture.
Researchers solve the mystery of the Mayan 819-day calendar
Researchers at Tulane University in Louisiana have solved the mystery of the 819-day ancient Mesoamerican calendar used by ancient Mayans.
The researchers were able to match the planetary cycles of every planet that might have been visible to ancient astronomers using a 45-year period.
Multiple calendars that were likely used by scholars at the time have been discovered during research on the ancient Mayan civilization, but not all of them make sense in today’s world.
One such calendar was discovered in glyphic texts – the Mayans’ native writing system – and piqued the interest of researchers.
However, the astronomers did not leave behind any additional text or definitions explaining how it might work with their regular calendar system.
819-day calendar
The 819-day count and the motions of the celestial bodies, particularly Venus and Mars, were tracked by the Mayans using a calendar system.
The synodic period, which is the amount of time it takes for these planets to return to their original positions with respect to the sun as seen from Earth, served as the foundation for this system.
The 819-day count was divided into 13 cycles, each lasting 63 days, and each cycle was based on a particular Venus or Mars phase. The cycles were given specific god names and were connected to various characteristics and traits. For instance, while the second cycle is named after the god of war and is associated with conflict and aggression, the second cycle is named after the maize god and is associated with growth and fertility.
Image representing ancient Mayan works
This calendar system, which the Mayans found and developed, could not be adapted to any calendar system we use today, which made the number 819 mysterious.
Anthropologists John Linden and Victoria Bricker from Tulane University have studied the mystery of the Mayan 819 daily count, a type of ancient Mesoamerican calendar system, and have come up with important findings.
The study was published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.
When the researchers bumped into the idea of extending the time that the 819-day count can be used to represent the synodic period for all known planets, they found that the planets lined up perfectly.
For example, they found that multiplying 819 by 20 equals 16,380 (about 45 years). And the 378 cycles of Saturn’s 13-day synodic period add up to 914,819 days, which is the same as six times 4.
Likewise, the same process can be used to show when all known planets will appear in the sky over the next 45 years. They also note that the number of days (16,380) used in mathematics is a multiple of 260, meaning that 819 rounds of 20-day periods match the Tzolk’in (general Mayan calendar).
According to the researchers, rather than focusing on just one or two planets, the ancient Mayans developed a large calendar system that could be used to predict the synod periods of all visible planets.
More than 100 pre-Hispanic religious sites linked to ancient Andean cults were discovered in Bolivia
Photographs of the walled concentric sites in the Rio Lauca area of Carangas.
A trio of archaeologists from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina, the French National Center for Scientific Research, and the Institute of Research for Development, France, has found more than 100 pre-Hispanic religious sites that they believe are linked to ancient Andean cults in Bolivia.
In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, Pablo Cruz, Richard Joffre and Jean Vacher, describe the sites they found and highlight one in particular that stood out from the rest.
In this new effort, the researchers were studying hilltops in the Carangas region of Highland Bolivia, which was once home to pre-Hispanic people.
By studying images captured by satellites and also examining multiple sites on the ground, the researchers learned more about the sites and to make some guesses regarding their nature and use.
The sites were concentric circles of walls created on hilltops using mostly local material. Most sites featured multiple circles. In all, the research team was able to identify 135 such hilltop sites—all were dated to between AD 1250 and 1600.
They note that the large numbers of ceramic fragments found at all of the sites had once been part of plates, jars or bowls—this, they suggest, indicates that the sites had served a ceremonial purpose.
Prior research has shown that the people of the region conducted rites known as wak’a, which could have been related to the rings on the hilltops.
photograph and site plan of Waskiri.
The group also found one site, Waskiri, that stood out from the others due to both its size and intricacy. It was 140 meters in diameter and was made using two circled walls, one inside the other, the second somewhat smaller.
The two rings were connected by adjoining enclosures and contained many ceramic fragments. Also, there was what the researchers describe as a plaza at the center of the ring structure, which also featured ceramic fragments.
According to the researchers, the design of the circles suggests they may have had an Incan influence.
The team says the sites represent a rich area of study for a part of the Andes that has not been studied well due to its harsh, cold climate.
Three Incan mummies sacrificed 500 years ago were regularly given drugs and alcohol before their death, particularly the eldest child called the Maiden (shown here), to make them more compliant, researchers have found.
Three Incan children who were sacrificed 500 years ago were regularly given drugs and alcohol in their final months to make them more compliant in the ritual that ultimately killed them, new research suggests.
Archaeologists analyzed hair samples from the frozen mummies of the three children, who were discovered in 1999, entombed within a shrine near the 22,100-foot (6,739 meters) summit of the Argentinian volcano Llullaillaco.
The samples revealed that all three children consistently consumed coca leaves (from which cocaine is derived) and alcoholic beverages, but the oldest child, the famed “Maiden,” ingested markedly more of the substances.
Coca was a highly controlled substance during the height of the Inca Empire, when the children were sacrificed.
The evidence, combined with other archaeological and radiological data, suggests that the Maiden was treated very differently from the other two children, Llullaillaco Boy and Lightning Girl (so named by researchers because the mummy appears to have been struck by lightning).
After being selected for the deadly rite, the Maiden likely underwent a type of status change, becoming an important figure to the empire; the other two children may have served as her attendants.
“[The Maiden] became somebody other than who she was before,” said study lead author Andrew Wilson, an archaeologist at the University of Bradford in the U.K. “Her sacrifice was seen as an honor.”
Hair analyses
To learn about the final moments of a mummy’s life, scientists will sometimes turn to hair samples, which provide a record of what substances were circulating in the blood when new hair cells formed. And because hair grows at a relatively constant rate, it can provide a kind of timeline of what a person has consumed (the length of the timeline depends on the length of hair available).
In a 2007 study, Wilson and his colleagues analyzed the child mummies’ hair to understand how their diets changed over time. They found that the children came from a peasant background, as their diet consisted mainly of common vegetables, potatoes in particular. But in the year leading up to their deaths, they ate “elite” food, including maize and dried llama meat, and appeared to have been fattened up in preparation for the sacrifice.
Additionally, the 13-year-old Maiden consumed more of the elite food than the Llullaillaco Boy and Lightning Girl, who were both 4 to 5 years old, Wilson noted. (The three children were previously believed to be about two years older than these estimates, but a new analysis of CT scans suggests otherwise.)
In the new study, the scientists analyzed the mummies’ hair for cocaine (a major alkaloid of coca leaves) and its metabolite benzoylecgonine, as well as cocaethylene, which forms when both cocaine and ethanol are present in the blood.
The scientists created a timeline of coca and alcohol consumption for the children — due to respective hair lengths, the chronology for the younger children only went back to about nine months before their deaths, whereas the Maiden’s timeline spanned about 21 months before death.
The team found that the younger children ingested coca and alcohol at a steady rate, but the Maiden consumed significantly more coca in her final year, with peak consumption occurring approximately six months before her death. Her alcohol consumption peaked within her last few weeks of life. [Images: Chilean Mummies Hold Nicotine Secret]
The increase in drug and alcohol ingestion likely made the Maiden more at ease with her impending death, Wilson said, adding that she was discovered with a sizeable coca quid (lump for chewing) in between her teeth, suggesting she was sedated when she died.
The researchers also discovered a sizeable coca quid (lump for chewing) in between the teeth of the Maiden Incan mummy, suggesting the child was sedated when she died some 500 years ago.
The chosen one
The children’s burial conditions provide further insight into their final moments. The Maiden sat cross-legged and slightly forward, in a fairly relaxed body position at the time of her death. She also had a feathered headdress on her head, elaborately braided hair, and a number of artifacts placed on a textile that was draped over her knees.
Furthermore, scans showed the Maiden had food in her system and that she had not recently defecated. “To my mind, that suggests she was not in a state of distress at the point at which she died,” Wilson said. It’s not clear how the Maiden died, but she may have succumbed to the freezing temperatures of the environment and was placed in her final position while she was still alive or very shortly after death, he said.
By contrast, the Llullaillaco Boy had blood on his cloak, a nit infestation in his hair, and a cloth binding his body, suggesting he may have died of suffocation. The Lightning Girl didn’t appear to be treated as roughly as the boy, though she didn’t receive the same care as the Maiden — she lacked, for example, the Maiden’s decorated headdress and braids.
“The Maiden was perhaps a chosen woman selected to live apart from her former life, among the elite and under the care of the priestesses,” Wilson said.
Evidence suggests the imperial rite may have been used as a form of social control. Being selected for the ritual was supposed to be seen as a great honor, but it likely produced a climate of fear. In fact, it was a major offense for parents to show any sadness after giving up their children for the ceremony. More work on the three mummies will reveal more about the Inca society and its practice of ritual sacrifice.
“The exciting thing about these individuals is that they probably still have much more to tell us,” Wilson said. “Locked in their tissues are many stories still to unfold.”
The work was detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
