Category Archives: SOUTH AMERICA

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

‘Thunder floor’ found at ancient Andean site in Peru

‘Thunder floor’ found at ancient Andean site in Peru

An ancient “sounding” dance floor, perhaps designed to create a drum-like sound for a thunder god when stomped on, has been identified by archaeologists in Peru. Found at the site of Viejo Sangayaico, 200km southeast of Lima, the floor was built into an open-air platform sometime between AD1000 and AD1400.

‘Thunder floor’ found at ancient Andean site in Peru
A different drum: an open-air platform at Viejo Sangayaico that makes a deep percussive sound when stomped on may have been a “sounding” dance-floor used to venerate a nearby mountain deity of thunder and lightning

It then continued in use under Inca rule, from 1400 to 1532, and perhaps during the early years of the Spanish conquest.

“We know that in pre-Hispanic Andean rituals dance was a big part of the proceedings.

I believe that this specially constructed platform was built to enhance the natural sounds associated with dance,” says Kevin Lane, an archaeologist with the Instituto de las Culturas (IDECU) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina, who led the research.

Funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the project’s findings have recently been published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

The dance floor was built on one of two open-air platforms close to a possible Inca temple dedicated to a lightning deity.

The platforms face the nearby mountain of Huinchocruz, where a pre-Hispanic ceremonial platform known as an ushnu stood.

“I believe that these open platforms would have been used during the pre-Hispanic period as a stage on which to venerate the nearby mountain gods, in this case those of Huinchocruz,” Lane says.

Because lightning deities were associated with rain and thunder in Andean belief, it is possible that the people of Viejo Sangayaico used the dance floor to imitate the sound of thunder, Lane explains. “This would likely have been accompanied by drums and possibly Andean wind instruments.”

The archaeologists first identified the sounding dance floor when they heard a hollow noise as they walked on it. “We realized that the platform was built to enhance sound when we started excavating it,” Lane says.

“We discovered that the platform had been dug and then infilled with specially prepared fills and surfaces to create a percussion effect. This involved four layers of camelid guano interspersed with four layers of clean silty clay.”

Lane says the dung layers contained small gaps which caused a deep, bass-like sound to be produced whenever people danced or stomped on the floor’s surface, which was around 10 meters in diameter.

“We reckon the platform could have held up to 26 people dancing in unison, making for a loud thumping sound,” Lane says, adding that the dust raised by the dancing may have been a visual feature.

The discovery raises the possibility that parts of other Andean sites may have been built to enhance sound. “We already knew this from sites like Chavin, but even during the late pre-Hispanic period it is possible that many sites had sectors specially prepared for this,” Lane says.

Another Andean site in Peru where the use of sound has recently been studied is Huánuco Pampa.

“The sounding dance platform is a fantastic find and it shows that, aside from instruments, the human body and the landscape could be employed musically,” Lane says. “It also brings past sounds to life, especially given that the past is mostly silent and lost to us.”

BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover Wreckage of Notorious Slave Ship Off Brazil

Archaeologists Discover Wreckage of Notorious Slave Ship Off Brazil

Archaeologists Discover Wreckage of Notorious Slave Ship Off Brazil
Illustration of an Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade ship that took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries.

The wreckage of a 19th-century U.S. ship with more than 500 slaves on board may have been identified by archaeologists in the sea of ​​Angra dos Rei, Brazil, according to the local news outlet TV Prefeito.

Though researchers are still investigating, they believe it was a North American ship led by slave trader Nathanial Gordon, who was en route to deliver 500 enslaved Africans from Mozambique to Bracuí in Angra dos Reis in 1851.

Gordon illegally participated in the slave trade to Brazil, for which he was later tried, convicted, and executed under the Piracy Law of 1820.

Police had been chasing Gordon because the slave trade and the sailing of ships were illegal in Brazil and believe he may have sunk the ship to cover his tracks.

He lived as a fugitive for the next decade before being hung for his crimes in the U.S. in 1862.

Last year, archaeologists from the AfrOrigens Institute, the Fluminense Federal University, the Federal University of Sergipe, and multiple North American research institutions started searching for the ship.

Brazil was built on the enslavement of millions of Africans and Indigenous peoples. Research conducted by Princeton University observes that, “Of the 12 million enslaved Africans brought to the New World, almost half—5.5 million people—were forcibly taken to Brazil as early as 1540 and until the 1860s.”

BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Pedra do Inga: A 6,000-Year-Old Monument Depicting an Ancient Star Map

Pedra do Inga: A 6,000-Year-Old Monument Depicting an Ancient Star Map

Its most prominent symbols depict stars, the Milky Way as well as the constellation of Orion. Most glyphs etched on the massive stone represent animals, fruits, humans, and constellations, but also a plethora of yet unrecognizable symbols and images.

Its most prominent symbols depict stars, the Milky Way as well as the constellation of Orion

There’s a strange, massive stone located in the municipality of Ingá, in the interior of the Brazilian state of Paraíba called the Inga stone or Pedra do Inga.

On its surface, the ancients carved a series of intricate symbols, stars, and spirals.

The stone itself is massive; the rock formation covers an area of approximately 250 square meters.

Altogether primarily, a vertical wall 46 meters long by 3.8 meters high, and adjacent areas, there are entries whose meanings are unknown.

In addition to the stars, and spirals, ancient ‘astronomers’ carved other entries whose exact meanings remain a mystery to experts.

Despite this, scholars have agreed on the fact that depictions of stars, constellations, and ever galaxies are clearly visible on the rock’s surface.

While the exact age of the inscriptions is hard to tell, researchers argue that the rock formation can be dated back to around 6,000 years.

So far, experts have identified more than 400 engravings on the stone’s surface. Some of them are zoomorphic in nature, while others represent abstract symbols as well as stars.

There is a hypothesis that indicates the petroglyphs of Ingá are exceptionally important from an archaeoastronomical point of view.

Back in 1976, Spanish engineer Francisco Pavía Alemany began mathematically studying the archaeological monument.

His first results were published in 1986 by the Instituto of Arqueologia Brasileira (Pavía Alemany F. 1986). Alemany identified on the stone’s surface a series of “bowls” and another petroglyph etched into the vertical surface of the wall of Inga that formed a “solar calendar”, over which a gnomon projected the shadow of the first sun rays of every day.

Alemany later continued studying the stone bit this time focusing on recording and documenting a series of symbols on the surface where the observer could identify petroglyphs reminiscent of stars, that appeared to have been grouped together in what appeared to be constellations.

But it is the coexistence of the “bowls” and “constellations” on the rock’s surface which gives the Pedra do Inga its archaeoastronomical significance.

The site where the Inga Stone stands today is in constant danger of being damaged beyond repair by vandals.

SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

People ‘finger painted’ the skulls of their ancestors red in the Andes a millennium ago

People ‘finger painted’ the skulls of their ancestors red in the Andes a millennium ago

People 'finger painted' the skulls of their ancestors red in the Andes a millennium ago
A close-up of an adult male cranium with applied hematite-based pigment that covers a fracture that occurred before the individual died.

Up to a millennium ago, the Chincha people in what is now Peru decorated their ancestors’ remains with red pigment, sometimes finger-painting their skulls as part of a ritual intended to give the dead a new kind of social life.

In a new investigation, researchers analyzed hundreds of human remains found in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Dating to between A.D. 1000 and 1825, the skeletal remains they studied were found in more than 100 “chullpas,” large mortuary structures where multiple people were interred together. The team’s goal, detailed in the March 2023 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, was to investigate how and why red paint was applied to many of the bones.

What they discovered, however, was that different kinds of red paint were used and that only certain people were painted after death.

The use of red pigment in funeral rituals dates back thousands of years in Peru and is related to a prolonged process of dealing with deceased members of society. “Death was not the end,” the researchers wrote in the study. “It was a pivotal moment of transformation into another kind of existence, and a critical transition from one state to another, providing the basis for further life.” 

The researchers took samples of red paint from 38 different artifacts and bones, 25 of which were human skulls. Using three scientific techniques — X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and laser ablation ICP-MS, techniques that essentially analyze elements within a substance — they identified the composition of the red pigments.

Red paint on 24 of the samples came from iron-based ochres like hematite, 13 came from mercury-based cinnabar, and one was a combination of the two.

Further chemical analysis showed that the cinnabar was imported from hundreds of miles away while the hematite likely came from local sources. These differences may reflect elite and non-elite uses of the different kinds of paint, the study authors said.

This figure shows traces of red pigment found on the inside and outside of a disarticulated non-adult cranium. This suggests that pigmented hands held the cranium during painting.

Most of the individuals whose bones were painted were found to be adult males. However, the bones of women and children, as well as those of several people with healed traumatic injuries and people whose skulls were modified as babies, were also painted. 

By examining the skulls, the researchers figured out how the red paint was applied. “We know that Chincha peoples used textiles, leaves, and their own hands to apply red pigment to human remains,” study first author Jacob Bongers, an anthropological archaeologist at Boston University, told Live Science in an email. Thick vertical or horizontal lines of paint on skulls are consistent with someone using their fingers for application. 

“Finger painting would have been critical for forming close relationships between the living and the dead,” Bongers said. “The red pigment itself brings to light this living-dead relationship as well as social differences for others to see.”

Benjamin Schaefer, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Illinois Chicago who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that this research “makes an important and exciting contribution to understanding the ritual economy of death in the Andes. The living hand-painting the dead after death offers an intimate and dynamic glimpse into social identities in the Chincha Valley.”

Material and skeletal remains with red pigment: a) shell container, b) ceramic figurine, c) textile, d) modified bird, e) worked bone wrapped in yarn.

One aspect of the process that Bongers and colleagues have not figured out yet is when the red paint was applied. While it is clear to them that the bones were painted after the individuals had been skeletonized, the actual act of painting might have been a response to colonization.

“Some painted bones, especially crania [skulls], were removed and placed over other graves, presumably to ‘protect’ the dead,” the researchers wrote. By integrating theories rooted in Andean concepts of death and cosmology with the scientific analysis of painted skeletons, they further suggest that transgressions against the dead, such as looting, would have required correction by the living. “We hypothesize that individuals reentered disturbed chullpas to paint human remains that had become desecrated after the European invasion,” the researchers wrote. 

“Their research provides a roadmap for others to follow,” Celeste Gagnon, a bioarchaeologist at Wagner College in New York who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email, “to create work that fulfills a unique promise of anthropology: bringing together humanistic and scientific understandings of the past.”

SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Maya civilization: Archaeologists find an ancient city in the jungle

Maya civilization: Archaeologists find an ancient city in the jungle

Maya civilization: Archaeologists find an ancient city in the jungle
Archaeologists located a number of buildings including this one with stone steps

Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered the remains of an ancient Maya city deep in the jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula. Experts found several pyramid-like structures measuring more than 15m (50ft) in height.

Pottery unearthed at the site appears to indicate it was inhabited between 600 and 800 AD, a period known as the Late Classic.

Archaeologists have named the site Ocomtún (Mayan for stone column).

The abundance of stone columns inspired the name researchers gave the city

The Maya are considered to have been one of the great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere, renowned for their pyramid temples and great stone buildings in an area that is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

These latest remains were found in an ecological reserve in the state of Campeche, an area so dense with vegetation that it has been little explored.

Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said that its discovery was the result of fieldwork aimed at documenting the archaeology of the Central Maya Lowlands, an area spanning 3,000 sq km of uninhabited jungle.

INAH said that airborne laser scanning carried out by the University of Houston had helped the research team spotted “numerous concentrations of pre-Hispanic structures”.

Ivan Sprajc, who led the team, said they had been most surprised by the discovery of an elevated terrain surrounded by wetlands.

On that elevated terrain, they found several large buildings, including a number of pyramid-shaped ones measuring more than 15m.

“The site would have served as an important regional center,” Mr. Sprajc said in a statement released by INAH.

The cylindrical stone columns which prompted the researchers to name the site Ocomtún were probably entrances to rooms in the upper parts of the buildings, he added.

According to Mr. Sprajc, the site probably underwent considerable changes between 800 and 1000 AD before falling victim to the collapse of the Lowland Maya civilization in the 10th Century.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Peru archaeology: Ancient mummy found under a rubbish dump

Peru archaeology: Ancient mummy found under a rubbish dump

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.

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Cal Orcko: A 300 Feet Wall With Over 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

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.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Scientists discover 4 new Nazca Geoglyphs using AI deep learning

Scientists discover 4 new Nazca Geoglyphs using AI deep learning

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.