Category Archives: WORLD

SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Ancient DNA gives new insights into the ‘lost’ Indigenous people of Uruguay

Ancient DNA gives new insights into the ‘lost’ Indigenous people of Uruguay

The first whole-genome sequences of the ancient people of Uruguay provide a genetic snapshot of Indigenous populations of the region before they were decimated by a series of European military campaigns. PNAS Nexus published the research, led by anthropologists at Emory University and the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay. 

Ancient DNA gives new insights into the 'lost' Indigenous people of Uruguay

“Our work shows that the Indigenous people of ancient Uruguay exhibit an ancestry that has not been previously detected in South America,” says John Lindo, co-corresponding author and an Emory assistant professor of anthropology specializing in ancient DNA. “This contributes to the idea of South America being a place where multi-regional diversity existed, instead of the monolithic idea of a single Native American race across North and South America.”

The analyses drew from a DNA sample of a man that dated back 800 years and another from a woman that went back 1,500 years, both well before the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. The samples were collected from an archaeological site in eastern Uruguay by co-corresponding author Gonzalo Figueiro, a biological anthropologist at the University of the Republic. 

The results of the analyses showed a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama — the land bridge that connects North and South America — and to eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians. These findings support the theory proposed by some archaeologists of separate migrations into South America, including one that led to the Amazonian populations and another that led to the populations along the East coast. 

“We’ve now provided genetic evidence that this theory may be correct,” Lindo says. “It runs counter to the theory of a single migration that split at the foot of the Andes.”

The archaeological evidence for human settlement of the area now known as Uruguay, located on the Atlantic coast south of Brazil, goes back more than 10,000 years. European colonizers made initial contact with the Indigenous people of the region in the early 1500s. 

During the 1800s, the colonizers launched a series of military campaigns to exterminate the native peoples, culminating in what is known as the massacre at Salsipuedes Creek, in 1831, which targeted an ethnic group called the Charrúa. At that time, the authors write, the term Charrúa was being applied broadly to the remnants of various hunter-gatherer groups in the territory of Uruguay.

“Through these first whole-genome sequences of the Indigenous people of the region before the arrival of Europeans, we were able to reconstruct at least a small part of their genetic prehistory,” Lindo says. 

The work opens the door to modern-day Uruguayans seeking to potentially link themselves genetically to populations that existed in the region before European colonizers arrived. “We would like to gather more DNA samples from ancient archaeological sites from all over Uruguay, which would allow people living in the country today to explore a possible genetic connection,” Lindo says.

The Lindo ancient DNA lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas. Most ancient DNA labs are located in Europe, where the cooler climate has better-preserved specimens. 

Less focus has been put on sequencing ancient DNA from South America. One reason is that warmer, more humid climates throughout much of the continent have made it more challenging to collect usable ancient DNA specimens, although advances in sequencing technology are helping to remove some of these limitations.

“If you’re of European descent, you can have your DNA sequenced and use that information to pinpoint where your ancestors are from down to specific villages,” Lindo says. “If you are descended from people Indigenous to the Americas you may be able to learn that some chunk of your genome is Native American, but it’s unlikely that you can trace a direct lineage because there are not enough ancient DNA references available.”

Further complicating the picture, he adds, is the massive disruption caused by the arrival of Europeans given that many civilizations were destroyed and whole populations were killed.

By collaborating closely with Indigenous communities and local archaeologists, Lindo hopes to use advanced DNA sequencing techniques to build a free, online portal with increasing numbers of ancient DNA references from the Americas, to help people better explore and understand their ancestry.

Co-authors of the current paper include Emory senior Rosseirys De La Rosa, Andrew Luize Campelo dos Santos (the Federal University of Penambuco, Recife, Brazil), and Monica Sans (University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay), and Michael De Giorgio (Florida Atlantic University).

AFRICA, SUDAN, WORLD

Cattle May Have Been Domesticated in the Central Nile Valley

Cattle May Have Been Domesticated in the Central Nile Valley

Scientists have found that humans domesticated cattle around 10,000 years ago in the Central Nile region in today’s Sudan.

Cattle May Have Been Domesticated in the Central Nile Valley
Animal remains from Letti, incl. cattle remains (left).

The preliminary conclusions from researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences who recently returned from excavations overturn traditional thoughts that domesticated cattle came to East Africa from the lands of Turkey and Iraq.

Researchers are now waiting for precise sample dating results that will confirm their age. All indications are, however, that it is a period far preceding the 5th millennium BCE, a commonly accepted date of introduction of domesticated cattle from the Middle East. This would mean that domestication took place locally.

The area of the latest research was the Letti Basin in the Central Nile Valley. So far, this area has been known mainly as the economic base of the capital of the medieval kingdom of Makuria – Old Dongola, where Polish excavation missions have been working for five decades.

Dr. Piotr Osypiński from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology PAS, who conducts research in the Letti Basin together with Dr. Marta Osypińska from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław said: “The traces of human presence in this area are definitely older and reach the 8th-millennium BCE. We focused on them during the latest research”.

Cattle metatarsal bone from Letti (left), a medieval bone from Dongola (right).

Researchers call this area the great African intersection because this is where the trails of animals and people, existing for millennia along the Nile, cross the Sahel belt – the southern border of the Sahara.

In this area, on the edge of the desert and arable areas, the researchers discovered archaeological sites, several millennia older than the ancient civilizations and the Christian kingdom of Makuria. Their research sheds light on the topic of domesticating cattle by the first shepherds about 10,000 years ago.

The puzzle is where the domesticated cattle of early Eastern Sahara shepherds came from, says archaeozoologists, Dr. Marta Osypińska. 

Geneticists suggest that all domestic cattle we know today originated from a herd of aurochs that lived about 10,000 years ago in the lands of today’s Turkey and Iraq. Therefore, it would have to reach Africa in a domesticated form, according to the prevailing views in the 5th-6th millennium BCE.

However, archaeologists thought earlier that African cattle were domesticated also locally, in the Eastern Sahara region. The deserting ecosystem was to be conducive to ‘strengthening relations’ between humans and aurochs, and humans had followed the herds of these large ruminants from the earliest times. However, there was no direct evidence that such a process actually took place, i.e. the remains of wild cattle and its transitional and domesticated forms. In the case of African domestication, the very presence of the remains of archaic cattle (in sites older than those indicated by geneticists in the 5th-6th millennium BC) would constitute such evidence.

A figurine presumably depicting a cow.

Dr. Osypińska said: “Due to the lack of finds (from earlier excavations) in the form of well-preserved bones of large ruminants, the idea of local domestication of cattle was abandoned, and genetic reports dominated the scientific debate. Meanwhile, during our research in Letti, we made discoveries that shed new light and allow us to resume the debate about the origin of cattle in Africa.”

At one of the sites from the beginning of the Holocene Age (approx. 10,000 years ago), the researchers discovered the remains of domesticated cattle with ‘aurochs-like’ features. They were among the bones of other, strictly wild species of animals inhabiting the savannah.

The researchers are waiting for precise sample dating results, which will confirm their age and allow them to talk about the local domestication.

Osypiński said: “That group of people already knew ceramic vessels, used quern-stones to grind cereal grains (wild varieties of millet), so they can be called early-Neolithic communities. They still hunted wild savannah animals, with one only exception – cattle at an early stage of domestication.”

A figurine presumably depicting a cow.

From a layer from the same period, archaeologists extracted a tiny clay figurine depicting a cow. Although the head has not survived, according to the discoverers the silhouette undoubtedly points to a large ruminant. Very similar figurines are known in many shepherd cultures, including the Nuer people from South Sudan, the researchers say.

The interdisciplinary team’s research was financed by the Polish National Science Centre.

ASIA, LAOS, WORLD

A child’s 130,000-year-old tooth could offer clues to an extinct human relative

A child’s 130,000-year-old tooth could offer clues to an extinct human relative

Palaeontologists in Laos have uncovered an ancient molar that likely belonged to a young Denisovan girl. The discovery is a big deal, as the Laotian cave in which the molar was found is now one of only three spots known to host these enigmatic humans.

The suspected Denisovan molar.

In addition to Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau, we can now add Laos to the achingly shortlist of places that have yielded fossils of an elusive human species known as the Denisovans.

A team of palaeontologists found the suspected Denisovan molar at the Tam Ngu Hao 2 cave in the Annamite Mountains of Laos. The molar dates to the middle Pleistocene, and it’s the first Denisovan fossil ever to be found in southeast Asia. A paper detailing this discovery is published today in Nature Communications.

Laura Shackelford, an anthropologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-author of the new study, was excited to learn that Denisovans, like their Neanderthal cousins, inhabited a variety of environments, some of them extreme.

The entrance to Tam Ngu Hao 2 cave, also known as Cobra Cave.

“Although we only have a few fossils representing the Denisovans, this new fossil from Laos demonstrates that much like modern humans, Denisovans were widespread and they were highly adaptable,” Shackelford explained in an email. “They lived in the cold arctic temperatures of Siberia, in the cold, [oxygen poor] environment of the Tibetan Plateau, and now we know they were also living in the tropics of southeast Asia.”

What’s more, the new discovery “further attests” that southeast Asia was “a hotspot of diversity for the genus Homo” during the middle to late Pleistocene, as the scientists write in their study. So in addition to Denisovans, this part of the world was once home to H. Erectus, Neanderthals, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and H. sapiens.

That a Denisovan fossil was found in Laos is not a huge surprise. Traces of Denisovan DNA have been detected within the genomes of modern southeast Asian and Oceanian populations. The Ayta Magbukun—a Philippine ethnic group—have retained approximately 5% of their Denisovan ancestry, the highest of any human group in the world. Denisovans branched off from Neanderthals at some point between 200,000 and 390,000 years ago. They eventually went extinct, but not before interbreeding with modern humans. The Laotian molar is just the 10th Denisovan fossil to be found and the first outside of Siberia and Tibet.

The Annamite Mountains contain an abundance of limestone caves. Each year, Shackelford and her colleagues dispatch geologists to the area in hopes of finding spots worthy of further paleontological investigation.

“In 2018, our geologists spent the morning surveying and returned to the site before lunch with their pockets full of sediment samples that they had collected from a potential new site, what we now know as Tam Ngu Hao 2 or Cobra Cave,” Shackelford told me. “In these first samples, among fragments of fossil animal teeth, we found the tooth.”

By dating the sediment in which the molar was found, the team aged the fossil to between 164,000 and 131,000 years old. Protein analysis of the tooth’s enamel identified the fossil as belonging to a member of the Homo genus, but this test couldn’t pin down the exact species.

Study co-author Fabrice Demeter analyses the molar.

“We do know that this is the tooth of a girl who died when she was between about 4 to 8 years old,” said Shackelford. “Since this tooth comes from a child, we are currently doing additional analyses of tooth growth and development.”

Clément Zanolli, an expert on the evolution of human teeth and a co-author of the new study, said the identification of the Denisovan molar arose from multiple lines of morphological evidence.

The Laotian molar, he told me, bears a resemblance to teeth found on the partial Denisovan mandible from Tibet, including large tooth dimensions and various distinguishing features that separate it from other Homo species known to inhabit southeast Asia, including Neanderthals and modern humans.

“Among the human groups previously cited, the molar from Laos is closest to Neanderthals, and we know from paleogenetics that Denisovans were a sister group of Neanderthals, meaning that they were closely related and shared morphological features,” Zanolli, who works at the University of Bordeaux, explained in an email. “For these reasons, the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the tooth that we found in Laos belongs to a Denisovan individual.”

It’s not impossible that the molar belonged to a Neanderthal, but if that’s the case, that “would make it the south-eastern-most Neanderthal fossil ever discovered,” according to the paper.

“We are confident it is Denisovan,” Fabrice Demeter, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the study, told me in an email. But to “further confirm our results if needed, genetic analyses would be useful,” he said. Unfortunately, however, “DNA tends to fragment more quickly and intensely in tropical environments,” and it’s for this reason that “no ancient DNA from any Pleistocene human has been sequenced so far,” he added.

The new fossil is important because it affirms something already hinted at by the genetic data—that Denisovans once inhabited a wide area of southeast Asia. What’s more, it “confirms that Denisovans were present in this region and could have met with Late Pleistocene modern humans,” according to Zanolli. And lastly, it shows that Denisovans could live in both cold, high-altitude environments and the tropical forests of southeast Asia.

The Denisovans appear to have been an adaptable group. But that just makes their sudden disappearance some 50,000 years ago all the more mysterious.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

An ancient temple dedicated to Zeus unearthed in Egypt

An ancient temple dedicated to Zeus unearthed in Egypt

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of an ancient temple built to honour Zeus-Kasios, a deity sporting the features of both Zeus and the weather-god Kasios, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Monday.

An ancient temple dedicated to Zeus unearthed in Egypt
This pink granite pillar was once a part of the Zeus-Kasios temple at Pelusium on the Sinai Peninsula.

The ruins were unearthed at the Tell el-Farama archaeological site in the northwestern Sinai Peninsula.

In Greco-Roman times (332 B.C. to A.D. 395), this area was known as the city and harbour of Pelusium, which sat on the far eastern mouth of the Nile River.

Due to its strategic location, people used Pelusium for various functions, including as a fortress during the time of the Egyptian pharaohs;  and artefacts dating to the Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, Christian and Islamic periods suggest it was in use in various ways then as well, according to a 2010 paper presented at the Sinai International Conference for Geology and Development.

The archaeological team zeroed in on the temple after excavating around the remains of two pink granite columns lying on the ground’s surface, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in the statement.

These columns once formed the temple’s front gate but collapsed in ancient times when a mighty earthquake rocked the city.

Researchers have been aware for several decades that there might be a Zeus-Kasios temple at the site.

In the early 1900s and later in the 1990s, archaeologists ascertained that the granite columns were likely brought on barges via the Nile from Aswan in southern Egypt to Pelusium, according to the 2010 paper.

Moreover, the late French Egyptologist Jean Clédat found Greek inscriptions at the site, indicating that a temple for Zeus-Kasios had been built there in Graeco-Roman times. However, archaeologists never did a formal excavation at the site, which is near an ancient fort and a church.

The pink granite pillars likely came from Aswan in ancient times.
Archaeologists excavate the remnants of the ancient temple.
Archaeologists analyze the site where ancient people honoured Zeus-Kasios.

Now, archaeologists have discovered previously unknown remains of the temple, including granite blocks that were likely part of a staircase leading to the temple’s entrance on the eastern side of the building, Ayman Ashmawy, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in the statement.

Several large blocks of pink granite were found in the streets around the temple site, indicating that later workers repurposed the temple’s stones for other projects, such as nearby churches.

Scientists are now documenting the newly analyzed blocks with photogrammetry, a technique in which many digital images are used to create virtual 3D images, which will help the team attempt to recreate the temple virtually, Hisham Hussein, the director of Sinai archaeological sites, said in the statement.

Inscriptions found on some of the granite blocks suggest that Roman Emperor Hadrian (ruled A.D. 117-138) renovated the temple, Hussein added.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Sixth Dynasty Official’s Tomb Discovered in Saqqara

Sixth Dynasty Official’s Tomb Discovered in Saqqara

A team of archaeologists in Egypt has discovered the 4,300-year-old tomb of a man named Mehtjetju, an official who claimed that he had access to “secret” royal documents. 

This relief depicts the tomb owner, Mehtjetju, who lived around 4,300 years ago.

“The dignitary bore the name Mehtjetju and was, among other things, an official with access to royal sealed — that is secret — documents,” according to the hieroglyphs on the tomb, Kamil Kuraszkiewicz, a professor at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Oriental Studies, said in a statement.  

Mehtjetju’s tomb was found next to the Step Pyramid of Djoser, which was constructed about 4,700 years ago in Saqqara. 

It’s no coincidence that Mehtjetju’s tomb is next to the Step Pyramid, the first pyramid built by the ancient Egyptians.

Djoser “was an important and revered king from the glorious past,” and officials sometimes wanted to be buried beside his pyramid, even centuries after Djoser died, Kuraszkiewicz told Live Science in an email. 

Mehtjetju lived sometime during the reign of the first three pharaohs of the sixth dynasty: Teti (reign ca. 2323 B.C to 2291 B.C.), Userkare (reign ca. 2291 B.C. to 2289 B.C.) and Pepi I (reign ca. 2289 B.C. to 2255 B.C.).

Mehtjetju would have served one or more of those pharaohs. His other titles included “inspector of the royal estate” and he was also a priest of the mortuary cult of the pharaoh Teti, according to the statement. 

A fragment of painted decoration shows two men and at least one oryx.
Conservators working at the facade of the tomb.

So far, archaeologists have excavated the façade (entrance) of the tomb’s chapel, finding hieroglyphic inscriptions, paintings and a relief depicting Mehtjetju. No family members are mentioned in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, but the burial chamber has not been excavated yet and the tomb seems to be part of a larger complex that may hold his family’s remains, Kuraszkiewicz told Live Science.

Mehtjetju’s high social status meant he could hire skilled artisans to build the tomb, according to the archaeologists, who said the façade’s reliefs were crafted by a skilled hand. However, some of the tomb’s rock is brittle and eroded, prompting conservators to intervene during the excavation.

Scholar reacts

Several details suggest it’s possible that the tomb’s decoration was not completed, Ann Macy Roth, a clinical professor of art history and Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, who was not involved in the finding, told Live Science in an email. 

Roth noted that one of the paintings shows the outlines of a man beside a large antelope known as an oryx. The fact that only the outline is shown “suggests that the decoration wasn’t completed,” Roth said, noting that this is an “interesting tomb” and she looks forward to hearing about future finds. 

The discovery is “very exciting, as new tombs always are,” Roth said. 

The team plans to resume excavations in September and hopes to uncover the burial chamber of the tomb at that time. The chamber may contain the mummy of Mehtjetju. 

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

There is a hidden underground ‘city’ beneath the Giza Pyramids, experts claim

There is a hidden underground ‘city’ beneath the Giza Pyramids, experts claim

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs. Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.
The unearthing of a lost city in Egypt was reported in many papers in 1935, including this report in the Sunday Express on July 7, 1935.

“There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow,” British explorer Andrew Collins said.

Collins, who will detail his findings in the book “Beneath the Pyramids” to be published in September, tracked down the entrance to the mysterious underworld after reading the forgotten memoirs of a 19th-century diplomat and explorer.

“In his memoirs, British consul general Henry Salt recounts how he investigated an underground system of ‘catacombs’ at Giza in 1817 in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia,” Collins said.

The document records that the two explored the caves for a distance of “several hundred yards,” coming upon four large chambers from which stretched further cave passageways.

With the help of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed Salt’s exploration on the plateau, eventually locating the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid.

Indeed, the tomb featured a crack in the rock, which led into a massive natural cave.

“We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders,” said Collins.

According to Collins, the caves — which are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old — may have both inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian’s belief in an underworld.

“Ancient funerary texts clearly allude to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids,” Collins told Discovery News.

Indeed, Giza was known anciently as Rostau, meaning the “mouth of the passages.”

This is the same name as a region of the ancient Egyptian underworld known as the Duat.

“The ‘mouth of the passages’ is unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumoured to exist beneath the plateau,” Collins told Discovery News.

Collins’ claim is expected to cause a stir in the Egyptological world.

Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery.

“There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau,” he stated.

But Collins remarks that after extensive research, he found no mention of the caves in modern times.

“To the best of our knowledge, nothing has ever been written or recorded about these caves since Salt’s explorations. If Hawass does have any report related to these caves, we have yet to see it,” Collins said.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Restoration Reveals Engravings in Egypt’s Temple of Esna

Restoration Reveals Engravings in Egypt’s Temple of Esna

The Egyptian-German archaeological mission has uncovered original reliefs and engravings on the walls and ceilings of the Temple of Esna in Luxor, Upper Egypt during ongoing restoration work.

Restoration Reveals Engravings in Egypt’s Temple of Esna

The mission uncovered a distinguished relief on top of the entrance gate of the temple showing 46 eagles standing in two rows, with some bearing the heads of the Upper Egypt goddess Nekhbet, and others bearing the head of the Lower Egypt goddess Wadjet.

“This is the first time to find this relief,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. “It was not seen or mentioned in the works published by the French Egyptologist Serge Soniron, who documented the temple’s reliefs in 1963 and 1975, Waziri added.

Hisham El-Leithy, the head of the Central Department for Egyptian Documentation Centre and head of the mission from the Egyptian side, explained that the uncovered reliefs and engravings at the Esna temple were hidden beneath dust and accumulation of salts and birds deposits over the last 2000 years.

This discovery made it important for us to begin a restoration project, funded by the American Research Centre in Cairo, to protect the temple and uncover its decorations, El-Leithy stressed.

Meanwhile, the mission also found a Roman engraving in red ink on the western side of the temple dating from the era of the Roman Emperor Domitian, 81-96 CE, who might have completed the construction of the temple.

More studies will be carried out on these engraving to show more details.

Construction on the Temple of Esna, which is dedicated to the ram god Khnum and his divine consorts, began in the Roman era during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and its decoration was completed during the reign of Emperor Decius (249-251 AD).

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Temple of Esna suffered from urban encroachment, which limited access to the site only through one of the houses built around it.

During the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha (1805-1840 AD), the temple is reported to have been used as a storage facility for the cotton crop.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Possible Traces of Calming Drug Found in Sacrificed Inca Children

Possible Traces of Calming Drug Found in Sacrificed Inca Children

Two Inca children slated for ritual sacrifice more than 500 years ago quaffed a special soothing concoction that has gone undetected until now. Those young victims, most likely a girl and a boy roughly 4 to 8 years old, drank a liquid that may have lightened their moods and calmed their nerves in the days or weeks before they were ceremonially killed and buried on Peru’s Ampato mountain, a new study suggests.

Possible Traces of Calming Drug Found in Sacrificed Inca Children
Previously excavated bodies of two ritually sacrificed Inca children, including this girl still wearing a ceremonial headdress, have yielded chemical clues to a beverage that may have been used to calm them in the days or weeks before being killed.

The youngsters’ bodies contained chemical remnants from one of the primary ingredients of ayahuasca, a liquid concoction known for its hallucinogenic effects, say bioarchaeologist Dagmara Socha of the University of Warsaw, Poland, and her colleagues (SN: 5/6/19). Analyses focused on hair from the girl’s naturally mummified body and fingernails from the boy’s partially mummified remains.

While no molecular signs of ayahuasca’s strong hallucinogens appeared in those remains, the team did find traces of harmine and harmaline, chemical products of Banisteriopsis caapi vines, Socha’s group reports in the June Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In ayahuasca, B. caapi amplifies the strength of other more hallucinogenic ingredients.

Recent investigations with rodents suggest that solutions containing harmine affect the brain much as some antidepressant drugs do. “This is the first [evidence] that B. caapi could have been used in the past for its antidepressant properties,” Socha says.

While research on whether harmine can lessen depression or anxiety in people is in its infancy, archaeologist Christine VanPool of the University of Missouri, Columbia, thinks it’s possible that the ingredient was used on purpose.

Spanish documents written after the fall of the Inca empire say that alcohol was used to calm those about to be sacrificed, so other brews may have been used too, speculates VanPool, who was not part of Socha’s team.

“I tentatively say yes, the Inca understood that B. caapi reduced anxiety in sacrificial victims,” she says.

Spanish chroniclers may have mistakenly assumed that Inca sacrifice victims drank a popular corn beer known as chicha rather than a B. caapi beverage, Socha suspects.

No evidence of alcohol appeared in molecular analyses of the Ampato mountain children. But alcohol consumed just before being sacrificed would have gone undetected in the researchers’ tests.

Trace evidence did also indicate that both children had chewed coca leaves in the weeks leading up to their deaths.

Spanish written accounts described the widespread use of coca leaves during Inca rites of passage. Those events included ritual sacrifices of children and young women, who were believed to become envoys to various local gods after death.

The grave of an Inca boy who was ritually sacrificed in the Andes more than 500 years ago included valuable items, such as this silver llama figurine, signifying his status as an envoy to local deities.

The sacrificed children were found during a 1995 expedition near the summit of Ampato (SN: 11/11/95). It would have taken at least two weeks and possibly several months for the pair of Inca children to complete a pilgrimage from wherever their homes were located to the capital city of Cuzco for official ceremonies and then to Ampato mountain, Socha says.

Giving those kids a calming B. caapi drink as well as coca leaves to chew doesn’t surprise archaeologist Lidio Valdez of the University of Calgary, who did not participate in the new study.

Children may not have understood that they were going to die, but they had to endure the rigors and loneliness of a long trip while separated from their families, he says.  

Valdez suspects Ampato mountain was originally called Qampato, a word meaning toad in the Inca language. Andean societies such as the Inca associated toads with water or rain. “The mountain was also likely linked with water or rain and the children perhaps sacrificed to ask the mountain gods to send water,” he says.