Inca children who were chosen to be ritually sacrificed were drugged so that they remained calm before their death, a new study of ancient hair and fingernail samples has confirmed. Credit: Creuxnoir/Adobe Stock The human sacrifice, typically of children, known as capacocha, was generally conducted in Incan society to celebrate major events like the birth…
More than 20 years ago, Dr. Heiko Prumers from the German Archaeological Institute and Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the University of Bonn, at that time a student in La Paz, began archaeological excavations on two “mounds” near the village of Casarabe in Bolivia. The Mojos Plains is a southwestern fringe of the Amazon…
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. A sculpture commemorates the Indigenous people of Uruguay in the capital of Montevideo. Archaeological evidence for human settlement of the area goes back 10,000…
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Maehary bonapartei represents a small reptile that is considered to be the most basal of the evolutionary lineage that gave rise to pterosaurs. The study also demonstrates that Faxinalipterus minimus is not a winged reptile, contrary to what was previously supposed. Right humerus of Faxinalipterus (UFRGS-PV-0927-T) which is quite different from the humerus of pterosaurs. Note…
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Tiny beetles that feed on fruit from the palm family may have developed their taste for coconuts long ago, according to a Penn State-led team of scientists studying suspected insect damage in a 60-million-year-old fossil. Palm bruchine tunnels on a fossil Coconut fruit of the Cerrejon Formation, Colombia [Credit: Penn State] “We found this remarkable…
Read More “Beetle in the coconut: Fossil find sheds new light on Neotropical rainforests” »
A new study has discovered that an ancient super-earthquake took place in Northern Chile, on the same scale as the largest recorded quake in history. The earthquake, 3800 years ago, had a magnitude of around 9.5 and the resulting tsunami struck countries as far away as New Zealand where boulders the size of cars were…
Fiber tells the story of its being, each lock carrying the history of its curator, of its origin. Spun into thread, plied into yarn, woven into tapestries, the fiber arts are ancient and ubiquitous. For ancient Andean peoples, including Inkas, the craft appeared to be even more vital as an expansive means of data management…
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Six mummified children thought to have been sacrificed hundreds of years ago, apparently to accompany a dead nobleman to the afterlife, have been unearthed in a tomb near Lima, archaeologists reported. An archaeologist works at the Cajamarquilla archeological site in Peru [Credit: Guadalupe Pardo/AFP] The tiny skeletons, wrapped tightly in cloth, were found in the…
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Colombia took a step Thursday toward recovering a long-lost Spanish wreck and its fabled riches, but it may be a rough ride as Spain and native Bolivians have also staked claims on the booty. The wreckage of the San Jose galleon, a ship sunk off the coast of Colombia in 1708, can be seen in…
Human DNA can be extracted from the ‘cement’ head lice used to glue their eggs to hairs thousands of years ago, scientists have found, which could provide an important new window into the past. A mummified adult man of the Ansilta culture, from the Andes of San Juan, Argentina, dating back approx 2,000 years [Credit:…
Read More “Nits on ancient mummies shed light on South American ancestry” »
