Inca jewelry on display at the Larco Archaeological Museum in Lima

You can see a lot of the other awesome stuff that they have on display here: http://www.museolarco.org/

Inca child mummy reveals lost genetic history of South America

Back in 1985, hikers climbing Argentina’s Aconcagua mountain stumbled upon a ghastly surprise: the frozen corpse of a 7-year-old boy. It was apparent that he’d been there for a long time, so the hikers notified archaeologists, who carefully excavated the body. They determined that the Aconcagua boy, as he came to be known, was sacrificed as part of an Incan ritual 500 years ago and had been naturally mummified by the mountain’s cold, dry environment. Now, a new analysis of the Aconcagua boy’s mitochondrial DNA reveals that he belonged to a population of native South Americans that all but disappeared after the Spanish conquest of the New World.

The Aconcagua boy died as part of an Incan ritual of child sacrifice called capacocha. Children and adolescents were taken to the tops of high peaks and left to die of exposure or killed outright; the Aconcagua boy was likely executed with a blow to the head. Read more.

Incan pot, 15th or 16th century.

Effigy figure

Cast silver alloy

Peru. Inca. Date unknown.

The Walters

Using ancient DNA, researchers unravel the mystery of Machu Picchu

Dramatically perched on an Andes mountain ridge some 8,000 feet above sea level in Peru, Machu Picchu is a visual wonder and a technical masterpiece.

“It is breathtaking,” said Brenda Bradley, an associate professor of anthropology at the George Washington University.

The Inca built the site’s 15th-century ruins without mortar, fitting the blocks of stone so tightly together that you still cannot fit a piece of paper between them. The design included steeped, agricultural terraces to boost planting space and protect against flooding.

But despite its distinction as one of the most iconic and important archeological sites in the world, the origins of Machu Picchu remain a mystery. The Inca left no record of why they built the site or how they used it before it was abandoned in the early 16th century. Read more.

Final Moments of Incan Child Mummies' Lives Revealed

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. Read more.

Tesoros del antiguo Peru

Golden Inca bird from Peru.

Courtesy & currently located at the Museum of the Americas, Madrid. Photo taken by Simon Burchell

This is amazing

Archaeologists in Peru thought they had discovered something special when they uncovered the tomb of a pre-Inca priestess and eight other corpses in 2011. But an even bigger find was right beneath their feet.

Continuing their search for artifacts a year later, the team dug beneath the priestess, uncovering a basement tomb they believe was built by an ancient water cult and meant to flood.

“This is a very valuable finding,” said Carlos Wester La Torre, head of the excavation and director of the Brüning National Archaeological Museum in the Lambayeque region—a region named after the little-known culture that built the stacked tomb. “The amount of information of this funerary complex is very important, because it changes [what we know of] the political and religious structures of the Andean region.”

The nearly 800-year-old basement burial sheds light on complex Lambayeque social structures and on the worship of water in the culture.

Four sets of waterlogged human remains were found in the flooded tomb, one adorned with pearl and shell beads—indicators of wealth or status. The other three corpses likely were intended to accompany the body into the next world.

The faces of both elite individuals, in the lower and upper tombs, were covered with copper sheets, and wore earspools bearing similar, wavelike designs.

While other saturated burial sites have been discovered in the region, this is the first documented discovery of a stacked grave holding revered people, according to archaeologist Izumi Shimada, a Lambayeque expert at Southern Illinois University who was not part of the excavation team.

Water Worship

The Lambayeque, sometimes called the Sicán, had carved out a home along the drought-prone Peruvian coast nearly a hundred years before the Inca arrived.

The stacked tomb sits in a sprawling ceremonial complex called Chotuna-Chornancap, close to the modern city of Chiclayo. The spiritual center’s coastal location, water-themed art, and recently discovered grave may help round out the creation story of the Lambayeque.

According to folklore, their mythical founder, Naymlap, arrived on a raft from the sea and walked on crushed Spondylus shells—a ritual item treasured throughout the Andes. When he died he turned into a bird. 

“These concepts—birds and water—are part of their beliefs and help them understand life and death,” dig leader Wester La Torre said.

The watery grave contained piles of shells and wave-embossed gold earspools—more evidence of the importance of water to the Lambayeque.

They knew the tomb—located below the water table, where the ground is always saturated—would flood, Wester La Torre said. They likely wanted it to flood, he added, perhaps to ensure the region’s agricultural fertility.

This Lambayeque, after all, thrived for nearly 600 years—from A.D. 800 to 1375—in a mercurial environment. To grow food in the desert, they built complex and extensive irrigation systems. And rare periods of torrential rain could wreak nearly as much havoc as the persistent aridity.

The practice of a groundwater burial could also link the Lambayeque to that later Andean culture, the Inca, Wester La Torre said. “The Inca believed that the dead became a seed, which sprouted new life,” he explained. “The way that this person was buried suggests the same process of fertilization, in which the seed, the person, is reborn.”

Stacked Burial

Nearly a year ago, Wester La Torre discovered the first tomb 16 feet (5 meters) underground. While digging deeper for artifacts, his team found the lower tomb under the water table, at that time just 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface.

Stacked burials are highly unusual in Andean archaeology, according to Wester La Torre and Shimada. Typically elite tombs are found in isolation.

While archaeologists have not yet determined the sex of the person in the flooded tomb, Wester La Torre said the individual may have been related to the important woman overhead. Alternatively, the two may have shared a religious, commercial, or political relationship, such as a succession of power.

Changing Tides

While Wester La Torre is confident that the Lambayeque intentionally placed the grave in groundwater, other archaeologists question whether the tomb actually flooded during Lambayeque times. The area water table, they note, fluctuates with rainfall and irrigation levels.

Some archaeologists say modern agriculture may have raised the water table, meaning the original grave would have been dry. The more cropland farmers irrigate, the more run-off they see percolating into the soil and underground reservoirs.

“What we don’t really know is the water table 800 years ago,” says Southern Illinois University’s Shimada. “We don’t know where it was.”

Regardless of water levels, Shimada said, “the single most important aspect of this superimposed tomb is that both [burials] date to a time period that is still not well known. It is one of the very few elite tombs dating to the Late Sicán.”

Having reached the height of their power, the Sicán were buffeted by a drought and huge flood roughly around A.D. 1100.

The disasters launched the culture into a “period of chaos and decline,” Shimada said. The capital moved to a new location, and the civilization entered its late period.

Although the Lambayeque’s territory shrank, their society remained a power in the region, archaeologists say—and the new tomb discovery appears to back them up.

“The tomb suggests that, indeed, shortly after the series of natural disasters … ,” Shimada said, “they maintained a great deal of wealth.”

A 500-year-old frozen Incan mummy suffered from a bacterial lung infection at the time of its death, as revealed by a novel proteomics method that shows evidence of an active pathogenic infection in an ancient sample for the first time.

The full report is published July 25 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Detecting diseases in ancient remains is often fraught with difficulty, especially because of contamination. Techniques based on microbe DNA can easily be confused by environmental contamination, and they can only confirm that the pathogen was present, not that the person was infected, but the researchers behind the study, led by Angelique Corthals of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, found a way around this problem. They used proteomics, focusing on protein rather than DNA remains, to profile immune system response from degraded samples taken from 500 year-old mummies.

The team swabbed the lips of two Andean Inca mummies, buried at 22,000-feet elevation and originally discovered in 1999, and compared the proteins they found to large databases of the human genome. They found that the protein profile from the mummy of a 15-year old girl, called “The Maiden,” was similar to that of chronic respiratory infection patients, and the analysis of the DNA showed the presence of probably pathogenic bacteria in the genus Mycobacterium, responsible for upper respiratory tract infections and tuberculosis. In addition, X-rays of the lungs of the Maiden showed signs of lung infection at the time of death. Proteomics, DNA, and x-rays from another mummy found together with the Maiden did not show signs of respiratory infection.

“Pathogen detection in ancient tissues isn’t new, but until now it’s been impossible to say whether the infectious agent was latent or active,” says Corthals. “Our technique opens a new door to solving some of history’s biggest mysteries, such as the reasons why the flu of 1918 was so devastating. It will also enhance our understanding of our future’s greatest threats, such as the emergence of new infectious agents or re-emergence of known infectious diseases.”

“Our study is the first of its kind since rather than looking for the pathogen, which is notoriously difficult to do in historical samples, we are looking at the immune system protein profile of the “patient,” which more accurately tells us that there was indeed an infection at the time of death.” or “Our study opens the door to solving many historical and current biomedical and forensic mysteries, from understanding why the plague of 1918 was so lethal, to finding out which pathogen is responsible for death in cases of multiple infections.”

Pre Inca (Paracas - Peru)

Ecuador seeks answer to riddle of Inca emperor's tomb

The mystery surrounding the tomb of the last Inca emperor - and its reputed treasure - might be closer to being solved.

If Ecuadorean historian Tamara Estupinan is right, Emperor Atahualpa’s mummified body was kept in the lush, hilly lowlands, a six-hour drive south-west of Ecuador’s capital city, Quito.

While it is still too early to confirm Ms Estupinan’s theory, this discovery could shed light on a tumultuous historical period that marked the beginning of the Spanish colonial era in the Americas.

At its height, in the early 1500s, the Inca empire covered most of the Andes, from southern Colombia to central Chile as well as some parts of Argentina.

Inca emperors were mummified because it was believed that their powers remained within their bodies, which were guarded by guards and family members. Read more.