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.

"There is a longstanding debate about what the function of Machu Picchu was because it is so unique and unusual as an Inca site," Dr. Bradley said. "It is too big to be a local settlement. And it's too small and not the right structure to have been an administrative center for the Inca Empire."

Now, Dr. Bradley and a team of researchers will be the first to analyze the genomes of the skeletal remains from more than 170 individuals buried at the site. The team's other members include Lars Fehren-Schmitz from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Yale University's Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar.

By sequencing the skeletons' ancient DNA, the researchers hope to better understand the functional role of Machu Picchu and its residents, as well as patterns of diversity, migration and labor diaspora in the Inca Empire—the largest in pre-Columbian America.

Yale explorer Hiram Bingham launched a study of the "lost city of the Incas" in the summer of 1911. His work included excavating Machu Picchu and bringing human bones and other objects, like ceramics and jewelry, back with him to the United States.

The artifacts remained at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven until 2012, when, after years of negotiations, the bones and relics were sent back to Peru. The Peru-Yale University International Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture houses the bones and relics. The museum, in Cusco about 45 miles from Machu Picchu, is open to the public and includes more than 360 items from Dr. Bingham's original excavation.

Before returning the skeletons to their home country, Dr. Bradley—who was a Yale faculty member at the time—and her colleagues scrambled to collect DNA samples from the ancient bones.

Next, with a recent National Science Foundation grant, the researchers will use cutting-edge methods to sequence nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA from the samples. Dr. Fehren-Schmitz will conduct the initial analysis, and Dr. Bradley will attempt to replicate the results in her lab.

"With ancient human DNA, you always have to worry about contamination," Dr. Bradley said. "If you replicate the experiment in a different lab with different researchers, and you find the same results, that is the gold standard." The researchers will then compare the results of the genetic analysis with previous data from Machu Picchu in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the site.

The prevailing hypothesis among researchers is that Machu Picchu was a so-called "royal retreat"—akin to what Camp David is for the White House—where Inca Emperor Pachacuti would have visited and held diplomatic meetings, Dr. Bradley explained. The archeology indicates that people who resided there were likely crafts specialists brought in from locations throughout the empire to work at the site.

"They were probably very skilled people who came from far and wide to play very specific roles. That's what we predict," she said. "We can now look at the DNA to see if that is true."

The genetic analysis will test this hypothesis by showing the relationships among the ancient people, whether they are from the same ancestral lines and locations, said Dr. Fehren-Schmitz, who has analyzed the genomes of many different populations throughout South America. This information also will help to put Machu Picchu in the context of the larger Inca Empire. "I'm interested in local processes and how increases in social complexity and social change influence genetic diversity," he said. "One thing that makes Machu Picchu so interesting is the idea that actually the population buried there doesn't reflect just a local population."

The researchers said the wealth of genomic data they plan to collect also would provide an interesting look at how colonialism affected people living in the Andes. Since the skeletons from Machu Picchu represent a pre-Spanish conquest population, they can compare those genetics to post-colonial DNA.

"Colonialism introduced disease and likely wiped out a lot of genetic diversity," Dr. Bradley said. "This is a chance to look at genetic diversity before that happened."
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Reference:

Phys.Org. 2016. “Using ancient DNA, researchers unravel the mystery of Machu Picchu”. Phys.Org. Posted: October 1, 2015. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-ancient-dna-unravel-mystery-machu.html

Rare Incan 'Calculators' Found in Peru

Photo source: WikiMedia Commons/Claus Ableiter

Archaeologists working in Peru have discovered 25 well-preserved quipus, an ancient string-based device used to solve mathematical problems and to assist in record-keeping.

The find was made in the archaeological complex of Incahuasi, south of Lima, Alejandro Chu, reports Peru This Week. The items were found in ancient warehouses, or kallancas, and not in a funerary context as is the norm, making this a rather unique find. The placement of the quipus suggests they were used for administrative purposes. Incahuasi was one of the most important strategic cities built by the Incas in the valley of Lunahuana.

Quipu (also called "khipus" or "talking knots") typically consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. They aided in data collection and record-keeping, including the monitoring of tax obligations, census records, calendrical information, and military organization. The cords contained numeric and other values encoded on knots in a base-10 positional system. Some quipu had as many as 2,000 cords.

The Khipu Database Project describes quipus and how they worked:

Most of the existing khipu are from the Inka period, approx 1400 – 1532 CE. The Inka empire stretched from Ecuador through central Chile, with its heart in Cuzco, a city in the high Andes of southern Peru. Colonial documents indicate that khipu were used for record keeping and sending messages by runner throughout the empire. There are approximately 600 khipu surviving in museums and private collections around the world.

The word khipu comes from the Quechua word for "knot" and denotes both singular and plural. Khipu are textile artifacts composed of cords of cotton or occasionally camelid fiber. The cords are arranged such that there is one main cord, called a primary cord, from which many pendant cords hang. There may be additional cords attached to a pendant cord; these are termed subsidiaries. Some khipu have up to 10 or 12 levels of subsidiaries. Khipu are often displayed with the primary cord stretched horizontally, so that the pendants appear to form a curtain of parallel cords, or with the primary cord in a curve, so that the pendants radiate out from their points of attachment. When khipu were in use, they were transported and stored with the primary cord rolled into a spiral. In this configuration khipu have been compared to string mops.

Each khipu cord may have one or many knots. Leland Locke was the first to show that the knots had numerical significance. The Inkas used a decimal system of counting. Numbers of varying magnitude could be indicated by knot type and the position of the knot on its cord. Beginning in the 1970's, Marcia and Robert Ascher conducted invaluable research into the numeric significance of khipu, and developed a system of recording khipu details which is still in wide use today among khipu researchers. More recently, researchers such as Gary Urton have recognized the depth of information contained in non-numeric, structural elements of khipu.

Regrettably, many of these quipus were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, making this recent find all the more precious.
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References:

Dvorsky, George. 2014. “Rare Incan 'Calculators' Found in Peru”. Discovery News. Posted: June 27, 2014. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/rare-incan-calculators-found-in-peru-140627.htm

Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development

Human activity resulting from the Spanish conquest had a profound effect on coastal change in northwestern Peru, according to researchers at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.

Daniel Belknap, a professor of Earth sciences, and Daniel Sandweiss, a professor of anthropology and Quaternary and climate studies, researched how demographic and economic effects of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development on the Chira beach-ridge plain in northern coastal Peru.

The findings were documented in an article, “Effect of the Spanish Conquest on coastal change in Northwestern Peru,” which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Sandy beach ridges

The researchers determined that human activity, specifically the disposal of mollusk shells, was essential to preserving the sandy beach ridges along the Chira River in Peru.

“This type of interdisciplinary research is a hallmark of the Climate Change Institute at UMaine and contributes to better understanding of the impacts of humans on coastal systems,” Belknap says.

The study illustrates the value of comparing historic, archaeological, climatic and geological data and demonstrates that human activity alters landscapes, as well as cultures. The research also provides evidence of a previously unrecognised consequence of the Spanish conquest.

“We show that humans had a clear effect on a coastal system that now appears to be an uninhabited, natural landscape, yet is the product of millennia of anthropogenic modification of the environment,” the researchers say.

Shells deposited by humans

The Chira River carries primarily sand at its inlet. The ridges, or narrow dunes that run for miles parallel to the shoreline, are built entirely of sand. Most ridges with sharp crests are covered by shells that are associated with fire-cracked rocks, fire pits and other artefacts that suggest the shells were deposited by humans. The shells act as armour, protecting the ridges from erosion caused by onshore winds, according to the researchers.

For more than 30 years, archaeologists and geologists have been studying beach ridges in northern Peru to better understand maritime economies, the influence of El Nino cycles and the effects of sea-level change and sediment supply on coastal systems.

Previous research has shown disposed shells are instrumental in holding sand ridges in place in the face of persistent winds. Belknap and Sandweiss, who conducted a field examination of the ridges in 1997, hypothesized that only the shell-armoured ridges are stabilised and would maintain their shape and prevent winds from blowing sand inland.

Direct effect of European presence

The studied region was the first area in Peru to experience the direct effect of European presence, according to the researchers. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors moved to the Chira Valley, where they founded the first Spanish settlement in what is now Peru.

The Spanish conquest caused extreme depopulation of the Chira coast within a century, which drastically changed the economy and devastated traditional coastal shellfish harvesting. North of the Chira River, the changes affected the evolution of beach ridges.

The researchers found the last well-preserved ridge corresponds in age with the Spanish conquest of the region, and they correlate the devastation of the coastal population after European contact with a distinctly different geomorphology.

Population growth into the 19th and 20th centuries no longer resulted in shell waste on the coastal ridges because of mollusk exportation to interior markets. For the past 500 years, demographic decline and economic change have eliminated shell heaps on the coast, causing the newly formed dune ridges to dry up and eventually blow inland.

The researchers suggest there may have been more ridges than the nine documented dunes in the Chira beach-ridge plain, but for cultural and climatic reasons, there was no shell waste to stabilise them and some of the ridges may be composites of several events.
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References:

Past Horizons. 2014. “Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development”. Past Horizons. Posted: May 21, 2014. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/05/2014/spanish-conquest-of-the-inca-empire-altered-landscape-development

Search for Inca 'lost city' in Amazon may endanger indigenous people

A six-week expedition starting in July will try to find Paititi in the Megantoni National Sanctuary in south-east Peru

A French writer and adventurer plans to explore one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon in search of a "lost" or "secret city" that may have been built by the Incas, but there are fears that the expedition could endanger the health of isolated tribes that have never been exposed to common human diseases.

Thierry Jamin believes that the city, which he calls "Paititi", could lie somewhere in a 215,000-hectare protected area called the Megantoni National Sanctuary in the Cuzco region of south-east Peru.

"The magnificent discoveries realised by my group in the valleys of Lacco, Chunchusmayo and Cusirini in the north of the department of Cuzco lead towards a precise zone situated in the national sanctuary of Megantoni," Jamin told the Guardian via email.

"Several natives of the forest – Matsiguengas – assert that 'monumental ruins' exist at the top of a strange square mountain. I think that we are very close to officialise the existence of this big archaeological site."

According to his website, Jamin is planning a six-week expedition starting in July. He will be assisted by an NGO based in Cuzco that he leads and a group of Machiguengas from a village near the sanctuary.

His website describes Paititi, or "Paititi-Eldorado", as the "Incas' secret city" – "one of the most fascinating stories of the Inca mythology", the "biggest archaeological enigma of South America", and the place where the Incas hid "all the treasures of [their] empire" when Europeans invaded.

The search for Paititi or an Inca "lost city" has attracted scores of people and considerable controversy ever since the 16th century, with conflicting theories and ideas about where it might be and whether it really exists.

But some experts fear that such an expedition would pose a threat to isolated indigenous Nanti people – sometimes called "Kugapakoris" – within the sanctuary. One of the main reasons for the sanctuary's creation 10 years ago was to protect groups of indigenous people who have had little or no contact with outsiders and are extremely vulnerable to infectious diseases because of their lack of resistance.

According to the sanctuary's "master plan" for 2007-2011 – a 160-page government document outlining strategies and programmes to manage the area – the 215,000 hectares are divided into a number of "zones" where different activities are permitted. The biggest, most remote zone is in the sanctuary's far east and is called the "Strict Protection Zone" (ZPA). Its first stated aim is to protect "voluntarily isolated indigenous people", with scientific investigation only allowed in "exceptional circumstances".

Jamin is keeping the precise destination of the expedition a secret, but told the Guardian he intended to travel up the river Ticumpinia – not the river Timpia where he said there were "numerous Kuga-Pakuri communities".

"We don't want to tell anyone about our study zones, nor disseminate the exact locations of the sites we have found," he said.

Lelis Rivera, who works for the NGO Cedia and played a key role in the sanctuary's creation, pointed out that the presence of any outsiders in the sanctuary "could cause danger to the people living there" and that entering the ZPA in particular is "completely prohibited" by Peruvian law.

"Any people currently living in the upper Timpia or Ticumpinia regions are extremely vulnerable to germ transmission – that's the nature of living in relative social and immunological isolation," said anthropologist Christine Beier from the NGO Cabeceras Aid Project and one of the world's leading experts on Nanti society and history.

Jamin told the Guardian that he will apply to the ministry of environment, which oversees management of "protected natural areas", for permission to enter the Megantoni sanctuary. He said he has already applied for permission from the ministry of culture.

However, Ramon Rivero Mejia at the culture ministry says it has received no application from either Jamin, any member of his team or the NGO that Jamin presides over.

Some experts doubt that Paititi is where Jamin thinks it is. "The Incas conquered territories of the Machiguenga and Piro and built roads, bridges and some fortified settlements, meaning it's possible that in Megantoni some Inca-type buildings and objects will be found," said Martti Parssinen, a Finnish archaeologist and historian who has researched Peru and the Incas for decades.

"Nevertheless, Paititi is not there … At first, it was located from the confluence of the Madre de Díos and the Beni rivers toward the east or south, but during the colonial period some Inca refugees probably reestablished it near the present Brazilian Pacaas Novos mountains."

Asked by the Guardian why he thinks archaeological remains in Megantoni might be related to the Incas, Jamin said: "We don't know if they're Inca or pre-Inca. One of the objectives of our 2014 campaign will be to establish that."
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References:

Hill, David. 2014. “Search for Inca 'lost city' in Amazon may endanger indigenous people”. The Guardian. Posted: April 7, 2014. Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/07/search-inca-lost-city-amazon-peru-paititi

Inca children were drugged with coca and alcohol before sacrifice

Scientists from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen have examined the bodies of three 500-year-old Inca children along with scientists from Bradford University in England. This has given new, detailed knowledge about the old Ince ritual 'capacocha' which also involved sacrificing humans. The results were published recently in the journal PNAS.

One of the examined mummies is the 13-year-old girl, 'The Llullaillaco Maiden', named after the 6,379 meters tall volcanic mountain, Llullaillaco, where she was found frozen close to the mountain's top. The two other bodies are a boy and a girl around 4 or 5 years old found in separate graves near The Maiden. The mummified bodies are all remarkably well-preserved and have been frozen for nearly 500 years near the top of the mountain, which is found on the border between Chile and Argentina.

"Now we know more precisely what happened in an Inca sacrifice, for example to what extent coca and alcohol were used as part of the Inca ritual in the months and weeks preceding a sacrifice. It is very satisfactory that we with our scientific methods can help uncover the unique circumstances regarding a number of very central aspects of ancient Inca culture," says Professor Niels Lynnerup from The Department of Forensic Medicine, who, along with PhD student Chiara Villa, has analysed a number of CT scans of the mummies.

New light on Inca child sacrifice

What we have known so far about the religious capacocha ritual from the Inca Empire, was derived from written sources from the Spanish colonial power in South America. The new analyses of the frozen bodies give new knowledge about the practice of the rituals, for example the child sacrifices.

The scientists' analyses show that the three mummified children had all ingested both coca and alcohol prior to their death. The girl, 'The Maiden', was even found with chewed coca leaves in her mouth, and the analyses show that her consumption of coca increased sharply twelve months before her death, and then peaked six months later. The analyses also show that her alcohol consumption peaked during the last few weeks before her death.

"We made CT analyses and have produced three-dimensional visualisations of the mummified girl's organs and the contents of her mouth cavity. From that we could establish her age relatively precisely just as the coca leaf stuck between her teeth and in her cheek also could be identified. Finally, because of the amazing preservation we could also determine the contents of the intestines, and thereby establish a reasonable time of her final meal," explains Niels Lynnerup.

The other examinations show a significant consumption of cocaine from coca leaves and alcohol in the time leading to the sacrifice. Compared to analyses of her hair this creates a good picture of her life in the two years before her death.

"We can see that the ritual sacrifice has been prepared for a long time and that sustained consumption of drugs apparently was a part of the preparations prior to the sacrifice itself," says Niels Lynnerup.

Ritual use of cocaine and alcohol

Dr. Andrew Wilson is an associate professor at the Department for Forensic and Archaeological Sciences at University of Bradford. He compares in value the new research results with the historic accounts from the Spanish colonial time.

The scientists can with some certainty say that 'The Maiden' was selected as sacrifice twelve months before her death. Also, she was most likely implicated in a number of rituals involving use of coca and alcohol, and both drugs were given to her under supervision for some time.

There was apparently no indication of physical violence against the children, but coca and alcohol have most likely precipitated their death, which was inevitable in the altitudes where they were found.

The circumstances during her final few weeks with 'The Maiden' showing consistently increased levels of coca and alcohol consumption compared the younger children show that there must have been a need to sedate her in the last weeks of her life.

This conclusion is verified by the position in which 'The Maiden' was found. Hun was found sitting cross-legged with her head sloping forward and her arms resting loosely on her lap. Her head piece was intact and the objects surrounding her were undisturbed. This leads the scientists to believe that she was placed in the tomb, heavily influenced by drugs.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2013. “Inca children were drugged with coca and alcohol before sacrifice”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 6, 2013. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/uoc-icw080513.php

Machu Picchu: Facts & History

Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Incan site located on a ridge between the Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu mountains in Peru. It sits 7,970 feet (2,430 meters) above sea level on the eastern slope of the Andes and overlooks the Urubamba River hundreds of feet below.

The site’s excellent preservation, the quality of its architecture, and the breathtaking mountain vista it occupies has made Machu Picchu one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world today. The site covers 80,000 acres (32,500 hectares). Terraced fields on the edge of the site were once used for growing crops, likely maize and potatoes.

In 1911, explorer Hiram Bingham III, a professor at Yale University, visited the site and published its existence for the first time. He found it covered with vegetation, much of which has now been removed. The buildings were made without mortar (typical of the Inca), their granite stones quarried and precisely cut.

When Bingham discovered the site he was actually searching for Vilcabamba, the last capital of the Inca before their final defeat at the hands of the Spanish in 1572.

The explorer found Machu Picchu largely intact, having apparently never been visited by the Spanish conquistadors. In fact, the only reference to the site at all in Spanish documents is a mention of the word “Picchu” in a 1568 document, the text implying that it belonged to the Incan emperor.

An emperor’s abode

Machu Picchu is believed to have been built by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the ninth ruler of the Inca, in the mid-1400s. An empire builder, Pachacuti initiated a series of conquests that would eventually see the Inca grow into a South American realm that stretched from Ecuador to Chile.

Many archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as a royal estate of sorts, the presence of elite residences in the northeast sector of the site backing that idea up. It would have been used by the emperor and his family as a temporary respite, the site supporting a small number of year-round caretakers. Other examples of Inca royal estates are known in Peru.

Interestingly, the dwelling of the emperor himself appears to be in the southwest part of the site, away from the other elite residences. A building known today as the “Temple of the Sun” is adjacent to it.

A staircase running beside the royal compound leads to a plaza below, and the emperor was afforded a garden, a private bath and even a private toilet area — the only private one on site.

Although Machu Picchu has a wall, modest gateway and dry moat (likely used for collecting rainwater) it doesn’t appear to have been set up with military purposes in mind, and there is no evidence that a battle of any sort was fought there.

Temple of the Sun

Machu Picchu has a number of structures that would have enhanced the spiritual significance of the site.

One of them, the “Temple of the Sun,” or Torreón, has an elliptical design similar to a sun temple found at the Inca capital of Cuzco. It is located near where the Inca emperor is believed to have resided at Machu Picchu.

A rock inside the temple could have served as an altar. During the June solstice the rising sun shines directly into one of the temple’s windows, and this indicates an alignment between the window, rock and solstice sun.

Beneath the temple lies a cave, naturally formed, which the explorer Bingham referred to as a “royal mausoleum,” although there’s little evidence that it was used as such. A boulder carved into a stairway lies near the cave entrance and the underground chamber likely served a religious function of some form.

Principal temple & Intihuatana

A series of religious structures is located on the northwest of the site, bordering the plaza.

One of the buildings, dubbed the “Principal Temple,” contains a carved stone altar. When it was excavated by Bingham he found that it has a layer of white sand, something seen in temples at Cuzco, the Incan capital.

A building adjacent to the “Principal Temple” is known as the “Temple of the Three Windows” and contains a large amount of broken pottery, ritually smashed it appears.

But perhaps the biggest puzzle at Machu Picchu is a giant rock, named “the Intihuatana” by Bingham, after other carved stones found in the Incan empire. The stone at Machu Picchu is situated on a raised platform that towers above the plaza. Its purpose is a mystery, with recent research disproving the idea that it acted as a sundial. It may have been used for astronomical observations of some form. It may also be connected with the mountains that surround Machu Picchu.

Abandonment of Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu did not survive the collapse of the Inca.

In the 16th century the Spanish appeared in South America, plagues afflicting the Inca along with military campaigns waged by conquistadors. In 1572, with the fall of the last Incan capital, their line of rulers came to end. Machu Picchu, a royal estate once visited by great emperors, fell into ruin. Today, the site is on the United Nations' list of World Heritage sites.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2012. “Machu Picchu: Facts & History”. Live Science. Posted: August 31, 2012. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/22869-machu-picchu.html

Ancient Incan Mummy Had Lung Infection, According to Novel Proteomics Analysis

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.

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."
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References:

Science Daily. 2012. "Ancient Incan Mummy Had Lung Infection, According to Novel Proteomics Analysis". Science Daily. Posted: July 25, 2012. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200302.htm

Ancient War Revealed in Discovery of Incan Fortresses

Incan fortresses built some 500 years ago have been discovered along an extinct volcano in northern Ecuador, revealing evidence of a war fought by the Inca just before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Andes.

"We're seeing evidence for a pre-Columbian frontier, or borderline, that we think existed between Inca fortresses and Ecuadorian people's fortresses," project director Samuel Connell, of Foothill College in California, told LiveScience.

The team has identified what they think are 20 fortresses built by the Inca and two forts that were built by a people from Ecuador known as the Cayambe. The volcano is called Pambamarca.



The team's research was presented in March at the 76th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), in Sacramento, Calif.

"We know that there are many, many fortresses throughout northern Ecuador that haven't been identified one way or the other," said Chad Gifford, of Columbia University, who is also a project director.

Spanish folklore?

The discoveries suggest that there is a ring of truth to stories that Spanish chroniclers told when they penetrated into South America during the 16th and 17th centuries.

According to these stories, Incan ruler Huayna Capac sought to conquer the Cayambe. Using a "very powerful army," he was hoping for a quick victory but ended up getting entangled in a 17-year struggle.

"Finding that their forces were not sufficient to face the Inca on an open battlefield, the Cayambes withdrew and made strongholds in a very large fortress that they had," wrote Spanish missionary Bernabe Cobo in the 17th century in his book "History of the Inca Empire" (University of Texas Press, 1983). A translation, by Roland Hamilton, was published in 1983 by the University of Texas Press. "The Inca ordered his men to lay siege to it and bombard it continuously; but the men inside resisted so bravely that they forced the Inca to raise the siege because he had lost so many men."

Finally, after many battles, the Inca succeeded in driving the Cayambe out of their strongholds and onto the shores of a lake.

Cobo wrote that "the Inca ordered his men to cut the enemies' throats without pity as they caught them and to throw the bodies into the lake; as a result the water of the lake became so darkened with blood that it was given the name that it has today of Yahuarcocha, which means lake of blood."

Signs of War

The newly discovered Inca fortresses are built out of stone, contain platforms called ushnus, and are located on ridges about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above the ground.

The soldiers who lived in them were clearly prepared for battle.

"The site of Quitoloma has well over 100 structures for people living inside," said Connell. "Those structures are filled with Inca weaponry. We find quite a few sling stones stored in these houses as if they were lying in wait for the enemy to attack, or were about to storm down the hill."

The two Cayambe forts, by comparison, are made out of a tough volcanic material called cangahua. They are sizable fortresses with people likely having lived both inside and outside their walls. "There are fewer of them but plenty big," Gifford said.

One of the forts had evidence for a battle with two types of ammunition (sling stones and bola stones) found outside its walls. Both fortifications housed pottery designed using Ecuadorian rather than Incan styles.

More excavation needs to be done to unravel the full story of these fortresses, but so far the team has found no evidence of post-conflict slaughter at the Cayambe sites. "We see the apparent continued settlement in the area, which runs counter to this idea of [a] lake of blood," Connell said.

Cayambe pottery continued to be used in the region, suggesting that their culture carried on, at least on some level. "It could be that some peoples decided after many years of resistance and warfare to simply lay down their arms or become allies with the Inca," Connell said.

There certainly would have been a need for them to become friends.

In the decades after the war, large numbers of Spanish would penetrate into Ecuador and Peru. Smallpox ravaged the local population and the Inca would find themselves fighting an enemy equipped with gunpowder. Against these pressures they fell back, with their last stronghold at Vilcabamba falling in 1572.

The conquest was nothing short of a disaster for people living in Ecuador. When the Spanish took over they built estates called haciendas. The descendents of the Cayambe would be forced to labor for the Spanish, doing work like processing wool. Connell said that they worked in "very severe conditions," sometimes in windowless rooms. A difficult time for a people who, just decades earlier, had fought a war for their freedom.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2011. "Ancient War Revealed in Discovery of Incan Fortresses". Live Science. Posted: May 31, 2011. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/14370-incan-fortresses-ecuador-ancient-battles.html

Peru: 'sensational' Inca find for British team in Andes

A British team of archaeologists on expedition in the Peruvian Andes has hailed as "sensational" the discovery of some of the most sacred objects in the Inca civilisation – three "ancestor stones", which were once believed to form a precious link between the heavens and the underworld.

The find, which was made on an isolated Andean mountainside, provoked joy among local specialists and the experts present from, among others, the British Museum, Reading University and Royal Holloway, University of London. No examples of the stones were thought to have survived until now.

"It was a very moving moment," said Dr Colin McEwan, the British Museum's head of the Americas, as he recalled seeing the stones for the first time.

Dr Frank Meddens, research associate of Royal Holloway, who was also on the expedition, said they had "danced a little jig on top of the mountain" after discovering the objects that they had only read about in 16th-century Spanish documents.

The Incas would have been just as overawed. The conical-shaped stones were among the most significant items in Inca society and religion. Key elements in ritual events, they were thought to facilitate a connection between different realms of the world – the celestial and the underworld of the ancestors – with the Inca king, as the divine ruler, acting as intermediary. And they were considered more precious than gold.

"This is a whole new category of object. It is nothing short of sensational," said McEwan of the three stones in red and white Andesite, a hard, granite-like rock, which were excavated some 2.5 metres beneath an Inca stone platform. The platform too was recently excavated and is a structure of distinctive stonework that once symbolised the imperial control of conquered territories.

The site – at Incapirca Waminan – is one of 20 undocumented high-altitude Inca ceremonial platforms explored by the archaeologists around the Ayacucho basin. Such sites were potent imperial symbols of religious and political authority as the Incas expanded outwards from Cuzco, a sacred city of temples and palaces in the central Peruvian Andes.

Ancestor stones represented deities, ancestors and the sun, and were imbued with supreme symbolic significance. They were greeted with incomprehension by Spanish chroniclers of the early 16th century, who sacrilegiously likened their shape to sugar loaves, pineapples and bowling pins. The insult, however, was returned: when the 16th-century Inca ruler Atahualpa was shown a copy of the Bible by the Conquistadors, he reacted with similar contempt.

According to Spanish sources, the stones were used in public solar rituals, sometimes draped in gold cloth and paraded. One witness wrote: "The stones… were held to be blessed and sacred."

Symbols of the ancestral essence of the Inca king, the objects were placed on display when the supreme leader was absent from Cuzco, the capital of the Inca people, in an attempt to demonstrate the perpetual presence and his power. The Incas believed their king to be a living god who ruled by divine right.

As the Incas had no system of writing, the significance of the archaeologists' unprecedented find is reinforced by the identification of ancestor stones in the decoration of a unique 16th-century Inca vessel (cocha) in the British Museum. Spanning 50cm in diameter, it bears a carved scene showing a central solar disc and two kneeling figures with their hands clasped as they honour an ancestor stone. They are flanked on either side by an Inca king and queen and high-ranking lords.

The Incas created a huge empire that stretched more than 2,400 miles along the length of the Andes and whose economy was based on taxed labour, with its people farming and herding animals, working in mines and producing goods such as clothing and pottery.

The sites for ceremonial platforms were chosen for their vistas of the snow-capped peaks, which were worshipped as mountain deities. It was at such sites that the Incas sacrificed children – the ceremony of capacocha – at moments of potential instability.

These structures also had sacred central spaces known as the ushnu, with a vertical opening into "the body of the earth" into which libations such as maize beer were poured. The ushnu platforms served as a stage from which the Inca king and his lords could preside over seasonal festivals and ceremonies.

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References:

Alberge, Dalya. 2010. "Peru: 'sensational' Inca find for British team in Andes". Guardian. Posted: December 5, 2010. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/inca-ancestor-stones-andes

High in the Andes, Keeping an Incan Mystery Alive

The route to this village 13,000 feet above sea level runs from the desert coast up hairpin bends, delivering the mix of exhilaration and terror that Andean roads often provide. Condors soar above mist-shrouded crags. Quechua-speaking herders squint at strangers who arrive gasping in the thin air.

Rapaz’s isolation has allowed it to guard an enduring archaeological mystery: a collection of khipus, the cryptic woven knots that may explain how the Incas — in contrast to contemporaries in the Ottoman Empire and China’s Ming dynasty — ruled a vast, administratively complex empire without a written language.

Archaeologists say the Incas, brought down by the Spanish conquest, used khipus — strands of woolen cords made from the hair of animals like llamas or alpacas — as an alternative to writing. The practice may have allowed them to share information from what is now southern Colombia to northern Chile.

Few of the world’s so-called lost writings have proved as daunting to decipher as khipus, scholars say, with chroniclers from the outset of colonial rule bewildered by their inability to crack the code. Researchers at Harvard have been using databases and mathematical models in recent efforts to understand the khipu (pronounced KEE-poo), which means knot in Quechua, the Inca language still spoken by millions in the Andes.

Only about 600 khipus are thought to survive. Collectors spirited many away from Peru decades ago, including a mother lode of about 300 held at Berlin’s Ethnological Museum. Most were thought to have been destroyed after Spanish officials decreed them to be idolatrous in 1583.

But Rapaz, home to about 500 people who subsist by herding llamas and cattle and farming crops like rye, offers a rare glimpse into the role of khipus during the Inca Empire and long afterward. The village houses one of the last known khipu collections still in ritual use.

“I feel my ancestors talking to me when I look at our khipu,” said Marcelina Gallardo, 48, a herder who lives with her children here in the puna, the Andean region above the tree line where temperatures drop below freezing at night and carnivores like the puma prey on herds.

Outside her stone hut one recent morning, Ms. Gallardo nodded toward the stomach lining and skull of a newly butchered llama drying in the sun. She shared a shred of llama charqui, or jerky. “The khipu is a jewel of our life in this place,” she said.

Even here, no one claims to understand the knowledge encoded in the village’s khipus, which are guarded in a ceremonial house called a Kaha Wayi. The khipus’ intricate braids are decorated with knots and tiny figurines, some of which hold even tinier bags filled with coca leaves.

The ability of Rapacinos, as the villagers are called, to decipher their khipus seems to have faded with elders who died long ago, though scholars say the village’s use of khipus may have continued into the 19th century. Testing tends to show dates for Rapaz’s khipus that are well beyond the vanquishing of the Incas, and experts say they differ greatly from Inca-designed khipus.

Even now, Rapacinos conduct rituals in the Kaha Wayi beside their khipus, as described by Frank Salomon, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who led a recent project to help Rapaz protect its khipus in an earthquake-resistant casing.

One tradition requires the villagers to murmur invocations during the bone-chilling night to the deified mountains surrounding Rapaz, asking for the clouds to let forth rain. Then they peer into burning llama fat and read how its sparks fly, before sacrificing a guinea pig and nestling it in a hole with flowers and coca.

The survival of such rituals, and of Rapaz’s khipus, testifies to the village’s resilience after centuries of hardship. Fading murals on the walls of Rapaz’s colonial church depict devils pulling Indians into the flames of hell for their sins. Feudal landholding families forced the ancestors of many here into coerced labor.

Rapacinos have also faced more recent challenges. A government of leftist military officers in the 1970s created economic havoc with nationalization, sowing chaos exploited by the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path who terrorized Rapaz into the 1990s, effectively shutting it off from significant contact with the rest of Peru.

But throughout it all, perhaps because of the village’s high level of cohesion and communal ownership of land and herds, Rapacinos somehow preserved their khipus in their Kaha Wayi.

“They feel that they must protect the khipu collection for the same reason we feel that we have to defend the physical original of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” Professor Salomon said. “I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s our Constitution, it’s our Magna Carta.’ ”

Despite Rapaz’s forbidding geography, changes in the rhythm of village life here are emerging that may alter the way Rapacinos relate to their khipus.

About a year ago, villagers say, a loudspeaker replaced the town crier. And a new cellphone tower enables Rapacinos to communicate more easily with the outside world. Those changes are largely welcome. More menacing are the rustlers in pickup trucks who steal llamas, cattle and vicuñas — Andean members of the camel family prized for their wool.

The most immediate threat to the khipus may be from Rapaz’s tilt toward Protestantism, a trend witnessed in communities large and small throughout Latin America. About 20 percent of Rapacino families already belong to new Protestant congregations, which view rituals near the khipus as pagan sacrilege.

Far from Rapaz, the pursuit to decipher khipus faces its own challenges, even as new discoveries suggest that they were used in Andean societies long before the Inca Empire emerged as a power in the 15th century.

Scholars say they lack the equivalent for khipus of a Rosetta Stone, the granite slab whose engravings in Greek were used to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Jesuit manuscripts discovered in Naples, Italy, had seemed to achieve something similar for khipus, but are now thought to be forgeries.

In Rapaz, villagers still guard their khipus the way descendants of those in the West might someday protect shreds of the Bible or other documents if today’s civilizations were to crumble.

“They must remain here, because they belong to our people,” said Fidencio Alejo Falcón, 42. “We will never surrender them.”

[Andrea Zárate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.]
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References:

Romero, Simon. 2010. "High in the Andes, Keeping an Incan Mystery Alive". New York Times. Posted: August 16, 2010. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/americas/17peru.html?_r=1

Inca cemetery holds brutal glimpses of Spanish violence

Skeletons provide first material evidence of conquest-related fatalities

If bones could scream, a bloodcurdling din would be reverberating through a 500-year-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons unearthed there have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca fatalities caused by Spanish conquerors.

European newcomers killed some Inca individuals with guns, steel lances or hammers, and possibly light cannons, scientists report online in the March 23 American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Surprisingly, though, no incisions or other marks characteristic of sword injuries appear on these bones, according to a team led by anthropologist Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Spanish documents from the 16th century emphasize steel swords as a favored military weapon.

Many Spaniards who helped Francisco Pizarro conquer the Incas were fortune-seekers, not soldiers, “so the absence of sword injuries makes some sense,” Murphy explains.

Skeletons in the Inca cemetery, as well as at another grave site about a mile away, display a gruesome array of violent injuries, many probably caused by maces, clubs and other Inca weapons, the researchers report. Those weapons may have been wielded by Inca from communities known to have collaborated with the Spanish, or might have been borrowed by the Spanish, they posit. “The nature and pattern of these skeletal injuries were unlike anything colleagues and I had seen before,” Murphy says. “Many of these people died brutal, horrible deaths.”

Little is known about early European dealings with the Inca, remarks anthropologist Haagen Klaus of Utah Valley University in Orem.

“Murphy’s data show the types of violence that emerged from the first moments of contact between Spaniards and the Inca,” Klaus says. Pottery and artifacts at the sites date to between 1470 and 1540, placing the deaths close to when Spaniards captured the Inca emperor around 1532. It took the invaders nearly another 40 years to control all Inca lands.

Murphy’s team assessed skeletons of 258 Inca individuals, age 15 or older, excavated several years ago at the two cemeteries.

In one cemetery, bodies had been hastily deposited in shallow graves. One-quarter of 120 skeletons displayed head and body injuries inflicted at the time of death, as indicated by a lack of healed bone and other clues. That’s a conservative estimate, Murphy notes, since soft-tissue damage doesn’t show up on bones.

“I’m struck by the severity of violence in certain individual cases, where the skull was essentially crushed, repeatedly stabbed or struck, or shot through by gunshot,” comments archaeologist Steven Wernke of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Whoever killed these individuals wanted to intimidate survivors as well, he asserts.

One man’s skull contained two holes and radiating fractures consistent with damage produced by early guns that shot ammunition at low velocities.

Another male skull sported three small rectangular openings in the back of the head. These injuries resemble those on skulls from a 1461 battlefield cemetery in England, Murphy says. Medieval weapons tipped with steel spikes or sharp beaks probably caused these wounds, she proposes.

Three other skeletons exhibited injuries likely due to Spanish weapons. Other skeletons contained head and body fractures probably inflicted by attackers bearing Inca weapons.

Individuals placed in this cemetery may have been slain in a documented 1536 Inca uprising against Spanish rulers in nearby Lima, Murphy suggests. Family members collected their bodies and buried them quickly near previously deceased relatives, she speculates.

At the second Inca cemetery, 18 of 138 skeletons showed definite signs of violent death, all from Inca weapons. That supports a scenario in which social turmoil around the time Spaniards arrived triggered conflicts between Inca communities, Murphy says.

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References:

Bower, Bruce. 2010. "Inca cemetery holds brutal glimpses of Spanish violence". Science News. Posted: April 2, 2010. Available online:http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57860/title/Inca_cemetery_holds_brutal__glimpses_of_Spanish_violence