"Skeletal and mummified ancient remains from the Atacama Desert in what is now Chile show evidence of a surge of extreme violence tied to the rise of farming, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.
"The team analyzed the remains of 194 people who lived between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 600 in the Atacama Desert, and found that while violence was more prevalent at the beginning of the transition to farming, it persisted even after farming villages had been around for hundreds of years. Moreover, the violence targeted men and women alike.
"For instance, one woman appears to have been tortured; the skin on her face was stretched so much that her 'mouth' was pulled high above its natural position. This was likely an 'intentional act, occurring at the time of death when the skin was still fresh and causing deep agony,' the researchers wrote in the study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology."
Note: The Acatama Desert has been compared to the surface of Mars and it has apparently been like that for a long time. These people may have been fighting over the few areas where agriculture was possible in the desert, but the violence apparently got so extreme at times that it sounds like these early farmers went kind of insane:
"Perhaps the males' trauma came from intense brawls or fights that involved weapons, such as spear throwers, slings, maces, sticks and knives, the researchers said. It's possible that the women were injured due to domestic violence, they wrote in the study."
"The mountaintop Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in southern Peru was built and inhabited decades earlier than previously believed, according to new radiocarbon dates of human remains found at the archaeological site." Source: Live Science.
"The discovery that Machu Picchu was inhabited by 1420 — and possibly much earlier — has implications for how early the Inca Empire rose to power.
"'Machu Picchu is among the most famous archaeological sites in the world, but until now estimates of its antiquity and the length of its occupation were based on contradictory historical accounts written by Spaniards in the period following the Spanish conquest,' study lead author Richard Burger, an archaeologist and anthropologist at Yale University in Connecticut, said in a statement."
"The Band of Holes also known in Spanish as Monte Sierpe (serpent mountain) or Cerro Viruela (smallpox hill), is a series of about 5,000-6,000 man-sized holes found in the Pisco Valley on the Nazca Plateau in Peru. Local people have no idea who made them or how they were used. Over the years, it has been speculated that they were graves, defensive positions, or storage places. Recent thought is that they were storage pits built during the time of the Inca Empire (1438-1533)." (Wikipedia)
Note: As far as I can tell, these holes are a true archaeological mystery. It doesn't sound like the site has been studied very much and nobody knows what the holes were used for.
"In 2015, archaeologists from UCLA made a brief visit to the site, using photography from drone aircraft to create a detailed map. They speculate that the holes could have been used to measure produce given to the Inca state as tribute; the measurements might have been recorded on Incan khipus and reported to government officials. The archaeologists hope to do further studies to detect pollen or phytoliths [silica structures left by decaying plants] that could tend to confirm this hypothesis." (Wikipedia)
"Lying on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco in Peru, lies the walled complex of Saksaywaman (Sacsayhuaman). The site is famed for its remarkable large dry stone walls with boulders carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar ... This precision, combined with the rounded corners of the blocks, the variety of their interlocking shapes, and the way the walls lean inward have puzzled scientists for decades." Source: Ancient Origins (2014).
Note: According to Wikipedia, Saksaywaman was built by the Incas in the 15th century. This seems to be the mainstream consensus.
Saksaywaman is a masterpiece of ancient engineering. According to Wikipedia, "The stones used in the construction of these terraces are among the largest used in any building in pre-Hispanic America. They display a precision of cutting and fitting that is unmatched in the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper will not fit between many of the stones." The Ancient Origins article quoted above goes into some detail about how the complex's walls could have been built and how their massive stones might have been transported. The next video describes one theory about how the walls were engineered.
Did the Inca build the intricately fitted stone walls of Sacsayhuaman or were they the work of some earlier "lost civilization?" Both possibilities might be true. The walls show clear signs that they were constructed in different stages over the years, perhaps by different cultures building on top of each other. And there is some reason to believe that the complex was already in existence, at least in some form, when the Incas took over the site. According to Megalith Builders, for instance, sections of the walls were first built by the Killke culture (900 -1200 AD) which lived in the area before the arrival of the Incas in the 13th century.
According to Wikipedia, "Killke culture flourished in highland Peru in the Late Intermediate Period around what is now Cusco. They built the massive fortress, Saksaywaman, during the 12th century [next video]. Later, the fortress was used by the Inca, following their occupation of the region."
Note: the Wikipedia article on the Killke culture contradicts its article on Sacsayhuaman, which says that the complex was built by the Incas. There's a lot of confusion about who the builders actually were in the sources I've seen.
This whole subject is very confusing. For example, Sacsayhuaman was first occupied around 900 AD, according to History Things, four centuries before the Incas conquered the area. The Killke culture, according to Wikipedia, existed between 900 and 1200 AD. If these dates are reliable, they seem to imply that the complex was already in existence in some form when the Killke culture appeared. If that's believable, then it's possible that a civilization even older than the Killke built the first walls. This is pure conjecture, naturally, but it's not completely implausible:
"Sacsayhuamán may still be hundreds or even thousands of years older than the Killke culture. There seems to be no reason why building in the Cuzco and Sacsayhuamán area would have only begun in 1100 AD when megalithic building had begun much earlier in other areas…" -- D.H. Childress, quoted in Ancient Pages.
I like rogue archaeologists like Childress -- they're entertaining, if nothing else -- but after sifting through all these various sources of unknown reliability, I'm guessing that the megalithic walls of Peru were probably built in stages by the Killke culture and the Incas. Like the Mayans and Aztecs, they were master stone-workers and perfectly capable of constructing these spectacular sites. How they did it, though, remains a mystery.
"A shrunken head from Ecuador that was brought to the United States in the 1940s (and in 1979 was loaned as a prop to the film 'Wise Blood') has been authenticated and repatriated to its country of origin." Source: Live Science.
"In 1942, James Ostelle Harrison — a faculty member at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, now deceased — acquired the object, known as a 'tsantsa,' during his travels in Ecuador. Harrison donated the head to the university, where it was displayed in campus museums for decades. Then, in the 1980s, the university placed the tsantsa in storage.
"Such tsantsas were crafted from human heads — typically belonging to a slain enemy — and were made and used in rituals in Ecuador until the middle of the 20th century by men in the Amazonian Shuar, Achuar, Awajún/Aguaruna, Wampís/Huambisa and Candoshi-Shampra populations, known collectively as the SAAWC culture groups, according to a new study about the artifact."
"During the last ice age, when hunters and gatherers crossed the ancient Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia with North America, they carried something special with them in their genetic code: pieces of ancestral Australian DNA, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.
"Over the generations, these people and their descendants trekked southward, making their way to South America. Even now, more than 15,000 years after these people crossed the Bering Land Bridge, their descendants — who still carry ancestral Australian genetic signatures — can be found in parts of the South American Pacific coast and in the Amazon, the researchers found."
Comment: The theory here is that indigenous Australians migrated north through Asia, crossed over the Bering Land Bridge into what is now Alaska and then traveled down the coast to South America -- a very long and roundabout journey. That could very well be true, but it's also possible that the prehistoric seafarers of Oceania reached South America more directly by island hopping across the Pacific. This disputed theory is based on the discovery of very early human settlements in South America which -- assuming that the dating is correct -- seem to conflict with the orthodox story:
"Excavations of South American sites containing traces of ancient human activity have suggested that humans reached the southern region of the continent at least 14,500 years before present (BP) — remarkably quickly after first entering the Americas — and that they soon developed diverse technologies across different sites. But the picture yielded by these archaeological investigations is a patchwork, leaving open key questions, such as whether the first humans migrated south along the Pacific coast or by some other route. The history is further complicated by disputed claims (examples marked by red headers with asterisks) that certain sites reflect a much earlier occupation of the continent beginning more than 20,000 BP." Source: The Scientist (2020).
"Machu Picchu is a city comprised of more than 200 buildings, temples, houses, pathways, fountains and altars all cut from grey granite from the mountain top. There is no evidence of any fortified walls, which means that it was not a fortress. Many of the stone blocks weigh more than 50 tons, and all are cut and fitted together in such a precise manner that it raises incredulity as to how [its builders could have] created such a monumental place." Source: Ancient Origins (2013).
Notes: Several years ago "[a] Polish-Peruvian archaeological team ... confirmed what has been suspected for many centuries – the Incas used the ancient city of Machu Picchu as a mountaintop observatory." (Ancient Origins (2014)) How the Incas constructed the city is apparently still a mystery:
According to Rediscover Machu Picchu, "[t]he Incas used dry stone technique to build the city. No mortar was used, the stone bricks were simply put together without any material to stick them together." The rocks were then "put together like a huge puzzle." This would've required an amazing amount of precision since "[s]ome of the bricks are so tightly put together that one cannot even put a knife between them."
The rocks were apparently split "with the so-called wooden wedge technique: holes were drilled into the rocks and wet wooden wedges were inserted into them. After that the constructors waited until the wet wooden wedges froze." The expanding wedges would then split the rock, "[b]ut the wooden wedge technique cannot explain the smoothness and perfect straightness of the bricks."
Wooden wedge rocksplitting technique as used in India.
The construction of Machu Picchu required thousands of workers and a huge amount of detailed planning, but from what I've read the Incas didn't have iron tools, wheels, or a written language. The logistics involved are mind-boggling, but the city was built somehow so unless you believe in ancient aliens, Machu Picchu provides yet more evidence that early humans were more technologically sophisticated than commonly believed.
"Since the early 1900s, almost 300 human mummies have been uncovered along the coast of southern Peru and northern Chile, including adults, children, infants, and miscarried foetuses." Source: Science Alert (2018).
"With some dated to as far back as 5050 BC, these are the oldest mummies discovered in the world to date.
"They were made by a group of hunter-gatherers known as the Chinchorro people, who were mummifying their dead roughly 2,000 years before the ancient Egyptians began mummifying their pharaohs."
It's possible that many of these mummies were people who died from arsenic poisoning. According to one researcher, "... contaminated drinking water in the area from nearby volcanoes could have initiated the practice of mummification, because researchers have found arsenic in the mummies' tissues.
"'Arsenic poisoning can lead to a high rate of miscarriages, and infant mortality, and the sorrow over these deaths may have led this community to start preserving the little bodies,' he said.
"Mummification could have started with the foetuses and grown to include adults. The oldest mummies we have found are of children.'"
"A small pouch, made from three fox snouts neatly sewn together, may contain the world’s earliest archaeological evidence for the consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant preparation indigenous to peoples of the Amazon basin that produces potent hallucinations." Source: National Geographic.(2019)
"The pouch likely belonged to a shaman in what is now southwestern Bolivia around a thousand years ago, according to José Capriles, an anthropologist at Penn State University and an author of a paper published on the discovery today in the journal PNAS."
Note: This shaman or brujo (witch) was taking an extremely powerful psychedelic. An analysis of the pouch's contents "revealed traces of bufotenine [found in toad skins and mushrooms, among other things], benzoylecgonine [a cocaine metabolite] and cocaine (likely from coca leaf), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine [an alkaloid found in ayahuasca], and possibly psilocin, a chemical component of psychedelic mushrooms."
Note: Pharmahuasca can be dangerous. According to the Vaults of Erowid, "The health risks associated with all drugs are dose-dependent and pharmahuasca-type ayahuascas can easily include much higher dose levels than plant-based ayahuascas and are often consumed by less experienced self-experimenters and often without experienced sitter/guide."
Ayahuasca is a powerful hallucinogen. According to Wikipedia, "People who have consumed ayahuasca report having mystical experiences and spiritual revelations regarding their purpose on earth, the true nature of the universe, and deep insight into how to be the best person they possibly can. This is viewed by many as a spiritual awakening and what is often described as a near death experience or rebirth. It is often reported that individuals feel they gain access to higher spiritual dimensions and make contact with various spiritual or extra-dimensional beings who can act as guides or healers."
The active ingredient in ayahuasca is DMT, a short-acting but extremely powerful psychedelic which normally can't be absorbed through the gut. It's a mystery, at least to me, how these Amazonian shamans learned how to prepare the ayahuasca brew, which not only makes it possible to take DMT orally but to extend its effects from 10 or 15 minutes to several hours.