Posted on 02/02/2022 11:31:40 AM PST by Red Badger
Researchers excavating 500-year-old graves in southern Peru have unearthed 192 human spines threaded onto reed posts.
Describing this remarkable discovery in the journal Antiquity, the authors say this unusual assemblage of human vertebrae may have provided a means for indigenous people to reconstruct dead bodies damaged by European grave robbers.
The skewered spines were recovered from burial sites in the Chincha Valley, where the local community was decimated by famine and disease epidemics following the arrival of Europeans.
According to the researchers, the Chincha population declined from over 30,000 households in 1533 to just 979 half a century later, and many of the dead would have been ritually buried along with precious items made of gold.
It is therefore telling that all of the vertebrae-on-posts were dated to between 1450 and 1650 CE, a period when European colonialists raided and destroyed large numbers of indigenous graves in the region.
“Looting was primarily intended to remove grave goods made of gold and silver and would have gone hand in hand with European efforts to eradicate Indigenous religious practices and funerary customs,” explained study author Dr Jacob Bongers in a statement.
“These 'vertebrae-on-posts' were likely made to reconstruct the dead in response to grave looting,” he said, adding that these oddly assembled human spines “represent a direct, ritualized, and Indigenous response to European colonialism.”
Vertebrae-on-post. Image: Jacob L. Bongers This theory is backed up by radiocarbon dating suggesting that the threading of these vertebrae onto reed posts was carried out after the initial burial, while further archaeological evidence supports the idea that local indigenous cultures were concerned with the integrity of dead bodies.
For instance, the authors mention that Incan child sacrifices often involved “non-bloody” killing techniques such as “strangulation or live burial, allegedly in the belief that nothing ‘incomplete’ should be offered [as a sacrifice] to the sun.”
They also note that the Chinchorro people, who inhabited the nearby Atacama Desert several millennia earlier, displayed a similar interest in keeping dead bodies intact, and developed the first known mummification techniques anywhere in the world. To maintain the rigidity of these mummies, the Chinchorro often threaded wooden sticks through their vertebrae.
Another spine on a reed post, this time with the skull attached. Image: Jacob L. Bongers Based on all of this evidence, the study authors conclude that the vertebrae-on-posts discovered in the Chincha Valley represent a continuation of this practice of preserving the wholeness of dead bodies, and was conducted in order to reconstruct corpses that had been destroyed by looters.
More broadly, they say that such practices reflect the funerary customs and beliefs of ancient South American cultures, for whom “body parts continued to live social lives long beyond biological death.”
Good lord what kind of a Dog do You have ?
Somewhat hazardous.
We thought he was a Boxer when he first showed up in July. Skin and bones, desperately thirsty. Very skittish.
Chicken, Boxer. We named him Tyson.
It took to November for him to get close enough to us to hand feed (very gentle, we still have all our fingers).
December 1st, 1:00 AM, 23°, he decides maybe he can come in to the house...
He's very mellow, I say serene, my son says Zen. Fattened him up a bit more and gained enough confidence for him to allow us to take him to the vet.
Vet refused to take him under the grounds that only a legal owner can have a pet treated. We did get a chip check, no chip.
To get him legal we had to put him in doggy jail at the county animal control for 5 days in the faint hope that his "real" owner, the one who had him sleeping under the stars with the coyotes for at least 5 months, would claim him.
Animal Control said he was an American Bulldog, not a boxer. That was his first existential crisis, do we need to rename him if he's not a Boxer?
At the end of 5 days as a political prisoner (jailed for committing no crime) he was to go to the Humane Society where I was first in line to adopt.
The Humane Society refused to take him under the grounds that he's too timid.
Other arrangement were made, and we adopted him on the Solstice. We contemplated a Solstice related name, perhaps Zeus? Then when we called him with a "Hey Zeus!" it would evoke Christmas...
Got him to the vet who believes he's a Boxer/Mastiff cross.
Tyson still works. But he thinks his name is either Goober or Nutty Buddy.
Very mellow, very gentle, EXCEPT when he's in play mode.
Then he's a 100 lb wrecking ball. I threw my shoulder out playing keep away/fetch and got a back spasm on the 10th. I'm still hors de combat.
This week the little twerp head butted my son and broke his nose.
Good thing he's cute...
...except when he yawns!
Maybe I would have less pain if my vertebrate were threaded onto a post... ⚕️ ——♿️—— 😒
The nearby precolumbian restaurant served spaghettia and Pete’s balls.
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