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.”
And here is the answer in their own history lesson.
Keep in mind that a tribe could lose 600 warriors in 50 years, or from one dry spell caused by a volcano.
At least they didn't blame capitalism or SUVs.
I bet they click and make noise
Poor, peaceful, indigenous people living happily until those nasty Europeans came along.....
Those indigenous commies protesting Columbus Day should be grateful the people who followed him wiped out those murderous tribes. If not for Columbus, their ancestors would have been murdered long ago.
Vertebrae-On-Sticks Ping.
Your theory may be more valid than all them others
Owww!!!
It was the Japanese. I found a listing for a restaurant in Yamoto named “Inca Kabob”.
Cannibal Shish-Ka-Bobs
That cult in Matamoros would do something similar.
Nah.
Most of them have no backbones.
Well played! Well played!
Ten Years before Europeans arrived in South America - the Aztecs sacrificed 80,000 slaves to consecrate a new temple.
So, they are really reaching trying to blame this on White people.
They knew the Europeans were coming so they had to hurry...............
Hmmm... There were no Europeans close to Peru until 1513, and the conquest of Peru started in 1524...
So it appears the first 74 years of the 200 year period were before there was any significant European presence...
ooooh sh!t...
It is how they got the marrow out to eat.
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