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.”
“Hmmm... There were no Europeans close to Peru until 1513, and the conquest of Peru started in 1524...”
Actually, It is well known that the Europeans sent special, advance, graverobbing teams. They wanted to make sure that they didn’t miss any of the vertebrae by being late.
Who told the Europeans that there was gold in these old graves? Did they have gold-sniffing dogs?
Articles like this bring up lots of interesting questions .
personally partial to the long gone culture that puts stakes up muslims butts
I hope The Predator got all of the marrow out of those bones, before he strung ‘em up. Marrow’s tasty on crusty bread...
Well, that splattered my screen... ;-D
Its the European diseases that were brought to the Americas. There were no immunities to them. That is well documented history.
That is why an attempt was made to insert artificial stiffeners.
I'm just saying that every time societies have centuries long cooling periods diseases become very much a problem. To think the Americas are ever an exception is to think of the Americas as some kind of fairy tale.
Rapant diseases was a normal part of life during the Little Ice Age (roughly AD 1300-1800's, particularly 1500's to 1800's) and during the Dark Age cooling period (AD 300 to 1900) and the Greek Dark Age (1000 BC to 700-ish BC). It's well documented history -- at least in civilizations that had written history (hint: the indigenous Americans didn't write). During the warm periods the diseases go way down and the crop yields go way up.
When the Europeans came, for the first time the Americas had written history, thus this was the first cooling period that rampant diseases could be recorded, unlike in other parts of the world where we have recorded history of horrible plagues during other cooling periods too. It's also no surprise the Europeans came during the Little Ice Age. One of the reasons the King of Spain hired Columbus was because the land route to the far east was virtually impossible to cross the Himalayas during the cooling period, then once land was found in the Americas all of the European countries saw land they could cultivate to offset the low crop yields during the cooling period.
It's also a well known fact (or at least I thought it was LOL) that the indigenous Americans also were struggling with the Little Ice Age. IMHO it's one of the main factors in the intertribal wars. I'm not saying they didn't have other motivations, like revenge wars in the northeast. I'm saying that often the wars were over food or land to raise food --- because crop yields were down here in the Americas during the Little Ice Age like they were in much of Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Life sucked, period. It motivated many tribes/nations of all colors to fight people that we today clump together as one race (when often tribal differences mattered to different races as much as racial differences did).
Basically I'm saying that both the Europeans' first impressions of the Americans and the Americans' first impressions of the Europeans was when both groups saw each other during their worst. Meeting each other during the Little Ice Age was like catching each other when their pants were down -- a horrible first impression. Disease is part of that bad first impression that IMHO is wrongly associated with the Europeans.
What Can We Blame On White People” article?
——-
Or Trumps fault.
Thanks Red Badger. The self-appointed ruling class always seems to turn out the same.
Looks like Bob got the old Shishka treatment.
No bread, He’s on a Gluten Free diet...
It was spine-tingling, eh?......................
It was spine-tingling, eh?......................
That looks like our dog when he yawns.
Bones of the spine don’t have marrow they have spinal cord. Long bones of arms and legs have marrow.
Actually the Indians of the Americas did have writing, at least the Aztecs and the Mayas. Their books were burned except a few that still exist in Spanish archives. I just saw an interesting show on PBS about the Maya. Their stone writing still exists as does writing on ceramic objects. I know a lot less about the Inca culture.
True that. I forgot about the Aztecs. It’d be neat if we had a way to see what killed of the Hopewells 1500 years ago (during the Dark Age cooling period).
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