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Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed what is believed to be the largest single mass child sacrifice in history. The bodies of 227 victims, aged between five and 14, were found near the coastal town of Huanchaco, north of Peru's capital Lima. The children were believed to have been sacrificed over 500 years ago. The discovery comes barely a year after 200 child victims of human sacrifice were found at two other sites in the country. Archaeologists told AFP news agency that some of the bodies in this latest collection still had hair and skin when they were dug up. The...

(CNN) — Archeologists in Peru have uncovered the remains of around 250 children sacrificed by the pre-Columbian Chimú civilization. The remains are of children aged 4-12 years old, as well as 40 warriors, sacrificed between the 13th and 15th centuries, according to a video from Peruvian state media agency Andina. The Chimú civilization inhabited northern Peru before they were conquered by the Inca. They built Chan Chan, the largest city in pre-Columbian South America.

The vast cultural and linguistic diversity of Latin American countries is still far from being fully represented by genetic surveys. Western South America in particular holds a key role in the history of the continent due to the presence of three major ecogeographic domains (the Andes, the Amazonia, and the Pacific Coast), and for hosting the earliest and largest complex societies... A thorough study, a collaboration between scientists and institutes from Europe, the USA, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, including geneticists, linguists and anthropologists, has shed new light on the population history of South America... The results confirmed the impact...

Iran’s main proxy terrorist group is expanding in Latin America and networking with organized crime and other violent groups, according to U.S. and Argentinean officials. “It matters whether the U.S. can move the dial and thwart Iranian-backed penetration in our backyard,” Toby Dershowitz, a senior vice president at the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. "This may be the year that serves as a wake-up call for others in the region impacted adversely by Hezbollah’s malign activities — including but not limited to money laundering and narco-terrorism.” Faurie emphasized that Hezbollah has formed ties with historically...

Hugo Chavez was one of the most evil socialist dictators ever. He took the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela, and turned it into a disaster of misery and poverty in only five years. How bad? The people had no food or toilet paper. And critics of Chavez were tortured and murdered. Isn't socialism wonderful? But it gets worse. Just like Fidel Castro, Chavez got filthy rich based on the misery of his own people. His family made billions. Then this evil dictator died of cancer. He turned the country over to his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro ran the...

Full title: Rare spectacled bear being 'driven to extinction' by penis bone poachers brewing 'magical sex potion' Penis poaching of the spectacled bear could result in the species going extinct if demand grows for the special 'sex potion' that people make with its private parts. ..." According to National Geographic, some people in South America claim the 'sex drink' can cure sexual performance problems if it contains just a scraping of a spectacled bear's penis bone. Some people also believe that the beverage can give you the strength of a whole bear if you put the entire penis bone in...

A large earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.0 struck the Amazon jungle in north-central Peru early Sunday, the U.S. Geological survey reported, collapsing buildings and knocking out power to some areas. The quake struck at 12:41 a.m. PDT, 47 miles southeast of the village of Lagunas and 57 miles east of the larger town of Yurimaguas. The epicenter was 68 miles below the surface. In a tweet, President Martín Vizcarra called for calm and said that authorities were checking the affected areas. The mayor of Lagunas, Arri Pezo, told local radio station RPP that the quake was felt very...

Bovine carcasses come from ships transporting cattle from South America The bovine bodies come from ships transporting cattle from South America which throw the corpses of animals overboard if they die during transit. The cadavers may have been thrown from the Polaris 2, a cattle ship operating under a Panamanian flag... Such a move “is prohibited by international law”, the general director of livestock... In 2016, the Polaris 2 had to request to dock in the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife after it ran out of food for the animals. A veterinary inspection also forced the slaughter of 300...

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, also known as Clovis comet hypothesis, posits that the hemisphere-wide debris field of a large, disintegrating asteroid (or comet) struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia approximately 12,800 years ago. This event triggered extensive biomass burning, brief impact winter, climate change, and contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna. Controversial from the time it was proposed, this hypothesis continues to be contested by those who prefer to attribute the end-Pleistocene reversal in (global) warming entirely to terrestrial causes. Now, University of California, Santa Barbara’s Professor James Kennett and co-authors present further geologic and...

President Jair Bolsonaro said in his address to the nation on Tuesday that Latin America’s most populous country has now been "liberated from socialism and political correctness". He promised to combat the "ideology of gender" teaching in schools, "respect our Judeo-Christian tradition" and "prepare children for the job market, not political militancy". Notable foreign leaders attending the inauguration include Hungary's hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Israel's hawkish premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who has hailed a budding "brotherhood" with Brazil's new leader. Leftist Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, deemed dictators by Bolsonaro,...

Our love affair with chocolate is much older than we thought, and newly discovered traces of cocoa on ancient pots suggest it started in the rainforests of what is now Ecuador some 5300 years ago. That’s nearly 1500 years older than earlier evidence, and it shifts the nexus of cocoa production from Central America to the upper Amazon. “This is an incredibly strong demonstration,” says Rosemary Joyce, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study. “It puts to rest any lingering claims that the use of [cocoa] pods … was an invention...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsZ3p9gOkpY&t=8s [bad language alert] Brazil is about to elect a new president during a turbulent period of political corruption and economic uncertainty. John Oliver urges the people of Brazil not to figuratively [deleted] their democracy.

In the U.S., today is "Columbus Day". Not much is done to celebrate it, although most schools and government jobs have the day off. It occurred to me that in part, it is due to Spain and Queen Isabella, Christopher Columbus and the discoveries of the New World that has led most of us to even be interested in this site. Just think of how many millions of people speak Spanish now around the world as a result of this discovery. When you think of most of the continent of South America, Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic,...

The use of high technology in the form of small, all-terrain robots has made it possible to shed light on possible human sacrifices as much as 3,000 years old in the temple of Chavin de Huantar in Peru, the first major religious and pilgrimage center in South American history. The Chavin Rovers, as the robots are called... edged through the narrow channels that lead to the galleries of the complex, many of which remain hidden to this day, and came upon the most important discovery on this site in the last 50 years. These robotic four-wheel-drive vehicles, guided by remote...

The newly-reported specimen was obtained from an amber deposit in the Angbamo area in Myanmar’s Kachin province.The fossil is a 1.6-inch (4.75 cm) long postcranial skeleton made up of 97 vertebrae; the snake’s head is missing. It dates from the Late Cretaceous epoch, approximately 99 million years ago.“This snake, named Xiaophis myanmarensis, is linked to ancient snakes from Argentina, Africa, India and Australia,” said University of Alberta’s Professor Michael Caldwell.“It is an important — and until now, missing — component of understanding snake evolution from southern continents, that is Gondwana, in the mid-Mesozoic.” “At 99 million years old, it dates...

Even as the overall population of Christians in the United States declines, evangelicals have become an energetic right-wing voting base, helping President Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016. In Brazil, where Pentecostal and other charismatic Christian churches are rapidly gaining members, evangelical voters are only beginning to flex their electoral muscle. In 1970, 90 percent of Brazil’s population identified as Roman Catholic. By 2017 just under 65 percent did. Evangelicals now make up an estimated 27 percent of Brazil’s 208 million people. As their numbers have grown, so has the evangelical influence over Brazilian politics. My demographic research in...

The missing submarine was found off the coast of Denmark. Sea War Museum Jutland _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A missing German submarine said to have taken the defeated Nazi leadership to South America has been discovered after being lost at sea for nearly 73 years. The U-3523 was one of Hitler’s Type XXI submarines – a new and highly advanced design which came too late to stop an allied victory. It was the first class of U-boats designed to sail submerged for a prolonged period of time and had a range which allowed it to sail non-stop to South America. The U-3523...

A frightening flesh-eating disease is currently making its way across Australia, and puzzled scientists and officials aren’t sure how to stop this mysterious condition from wreaking havoc. Cases of an infection known as Buruli ulcer have spiked in recent years in the country, rising 150 percent from 74 cases in 2013 to 186 in 2016. It shows no signs of slowing down; last year saw a projected 286 cases. The infection causes unsightly skin ulcers that destroy the skin and the soft tissue around it. Complicating matters is the fact that scientists aren’t sure how it is spread or how...

Sweet potatoes were domesticated thousands of years ago in the Americas. So 18th century European explorers were surprised to find Polynesians had been growing the crop for centuries. New genetic evidence instead suggests that wild precursors to sweet potatoes reached Polynesia at least 100,000 years ago — long before humans inhabited the South Pacific islands, researchers report April 12 in Current Biology. If true, it could also challenge the idea that Polynesian seafarers reached the Americas around the 12th century. For the new study, the researchers analyzed the DNA of 199 specimens taken from sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and...

Trump announced Monday he has directed the Department of Homeland Security to block large groups of migrants who have begun to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border and apply for asylum as refugees from Central America. "Despite the Democrat inspired laws on Sanctuary Cities and the Border being so bad and one sided, I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country. It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL," Trump tweeted Monday morning. Trump also said negotiations over a new North American Free...