A team of student archaeologists has rediscovered a 1,000-year-old multicoloured mural depicting a deity surrounded by warriors which was last seen a century ago in northern Peru. Known as the Huaca Pintada, the 30-metre-long wall painted with fantastical images depicting mythical scenes was first found in 1916 by a band of treasure-hunting tomb raiders in […]
Thousands of years ago, a child in Peru was sacrificed as part of an ancient ritual, their head severed at the neck and made into a type of trophy. A new analysis of a single hair plucked from the mummy’s skull reveals that the child consumed a psychoactive cactus prior to execution, as part of […]
The remains of dozens of child sacrifice victims have been unearthed in Peru, and many more are likely waiting to be found, archaeologists say. The skeletons show evidence that the children’s hearts were removed, said Gabriel Prieto, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who directs the excavations at Pampa La Cruz, […]
Peruvian firefighters were fighting to contain a forest fire near the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu as the blaze threatened to close in on the ancient city in the Andean mountains on Thursday. The fire, which had engulfed an area about half the size of Vatican City, was started on Tuesday by farmers burning grass […]
A team of experts has found a mummy estimated to be at least 800 years old on Peru’s central coast, one of the archaeologists who participated in the excavation said. The mummified remains were of a person from the culture that developed between the coast and mountains of the South American country. The mummy, whose […]
Britain’s failure to deal with road traffic around the prehistoric stone circle is condemned as ‘a national disgrace’ The traffic-choked roads still roaring past Stonehenge in Wiltshire have earned the world’s most famous prehistoric monument a place on a list of the world’s most threatened sites. The government’s decision to abandon, on cost grounds, a plan to […]
Researchers believe the 140 children were sacrificed 550 years ago by the Chimú civilisation as floods ravaged the coastline Archaeologists in northern Peru say they have found evidence of what could be the world’s largest single case of child sacrifice. The burial site, known as Las Llamas, contains the skeletons of 140 children who were aged between […]
