spines

Human Spines Found Mounted on Sticks in Peru, And Archaeologists Think They Know Why

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People in the Chincha valley of Peru threaded the spines of the dead onto wooden rods around 500 years ago, a mostly-unknown practice only recently documented by archaeologists.   It may have been an attempt to restore the bodies of the dead during the European colonization, according to a study by the researchers who unearthed … Read more

Reconstructed human spines may honor Peru’s defiled dead | Science

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In 2012, archaeologists were excavating a series of large stone tombs in Peru’s Chincha Valley when they found something none of them had ever seen before: human vertebrae threaded onto a reed, almost like a spinal abacus. Over the next 10 years, researchers found nearly 200 such remains in the same valley. At first, they … Read more