Scientists discover 4 new Nazca Geoglyphs using AI deep learning

Scientists from Japan used AI deep learning to discover new geoglyphs in the Arid Peruvian coastal plain, in the northern part of Peru’s Nazca Pampa.

The research has been ongoing since 2004 by a team from Yamagata University, led by Professor Makato Sakai. Yamagata University has been conducting geoglyph distribution surveys using satellite imagery, aerial photography, airborne scanning LiDAR, and drone photography to investigate the vast area of the Nazca Pampa covering more than 390 km2.

The Nazca Lines are thought to have been made over centuries, starting around 100 BC by the Nazca people of modern-day Peru. They were first studied in detail in the 1940s, and by the time they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, around 30 were identified.

They’re remarkably well-preserved considering their age, helped by the desert’s dry climate and winds that sweep away the sand but are being obscured by floods and human activity.

Archaeologists discovered 142 new designs in the desert over the course of ten years by manually identifying them using aerial photography and on-site surveying. Then, in collaboration with IBM Japan researchers, they used machine learning to search the data for designs that had been missed in previous studies.

In order to create a thorough survey of the area in 2016, the researchers used aerial photography with a ground resolution of 0.1 m per pixel.

The team has identified numerous geoglyphs over time, but because the process takes a long time, they have turned to AI deep learning to analyze the images much more quickly.

A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science revealed the discovery of four new Nazca geoglyphs using this new method by developing a labelling approach for training data that identifies a similar partial pattern between the known and new geoglyphs.

The four new geoglyphs depict a humanoid figure, a pair of legs, a fish, and a bird.

The humanoid geoglyph is shown holding a club in his/her right hand and measures 5 metres in length. The fish geoglyph, shown with a wide-open mouth measures 19 metres, while the bird geoglyph measures 17 metres and the pair of legs 78 metres.

“We have developed a DL pipeline that addresses the challenges that frequently arise in the task of archaeological image object detection,” the study’s authors write.

Our method enables the discovery of previously unattainable targets by enabling DL to learn representations of images with better generalization and performance.

Additionally, by speeding up the research process, our approach advances archaeology by introducing a novel paradigm that combines field research and AI, resulting in more effective and efficient investigations.

These results serve as yet another illustration of how machine learning can be useful to scientists, particularly when tackling tasks involving sizable datasets. Just like humans, algorithms can be taught to sift through specific types of data looking for patterns and anomalies.

Although creating these tools can be challenging, once trained, such algorithms are tireless and consistent.

1,200-year-old remains of sacrificed adults, and kids unearthed in Peru

Peruvian archeologists have unearthed eight children and 12 adults apparently sacrificed around 800-1,200 years ago, they said on Tuesday, in a major dig at the pre-Incan Cajamarquilla complex east of Lima.

The remains were outside an underground tomb where the team from Peru’s San Marcos University found November an ancient mummy thought to be a VIP bound with ropes, in a fetal position.

Archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen said the bodies, some mummified and others skeletons, were wrapped in various layers of textiles as part of ancient pre-Hispanic ritual, and had likely been sacrificed to accompany the main mummy.

“For them, death was not the end, but rather a transition to a parallel world where the dead lived,” Van Dalen told a news conference. “They thought that the souls of the dead became protectors of the living.”

Van Dalen said the burial pattern was familiar, citing the tomb of the Lord of Sipán, a ruler from 1,700 years ago found along with children and adults sacrificed to be buried with him.

“This is precisely what we think and propose in the case of the mummy at Cajamarquilla, which would have been buried with these people,” he said. “As part of the ritual, evidence of violence has been found in some of the individuals.”

Yomira Huamán, part of the team, said that along with funeral items, there were musical artifacts such as the “zampoña,” a wind instrument of Andean origin with several wooden tubes in the form of flutes.

“Our investigations suggest the mummy of Cajamarquilla would be a man of approximately 35 years. This character did not have any organs, meaning he was eviscerated after death,” she said.

Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites of cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which 500 years ago dominated the southern part of the continent, ranging from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.

“The complex has only been excavated 1%,” Huamán said. “I think Cajamarquilla has much more to say, much more to tell us.”

Archeologists in Peru found a 1,000-year-old adolescent mummy wrapped in a bundle

Archaeologists have unearthed a more than 1,000-year-old mummy on the outskirts of Peru’s capital, Lima.

The mummified adolescent was wrapped in a funerary bundle, with ceramic objects, rope, bits of skin, and hair nearby, and found in an underground tomb.

Archaeologists believe the mummy, found at an archaeological site in Cajamarquilla, is one of 20 buried in the area likely killed as a ritual sacrifice.

The mummified adolescent was found in a “good state of conservation,” said archaeologist Yomira Huaman, in charge of the Cajamarquilla research project affiliated with the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

The adolescent lived between 1,100 and 1,200 years ago, and might have belonged to the Lima or Ichma cultures.

The mummy was discovered about 220 yards from where the first mummy of Cajamarquilla was found, explained Huaman, referring to another mummy found nearby last year.

‘From the ceramic analysis, we have identified that it was mostly occupied by the coastal presence, the late Lima culture, also a strong influence of the Ichma culture,’ said Huaman.

The way the teen was buried was unlike other mummies that have been discovered in the past.

Most bodies in Cajamarquilla have been found in simple tombs or funeral chambers, while the adolescent was found in what appeared to be a storage container.

Archaeologists, also they have uncovered the ruins of four pyramid-shaped temples and walls laid out almost like a maze.

While best known for the mountaintop Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, Peru was home to a number of pre-Hispanic cultures that flourished in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, primarily along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.

The Lima civilization was known for its ceramic artwork, which included styles such as Maranga and interlocking patterns that reflected the nearby Moche culture.

The Last Moments of 500-Year-Old Child Mummies

Three Incan children who were sacrificed 500 years ago were regularly given drugs and alcohol in their final months to make them more compliant in the ritual that ultimately killed them, new research suggests.

Archaeologists analyzed hair samples from the frozen mummies of the three children, who were discovered in 1999, entombed within a shrine near the 22,100-foot (6,739 meters) summit of the Argentinian volcano Llullaillaco.

The samples revealed that all three children consistently consumed coca leaves (from which cocaine is derived) and alcoholic beverages, but the oldest child, the famed “Maiden,” ingested markedly more of the substances.

Coca was a highly controlled substance during the height of the Inca Empire, when the children were sacrificed.

The evidence, combined with other archaeological and radiological data, suggests that the Maiden was treated very differently from the other two children, Llullaillaco Boy and Lightning Girl (so named by researchers because the mummy appears to have been struck by lightning).

After being selected for the deadly rite, the Maiden likely underwent a type of status change, becoming an important figure to the empire; the other two children may have served as her attendants.

“[The Maiden] became somebody other than who she was before,” said study lead author Andrew Wilson, an archaeologist at the University of Bradford in the U.K. “Her sacrifice was seen as an honor.”

Hair analyses

To learn about the final moments of a mummy’s life, scientists will sometimes turn to hair samples, which provide a record of what substances were circulating in the blood when new hair cells formed. And because hair grows at a relatively constant rate, it can provide a kind of timeline of what a person has consumed (the length of the timeline depends on the length of hair available).

In a 2007 study, Wilson and his colleagues analyzed the child mummies’ hair to understand how their diets changed over time. They found that the children came from a peasant background, as their diet consisted mainly of common vegetables, potatoes in particular. But in the year leading up to their deaths, they ate “elite” food, including maize and dried llama meat, and appeared to have been fattened up in preparation for the sacrifice.

Additionally, the 13-year-old Maiden consumed more of the elite food than the Llullaillaco Boy and Lightning Girl, who were both 4 to 5 years old, Wilson noted. (The three children were previously believed to be about two years older than these estimates, but a new analysis of CT scans suggests otherwise.)

In the new study, the scientists analyzed the mummies’ hair for cocaine (a major alkaloid of coca leaves) and its metabolite benzoylecgonine, as well as cocaethylene, which forms when both cocaine and ethanol are present in the blood.

The scientists created a timeline of coca and alcohol consumption for the children — due to respective hair lengths, the chronology for the younger children only went back to about nine months before their deaths, whereas the Maiden’s timeline spanned about 21 months before death.

The team found that the younger children ingested coca and alcohol at a steady rate, but the Maiden consumed significantly more coca in her final year, with peak consumption occurring approximately six months before her death. Her alcohol consumption peaked within her last few weeks of life. [Images: Chilean Mummies Hold Nicotine Secret]

The increase in drug and alcohol ingestion likely made the Maiden more at ease with her impending death, Wilson said, adding that she was discovered with a sizeable coca quid (lump for chewing) in between her teeth, suggesting she was sedated when she died.

The chosen one

The children’s burial conditions provide further insight into their final moments. The Maiden sat cross-legged and slightly forward, in a fairly relaxed body position at the time of her death. She also had a feathered headdress on her head, elaborately braided hair, and a number of artifacts placed on a textile that was draped over her knees.

Furthermore, scans showed the Maiden had food in her system and that she had not recently defecated. “To my mind, that suggests she was not in a state of distress at the point at which she died,” Wilson said. It’s not clear how the Maiden died, but she may have succumbed to the freezing temperatures of the environment and was placed in her final position while she was still alive or very shortly after death, he said.

By contrast, the Llullaillaco Boy had blood on his cloak, a nit infestation in his hair, and a cloth binding his body, suggesting he may have died of suffocation. The Lightning Girl didn’t appear to be treated as roughly as the boy, though she didn’t receive the same care as the Maiden — she lacked, for example, the Maiden’s decorated headdress and braids.

“The Maiden was perhaps a chosen woman selected to live apart from her former life, among the elite and under the care of the priestesses,” Wilson said.

Evidence suggests the imperial rite may have been used as a form of social control. Being selected for the ritual was supposed to be seen as a great honor, but it likely produced a climate of fear. In fact, it was a major offense for parents to show any sadness after giving up their children for the ceremony. More work on the three mummies will reveal more about the Inca society and its practice of ritual sacrifice.

“The exciting thing about these individuals is that they probably still have much more to tell us,” Wilson said. “Locked in their tissues are many stories still to unfold.”

The work was detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A 1,400-year-old mural of 2-faced men unearthed in Peru may allude to ‘cosmic realms’

Two murals of two-faced men holding unusual treasures — including a goblet that hummingbirds are drinking from, a detail that may allude to sacrifice and “cosmic realms” — were recently discovered at the 1,400-year-old archaeological site of Pañamarca in coastal Peru. 

Both murals, which adorn the same pillar within a ceremonial hall, are rich in detail. In one mural, which sits near the top of the pillar, a man with two faces — one looking left and one looking right — holds a feather fan in one hand and a goblet with four hummingbirds drinking from it in the other.

The second two-faced man, painted lower on the pillar, has a moving feather fan in one hand and a stick-like object that is only partly preserved in the other. Researchers say the artists may have been experimenting with how to depict movement. 

Both men are wearing what looks like a headdress or crown on their heads and colorful clothing that has elaborate patterns and what appear to be sizable belts. The murals were unearthed by archaeologists in August 2022.

Why the Moche depicted these two men like this is a mystery. “There is nothing quite like this in South American archaeology,” Lisa Trever, an associate professor of pre-Columbian art history and archaeology at Columbia University who is one of the leaders of the team, told Live Science in an email. “The artists may have been experimenting with how to show movement, and two narrative moments at once.” 

The murals were drawn between A.D. 550 and 800, at a time when a civilization known as the Moche flourished in coastal areas of Peru. The Moche built sizable temples, engaged in human sacrifice and created fine works of art, such as ceramic goblets that are sculpted in the shapes of human heads. They lived before a writing system was used in Peru. 

The two men may be deities, but this is uncertain. “Typically, deity images in Moche art have non-human aspects like fangs, or the faces or tails or wings of various creatures. This one, with the exception of the two faces, seems entirely human,” Trever noted. 

Mysterious hall

Pañamarca is an architectural complex located in Peru’s lower Nepeña Valley. The hall with the two-faced men contains numerous other murals, including examples depicting a priestess, a serpent and a bat.

Archaeologists have been studying it for over 60 years, after uncovering the first mural in 1958. Despite the decades of study, much of the hall is still unexcavated, and more murals are likely waiting to be found, the team said in a statement. 

It’s still unknown how the Moche used this hall. “One of the things that is so interesting, and challenging, about this building is that the unusual density of paintings within it means that we can only excavate and conserve a modest part of the building each field season,” Trever said. “That means that we still have a lot of questions about the architecture and its functions.” 

It’s unlikely that many people had access to this hall. “Certainly this was a space that was not for public access, given how narrow the passages and interior space are,” Trever said. “It must have been a very special place to enter, maybe only open to the leaders or elders of the community at Pañamarca.” 

Important finds

The recent discoveries are important, said Edward Swenson, director of the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto, who is not involved with the research project.

“The Pañamarca murals are truly spectacular, and the 2022 discoveries will no doubt significantly aid archaeological and art historical efforts to reconstruct the cosmological meanings and religious narratives of Moche iconography,” Swenson, who has studied the Moche extensively, told Live Science in an email. 

One possible explanation for why the men have two faces is that it may “signify a mortal wearing a mask and thus impersonating or becoming one with [the] supernatural,” Swenson said. 

The detail of the hummingbirds drinking from the goblet is also important, as it may symbolize a connection between mortals and gods. “I interpret the [hummingbirds] drinking from the cup as a powerful invocation of the centrality of sacrifice in Moche worldview,” Swenson said. “Sacrifice served as a critical mechanism to ensure the circulation of life-giving fluids between beings and cosmic realms.” 

The team will continue fieldwork at the site this year. 

Unique tombs wrapped in high-quality fabrics and painted bodies were discovered at a monumental temple in Peru

Unique tombs wrapped in high-quality fabrics and painted bodies were discovered at the monumental temple in Peru.

Located on the Cerro Colorado hill near the city of Barranca, Peru, four mysterious mounds were identified as spots with potential archaeological significance. The mounds were later revealed to contain human remains and the remnants of a temple structure.

Excavations are being carried out by archaeologists from the Jagiellonian University and St Mark’s University as part of the Programa de Investigacion “Los valles de Barranca” project.

The project to investigate the area began in 2022, and the results were announced in February of this year, according to Nauka W Polsce.

Human burials and monumental architecture made of dried bricks and stone blocks were discovered during research on two of the mounds. This has resulted in a large-scale excavation of the site, where the project has discovered destroyed burials in the form of burial bundles, which were placed within the ruins of a temple complex made of dried brick.

The remains of a young boy whose skull was intentionally deformed are found in one of the destroyed burials. He was originally buried with decorated textiles, indicating that he came from a high-status family. The fabric was three meters long and decorated with totally unique zoomorphic representations.

Bioarchaeologist, Łukasz Majchrzak, said “One of them (fabrics), 3 meters long, was decorated with zoomorphic representations and is unique – similar fabrics have not been found in the entire Andes so far,”

The construction of the temple complex was dated by physicochemical analysis and carbon dating of organic remains to between 2500 and 2200 BC, whereas the same method used to date the burials indicates that they were interred between AD 772 and 989.

“Andeans used to set up necropolises in abandoned places of worship. This was also the case here because the graves were dug into structures that were several thousand years older,” added Majchrzak.

The grass and mortar mixture that was used to bind the blocks that made up the small pyramid was sampled for the structure’s dating. Settlements with imposing architecture were built in the Andes during the third millennium BC, and agriculture spread as a result of interactions with communities residing in the Amazon.

The examined graves date from the Wari Empire’s reign over the region. Castillo de Huarmey, one of the most important sites of this culture, is only 70 kilometers north of Barranca.

Ancient Peruvians gave themselves elongated skulls as a mark of status

Members of the ruling elite in parts of South America would have been very easy to spot 700 years ago – due to their tall, elongated skulls. Their artificially extended heads were apparently status symbols, and could have helped foster a sense of community and collective identity, according to a study.

Over 300 years before the Inca empire swept the south western Americas, members of a small ethnic community known as the Collagua practised intentional head shaping which developed to focus on creating a tall thin skull shape.

According to bioarchaeologist Matthew Velasco of Cornell University the cranial modifications may have bound the powerful elite together, but it may also have polarised other groups, resulting in social inequality.

The Collagua people lived in the Colca Valley in south-eastern Peru, where they raised Alpacas and llamas for wool.

Early Spanish accounts also detail another ethnic group – the Cavanas, who also populated the region. Spanish records say that in contrast to the tall narrow heads of the Collagua, the Cavanas also modified their skulls, widening and flattening them.

The Collagua would use pieces of wood, which were tightly bound to the heads of infants to modify how their heads grew. The practice was banned by the invading Spanish in the 16th Century.

Mr Velasco’s research, published in the journal Current Anthropology is the first time skull shape has been studied as a class differentiator within the Collagua.

By looking at skull shapes from over 200 individuals from a 300-year period, the research team saw that tall thin skulls became increasingly linked to high social status.

Chemical analysis of the bones revealed that Collagua women with purposefully distended heads were more likely to eat a broader diet than those without cranial modifications. The team also observed that these women typically had fewer injuries from physical attacks than women with unaltered skulls, Science News reports.

The study suggests the changes to head shape among those with power may have helped pave the way for a peaceful incorporation for the Collagua into the Incan empire.

“Greater standardisation of head-shaping practices echoes broader patterns of identity formation across the south-central highlands and may have provided a symbolic basis for the cooperation of elite groups during an era of intensive conflict,” says Mr Velasco.

The intensive conflict was due to the encroaching Incas, who originated from the highlands of Peru and through armed takeovers and assimilation, ultimately controlled most of Peru, as well as large parts of what are now Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, in addition to a small part of southwest Colombia.

The civilisation was one of the largest empires in the world when it reached its peak in the 16th century before the Spanish conquistadors arrived.

Characterizing red pigment in ancient bone samples in Peru to reveal their sources

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and one in Canada has characterized a large number of red pigment samples found on the bones of ancient people who once lived in what is now southern Peru.

In their paper published in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, the group describes their study of the pigments.

Prior studies of the use of red pigments in funeral rites by people who lived in ancient Peru suggest the practice is related to prolonging the existence of the dead.

In this new effort, the researchers used various techniques to analyze red pigments found on bones left behind by members of the Chincha, people who lived around Peru over the years 1000 AD to 1825 AD.

The pigments were found on bones excavated from over 100 chullpas, or mass burial graves. The aim of the research was to determine why the bones were painted and how it was done.

To find their answers, the researchers subjected the 35 bones (25 of which were skulls) to laser ablation, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and X-ray powder diffraction in order to identify all of the components in the pigments.

They found that the bulk of them were made using iron-based ochres such as hematite. Another major material they found was cinnabar, which had a mercury base.

They also found that cinnabar was not native to the local area—it would have been imported. This suggested its use was likely meant for important or rich people.

The researchers also noted that while there were some women and children’s bones in their collection, most were from adult males.

The researchers concluded that the arrangement of the pigments on the bones indicates it had been applied using either leaves or bare fingers.

The researchers also noted that the arrangement of the bones in the chullpas suggested that the pigments may have been applied long after the people had been skeletonized.

This, they suggest, indicates that the people of the time may have exhumed loved ones and applied the paints to their bones to protect them from European invaders.