Earliest-known Evidence Of Peanut, Cotton And Squash Farming Found

Source: Vanderbilt University
Date: June 29, 2007

Science Daily — Anthropologists working on the slopes of the Andes in northern Peru have discovered the earliest-known evidence of peanut, cotton and squash farming dating back 5,000 to 9,000 years. Their findings provide long-sought-after evidence that some of the early development of agriculture in the New World took place at farming settlements in the Andes.

The discovery was published in the June 29 issue of Science.

The research team made their discovery in the Ñanchoc Valley, which is approximately 500 meters above sea level on the lower western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru.

"We believe the development of agriculture by the Ñanchoc people served as a catalyst for cultural and social changes that eventually led to intensified agriculture, institutionalized political power and new towns in the Andean highlands and along the coast 4,000 to 5,500 years ago," Tom D. Dillehay, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and lead author on the publication, said. "Our new findings indicate that agriculture played a broader role in these sweeping developments than was previously understood."

Dillehay and his colleagues found wild-type peanuts, squash and cotton as well as a quinoa-like grain, manioc and other tubers and fruits in the floors and hearths of buried preceramic sites, garden plots, irrigation canals, storage structures and on hoes. The researchers used a technique called accelerator mass spectrometry to determine the radiocarbon dates of the materials. Data gleaned from botanists, other archaeological findings and a review of the current plant community in the area suggest the specific strains of the discovered plant remains did not naturally grow in the immediate area.

"The plants we found in northern Peru did not typically grow in the wild in that area," Dillehay said. "We believe they must have therefore been domesticated elsewhere first and then brought to this valley by traders or mobile horticulturists.

"The use of these domesticated plants goes along with broader cultural changes we believe existed at that time in this area, such as people staying in one place, developing irrigation and other water management techniques, creating public ceremonials, building mounds and obtaining and saving exotic artifacts."

The researchers dated the squash from approximately 9,200 years ago, the peanut from 7,600 years ago and the cotton from 5,500 years ago.

Dillehay published the findings with fellow researchers Jack Rossen, Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y.; Thomas C. Andres, The Curcurbit Network, New York, N.Y.; and David E. Williams, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.

Dillehay is chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt, Professor Extraordinaire at the Universidad Austral de Chile and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

The research was supported by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Lima; the National Science Foundation; the Heinz Foundation; the University of Kentucky and Vanderbilt University.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Vanderbilt University.

The Possessed

By ARTHUR LUBOW
Published: June 24, 2007

The stones at Machu Picchu seem almost alive.

They may be alive, if you credit the religious beliefs of the ruler Pachacuti Yupanqui, whose subjects in the early 15th century constructed the granite Inca complex, high above a curling river and nestled among jagged green peaks.

To honor the spirits that take form as mountains, the Inca stoneworkers carved rock outcrops to replicate their shapes. Doorways and windows of sublimely precise masonry frame exquisite views. But this extraordinary marriage of setting and architecture only partly explains the fame of Machu Picchu today.

Just as important is the romantic history, both of the people who built it in this remote place and of the explorer who brought it to the attention of the world. The Inca succumbed to Spanish conquest in the 16th century; and the explorer Hiram Bingham III, whose long life lasted almost as many years as the Inca empire, died in 1956. Like the stones of Machu Picchu, however, the voices of the Inca ruler and the American explorer continue to resonate.

Imposingly tall and strong-minded, Bingham was the grandson of a famous missionary who took Christianity to the Hawaiian islanders. In his efforts to locate lost places of legend, the younger Bingham proved to be as resourceful. Bolstered by the fortune of his wife, who was a Tiffany heiress, and a faculty position at Yale University, where he taught South American history, Bingham traveled to Peru in 1911 in hopes of finding Vilcabamba, the redoubt in the Andean highlands where the last Inca resistance forces retreated from the Spanish conquerors.

Instead he stumbled upon Machu Picchu. With the joint support of Yale and the National Geographic Society, Bingham returned twice to conduct archeological digs in Peru. In 1912, he and his team excavated Machu Picchu and shipped nearly 5,000 artifacts back to Yale.

Two years later, he staged a final expedition to explore sites near Machu Picchu in the Sacred Valley.

If you have visited Machu Picchu, you will probably find Bingham's excavated artifacts at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven to be a bit of a letdown. Mostly, the pieces are bones, in varying stages of decomposition, or pots, many of them in fragments.

Unsurpassed as stonemasons, engineers and architects, the Incas thought more prosaically when it came to ceramics.

Leaving aside unfair comparisons to the jaw-dropping Machu Picchu site itself, the pottery of the Inca, even when intact, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca.

Everyone agrees that the Machu Picchu artifacts at Yale are modest in appearance. That has not prevented, however, a bare-knuckled disagreement from developing over their rightful ownership.

Peru says the Bingham objects were sent to Yale on loan and their return is long overdue. Yale demurs.

In many ways, the dispute between Yale and Peru is unlike the headline-making investigations that have impelled the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to repatriate ancient artifacts to their countries of origin.
It does not revolve around criminal allegations of surreptitious tomb-raiding and black-market antiquities deals. But if the circumstances are unique, the background sentiments are not.

Other countries as well as Peru are demanding the recovery of cultural treasures removed by more powerful nations many years ago. The Greeks want the Parthenon marbles returned to Athens from the British Museum; the Egyptians want the same museum to surrender the Rosetta Stone and, on top of that, seek to spirit away the bust of Nefertiti from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.

Where might it all end? One clue comes in a sweeping request from China. As a way of combating plunder of the present as well as the past, the Chinese government has asked the United States to ban the import of all Chinese art objects made before 1911. The State Department has been reviewing the Chinese request for more than two years.

The movement for the repatriation of ''cultural patrimony'' by nations whose ancient past is typically more glorious than their recent history provides the framework for the dispute between Peru and Yale. To the scholars and administrators of Yale, the bones, ceramics and metalwork are best conserved at the university, where ongoing research is gleaning new knowledge of the civilization at Machu Picchu under the Inca.

Outside Yale, most everyone I talked to wants the collection to go back to Peru, but many of them are far from disinterested arbiters. In the end, if the case winds up in the United States courts, its disposition may be determined by narrowly legalistic interpretations of specific Peruvian laws and proclamations.

Yet the passions that ignite it are part of a broad global phenomenon. ''My opinion reflects the opinion of most Peruvians,'' Hilda Vidal, a curator at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima, told me.

''In general, anything that is patrimony of the cultures of the world, whether in museums in Asia or Europe or the United States, came to be there during the times when our governments were weak and the laws were weak, or during the Roman conquest or our conquest by the Spanish.
Now that the world is more civilized, these countries should reflect on this issue. It saddens us Peruvians to go to museums abroad and see a Paracas textile.
I am hopeful that in the future all the cultural patrimony of the world will return to its country of origin.''

Behind her words, I could imagine a gigantic sucking whoosh, as the display cases in the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the Louvre and the other great universal museums of the world were cleansed of their contents, leaving behind the clattering of a few Wedgwood bowls and SÃ

Recently Excavated Headless Skeleton Expands Understanding Of Ancient Andean Rituals

Science Daily — Images of disembodied heads are widespread in the art of Nasca, a culture based on the southern coast of Peru from AD 1 to AD 750. But despite this evidence and large numbers of trophy heads in the region's archaeological record, only eight headless bodies have been recovered with evidence of decapitation, explains Christina A. Conlee (Texas State University). Conlee's analysis of a newly excavated headless body from the site of La Tiza provides important new data on decapitation and its relationship to ancient ideas of death and regeneration.

As Conlee outlines in the June issue of Current Anthropology, the third vertebrae of the La Tiza skeleton has dark cut marks, rounded edges, and no evidence of flaking or breakage, indicating decapitation occurred at or very soon after the time of death. A ceramic jar decorated with an image of a head was placed next to the body. The head has a tree with eyes growing out of it, the branches encircling the vessel.

"Ritual battles often take place just before plowing for potato planting, and trees and unripened fruit figure in these rituals, in which the shedding of blood is necessary to nourish the earth to produce a good harvest," Conlee writes. "The presence of scalp cuts on Nasca trophy heads suggests the letting of blood was an important part of the ritual that resulted in decapitation."

Conlee also points to damage on the jar that indicates it had already been handled and used before being included in the tomb. This was only the third head jar found with a headless skeleton. Most are found at domestic sites, and prior research has concluded that they were probably used to drink from, most likely in connection with fertility rituals. "If the head jar was used to drink from during fertility rituals, then its inclusion in the burial further strengthens the relationship between decapitation and rebirth," Conlee explains.

Notably, there is also no evidence of habitation in the La Tiza region during the Middle Nasca period (AD 450-550), to which the head jar dates. All of the Nasca domestic sites in the area date to the Early Nasca, indicating that the La Tiza skeleton may have been deliberately buried in an abandoned settlement that was associated with the ancestors.

"Human sacrifice and decapitation were part of powerful rituals that would have allayed fears by invoking the ancestors to ensure fertility and the continuation of Nasca society," Conlee writes. "The decapitation of the La Tiza individual appears to have been part of a ritual associated with ensuring agricultural fertility and the continuation of life and rebirth of the community."

Reference: Christina A. Conlee, "Decapitation and Rebirth: A Headless Burial from Nasca, Peru." Current Anthropology 48:3.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Chicago Press Journals.

Peru: Tomb believed to be older than "Señor de Sipan" found in northern Peru

Art/Culture/History 3 July, 2007 [ 10:45 ]

(LIP-ir) -- A team of archaeologists, led by Walter Alva, have discovered the wooden tomb of another member of the Mochica culture's elite - older than the "Señor de Sipan" (Lord of Sipan).

These findings belong to the Moche civilization, which ruled the northern coast of Peru from the time of Christ to 800 AD, centuries prior to the Incas.

Alva has stated that he and his team are investigating and within the next few days will know the role of this noble in the Mochica society.

"We have found the tomb of a person that belonged to Mochica nobility. Inside the coffin, discoveries of copper and copper-plated decorations - covered in rust, demonstrate that this person was not a Lord but was among the Mochica elite," Alva explained.The archaeologist, who discovered the "Señor de Sipan" (Lord of Sipan) in 1987, has said that this discovery will provide valuable information about the Mochica culture.

The mummy is estimated to be 1,800 years old, whereas it is estimated that the "Señor de Sipan" was buried 1,700 years ago."The tomb is of a person that appears on Mochica artwork, which shows he participated in important rituals. His headdress, which is V-shaped, identifies him as such," explained Alva.

The archaeologist explained the value of this discovery, "This is the tomb of a person we hadn't found, now we have the Mochica elite complete."40 workers and 6 archaeologists are taking part in this work funded by the Ítalo Peruvian Fund and the government. This years budget is 600 thousand soles.

Pharmacy student learns about medicine in Peru

Monday, July 02, 2007

College group also explores foreign culture, canoes down Amazon and climbs Machu Picchu.
By GINA VASSELLI
The Express-Times

Ryan Toth canoed down the Amazon, stood on top of Machu Picchu and got class credit for doing it.

The 23-year-old Phillipsburg man traveled to Peru this summer as part of his studies as a pharmacy student at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.

The study abroad program was organized through the Global Awareness Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving the rainforest, according to its Web site.

Toth and 11 other pharmacy students from across the country returned June 25 from their three-week trip.

Shelli Holt-Macey, director of Wilkes University's Experiential Programs for the pharmacy school, said the students were selected by the institute's founder, Dr. Barbara Brodman.

The students flew June 1 into Lima, Peru.

"That was basically the last city I saw," Toth said. "The rest was more or less all jungle."

Toth said they visited the GAI's Center for Natural Medicine in Iquitos to learn about natural medicine and drug discovery.

While the group was in Iquitos, it was visited by a shaman who talked about the plants used by the different tribes.

Toth said after her speech, the shaman stayed at the center because of a national workers strike in Peru and demonstrations in Iquitos.

"I guess she was scared to go back," Toth said.

He said the strike was unexpected and surreal.

"That was weird. It happened like two days after we got there," Toth said.

The group left the center a few days later and traveled to Cusco, Peru. It arrived there in time to experience the winter solstice at Machu Picchu.

"It's so huge you just wonder how they could build it," Toth said. "They didn't use mortar and the stones fit so perfectly together you can't fit a credit card between them."

But his parents, Brenda and Dale, had other concerns about the Incan city.

"I knew he was going there but I didn't realize how steep it was. So when I saw those pictures it made me a little nervous," Brenda Toth said.

Ryan Toth said the group traveled down the Amazon in canoes for about three days, which was not always easy.

"One time we were rowing as hard as we could with the current and we weren't moving because of the wind coming against us," he said.

Along the river they met three different native tribes: The Bora, Huitoto and Yagua.

Ryan Toth said he became friends with a river guide from the Bora tribe named Wellington.

"He spoke a little English and I speak a little Spanish so we became friendly," he said.

Wellington hand-carved a mask for him and it became one of many tribal souvenirs Toth took home.

Holt-Macey said the program was a great success because "it's directly related to the study of pharmacy and understanding how other cultures work without a system like the U.S.," she said.

Ryan Toth said the trip "was not the kind of thing you can do as a tourist. We got to see places and people that barely anyone ever sees."

Gina Vasselli is a staff writer. She can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at gvasselli@express-times.com.

New Excavations at Sipán

From K. Kris Hirst,

Friday June 8, 2007
Published by About.com: Archaeology

An international project involving the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán, the University of Milan and the Caritas of Peru, has begun an extensive set of excavations at the Moche culture site of Sipán in May 2007 that will go on through the end of the year. The excavations are directed by the Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who first excavated at Sipán in the 1980s.

Located in the lower Lambayeque Valley of the northern coast of Peru, Sipán is one of the most well known archaeological sites in the world, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, and best known for the discovery of several burials of elite residents, including el Señor de Sipán (or Lord of Sipán). The tombs included funerary assemblages that matched the clothing and accessories of individuals illustrated in Moche iconography, fine-line ceramic and mural art thought to represent important sacrificial and religious/political rites.

The 2007 investigations will be focused on the pyramids of Sipán, to excavate them more fully and determine the best method of preserving them. One important reason for the excavation was the realization of the effects of el Niño (ENSO). Researchers believe that although the changing climate has worn the appearance of the pyramids to soft-edged hills, the detailed architecture of the adobes may be revealed with additional excavation. If so, they need to be preserved from further damage. Similar work has been effected at the Lima culture site of Huaca Pucllana, which revealed the intricately designed adobe walls that researcher Antonio Aimi (University of Milan) describes as 'an Escher pattern'.

At the same time, the project will construct a sewage and water treatment plant to develop Sipán as a tourist location and improve the plight of the people in the region. The project is being conducted by Caritas (the unidad ejecutora), Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan (Walter Alva), the Milan University (Antonio Aimi and Emilia Perassi), with sponsorship by the Italy-Peruvian Fund (FIP).

• Sipán, more on the site
• Moche Civilization
• Sipán, Peru Cultural website developed with Walter Alva (Spanish)
• Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán
• Caritas of Peru
• After 10 years, the new excavations in Sipán, (Spanish and English versions) Antonio Aimi

Information in InkaNatura

• Info about Sipan
• Chiclayo and Sipan Tour Programs
• Sipan photo gallery
  

Archaeologists study headless body in Peru

Published by Science Daily
SAN MARCOS, Texas, May 30 (UPI) -- U.S. archaeologists say a recently excavated headless Peruvian skeleton has expanded their understanding of ancient Andean rituals.

Images of disembodied heads are widespread in the art of Nasca, a culture based on the southern coast of Peru from about 1 A.D. to 750 A.D. Despite that evidence and the discovery of many trophy heads in the region, only eight headless bodies have been recovered with evidence of decapitation, said Christina Conlee of Texas State University.

Conlee's analysis of the recently excavated headless body from the site of the ancient community of La Tiza provides important new data on decapitation and its relationship to ancient ideas of death and regeneration.

"Human sacrifice and decapitation were part of powerful rituals that would have allayed fears by invoking the ancestors to ensure fertility and the continuation of Nasca society," Conlee said. "The decapitation of the La Tiza individual appears to have been part of a ritual associated with ensuring agricultural fertility and the continuation of life and rebirth of the community."

She details her findings in the June issue of the journal Current Anthropology.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

First Amazon-Andean Crop Plant Transfer And Corn Processing In Peru 3600-4000 Years Ago

Source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Date: March 7, 2006

Published by Science Daily — Mouthwatering Peruvian cuisine like causa (mashed yellow potatoes layered with avocado and seafood) and carapulcra (dried potatoes and pork/chicken in peanut sauce) combine food crops from Amazon basin rainforests and Andean highlands. Smithsonian archaeologists and colleagues presenting in the prestigious journal, Nature1, uncover the first definitive evidence for this culinary, cultural link: 3600-4000 year-old plant microfossils and starch grains.

Heading to the supermarket to pick up some corn flour, a couple of tomatoes or a can of beans usually doesn't conjure up the notion of 10,000 years of agricultural development in the Americas--a transition from hunter-gatherer cultures to agricultural cultures actively developing and trading new food crops. But this transition is still inadequately understood. New excavations and a growing collection of plant microfossil remains rapidly adds pieces to this puzzle.

A multidisciplinary team excavated a stone house at Waynuna, north of Arequipa on the western slope of the Andes and analyzed plant remains from three grinding stones.
Arrowroot from the Amazon. Starchy arrowroot (Maranta sp.) tubers don't grow in the Andean highlands. So the presence of tiny Arrowroot starch grains and phytoliths on the grinding stones and in associated sediments means that people were moving tubers from lowland Amazon rainforest sites east of the Andes west to the Waynuna site.

Maize from Mexico. Maize (Zea mays) cultivation also swept through the Americas in the millennia following its domestication from Teosinte, a wild ancestor from Mexico's tropical Balsas river valley, some 9000 years ago. At the Waynuna site, maize starch grains were the most common plant remains on the grinding stones. Phytoliths derived from the leaves of maize provided evidence that maize was grown at the site. The shape and grinding damage of maize particles suggests that two races of maize--one used as flour and another, popcorn or dent corn variety--were probably grown and processed at the site. The Waynuna house is older than any of the other sites in Peru where maize has been found and sets back the date of maize cultivation and processing in the region by ~1000 years.

Obsidian trade. The Waynuna site perches on the shoulders of Cerro Aycano, the northernmost point of one of the Andes' richest sources of obsidian. Ample archaeological evidence shows that preceramic peoples moved obsidian from the mountains down into the Amazon basin, so it is not surprising that travelers eventually introduced new foods to residents of this upland area.

Multiproxy microfossil analysis of starch grains and phytoliths is proving to be an extremely important tool--applied to stone tool surfaces and associated sediments, to new sites and to sites where warm, wet climates have destroyed larger plant remains. Future work is expected to yield a better understanding of the domestication and trade of peanuts, manioc and achira, staples depicted in the stone iconography of the first great cultures to develop in a region where amazing cooking is still the standard.

###
The research team included members from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the University of Maine, Orono, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, along with Ithaca College in the U.S. and the Museo Contisuyo, Moquegua and the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Alameda, in Peru. This work was funded by a grant from the Heinz Charitable Trust Latin American Archaeology Program, FERCO, the Office of the Provost, Ithaca College, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), a unit of the Smithsonian Institution with headquarters in Panama City, Panama, furthers our understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. http://www.stri.org/

Ref. Perry, L., Sandweiss, D., Piperno, D., Radmaker, K., Malpass, M., Umire, A. and de la Vera, P. 2006. Early maize agriculture and interzonal interaction in southern Peru. Nature, 2 March, 2006.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Predators Keep The World Green, Ecologists Find

Source: Duke University
Date: February 28, 2006
Published by Science Daily — Predators are, ironically, the key to keeping the world green, because they keep the numbers of plant-eating herbivores under control, reports a research team lead by John Terborgh, a professor of environmental science at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

Their findings confirm the answer to one of ecology's oldest and thorniest questions: why is the world green? It also seems to put to rest a competing theory that plants protect themselves from herbivores through physical and chemical defenses.

The researchers drew their conclusions from study of a Venezuelan valley flooded 20 years ago by a hydroelectric project.

The research, reported in the March 2006 issue of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology, was supported by the National Science Foundation. The paper was co-authored by Terborgh, Kenneth Feeley and Bradley Balukjian from Harvard University, Miles Silman from Wake Forest University, and Percy Nuñez of Universidad Nacional "San Antonio de Abad" de Cusco in Peru.

Their results support the so-called "green world hypothesis," first proposed in 1960 by United States scientists Nelson Hairston, Frederick Smith and Lawrence Slobodkin. Despite being almost 50 years old, the green world hypothesis has been almost impossible to test until now.

"Since the landmark paper by Hairston et al, ecologists have been debating whether herbivores are limited by plant defenses or by predators," wrote the authors. "The matter is trivially simple in principle, but in practice the challenge of experimentally creating predator-free environments in which herbivores can increase without constraint has proven almost insurmountable."

However, the researchers realized that the hypothesis could be tested on a vast hydroelectric project.

Within Venezuela's Caroni Valley, an area of 4,300 square kilometres was flooded in 1986 to create a lake (Lago Guri) containing hundreds of islands that were formerly fragments of a continuous landscape.

Terborgh and his team monitored the vegetation at 14 sites of differing size. Nine of the sites were on predator-free islands, while the others were on the mainland or on islands with a complete or nearly complete suite of predators.

They found that, by 1997, small sapling densities on small islands were only 37 percent of those of large land masses and by 2002 this had fallen to just 25 percent. Most of the vertebrates present in regional dry forest ecosystem had disappeared from small islands, including fruit eaters and predators of vertebrates, leaving a hyperabundance of generalist herbivores such as iguanas, howler monkeys and leaf-cutter ants.

"Mere numbers do not do justice to the bizarre condition of herbivore-impacted islets," the authors wrote. "The understory is almost free of foliage, so that a person standing in the interior sees light streaming in from the edge around the entire perimeter. There is almost no leaf litter, and the ground is bright red from the subsoil brought to the surface by leaf-cutter ants.

"Dead twigs, branches and vine stems from canopy dieback litter the ground, and in places lie in heaps. But in striking contrast with this scenario of destruction, the medium islands presented a relatively normal appearance."

Besides proving that the green world hypothesis is correct, Terborgh's team's results have important implications for the debate raging in many countries over reintroduction of top predators such as wolves. "The take-home message is clear: the presence of a viable carnivore guild is fundamental to maintaining biodiversity," the authors wrote.

Information collected for the Journal of Ecology report is a five-year update of results published by Terborgh and 10 other scientists in the Nov. 30, 2001, issue of the journal Science.

"The Science article reported on the first plant census we did, involving 15,000 plants, but it only gave us a snapshot in time," Terborgh said in an interview. "We could see that there were huge differences between the little islands that didn't have any predators on them, and larger islands that did have predators. But we couldn't say much about where that was going to go in the future.

"This article reports on the re-census," he added. "Indeed, during that five-year interval the populations of small, sapling-level plants continued to decline quite radically. And there's no question that the vegetation on these islands is just in a state of collapse."

A drought that began in 2001 and reached extreme levels in 2003 has now ended the study, Terborgh reported.

"By 2003, the lake level had dropped 26 meters," he said. "By then, I think only three of the islands were left surrounded by water. That ended the experiment because it allowed the animals to redistribute themselves in their own fashion. The overcrowded populations of the plant-eating animals that had been the object of our studies simply dispersed.

"The fundamental premise of the whole project was our ability to study predator-free space, and that condition was no longer met. In one period in 2003 we found six different predators on islands that previously had no predators."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Duke University.

Almodovar project is in ruins

Published in Guardian Unlimited
By Pamela Rolfe
May 17, 2007

CANNES -- Pedro Almodovar's production company El Deseo announced Wednesday it has started production on a docudrama about the discovery of the tomb of El Senor de Sipan, the ruler of ancient Peru's ruins, after acquiring exclusive audiovisual rights to the archeological dig.

Months after James Cameron's "The Last Tomb of Christ" documentary stirred controversy by claiming it had discovered the bones of Jesus Christ and his family, El Deseo has started preproduction on the feature-length film in co-production with Explora Films.

Documentary specialist Jose Manuel Novoa will direct the film that will combine the dig's discoveries with a re-creation of Sipan's life with elaborate set designs, including a pyramid and costumes.

According to El Deseo, the tale of the man who ruled Peru some 1,700 years ago includes sackings, murders and intrigue "in the purest style of adventure film."

Spanish pubcaster Television Espanola and the Spanish Geographic Society are supporting the project, which boasts a $1 million budget.

Calling it the "the main archeological discovery of the 20th century in America, comparable to the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb," El Deseo said it anticipates news in the coming months that will make headlines worldwide.

Archeologist Walter Alva discovered the tomb some 20 years ago and is heading the dig, which has already unearthed new graves, temples and multicolored facades.

Disoriented Penguin Reaches Peru's Shore

Published in Guardian Unlimited
Sunday May 13, 2007 2:31 AM

LIMA, Peru (AP) - A "disoriented'' Magellanic penguin swam ashore on Peru's coast, some 3,100 miles north of his home in the frigid waters of southern Chile.

The penguin got lost while looking for food, Peru's National Resource Institute was quoted as saying in El Comercio newspaper Saturday.

"It seems he was disoriented and got lost in the sea due to the different ocean currents,'' said Wilder Canales, who heads the National Paracas Reserve in southern Peru. "In his endless search for food, he casually climbed up on our shores, something that has never happened before.''

Television images showed scientists at the nature reserve treating an injury to the penguin's right wing that was apparently caused by a fishing net.

Peruvian authorities are trying to coordinate with their Chilean counterparts to return the penguin to its home waters.

An Ancient Inca Tax And Metallurgy In Peru

Source: American Chemical
SocietyDate: April 24, 2007

Published by Science Daily — Scientists in the United States and Canada are reporting the first scientific evidence that ancient civilizations in the Central Andes Mountains of Peru smelted metals, and hints that a tax imposed on local people by ancient Inca rulers forced a switch from production of copper to silver.

Their study is scheduled for the May 15 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

The University of Alberta's Colin A. Cooke and colleagues point out that past evidence for metal smelting, which involves heating ore to extract pure metal, was limited mainly to the existence of metal artifacts dating to about 1,000 A.D. and the Wari Empire that preceded the Inca.

The new evidence emerged from a study of metallurgical air pollutants released from ancient furnaces during the smelting process and deposited in lake sediments in the area.

By analyzing metals in the sediments, the researchers recreated a 1,000-year history of metal smelting in the area, predating Francisco Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors by 600 years. Their findings show that smelters in the Morococha region of Peru switched from production of copper to silver around the time that Inca rulers imposed a tax, payable in silver, on local populations.

Article: "A Millennium of Metallurgy Recorded by Lake Sediments from Morococha, Peruvian Andes"

Cuzco, Inca Valley merit exploration

Published in ContraCostaTimes.com
By Sara Benson
LONELY PLANET
Article Launched: 04/22/2007 03:14:14 AM PDT
The high-flying Andean capital of Cuzco is the gateway to the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, South America's premier tourist destination. Each year more than a million foreign visitors pass through Q'osqo (as it's known in the indigenous Quechua language), but few pause long enough to explore this Peruvian city once ruled by Inca kings and Spanish conquistadors.
Start at the nerve center of the colonial city, the Plaza de Armas. Once the site of an Inca palace, for centuries it has been lorded over by La Catedral, a jewel box of art that blends Catholic beliefs with indigenous Andean traditions. In Marcos Zapata's "The Last Supper," roast cuy (guinea pig) is a featured dish in the holy Christian feast.

Narrow alleyways beside the plaza are buttressed by complexly crafted Inca stonework. During ancient times the Incas' chosen Virgins of the Sun were housed behind these walls. Nearby are the ruins of Qorikancha, the "Golden Courtyard," once the Inca empire's richest temple. Before it was looted by Spanish conquistadors, some say it was literally covered in gold.

Pre-Columbian art

Exquisite artifacts from Peru's varied ancient cultures are displayed in the Museo de Arte Precolombino (Pre-Columbian Art Museum), housed in a Spanish colonial mansion built over a sacred Inca site. The more modest Museo Inka harbors mummies, pottery, jewelry and the world's largest collection of queros (Inca ceremonial drinking vessels). Andean highland weavers demonstrate their craft in the courtyard.
With their eyes set solely on Machu Picchu, many visitors miss not only the back streets of Cuzco, but also El Valle Sagrado, the "Sacred Valley" of the Incas. Lying just outside the city, the idyllic valley is flush with archaeological ruins, hot springs, colonial towns with quaint cobblestone streets, hectic highland markets and wide-open countryside ripe for adventure sports.

Valley of Incas

The most convenient jumping-off point is Ollantaytambo, where trains to Machu Picchu stop. An Inca village that has been inhabited continuously since the 13th century, Ollantaytambo is overshadowed by the ruins of a massive temple and fortress where the Incas made their last stand against the Spanish conquistadors before retreating deep into the Amazon jungle. The town's Museo CATCCO hosts artisan workshops and ethnographic exhibits on kaleidoscopic highland festivals.

The fertile Inca agricultural terraces of Moray and salt pans of Salinas are a short taxi ride from Urubamba, the valley's hub for adventure sports. Outfitters can arrange rides on graceful Peruvian paso horses, hot-air-balloon flights and paragliding over the Andes or guided hikes, bird-watching trips and river-rafting adventures.

The markets of Pisac and Chinchero attract hundreds of foreign visitors and Peruvian villagers alike. Pisac's Sunday market is filled with tour buses and locals in traditional dress, while the town's clay-oven bakeries are famous for their castillos de cuyes (miniature guinea pig castles). The ruins of Pisac's Inca citadel, with ceremonial baths and honeycomb tombs, is perched above the dizzying Rio Kitamayo gorge. The hamlet of Chinchero has a less frenzied Sunday market, but also an exquisite colonial church and a local archaeology museum.

Inca fortress

The valley's most famous site, Saqsaywaman, is a challenging uphill walk from Cuzco's Plaza de Armas along a winding Inca road. The imposing fort is known not only for its zigzag fortifications, but also for the grand pageantry of the Inti Raymi festival, an Inca winter solstice celebration, held every June 24.

Wherever you spend an extra day or two en route to Machu Picchu, you won't regret it. Little-known ancient ruins, colonial treasures and vibrant Andean villages await.

If you go


Places to stay: Uphill from Cuzco's Plaza de Armas, Hostal Rumi Punku (www.rumipunku.com, 011-51-84-22-1102, doubles from $40) has authentic Inca stonework, a rooftop terrace and a Finnish sauna. The 99-room Novotel Cusco (www.novotel.com, 011-51-84-58-1030, doubles from $130) inhabits an elegant colonial courtyard, where each of the historic wing's rooms are unique. Next to the Qorikancha ruins, Hotel Libertador Palacio del Inka (www.libertador.com.pe, 011-51-84-23-1961, doubles from $190) is an opulent mansion -- Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro once slept here -- set upon rock-solid Inca foundations.

Places to eat: Cuzco's cobblestone streets are full of inviting eateries. In a garden courtyard with a crackling fire pit, Pachapapa (Plaza San Blas 120) serves classic Peruvian dishes, from Cuzquenan lamb stew to roasted wild trout with quinoa pancakes, plus fruity pisco (Peruvian brandy) cocktails. Inka Panaka (Tandapata 140) nearby is the place for nouveau Andean cooking. The more casual Inkafe Cafe (Choquechaca 140) specializes in regional fare, including hard-to-find highland desserts. The sophisticated restaurant Map Cafe, in the courtyard of the Museo de Arte Precolombino, serves such eclectic gourmet delights as guinea pig confit and alpaca steaks.

Ancient Peruvian metallurgy studied

Published by ScienceDaily.com

EDMONTON, Alberta, April 19 (UPI) -- A Canadian-led study has reported the first scientific evidence that ancient Peruvian civilizations in the central Andes Mountains smelted metals.

The study by the University of Alberta's Colin Cooke and colleagues also determined that a tax imposed on local people by ancient Inca rulers might have forced a switch from production of copper to silver.

The researchers said prior evidence of metal smelting was limited mainly to the existence of metal artifacts dating to about 1,000 A.D. and the Wari Empire that preceded the Incas. The new evidence emerged from a study of metallurgical air pollutants released from ancient furnaces during the smelting process and deposited in lake sediments.

By analyzing metals in the sediments, the researchers recreated a 1,000-year history of metal smelting in the area, predating Francisco Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors by 600 years.

The findings suggest smelters in the Morococha region of Peru switched from producing copper to silver about the time Inca rulers imposed a tax, payable in silver, on local populations.

The study is scheduled for the May 15 issue of the American Chemical Society's semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

New Archaeological Findings On Political Power In Peru

Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Date: March 25, 2007

Published by Science Daily — A team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of Almería has completed its second part of the "Proyecto La Puntilla", an archaeological expedition to the Peruvian province of Nazca, where last year it discovered a new type of construction. The latest findings show that a new political power based on the exercise of violence emerged on the south coast of Peru two thousand years ago. There was a State in which an aristocracy, based in Cahuachi, exercised its dominion on other, poorer communities in the Nazca Valley. The team has also observed practices such as cranial deformation.

The excavations at the necropolis of El Trigal have uncovered new information on the repercussions of the emergence of the State in southern Peru. The archaeologists have found that El Trigal graves are very simple, in contrast with the extravagant tombs of the aristocracy around Nazca.

The situation shows the poverty that existed among the community in El Tribal. The dominant group in the State of Cahuachi imposed the transfer of wealth through taxes and other means. This explains the poverty of those living in the area of La Puntilla.

A settlement was established in El Trigal about 3000 years ago. Several centuries later, this had become an economically strong community with a vast network of relations with other territories. This hypothesis is backed up by the presence of valuable Spondylus shells (probably from the distant coasts of what today we know as Ecuador), obsidian (from the mountains), and craft tools, such as the boat decorated with the style known as Ocucaje 8 (possibly manual workers in the north).

However, the necropolis excavated in El Trigal, dated as being from the first century AD, represents a later period of decline and pauperisation in the community, coinciding with the emergence of Cahuachi.

This data confirms that 1900 years ago a State existed in the Nazca Valley based in the monumental settlements of Cahuachi, where pyramids were built. Those governing Cahuachi belonged to one of the groups who shared control over the south coast of Peru, such as the aristocratic group described in the Paracas necropolis (near Pisco), in the same area.

The dominant class in Cahuachi controlled the communities in the Nazca Valley using violence, forcing the communities to economically sustain the group in power. Between those communities were those that occupied the area known as La Puntilla, to the east of Nazca, where the research team has been excavating for the past two years.

Cranial deformation

One of the key findings at the necropolis was that some of the bodies found in the tombs have undergone certain manipulations. One such manipulation was cranial deformation in order to obtain an "elongated skull", and this has been observed in one of the corpses.

This practice took place during childhood by using wooden objects to put pressure on the skull. "Elongated skulls" are characteristic of the aristocracy buried in the tombs in Paracas, and a number of studies suggest that this treatment was a way of distinguishing dominant groups. This is why it is so significant that this characteristic has been found in an individual buried at the necropolis of a poor community in the Nazca Valley.

This discovery opens up a series of other questions: Is this the member of a family belonging to the dominant group? Or is the practice unrelated to a person's affiliation with a group? Was it a way of identifying individuals who took part in specific activities (for example, shamanism)?

In another tomb, another interesting case has been found. Alongside the corpse of a woman, they have found the legs and feet of another individual. We know that decapitation and dismemberment were frequent among the first states of the region, so we cannot discard the possibility that this was an intentional act.

The fieldwork in this second part of the "Proyecto La Puntilla" ended in December, and the material and human remains uncovered are now being studied. The research will be amplified through a programme to analyse the DNA in order to find evidence on the affiliation of those individuals buried at the necropolis.

The "Proyecto La Puntilla" is funded by the General Directorate for Fine Arts and Cultural Assets of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and by the Catalan Department of Education and Universities. The project is also recognised by the National Institute for Culture of Peru. The research team consists of archaeologists and students from Spain, Peru, Chile, Argentina, France and Italy.

New Understanding Of Human Sacrifice In Early Peru

Source: University of Chicago Press Journals
Date: August 26, 2005

Published by Science Daily — A study published in the August/October issue of CurrentAnthropology, reports on new archaeological evidence regarding theidentities of human sacrifice victims of the Moche society of Peru.

The Moche was a complex society whose influence extended over mostof the North coast of Peru between AD 200 and 650. They are widelyknown for their life-like mold-made ceramics, beautiful metallurgy, mudbrick pyramids, and iconographic depictions of one-on-one combatbetween Moche warriors. In recent years archaeologists had uncoveredevidence of the sacrifice of adult males at a number of Moche pyramids.What has remained unclear until now is who these sacrificial victimswere. Largely due to the nature of iconographic depictions of Mochecombat most scholars have speculated that the sacrifices were largelyrituals among local Moche elites, the primary goal of which was toprovide human victims for sacrificial ceremonies.

However, this newly published study by Richard Sutter and Rosa Cortezcompares genetically influenced tooth cusp and root traits for theMoche sacrificial victims from a pyramid at the Moche capital withthose of other North Coast populations. The findings of thisarchaeological comparison indicate that the sacrificial victims werenot local Moche elite. Instead they were likely warriors captured fromnearby valleys. When this result is considered in light of otherarchaeological and skeletal lines of evidence it suggests that theMoche populations in each valley were characterized by territorialconflict and competition with one another.

Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research,Current Anthropology is a transnational journal devoted to research onhumankind, encompassing the full range of anthropological scholarshipon human cultures and on the human and other primate species.Communicating across the subfields, the journal features papers in awide variety of areas, including social, cultural, and physicalanthropology as well as ethnology and ethnohistory, archaeology andprehistory, folklore, and linguistics. For more information, please seeour website: www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA

"The Origins and Role of the Moche (AD 1-750) Human SacrificialVictims: A Bio-Archaeological Perspective." Richard Sutter and RosaCortez. Current Anthropology 46:4.

LSU Researcher Discovers New Bird During Expedition To Peru

Source: Louisiana State University
Date: July 13, 2004

Published by Science Daily
Science Daily — He saw it. He heard it. But he needed proof.


For almost four years, LSU research associate Daniel Lane was haunted by the memory of an unusual, yellowish bird. He and an associate caught a glimpse of itwhile bird watching in Peru. They even recorded some of its song. Right away, they knew it was something new. Something different.

Now, thanks to Lane, a specimen of that bird previously unknown to science rests in a Lima museum and it will soon bear a name of Lane's choosing. As the discoverer of what could be a new species or, perhaps, a new genus, Lane will also be the first to author a scientific description of the bird.

The process will take some time, but, for someone who says his interest in birds began when he was "three or four," it's all a labor of love.

Lane, a New Jersey native who earned his master's from LSU in 1999, says his quest for the mystery bird dates back to 2000. As a part-time international bird-watching tour guide for WINGS Tours, Lane was one of the leaders of a group near the Manu National Park in Peru. He and fellow guide Gary Rosenberg, also an LSU graduate, spotted the bird along one of the park's major roads. Unfortunately, almost as soon as it was there, it was gone and no one else in the group had seen it.

The bird remained in Lane's mind as he returned to lead tours in the area for the next few years, but it didn't reappear.

"After three years, I was starting to doubt my sanity," said Lane.
Then, last year, the pair finally saw it again, and this time, the rest of the group saw it as well. They were also able to make a lengthy recording of its song, a critical part of ornithological study. Nevertheless, they were unable to obtain a specimen and, therefore, remained reticent about announcing their find.

Determined to obtain the proof he needed of his find, Lane returned to the region last November and played the recording of the bird's song. His attempt to attract his quarry failed and he once again went home empty-handed. Then, last month, Lane and some cohorts were in Peru conducting other field work when they made spur-of-the-moment plans to give it one more try.

After obtaining permission from the proper authorities, Lane and his group set off on their mission. On the morning of June 9, the playing of the taped song worked and the bird appeared, coming to rest in some nearby bamboo, just off the road. After observing and playing "cat and mouse" with the bird for almost an hour, Lane finally got his specimen.

Lane explained that the bird is likely a tanager, a type of songbird found mostly in tropical regions of the Americas. He describes it as having a short, bushy crest and olive back, wings and tail that contrast with a burnt orange crown. For now, the specimen is in the keeping of the National Museum in Lima where it will become the "type," the specimen on which the species' description is based and against which all others will be compared. Eventually, it will be sent to Lane so that he can write the scientific description and record his observations and its DNA will be tested to determine its specific relationship to other birds.

However long it takes, Lane is understanding of the pace of science. He's been in a similar situation before. In 1996, while on another expedition in Peru, he discovered the Scarlet-banded Barbet, a small, colorful toucan-like bird. And besides, he says, it feels good to know that he was sane after all.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Louisiana State University.

Where Is The World's Greatest Biodiversity? Smithsonian Scientists Find The Answer Is A Question Of Scale

Source: Smithsonian Institution
Date: January 25, 2002
Published by Science Daily


Science Daily — Amazonia represents the quintessence of biodiversity the richest ecosystem on earth. Yet a study by Smithsonian scientists, published this week in the journal Science, shows that differences in species composition of tropical forests are greater over distance in Panama than in Amazonia. The finding also challenges recent models proposed to explain forest species composition.

The research team, led by Richard Condit of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Center for Tropical Forest Science, compared data from single-hectare (2.47 acre) tropical forest plots near the Panama Canal with plots of the same size in the Yasuni National Park of Ecuador and in Peru's Manu Biosphere Reserve. After identifying, tagging and measuring more than 50,000 individual trees with stems of ten centimeters or more in diameter in all three forests, they observed that a wide swath of the western Amazon has a forest in which the species change very little over distances of more than 1000 kilometers. The tree species counts in any one locale are high, but each locale turns out to be much like the others in terms of species composition.

In contrast, forests on the Isthmus of Panama change dramatically in tree species composition from one site to the next. Forests just 50 kilometers apart in Panama are less alike than forests 1,400 kilometers apart in the western Amazon. As a result of such high landscape variation, parts of Panama have as many or even more tree species than parts of Amazonia. "Ecologists have a technical term for landscape variation in forest types: beta-diversity," Condit explained. "Beta-diversity is high when forests change a lot over short distances as in Panama but low when forests are similar over long distances as in Ecuador and Peru." The unique aspect of this research by the Smithsonian team, including colleagues from France, the United States and South America, was a precise mathematical prediction of beta-diversity that helped them pinpoint its cause. A theory for beta-diversity had heretofore eluded ecologists.

"The Smithsonian theory is based on a basic ecological premise called the 'neutral theory,'" Condit said, "but adds to it the simple yet crucial observation that trees do not generally spread their seeds very far a factor which tends to enhance beta-diversity."

The Science report provides one of the most precise tests of the neutral theory yet published.

The team concludes that the neutral theory cannot account for beta-diversity in tropical forests, and they discount the importance of random events in establishing what grows there. Instead, Panama's high beta-diversity must be due to the abrupt variation in rainfall across the Central American isthmus, from the ever-wet Caribbean shoreline to the dry Pacific slope.
Forests across western Amazonia, however, were more uniform in species composition than the theory allowed, a surprising result.

"Explanations for this uniformity will require deeper understanding of how different tropical trees are from one another," said co-author and Smithsonian scientist Egbert G. Leigh, Jr., who devised the mathematical formula that led to the undermining of the neutral theory.
"More tedious field work, it seems, is in store," Leigh concluded.

###

The Center for Tropical Forest Science, established within the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in 1990, is a consortium of forestry agencies, universities, research institutes and nongovernmental organizations around the world, each managing or involved in one or more of 17 forest dynamics plots in 14 different countries. In addition to monitoring the trees, the center sponsors training programs, scientific meetings, and communications between sites through a newsletter and Web site at http://www.ctfs.si.edu/.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Republic of Panama, is one of the world's leading centers for basic research on the ecology, behavior and evolution of tropical organisms. More information is available at http://www.stri.org/.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Smithsonian Institution.

Peru's Nasca Lines Point To Water Sources, Suggest UMass Researchers

Source: University Of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: December 1, 2000
Published by Science Daily

AMHERST, Mass. - The ancient "Nasca lines" created on the desert floor by native peoples in Peru thousands of years ago may not just be works of art, according to a team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts. The team, which includes hydrogeologist Stephen B. Mabee and archeologist Donald Proulx, suggests that some of the mysterious lines may in fact mark underground sources of water. The research project is detailed in the December issue of Discover magazine. The team also includes independent scholar David Johnson, an adjunct research associate in the department of anthropology at UMass, and geosciences graduate students Jenna Levin and Gregory Smith.

The lines were constructed in the desert in southwestern Peru about 1,500-2,000 years ago by the Nasca culture, prior to the invasion of the Incas. The lines, which are etched into the surface of the desert by removing surface pebbles to reveal the lighter sand beneath, depict birds and mammals, including a hummingbird, a monkey, and a man, as well as zigzags, spirals, triangles, and other geometric figures. Called "geoglyphs," the elaborate figures are located about 250 miles south of Lima, and measure up to 1.2 miles in length. Their meaning has been the object of centuries of speculation. Some experts have hypothesized that the figures had ceremonial or religious functions, or served as astronomical calendars. But a slate of scientific tests has led the UMass team to theorize that at least some of the geometric shapes mark underground water.

"Ancient inhabitants may have marked the location of their groundwater supply distribution system with geoglyphs because the springs and seeps associated with the faults provided a more reliable and, in some instances, a better-quality water source than the rivers. We're testing this scientifically," said Mabee. "The spatial coincidence between the geoglyphs and groundwater associated with underground faults in the bedrock offers an intriguing alternative to explain the function of some of the geoglyphs."

Proulx, who has studied the region for decades, notes that the symbols on the biomorphs (figures of animals, plants, and humans) and on Nasca pottery are almost identical. "There are representations of natural forces," he says, "Not deities in the Western sense, but powerful forces of sky and earth and water, whom they needed to propitiate for water and a good harvest."

The team has studied the drawings and taken water samples during three separate journeys to Peru, over the past five years. The research has been funded by a University of Massachusetts Healy grant, the National Geographic Society, and the H. John Heinz Charitable Trust.

"So far, the tests indicate that the underground faults provide a source of reliable water to local inhabitants. The water, in comparison with available river water, is better-quality in terms of pH levels, magnesium, calcium, chloride and sulfate concentrations," Mabee said.

Proulx carried out an archaeological survey of more than 128 sites in the drainage area, in conjunction with the geological research. His discoveries provided data for another piece of the puzzle many archaeological sites were constructed near water-bearing faults and used this important secondary source of water.

The team was able to map the water's sources, and found that in at least five cases, the wells and aquifers corresponded with geoglyphs and archaeological sites. "They always seem to go together," said Mabee.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University Of Massachusetts, Amherst.

New Archaeological Evidence Illuminates Inca Sun-Worship Ritual

Source: University Of Illinois At Chicago
Date: September 30, 1998
Published by Science Daily

Science Daily — University of Illinois at Chicago archaeologist Brian Bauer and colleagues have unearthed artifacts from sites in South America that shed light on how the Inca organized their sun-worship rituals and how they physically kept track of the sun's movements.

According to Bauer, "many scholars of Latin American antiquity believe that the Inca built large stone pillars to record the sun's horizon location at the June and December solstices, but archaeologists had not found physical evidence of the pillars and there had been no detailed investigation into the organization of the solstice rituals" -- until now.

During a survey of pre-Hispanic sites on the Island of the Sun, in Lake Titicaca, Bauer and colleagues David Dearborn of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and graduate student Matthew Seddon of the University of Chicago discovered the remains of two stone pillars. They also found a large platform area just outside the walls of a sanctuary on the island.

Archaeological and astronomical research, which the team presents in the Sept. 24 issue of Latin American Antiquity, suggests the Inca used the site to support the elites' claim to power through elaborate solar rituals, perhaps using two-tiered worship.

In the early 15th century the Inca empire -- the largest state to develop in the Americas -- expanded into the Lake Titicaca region in modern-day Peru and Bolivia and usurped the Island of the Sun from local control. The island and a sacred rock, which locals believed was the birthplace of the sun, had been the focus of worship for centuries, said Bauer. Under the Inca it became one of the most important pilgrimage centers in South America.

"The Inca nobility, as well as members of the general populace, journeyed to the island to worship and make offerings in a sanctuary plaza next to the sacred rock," said Bauer.

The team's research indicates that, on the June solstice, the Inca king and high priests of the empire assembled in a small plaza beside the sacred rock to witness the dramatic setting of the sun between the stone pillars. Their findings also indicate that, as the elites paid homage to the sun from within the sanctuary, lower-class pilgrims observed the event from a second platform outside the sanctuary wall. From the perspective of the lower-class pilgrims, the sun set between the stone pillars and directly over the ruling elite, who called themselves the children of the sun.

"We're proposing that the platform outside the sanctuary walls represents a segregation of the elite and non-elite classes of sun worship," said Bauer. "This adds a new dimension to the practice of the solar cult that was not distinctly recorded in accounts of similar state rituals in the imperial capital, Cusco.

"While both groups participated in solar worship, the non-elites simultaneously offered respect to the sun and the children of that deity. This physical segregation emphasized that the Inca alone had direct access to the powers of the sun," he said.

The researchers illustrate the layout of the Inca structures in a map. The two stone pillars were erected on a natural ridge 600 meters to the northwest of the sacred rock. The plaza adjacent to the sacred rock was rectangular in shape, roughly 80 meters long and 35 meters wide, with the long axis pointing in the direction of the June solstice sunset. A sanctuary wall to the south and east blocked access to the site, which could only be reached through a gate. The secondary plaza, accessible to all pilgrims, was just outside the sanctuary wall and about 250 meters southeast of the sacred rock plaza.

Bauer said the remnants of stone pillars are similar to pillars around Cusco, which were described by several Spanish chroniclers of the 16th century. Those pillars were large enough to be seen against the setting sun at a distance of 15 kilometers. One such set of pillars marked where the sun sets at the June solstice, which is the northernmost point at which the sun crosses the! horizon. Unfortunately, said Bauer, a combination of post-conquest looting and recent urban growth in the Cusco valley has destroyed the area where the Cusco pillars once stood.

Bauer and Dearborn's research on the Island of the Sun is a continuation of their long-standing joint research on Inca astronomy. They are the authors of Astronomy and Empire in the Ancient Andes (University of Texas Press), which examines the origins and organization of Inca astronomy in Cusco.

"The findings from the Island of the Sun is the first discovery and documentation of similar pillars outside the imperial capital of the Inca," said Bauer.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University Of Illinois At Chicago

Deep in the Jungle

Published by TRIBUNE-REVIEW

By Bill Zlatos
Sunday, April 22, 2007

Boating on the Manu River in southwestern Peru, I brace a lunch of pork and spaghetti against a strong gust. Suddenly, my guide gives me an incredible birthday gift.
He peers through his binoculars and points to the left bank more than 200 feet away.

"Jaguar!" he yells.

For many wildlife lovers, Peru's Manu Biosphere in the Amazon River Basin offers a diversity of plant and animal life one can only expect to see on cable TV nature shows. Roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, the area consists of the Manu National Park and the Manu Reserved Zone, which tourists, led by guides, may visit.

The region is home to 10 percent of the world's birds -- about 1,000 species -- and 10 percent of its plant life. It has 13 species of monkeys. Among the 13 species designated as "threatened" are ocelots and black caimans -- a kind of crocodile. And, of course, my jaguar.

The weeklong trip offers the chance to go deeper into the more isolated areas of the park and see much of it.

Take a bus to Manu and a plane back to Cusco. It costs more, but shaves a day of travel off the trip. And tourists get a spectacular aerial view of the jungle canopy and more time to explore quaint Cusco, the ancient Incan capital of Peru.

I join 10 other tourists from around the world on our bus, which leaves Cusco, follows the Urubamba River across the Sacred Valley and climbs a dirt road into the Andes.

After crossing a 13,000-foot pass, we stop to observe the chullpas, pre-Incan graves. About 5 feet high, these circular stone tombs once held the mummies of the royal family buried in fetal positions. The gold and silver treasure stashed with them has long since been plundered.

An obelisk marks the entrance to misty Manu at Acjanacu. We descend into the dwarf forest, the cloud forest and then to our lodge in the lowland rain forest. The lodges on this trip are spartan by American standards -- screened cabins with little more than twin cots for furniture and separate kitchen, shower and toilet facilities. At least it discourages more tourists from coming.

Wildlife abounds

We rise at 5 a.m. the next day and hike to a camouflaged blind to observe the Andean cock-of-the-rocks. The male birds preen in their reddish orange plumage with black tails and red crests to attract the females. The males woo the ladies in their guttural voices. After breakfast, most of the group rides mountain bikes for two hours. David, an architect from Switzerland, and I opt for a nature hike. We see brilliantly colored butterflies, eagles, a swallowtail kite, white-collared swifts, tree ferns, and a wasp nest hanging in the bamboo.

That afternoon, we launch two rafts on the Alta Madre de Dios River. Water from the Class I and II rapids splashes over the bow. With the guide's permission, I jump in to cool off. Most of my companions follow suit. We might as well swim now before we reach the Manu River and its crocodiles, piranhas, electric eels and snakes.

We observe animals during hikes in the jungle, from towers or from a 25-foot-long motorized boat with a bright blue canopy. Our pilot expertly guides the boat through a maze of logs lodged in the river. Sometimes, turtles, herons, egrets and other birds perch on the limbs.

Close encounters

On our third day, we awaken at 5 a.m. and boat 15 minutes on the Alta Madre de Dios River to a rocky island 300 feet from shore. We sit on inch-thick mattresses and face a clearing on the bank. Birds soon flock in the trees above a 50-foot-high clay lick. Parrots and parakeet first swoop down, then macaws.

They peck at the clay for minerals that counteract the toxins in the unripe fruit they eat. As if at a deli, the colorful birds patiently await their turn.

Later that morning, the boat pulls ashore where a stream joins the main river. We climb 75 feet, and I plop into a pool fed by a hot spring. The water is 105 degrees, but I soon get used to it.

On my descent, however, I hear a shriek. Heidi Coyle, a tourist from St. John's in the Virgin Islands, is standing in the stream and trying to balance herself on a rock when she notices a snake a foot away. Our guide identifies it as a poisonous coral snake.

"I was very scared," she said later. "I was looking around because where there's one, there's more."

The 3-foot snake eventually swims away, ending our snake encounters for the rest of the trip.

We ride the boat for five hours. Egrets, herons and cormorants stand on rocky islands, the banks or in river shallows. Vultures soar overhead or flock ominously in trees. Flood-tossed trees stripped of bark and blanched by lichen clog the river or are strewn ashore. And wild cane flourishes on the banks like the dandelions in my backyard.

Suddenly, we spot a dead white caiman, upside down and lodged in the branches of a tree stuck in the Manu River. Three vultures perch atop the 10-foot-long body until we pull alongside it.

Treetop view

Back in camp, I go into the jungle on a canopy tour. We climb a series of five towers linked by inch-thick cables. The purpose ostensibly is to observe wildlife from the treetops. But we see no critters as we zoom as far as 300 feet among the ivy like modern-day Tarzans and Janes. I even practice my Tarzan yell.

Most of our success in spotting wildlife is because of the skill of our guides, Alvaro Zamora and Abdel Martinez. They are adept at following the tracks or slightest movements of animals and pointing them out to us.

We stalk a wild pig, rustling and grunting down the trail. For a fleeting moment, I make out its silhouette. We see a poison frog, used by Indians for arrows and darts, inside the hollow of a tree. Of more concern are the inch-long giant ants, whose bites scare even the natives. The giant ant nests and those of termites and wasps hang on trees throughout the jungle.

The jungle is not as hot as I expect but noisier. The air is filled with the chirping of the cicada, the howling of monkeys and the squawking of parrots and macaws.

During our hikes, light filters through the dense foliage, casting mottled shadows on a jungle floor of matted leaves. We enjoy watching the spider, squirrel and brown capuchin monkeys swinging from tree to tree, sometimes baby in tow.

On one occasion, we observe some spider monkeys high in the fig and sava trees. Disapproving our presence, the monkeys shower us with leaves and limbs. We do not budge. Then they defecate on us, scoring a direct hit on a tourist. That gets us moving.

One of my favorite Amazon Basin animals is the giant river otter. We visit them by flatboat on Salvador Lake, an oxbow lake and the biggest one in Manu. Oxbow lakes are formed by a change in the course of a river.

We eventually spot a family of six otters, each about four and half feet long, as entertaining as circus clowns. They play or fight with each other, then dive into the lake and surface, clutching and crunching fish, bones and all. They are absolutely mesmerizing.

In addition to the animals, the guides point out a wide variety of plant life. We see walking palms, trees whose roots move toward sunlight. I am amazed at a giant fig tree. It stands on a root system of tentacles 25 feet tall and spreading out 100 feet in diameter.

The leche leche tree grows about 130 feet high, and its flared trunk stretches 10 feet across. On another hike, the guide stops to show us a cocoa tree, the source of chocolate. I kiss it.

Tribal lodge

Tourists are few in Manu, but we visit a lodge of eight thatched huts of the Matchiguenga, the biggest Indian tribe in this region. I am told there are three kinds of Indians in Peru: those who have assimilated the white man's ways; those who have some contact with whites, but still follow the traditional way of life; and "the naked people," who live isolated in the jungle.

The leader of this lodge, Carlos, is of the second type. He demonstrates his skill with the bow and arrow, and we tourists take turns with the bow and later play soccer with our hosts.

At the lodge, I buy two necklaces made of seeds, the tusk of a wild pig and the skull of a pacu, a fish related to the piranha, for my son and nephew. I also buy them handmade bows and arrows with feathers from a variety of birds.

Imagine my sweet talking to get bows and arrows through four airports on the way home.

After a week in the jungle, most of my group returns by boat down the Manu River to a grassy airstrip guarded by ducks. On the way there, my eyes glaze over by the abundance of wildlife I've seen and, imagining there's little new to see, I leave my camera in my pack rather than around my neck. All the better to steady my lunch against the breeze blowing into our faces.

It is about 1:30 p.m. when Abdel spots the jaguar. He stands -- fortunately for us -- in a clearing on the river bank where he probably had just quenched his thirst. His sleek tawny body, about six feet long, ripples with muscles.

In just a matter of seconds, the cat lumbers back to the jungle -- indifferent to and undaunted by us. The brush and wild cane soon blend into the natural camouflage of his fur as we fumble for our cameras. David snaps the only photograph among us, but by now the jaguar's body blends into the jungle, making him virtually invisible.

It marks only the second jaguar Abdel has seen all year, and it happens on my birthday.

"Thank you, Peru," I say aloud.

Ancient Peruvian metallurgy studied

Published by Science Daily

EDMONTON, Alberta, April 19 (UPI) -- A Canadian-led study has reported the first scientific evidence that ancient Peruvian civilizations in the central Andes Mountains smelted metals.

The study by the University of Alberta's Colin Cooke and colleagues also determined that a tax imposed on local people by ancient Inca rulers might have forced a switch from production of copper to silver.

The researchers said prior evidence of metal smelting was limited mainly to the existence of metal artifacts dating to about 1,000 A.D. and the Wari Empire that preceded the Incas. The new evidence emerged from a study of metallurgical air pollutants released from ancient furnaces during the smelting process and deposited in lake sediments.

By analyzing metals in the sediments, the researchers recreated a 1,000-year history of metal smelting in the area, predating Francisco Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors by 600 years.

The findings suggest smelters in the Morococha region of Peru switched from producing copper to silver about the time Inca rulers imposed a tax, payable in silver, on local populations.

The study is scheduled for the May 15 issue of the American Chemical Society's semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.

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