[Sharon]

If bones could scream, a bloodcurdling din would be reverberating through a 500-year-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons unearthed there have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca fatalities caused by Spanish conquerors.

European newcomers killed some Inca individuals with guns, steel lances or hammers, and possibly light cannons, scientists report online in the March 23, 2010, American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Skeletons such as this one unearthed in Peru have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca deaths caused by Spanish conquerors around 500 years ago. M. Murphy

Surprisingly, though, no incisions or other marks characteristic of sword injuries appear on these bones, according to a team led by anthropologist Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Spanish documents from the 16th century emphasize steel swords as a favored military weapon.

Many Spaniards who helped Francisco Pizarro conquer the Incas were fortune-seekers, not soldiers, “so the absence of sword injuries makes some sense,” Murphy explains.

Skeletons in the Inca cemetery, as well as at another grave site about a mile away, display a gruesome array of violent injuries, many probably caused by maces, clubs and other Inca weapons, the researchers report. Those weapons may have been wielded by Inca from communities known to have collaborated with the Spanish, or might have been borrowed by the Spanish, they posit. “The nature and pattern of these skeletal injuries were unlike anything colleagues and I had seen before,” Murphy says. “Many of these people died brutal, horrible deaths.”

[Faline]

[NEVERBACKZ]

Great stuff thanks for info

[Sharon]

Originally Posted by NEVERBACKZ ↗

Great stuff thanks for info

You're welcome :)

[Sharon]

The skeleton looks like a girl with a fancy corsage in her hair.

[sassieroses]

[Bastet]

Good post. Feeds my inner anthropologist.