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WASHINGTON -- Archaeologists say the discovery of thousands of Inca mummies could help solve some of the mysteries surrounding the ancient civilization. The mummies unearthed in a shantytown near Lima, Peru, are "a perfect sample -- each social class, each group of age is represented," said researcher Guillermo Cock. The find "enables us to look into an Inca community, to study their life, their health, their culture," Cock said at a news conference at the National Geographic Society, which funded his study. Some 2,200 individuals have been found, some bundled together in small groups with their possessions. The bundles...

WASHINGTON - The musket blast was sudden and deadly, the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere. "We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru. But he realized that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said in a telephone interview. The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient...

First Known Gunshot Victim in Americas Discovered Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina for National Geographic News June 19, 2007 The first known gunshot victim in the Americas was an Inca Indian killed by a musket-wielding Spaniard nearly 500 years ago in Peru, scientists announced today. (See pictures and watch video.) The casualty's skeleton was discovered in 2004 while excavating an Inca cemetery in the Lima suburb of Puruchuco—less than a mile from thousands of Inca mummy bundles discovered by Peruvian archaeologist Guillermo Cock. The individual may have been killed during an Inca uprising against Spanish conquistadors in 1536, according...