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As they waited to be sacrificed outside a temple, the victims made no attempt to escape their fate: their throats were cut, they were decapitated and their hearts ripped out. Their hands were not tied and they offered no resistance to the sacrificial knife. A seed containing a potent drug was used to paralyse their bodies, leaving the victims aware of a terrifying ritual that has been revealed for the first time by a dig in the vast pre-Colombian city of Túcume in northern Peru. Archaeologists working in the ruined city of giant pyramids have discovered one of the largest...

Ira Block/National Geographic A woman buried with a golden bowl on her face was wrapped in mummy cloths and buried with military items, hinting at a role as a ruler. A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru. She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures. But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday,...

PERU plans to sue Yale University to recover thousands of artefacts excavated from Machu Picchu more than 90 years ago. The South American country is seeking the return of some 4,900 artefacts from the Inca citadel, including ceramics, cloths and metalwork. Peru says they were lent to Yale for 18 months in 1916 but that the university in New Haven, Connecticut, has held on to them ever since. "Yale does not recognise the Peruvian state's ownership of these artefacts," Peru's ambassador to Washington, Eduardo Ferrero, said in a statement. He complained that after three years of talks, Yale officials were...

LIMA, Peru Peru is preparing a lawsuit against Yale University to retrieve artifacts taken nearly a century ago from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a government official said Wednesday. Peru has held discussions in recent years with Yale seeking the return of nearly 5,000 artifacts, including ceramics and human bones that explorer Hiram Bingham dug up during three expeditions to Machu Picchu in 1911, 1912 and 1914. "Yale considers the collection university property, given the amount of time it has been there," said Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, chief of Peru's National Institute of Culture, in an interview with The Associated...

Mummies of different epochs were among the finds Archaeologists digging at the ruins of Pachacamac in Peru say they have discovered a multi-level burial site. Mummy bundles of entire families were found in the graves from various eras, built on top of each other, they say. The researchers described the find as "exceptional" as the previously ignored cemetery had not been looted and is completely intact. Pachacamac, south of the capital, Lima, is thought to have been ruled by the Ychsma lords from 900 to 1470. The Incas turned it into a place of pilgrimage and it was abandoned after...

No, this isn’t about the Star-Spangled Banner, neither the flag nor the anthem. It’s about dawn itself. The promise of a new beginning. Civilization began, thousands of years before recorded history, when men discovered how to cultivate crops. That meant communities and social organization. It also meant the beginnings of astronomy, studying the movement of the sun. Early evidence of this includes the “solar observatories” built by the Incas in South America, by the Anasazi in North America, and most famously, by Druids and others at Stonehenge in Britain. All these identified the solar equinoxes, especially in the spring. Coupled...

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - Page updated at 12:03 A.M. Ancient Peru site older, much larger By Thomas H. Maugh II Los Angeles Times A Peruvian site previously reported as the oldest city in the Americas actually is a much larger complex of as many as 20 cities with huge pyramids and sunken plazas sprawled over three river valleys, researchers report. Construction started about 5,000 years ago — nearly 400 years before the first pyramid was built in Egypt — at a time when most people around the world were simple hunters and gatherers, a team from Northern Illinois University...

Mar. 19, 01:00 EDT Ancient Inca town called `unparalleled' archeological find 100 structures uncovered at site high in Andes Craig Mauro ASSOCIATED PRESS LIMA, Peru — Explorers have found the extensive ruins of an Inca town, complete with human remains, sprawled spectacularly across a mountain in southern Peru, the expedition leaders said yesterday. The ancient settlement clings to the slopes of a rugged peak in a region of the Andes Mountains where the Incas hid after the Spanish conquest. It consists of more than 100 structures, including a ridge-top truncated pyramid, ceremonial platforms and an 8-kilometre-long irrigation channel. British author...

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - In the first major Inca find in four decades, Peruvian and British explorers say they have discovered a hidden city, perched on an Andean hilltop, that may have sheltered stalwarts of South America's legendary empire as they made a last stand against Spanish conquerors. Located on a narrow ridge around 11,000 feet up in Peru's windswept, southern Andes, the Inca citadel of Corihuayrachina is a mysterious gathering of religious platforms, funeral towers, and food storehouses. British scholar and guide Peter Frost told a news conference on Monday he first spotted the ruins in the rugged, isolated...

A Frenchman has torn down part of an ancient Inca wall to build a hotel that he ironically wanted to call 'The Archaeologist', in the Peruvian city of Cusco, capital of the Inca empire. The El Comercio newspaper said Joel Raymund was planning to slap up a concrete wall in place of the large, finely cut bricks that had been there since before the 16th century Spanish conquest. Peruvian authorities have halted construction of the hotel. The newspaper reported Mr Raymund has apologised but it is not clear what sanctions he could face. The Inca dynasty ruled over a swathe...

Machete-wielding team discover Inca fastness lost for four centuries By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 06/06/2002) One of the last Inca strongholds against the conquering Spanish has been uncovered in cloud-forest by a British and American expedition investigating a rumour of lost ruins, the Royal Geographical Society will announce today. Called Cota Coca, after the coca grown there, the site is more than 6,000ft up in a valley near the junction of the Yanama and Blanco rivers in Vilcabamba, one of the least understood and most significant areas in the history of the Incas, rulers of the last great empire...

Archaeologists, while clearing away weeds from Peru's Machu Picchu, uncovered more of the ancient site, including a rubbish dump. Machu Picchu Rubbish Dump Found June 10 — Archeologists doing maintenance at the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu have found new stone terraces, water channels, a rubbish dump and a wall dividing the site's urban sector from its temples, an official said on Friday. "We were clearing away weeds when we were surprised to discover new stone structures, including a wall 6.8 meters (22 feet) high with fine masonry which separates the urban from the sacred zone," Fernando Astete, administrator...

Magnificent seven that keep mere mortals wondering By Christopher Howse (Filed: 03/04/2004) Only one person out of more than 600 polled could name all Seven Wonders of the World, according to a survey published today. That person's identity is unknown, since the survey was done scientifically by ICM, guaranteeing anonymity. Perhaps it was you. If not, and you want to try getting all seven, look away from this page now. How did you score? If you could name three, you were doing well. Only one person in 10 managed that. Four or more Wonders were named by only a tiny...

Pre-Inca Ruins Emerging From Peru's Cloud Forests John Roach for National Geographic News September 16, 2004 On the eastern slope of the Andes mountains in northern Peru, forests cloak the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, the size and scope of which explorers and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand. Known as the Chachapoya, the civilization covered an estimated 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The Chachapoya, distinguished by fair skin and great height, lived primarily on ridges and mountaintops in circular stone houses. Sean Savoy, leader of the Gran Saposoa-El Dorado IV Expedition (July-August 2004), points out a stone...

Machu Picchu Comes to L.A. Largest U.S. Exhibition of Inca Treasures Makes Only West Coast Stop at Natural History Museum (http://www.nhm.org/) . June 22 to September 7, 2003. This is the first stop on the exhibition’s national tour, after its debut at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Following the Los Angeles presentation, the exhibit will travel to Pittsburgh, Denver, Houston and Chicago. The enduring allure of Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Incan ruins nestled into Peru's Andes Mountains, is its mystery. Why and how did the Incas build such an impressive estate -- a five-acre city, really, with 150...

Source: University At Buffalo Date: 2004-01-05 Professor Works To Unravel Mysteries Of Khipu: Colored, Knotted Strings Used By The Ancient Incas BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Although the ancient Inca are renowned for their highly organized society and extraordinary skill in working with gold, stone and pottery, few are familiar with the khipu -- an elaborate system of colored, knotted strings that many researchers believe to be primarily mnemonic in nature, like a rosary -- that was used by the ancient conquerors to record census, tribute, genealogies and calendrical information. Because the Inca didn't employ a recognizable system of writing, researchers like...

Dawn of American religion found By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 15/04/2003) The oldest image of a deity in the Americas has been discovered by archaeologists - pushing back the origin of religion there by 1,000 years. A 4,000-year-old gourd fragment bearing an image of the Staff God A 4,250-year-old gourd fragment found in a looted cemetery on the Peruvian coast, 120 miles north of Lima, bears an archaic image of the Staff God, which was the principal deity in the region for millennia. "Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognisable religious icon," said Jonathan Haas, of...

LAKE GUATAVITA, Colombia (Reuters) - Covered in gold dust, the Indian king leapt from the ceremonial raft into the sacred lake as masked shamans sprinkled the waters with gold and emerald offerings to their gods. The ancient ritual of the Golden Man -- "El Dorado" in Spanish -- disappeared long before the arrival of the Spanish in South America, but the legend lured droves of conquistadors and looters to this small lake in the Colombian Andes. A gold-covered man, they reasoned, must be from a city of gold. Although the golden city was never found, the search for El Dorado...