The fact that llamas defecate communally so that their dung is easily gathered underpins the cultural achievement of the Inca civilisation and leads directly to the construction of Machu Picchu, says Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a British palaeoecologist working at the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima. Chepstow-Lusty has studied pollens and oribatid mites from the […]

The 100th anniversary of the ‘rediscovery’ of Machu Picchu in July 1911  has been marked by the return to Peru of some of the finest of the artefacts excavated from the ancient Inca ruins. They will be housed in a new museum and research centre at the University of Cusco. Dubbed the ‘Lost City of […]

A team of archaeologists, working Peruvian Andes, has hailed as ‘sensational’ the discovery of three ‘ancestor stones’ on an isolated Andean mountainside. For the Inca, such ancestor stones were more precious than gold, and imbued with supreme symbolic significance as representing deities, ancestors, and the sun. No examples of the stones were believed to have […]

Human remains unearthed in Lima, capital of Peru, have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca deaths caused by Spanish conquerors around 500 years ago, says Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. In a report on Violence and weapon-related trauma at Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Professor […]

There is a range of other must-see sites on the Northern coastal ‘Moche Route’ that date from before and after the Moche period. Among the gems is the ancient huaca of Cerro Ventarron, which neighbours the Lords of Sipan site, excavated by Walter Alva. At Cerro Ventarron, Walter’s son, Ignatius Alva, is working his father’s […]

4000 year old jewllery found at Jiskairumoko, near lake Titicaca

A 1st millenium AD iron mine has been discovered in the Ingenio Valley, southern Peru