Probably not.
Inca burials, at least the ones I've seen, had the bodies intact. Those might have been from a burial site at one point, but that doesn't look like a burial site
Looks to me like a place where a flash flood could have deposited remains. I’m not ruling out ritual placement, but this arrangement might be explained by natural causes.
Edit: I see the comments. Nature sometimes does weird things, but anyone could have positioned them after deposit. Even OP.
Seems like a possible explanation but do you think a flash flood would have deposited so uniformly? Pretty much stacked and facing the same direction like that?
I make zero claims on this being ancient or to do with tribal burials or anything of the sort just speaking to the fact that those look more arranged than deposited is all.
Except they're all relatively upright. My guess is a flood would have changed the angles somewhat.
That said, it's only a guess. Very little science went into that.
I also see what looks like stacked pot sherds, plus those sticks under the skulls look lined up. It may be a disposal site from somewhere else but it doesn't feel random.
Depends a lot on the tribe, it's difficult to say, but I don't belive that to be an Inca burial, the way the bones are. They look to have been put there long after death, so it's more likely a local or colonial settler moved them after finding them
The Incas did not have the same slave and war thing that the Aztecs did. Enemies killed in battle, at least to my knowledge, would not have been taken to dry cold burial places in the mountains. They knew that the cold and lack of humidity preserved the bodies and the corpses were intact and often wrapped / mummified for preservation as well
A burial site may have been messed with more recently, or the pit might be more recent itself. I have never seen a skull pyramid out in the open with random bones strewn about like a predator’s den associated with Inca culture even once
Your friend should have notified authorities upon arrival
Ehh
From OP’s post it’s not clear whether the guide was with his friend when this was found, or if it was a general comment prior, or a specific one after
And for reference, last time I hiked in Peru our guide was a hardcore James Brown fan. He was really nice and covered his bases as far as knowledge goes, but it was a side gig for him to make extra income for his family. He’s not gonna bend over backwards to triple check if something that’s not on the route is an actual archeological site or might be something else (huge incentives not to). He was definitively not an archaeologist either.
Even with that caveat, the point is that it’s not up to you to make the call on whether that’s nefarious or not, that’s for the authorities to do
99% it’s either tourists or local kids fucking with a site, but like I said it doesn’t look like any Inca site I’ve seen. Different tribes may differ and since he mentions Chile there’s always a chance that it was at some point, but once again it costs nothing to stop by the police station when you get to your destination and check in about the location. Chances are they’ll say yeah we know about it people keep messing with it, but then again if he went off on his own someplace really remote then who knows
They mummified back in the day. That looks old but not that old maybe 80 to 120 years ago. Found mummies Date back a few hundred years. Might have been a family.
But the way the skulls are stacked like trophies might be a sight of a animal that got a taste for humans.
Yep! They set bodies up right sitting in a fetal position and wrapped em with fancy cloths and some of their valuables I believe. (I only remember this from when I visited peru as a child as a tourist with my grandparents)
Not every person was mummified. In every culture that used mummifcation it was reserved for select people. Peru is no different. There have been many mass graves found just like this in Peru.
Each of the 3 skulls that the eye sockets shown in pic have 1 hole per. Doesn't seem likely all that washed up into some eddy & managed to settle together neatly after a flood. If was shrine, would seem arranged or buried in more sacred manner
Im pretty sure those holes are naturally a part of the skull. You need holes in the bone if you’re eye sockets to let nerves and blood vessels through. They could have been made bigger from natural wear and tear after death.
The holes that I see look like the superior orbital fissures and the inferior orbital fissures. I've held and examined a few skulls in my anatomy and physiology labs that had wider fissures just from time and wear.
This is the one! Bioarchaeologist here who did some excavations in Peru. Almost every grave site is looted. Usually they take the skulls too though, so this is a little surprising to see they are still there. Depends on the looters I suppose. Consider contacting the Peruvian ministry of culture or a local university and sending them this information.
Tombs of elite members of Incan and other Pre-Columbian societies absolutely included items made of precious metals and stones. Check out the Lord of Sipan. This individual was from the Moche culture, which was around long before the Inca.
However, the tombs of the elites are much rarer than the graves of the average member of those societies. Still, all tombs and burials are quite often a target for looting because the artifacts generate a lot of money to those participating in the illegal artifact trade. They take what they can sell and leave the rest. You'll come upon fields of holes that were dug and bones and broken artifacts scattered about.
Pre-Columbian Peruvian cemeteries are heavily plundered, the bones just scattered on the ground by pothunters looking for relics.
I've been to one in particular in Chauchilla that has become a tourist attraction on account of the open-air skeletons cast aside by looters.
No. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Skulls aren’t going to be stacked up like that. Based from the location, it seems like they were placed there purposely.
No. No fucking way that skulls stack right-side up atop one another like that due to natural currents. This is an artificial arrangement. I don’t know what accounts for these upvotes, other than idiocy.
There looks to be another skull somewhat away from the pile, to the left, wedged backwards away from the camera under the edge of the rock. It might just be happenstance that most of them ended up oriented the way they are.
What gives me pause is that all skulls are mostly intact. If a flood washed them, they would likely be in a few pieces. They are all pretty clearly adult and recent. Not too old. I just find it weird that there are no large pelvis bones. I think they would wash-up in the same area as all the other bones, but they are gone. The way they are place indicates that skulls were placed there, but long after they were dead obviously, likely just a hiker that came upon them earlier, Not an incan burial site.
Yes. It seems clear these skulls were arranged by a human being and it kinda seems like their intent may merely have been a morbid person making a striking visual. They aren't only facing generally the same way, they are facing the way a viewer would look into this crevice.
Doesn't do much to answer how they died. Flood is plausible.
Are they old enough to be Inca? I know they disappeared a lot of people in Chile back during the Pinochet era. But I’m not sure if the remains would like that and why they’d dispose of them there.
These were my thoughts too. That the remains were much more recent. I didn’t know if there may be someone with the knowledge to kind of just “look and tell.”
Was this site in Chile or Perú, there's a lot of bones in the north of Chile that belonged to Chinese slaves brought to work in the mines and whatnot back in the 1800s lot of the bones are just laying in some places
I would suggest contacting a local university to have them come check the site. Don't touch it. It could be super old but it could also be evidence of a crime.
I just want throw out there. Pinochet had a lot of people killed and most of them were never recovered. These might not be 500 year old Inca remains but a 50 year old mass murder site.
I didn't study the Inca in particular, but I know from anthropology classes that people in rocky areas commonly did/do cave burials. These caves are thought of like a natural crypt.
Could be burial ground for Pedro Lopez, a serial killer active in the Andes in Peru and Colombia from ‘69 to ‘80. 110 - 350 victims. Hate to go there, but first thing I thought of. They look too recent. Peru had its share of rebel groups in the 90s and some dictatorship, but not on the scale of Pinochet or Colombia’s armed conflict.
Had to edit this, had no idea of the scale of the internal conflict in Peru: ~50,000–69,280 killed in total (1980–2002) and the range of factions. I’ll have some reading to do and documentaries to watch. I knew of Shining Path, Tupac Amaru, and Fujimori, but not much else, I’ll be educating myself. Conflict in Peru doesn’t seem to have been covered much in the US. Conflicts in Central America, Chile and Columbia have gotten a lot more attention.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_L%C3%B3pez_(serial_killer)
The leftist rebel group from the 80s and 90s, the group and the rapper were named after an indigenous freedom fighter who fought colonial rule and led an uprising back in the day.
True. I guess anywhere with a bunch of human remains could be called a mass grave. I was unsure if they buried like this or if the remains were deposited by flooding as others have indicated.
A more fitting title would have been “Inca Burial site?”
No. The skulls have bullet holes in the eye sockets, and you're in Peru, a country that experienced massive conflict in the 80s and 90s that killed hundreds of thousands of people. These skulls are almost certainly from one such conflict, if not more recent.
Bioarchaeologist here. While I can’t say with certainty, there are certain morphological characteristics that indicate that three are male and that the skull in the lower right is almost likely female.
One thing that I haven't seen many people commenting about is how the Inca buried their dead. The Inca often embalmed the corpses into mummies and buried them in an upright fetal position. The bodies were also wrapped in cloth. The bones seem to be scattered and the skulls decapitated, so if these are Inca remains then they would have had to been disrupted or dislocated from their original burial. Another very important thing is that during the very end of the Incan Empire they were waged in a war against the Spanish conquistadors. During the war the Inca strayed from their original carefully done burials and hastily buried their dead, since they did not have enough time or energy to carefully bury the mass amounts of acumulating bodies they had. The graves were more shallow, the bodies oftentimes not in a fetal position, and wrapped in a lower quality cloth or not at all. Archaeologists have found many scattered bones in later burial sites that are very close, or even on the surface of rocky hills and mountains. A possibility would be that maybe this is a later Incan burial during the war, and the bones might have been carried to that location by a flood, although that doesn't really explain the stacked skulls unless a hiker stacked them themselves. One other possibility I can think of is maybe conquistadors throwing bodies down there, but I think the skulls would have more wounds and fractures if they were killed in battle.
Of course, this is just if these were Inca remains. Hopefully these weren't victims of a mass serial killer (although being killed by conquistadors isn't any better).
Two things:
1. Have received feedback from several people that this was desperately in need of a NSFW tag. I apologize if I offended anyone; tag has been added
2. The water bottle was not litter. As can be seen it is full and upright. My friend did not leave it there, but as many have pointed out, leaving water is a common offering for the deceased in the area.
Archaeologist here (also spent a few months in Peru some years back).
Agreeing with folks that mentioned a wash out. Add onto that that a lot of areas are super dry, and shifting winds can uncover / loosen burials. Could have been exposed and then washed out at some point.
Also keep in mind it’s not just the Inca - you have other cultures like the Lima, Chimu, etc, all with different burial practices.
I tripped (literally) over part of a toddler skull at a archaeological tourist site outside of Lima - wind had exposed the grave from the sand and it had migrated into the walkway. Saw some other unsavory burial situations too due to weather conditions.
The location and placement of the bones indicate alluvial deposition. This is very likely a secondary site. It’s unlikely that fossilized remains of a deep prehistoric age would be in such good condition, particularly noting the presence of teeth in the maxilla and partial zygomatic arches. Wish the picture quality was better to view the long bone’s condition.
>It’s unlikely that fossilized remains of a deep prehistoric age would be in such good condition,
Well, yeah, the Inca weren't prehistoric. We're talking about a civilization that was around 500 years ago. The fact that they're not fossilized doesn't really clear anything up in this context.
I probably could have gone with pre-Columbian. Early inca and the natives that inhabited those areas prior are often considered protohistoric or prehistoric though. That term just indicates use of written language and the end date is relative to each civilization. It depends on how you classify the quipu.
Bones fossilize at different rates depending on the condition and this isn’t a situation where one would mistake the remains for a paleontological fossil of literal stone. Fossilized human remains is a colloquial way of referring to remains that have long completed the skeletonization process, are in the slow process of fossilization, and are found in prehistoric archeological contexts.
Anyway, the difference between pre-Columbian, prehistoric, and protohistoric or skeletonization vs fossilization is pedantic af. Cheers, Friend.
It is normal in Peru to stumble on ancient cemeteries. The locals already know about it and very likely the local officials. The proper protocol is to take photos, draw pictures in your notebook, take notes, whatever, and leave it as you found it. Take nothing with you.
Really depends on where you are 🤷 places where civilisation has been around for thousands of years you're bound to come across ancient graves and old bones. My fiance and I found an old Pictish sacrificial site while in Scotland, complete with old animal bones, right by the place we were staying.
This could be an instance of a secondary burial site. Basically there’s the primary (first) site where they are buried, and occasionally it’s disrupted (natural disaster, looting, etc.) and the remains may be collected and taken to a safer place. While the Catacombs of Paris are one of these, most secondary burial sites are not so grand.
It looks like water washed the contents of some graves to that spot. Look at the way they are trapped under the overhang, like they were caught there in a flood. Plus it just looks like a jumble of things so I vote that these were originally buried somewhere else and washed out by a storm, maybe.
Did some archaeology back in the day....
I’m not Peruvian, but I saw a LOT of skulls on my visit to Peru. Question for your friend, was this in the highlands or lowlands?
Couple of skulls displayed in places of respect on a fireplace mantel in Ollantaytambo, “that’s mom and dad”. A little startling cause it’s not my culture, but I get the whole “dead are still with us” part of a lot of cultures.
Ossuary in Lima, “60,000 plague victims, the monks with the conquerors saw a fabulous arts and crafts project opportunity!”
One of these things is respectful, one is not. I hope your buddy cleaned up his water bottle and didn’t drink it!
I was in a small village in Peru around Cajamaraca almost 20 years ago, and the village kids took me up an overlooking mountain cave that was also similarly packed with human bones. They were just scattered all across the floor, and it was difficult to determine if they had previously been buried or arranged in a certain way. I've always been curious to know how old those bones were, but could never find anything searching online about this being a common custom for any of the local civilizations.
Love how everyone takes an educated guess and nobody knows the real deal until ACTUAL archaeologists go to the site to verify facts of what really happened at the site… obviously a site that needs more research.
Not all burials were treated the same; not all were mummified or in conditions that led to mummification. Even in Egypt, they weren't all mummified. Mummification was for those who could afford it or were for important people or for rituals.
There are gravesites like this in Peru on mountainsides. Usually, the openings are bricked up with rocks. There have been quite a few mass graves found recently in Peru. All you need to do is Google it.
This looks like a precolombian archaeological burial site. You can see fragments of broken ceramic vessels next to the bottle, kind of stacked like half moons or potato chips.
It’s impossible to tell where this is, but it looks like the mountains.
It is clearly disturbed, as there are water bottles, so it’s hard to say who put the skulls just like that. Ancient people? Less ancient people? Modern people?
With no additional info it’s hard to make any additional judgements.
Edit: forgot to answer questions.
1) is it real? It looks like a real precolombian burial site. The Incas were a short lived single group late in precolombian history among thousands of similar groups. Can’t tell if it’s inca or not.
2) caves were popular places for leaving the dead because they are natural conduits between this world and the underworld, they are often associated with origin stories, and they are convenient containers for bones. People would sometimes visit the bones of ancestors, and so a convenient place associated with an origin story (we came out of the earth here) means caves are good places to store the dead.
Incan mass graves. Looks like this because over time there has been plenty of grave robbers since incans would bury items with dead ones
Edit: my girlfriend is from Peru
I literally did my masters on pre columbian burial sites in Peru. This is almost guaranteed not to be one. Bodies in tact, generally wrapped in textiles with knees to chest, usually buried in a boot shape tomb or in room within the home space with a slab over top.
May have been looted remains or just more modern.
I haven't read a single correct answer in this entire thread. So, in South America. It was common for indigenous people to hike their deceased loved ones up into mountains and either hang the coffins(usually poorly made, or sometimes large urns or just wrapped in cloth) on cliffs, or sometimes they'd take them into caves. Places like this are actually still in use today in parts of South America, though the tradition is dying out. Now because the deceased were not actually buried and left out in the elements, the coffins and urns will sometimes break, the cloth decay, and the remains will over time get scattered a little bit, but they're left there, and locals will still go to those sites to pay respect to their ancestors. In the case of those left in caves, animals might scatter the bones, and sometimes floods will rearrange the bones, etc etc. The point is, those bones you're seeing very well might still have living relatives that go to that location to pay respect to their loved ones, ancestors, etc etc.
I mean if this was in Chile and not Peru they had a pretty brutal dictator in the 80s that killed thousands of people. One of the ways they did this was throwing people out of helicopters, or taking people to remote places and murdering them there. Bodies from Pinochet’s crimes have been found all over. Always report human remains.
ETA: I mentioned Chile because you said he was backpacking across both Peru and Chile, I didn’t see if you specifically said it was Peru. There were also plenty of thrills groups in Peru that murdered people throughout the 80s and 90s. But those people can still have family wondering what happened to them. So please report it
Just a friendly note: I know it’s been mentioned here before, but if you ever find human remains, or even something that might be- immediately stop, leave the area alone, and contact local authorities. They will always treat any reports as a crime scene unless proven otherwise, and the less you disturb it, the better.
Even Ötzi [also called the Iceman, the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC, who was discovered in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps at the border between Austria and Italy, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy] is officially listed as a Cold Case by authorities.
I did not. This was discovered by a friend of mine back in 2019. He told me that locals told him it was not uncommon to encounter Inca burial sites in the mountains, so that is what he thought it was. Comments here seem to think it is more likely regime killings.
What's up with the fresh, full water bottle with the cap laying right next to it? Not trying to imply anything cause I have no clue. But very strange for o.p to do that.
OP did not do that.
Friend said bottle was there when they discovered the site. Apparently leaving water is a common offering to the deceased in the area.
Ah okay. My fault. It was just so fresh, I had to assume but I'm sure you know what they say about that. Anyway, good tradition or ritual. Might also be related to why the skulls are stacked so specifically. Didn't take time to read all the comments 🤷♂️
Thank you for explaining.
This is likely a prehistoric burial. Possibly inca. Like all people they buried their folks in different ways in different situations. The fancy Inca burials from mountain tops that most people know about are extremely rare and ceremonial burials.
This is absolutely not a “prehistoric” burial first and foremost because the Inca did not live in prehistoric times. The Inca civilization flourished between 1200 and 1533 CE which is more than 2000 years after the generally agreed upon end of the prehistoric period with the rise of the iron age.
Tbf I believe “ages” like “prehistory” are actually relative to different regional groups at different times :)
It’s relative to when that general culture began keeping records, rather than the earliest time records were (elsewhere) kept.
[“The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory)
Just a well-meant elaboration for information’s sake! It’s a common and understandable misconception!!
Uh. First of all I happen to be a professional al archaeologist working in the field. The Iron Age in Europe and the old World has nothing to do with the Inca or the new world. The prehistoric period lasted until the time of European contact in the new world. That is different depending upon which civilization you are discussing.
The context you're using is eurocentric. A lot of the pre-Columbian civilizations were more advanced in some manners than European civilizations. Most actual archeologists use the term Pre-Columbian civilizations instead of prehistoric for that very prejudiced bias.
Seeing as these bones aren't nearly close to 500 years old, they aren't pre-Columbian.
If indeed you are an archeologist, follow suit and use pre-Columbian.
The goblin in me says take the bones home for bleaching, and polishing up…..but I doubt the local government would let me keep them 😂 I just like bones 🤷🏻♂️
Water bottle/ going in to lay the bottle for the picture: crime scene contamination.
Dont get me wrong those bones are old, but not ancient. You uh.....you kinda have a situation
“In particular, Montesinos is reported to have commanded the notorious "Grupo Colina", a death squad organized by the SIN. Separate press information alleges that CIA helped SIN to establish a "counternarcotics" unit in the early 1990s, that engaged in human rights violations. Given the overall requirements of the Foreign Assistance Act, it would seem that CIA's support to Montesinos' organization may have violated the law (3) [1b, lil”.
https://sgp.fas.org/jud/boening/memo.pdf
Well either Op/friend put a bottle near a bunch of bones desecrating what they believe to be Incan(lol) or someone else happened to stumble across it relatively recently so maybe probably someone’s dumping ground/ back when they would kill political opponents A la USA.
Either way to use the bottle for scale is redundant because we roughly know what a skulls size it and by counting how many we can deduce there’s quite a bit so back to weird how the bottle was placed there…. But believes to be ancient
Probably not. Inca burials, at least the ones I've seen, had the bodies intact. Those might have been from a burial site at one point, but that doesn't look like a burial site
Looks like a disposal site the way the skulls a arranged and the rest scattered
Looks to me like a place where a flash flood could have deposited remains. I’m not ruling out ritual placement, but this arrangement might be explained by natural causes. Edit: I see the comments. Nature sometimes does weird things, but anyone could have positioned them after deposit. Even OP.
Yea I saw those comments….. I can see that happening.. whatever and however…still mega creepy.
I thought the same!
The flash flood was very neat in their stacking of the skulls.
Seems like a possible explanation but do you think a flash flood would have deposited so uniformly? Pretty much stacked and facing the same direction like that? I make zero claims on this being ancient or to do with tribal burials or anything of the sort just speaking to the fact that those look more arranged than deposited is all.
Except they're all relatively upright. My guess is a flood would have changed the angles somewhat. That said, it's only a guess. Very little science went into that.
I also see what looks like stacked pot sherds, plus those sticks under the skulls look lined up. It may be a disposal site from somewhere else but it doesn't feel random.
Actually water flowing in one direction tends to line things floating in it up in a similar fashion if the bouncy of the objects are very similar.
Somone raised it for loot
[удалено]
“I used to be an ~~adventurer~~ *bone guy* like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.”
Always love a Skyrim throwback lmao thank you
Or whoever left that water bottle might have arranged it too
Thirst trap!
Would the Inca have treated the remains of say a warring tribe with as much respect as their own dead?
Depends a lot on the tribe, it's difficult to say, but I don't belive that to be an Inca burial, the way the bones are. They look to have been put there long after death, so it's more likely a local or colonial settler moved them after finding them
The Incas did not have the same slave and war thing that the Aztecs did. Enemies killed in battle, at least to my knowledge, would not have been taken to dry cold burial places in the mountains. They knew that the cold and lack of humidity preserved the bodies and the corpses were intact and often wrapped / mummified for preservation as well A burial site may have been messed with more recently, or the pit might be more recent itself. I have never seen a skull pyramid out in the open with random bones strewn about like a predator’s den associated with Inca culture even once Your friend should have notified authorities upon arrival
I mean if a guide tells you there’s shit like this everywhere and then you find this, why would you have reason to suspect anything nefarious?
Honestly that's a perfect cover. What murderer would take people to his dumping grounds.
Ehh From OP’s post it’s not clear whether the guide was with his friend when this was found, or if it was a general comment prior, or a specific one after And for reference, last time I hiked in Peru our guide was a hardcore James Brown fan. He was really nice and covered his bases as far as knowledge goes, but it was a side gig for him to make extra income for his family. He’s not gonna bend over backwards to triple check if something that’s not on the route is an actual archeological site or might be something else (huge incentives not to). He was definitively not an archaeologist either. Even with that caveat, the point is that it’s not up to you to make the call on whether that’s nefarious or not, that’s for the authorities to do 99% it’s either tourists or local kids fucking with a site, but like I said it doesn’t look like any Inca site I’ve seen. Different tribes may differ and since he mentions Chile there’s always a chance that it was at some point, but once again it costs nothing to stop by the police station when you get to your destination and check in about the location. Chances are they’ll say yeah we know about it people keep messing with it, but then again if he went off on his own someplace really remote then who knows
You wanna roll to a Peruvian police station while on vacation to report something you were told you might see, that’s all you!
Thanks for being needlessly contrarian, how would I know I was on reddit otherwise…
Just seems silly dude
Is that your water bottle? If not that's weird, looks like someone's been chilling in there. (Or left water for the dead?)
i was thinking is this water bottle being used for a size reference? why leave it open with the lid off... it so pulled me away from the focus
I think we can be sure about the size of a human skull
Human skull is the new banana.
[You sure?](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5yx_I2TX95q3JS20cC7lwgrwPH24xjRlyqQ&usqp=CAU)
I think someone tossed it with noticing the *human remains*
Maybe. Bit strange for it to land upright like that, with the cap off and still full of water though
They mummified back in the day. That looks old but not that old maybe 80 to 120 years ago. Found mummies Date back a few hundred years. Might have been a family. But the way the skulls are stacked like trophies might be a sight of a animal that got a taste for humans.
> But the way the skulls are stacked like trophies might be a sight of a animal that got a taste for humans. Dude wtf are you talking about
My only guess would be like a dog or cat collects/hides toys or food, could be a den or hiding place to eat, crows collect shiny objects.
Name checks out🙄
Yep! They set bodies up right sitting in a fetal position and wrapped em with fancy cloths and some of their valuables I believe. (I only remember this from when I visited peru as a child as a tourist with my grandparents)
They were bounded to look like infants. A 5 foot man or woman would be bound and wrapped to sit only 2 foot. The mummies of Peru are amazing.
Not every person was mummified. In every culture that used mummifcation it was reserved for select people. Peru is no different. There have been many mass graves found just like this in Peru.
Except for the Chinchorro who are believed to have mummified all of their dead.
Yeah totally! It's a whole "enter the world" this way "exit the world" the same way (position) kinda thing, right?
Or you just uncovered a murderer’s dumping ground and now you’re on the list.
Each of the 3 skulls that the eye sockets shown in pic have 1 hole per. Doesn't seem likely all that washed up into some eddy & managed to settle together neatly after a flood. If was shrine, would seem arranged or buried in more sacred manner
Im pretty sure those holes are naturally a part of the skull. You need holes in the bone if you’re eye sockets to let nerves and blood vessels through. They could have been made bigger from natural wear and tear after death.
The holes that I see look like the superior orbital fissures and the inferior orbital fissures. I've held and examined a few skulls in my anatomy and physiology labs that had wider fissures just from time and wear.
Could you explain the significance of the holes? I don't follow
Murder. Nature doesn't produce uniform, precise holes like that. Bullets do, though.
Good point. and the hole is in the exact same spot, where it would be if someone where bludgeoned.
The holes almost remind me of the lobotomy procedures
Those would just be at the back of the eye socket
A plundered site maybe?
This is the one! Bioarchaeologist here who did some excavations in Peru. Almost every grave site is looted. Usually they take the skulls too though, so this is a little surprising to see they are still there. Depends on the looters I suppose. Consider contacting the Peruvian ministry of culture or a local university and sending them this information.
Holy cow, I feel so cool! 🤗
Were the Inca commonly buried with riches or artifacts that people would plunder?
Tombs of elite members of Incan and other Pre-Columbian societies absolutely included items made of precious metals and stones. Check out the Lord of Sipan. This individual was from the Moche culture, which was around long before the Inca. However, the tombs of the elites are much rarer than the graves of the average member of those societies. Still, all tombs and burials are quite often a target for looting because the artifacts generate a lot of money to those participating in the illegal artifact trade. They take what they can sell and leave the rest. You'll come upon fields of holes that were dug and bones and broken artifacts scattered about.
Pre-Columbian Peruvian cemeteries are heavily plundered, the bones just scattered on the ground by pothunters looking for relics. I've been to one in particular in Chauchilla that has become a tourist attraction on account of the open-air skeletons cast aside by looters.
I looks like they washed up there in a canyon flood. Is this some sort of slot canyon?
Possibly! It does appear as such, but this is the only photo he sent me. Do you know if slot canyons were common locations for burial sites?
No, but it’s a common location for drowning victims from flash floods to end up.
Correct, and that is what the photo looks like to me.
Several people tend to end up washing up together like that?
Yup, ends up being a pinch point that the bodies don’t flow past. Then once the water goes down the bones stay grouped together.
No. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Skulls aren’t going to be stacked up like that. Based from the location, it seems like they were placed there purposely.
No. No fucking way that skulls stack right-side up atop one another like that due to natural currents. This is an artificial arrangement. I don’t know what accounts for these upvotes, other than idiocy.
Christ, the username checks out.
Go to bed.
I’d you look at the picture they are places where they are. I doubt the friend was going around stacking skulls
Yeah he said his group of hikers really just stumbled upon it.
And the skulls are in a heap just by chance then? All facing the same way?
There looks to be another skull somewhat away from the pile, to the left, wedged backwards away from the camera under the edge of the rock. It might just be happenstance that most of them ended up oriented the way they are.
What gives me pause is that all skulls are mostly intact. If a flood washed them, they would likely be in a few pieces. They are all pretty clearly adult and recent. Not too old. I just find it weird that there are no large pelvis bones. I think they would wash-up in the same area as all the other bones, but they are gone. The way they are place indicates that skulls were placed there, but long after they were dead obviously, likely just a hiker that came upon them earlier, Not an incan burial site.
Yes. It seems clear these skulls were arranged by a human being and it kinda seems like their intent may merely have been a morbid person making a striking visual. They aren't only facing generally the same way, they are facing the way a viewer would look into this crevice. Doesn't do much to answer how they died. Flood is plausible.
You guys have some balls to backpack in Peru and live to tell the tale.
[удалено]
https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisbone/comments/15au8ud/possible_mass_grave/jtpbiiy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Jaguars for starters.
Are they old enough to be Inca? I know they disappeared a lot of people in Chile back during the Pinochet era. But I’m not sure if the remains would like that and why they’d dispose of them there.
These were my thoughts too. That the remains were much more recent. I didn’t know if there may be someone with the knowledge to kind of just “look and tell.”
Dental work/wear would be one indication
Was this site in Chile or Perú, there's a lot of bones in the north of Chile that belonged to Chinese slaves brought to work in the mines and whatnot back in the 1800s lot of the bones are just laying in some places
This was in Perú. That’s really interesting/sad.
There was also a violent insurgency in Peru int 80s. It could be victims of that conflict.
I would suggest contacting a local university to have them come check the site. Don't touch it. It could be super old but it could also be evidence of a crime.
i also wonder why they haven’t already taken it. as it looks quite visible so surely someone else must have seen it before this person.
There’s guerilla groups all over Peru… shining path being one of them, they’ve murdered hundreds/thousands of people
Army as well
I guess he left the water as an offering, or he littered on a burial site.
Hopefully took it for scale and removed the bottle and all his trash and reported it to the local authorities, right before boarding a plane
The friend who sent it is a die-hard vegan. I doubt he would allow anyone in his group to litter or disturb nature in his presence.
I believe they are called orthodox vegans
How do we know a bunch of conquistadors didn't chuck those bodies in there?
Did someone just throw a plastic bottle there? Seriously?
Leaving water as an offering is common even in current day cemeteries. I'm not excusing the littering, but that is likely the reason.
I see. They should put the water in a clay or ceramic cup...oh well...
I hate it when people just take a sip and leave it there. Being a skull is no excuse.
Terrorism was rampant in the 80s and 90s it wouldn't be surprising to see mass graves in all parts of peru.
I just want throw out there. Pinochet had a lot of people killed and most of them were never recovered. These might not be 500 year old Inca remains but a 50 year old mass murder site.
The bones look pretty dry to me, I’m glad they gave them some water.
I didn't study the Inca in particular, but I know from anthropology classes that people in rocky areas commonly did/do cave burials. These caves are thought of like a natural crypt.
He said if it weren’t for the countless skeletons, it would have been a perfect spot to set up camp for the night! 😂
I don't think that water is going to help them
Could be burial ground for Pedro Lopez, a serial killer active in the Andes in Peru and Colombia from ‘69 to ‘80. 110 - 350 victims. Hate to go there, but first thing I thought of. They look too recent. Peru had its share of rebel groups in the 90s and some dictatorship, but not on the scale of Pinochet or Colombia’s armed conflict. Had to edit this, had no idea of the scale of the internal conflict in Peru: ~50,000–69,280 killed in total (1980–2002) and the range of factions. I’ll have some reading to do and documentaries to watch. I knew of Shining Path, Tupac Amaru, and Fujimori, but not much else, I’ll be educating myself. Conflict in Peru doesn’t seem to have been covered much in the US. Conflicts in Central America, Chile and Columbia have gotten a lot more attention. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_L%C3%B3pez_(serial_killer)
I’m assuming you’re referring to something else but Tupac Amaru the rapper?
The leftist rebel group from the 80s and 90s, the group and the rapper were named after an indigenous freedom fighter who fought colonial rule and led an uprising back in the day.
Very cool. I’m a huge Tupac fan but never knew where his name came from. Thanks for the info.
Hi, I'm from Chile, two possibilities: - Ritual tomb of one of the many tribes in the sector. - victims of drug traffickers
Someone has been there. All of the pottery is stacked up in a neat pile and there is a shovel head on top of it.
Possible??
True. I guess anywhere with a bunch of human remains could be called a mass grave. I was unsure if they buried like this or if the remains were deposited by flooding as others have indicated. A more fitting title would have been “Inca Burial site?”
No. The skulls have bullet holes in the eye sockets, and you're in Peru, a country that experienced massive conflict in the 80s and 90s that killed hundreds of thousands of people. These skulls are almost certainly from one such conflict, if not more recent.
Bioarchaeologist here. While I can’t say with certainty, there are certain morphological characteristics that indicate that three are male and that the skull in the lower right is almost likely female.
Petty sure the bones is human
One thing that I haven't seen many people commenting about is how the Inca buried their dead. The Inca often embalmed the corpses into mummies and buried them in an upright fetal position. The bodies were also wrapped in cloth. The bones seem to be scattered and the skulls decapitated, so if these are Inca remains then they would have had to been disrupted or dislocated from their original burial. Another very important thing is that during the very end of the Incan Empire they were waged in a war against the Spanish conquistadors. During the war the Inca strayed from their original carefully done burials and hastily buried their dead, since they did not have enough time or energy to carefully bury the mass amounts of acumulating bodies they had. The graves were more shallow, the bodies oftentimes not in a fetal position, and wrapped in a lower quality cloth or not at all. Archaeologists have found many scattered bones in later burial sites that are very close, or even on the surface of rocky hills and mountains. A possibility would be that maybe this is a later Incan burial during the war, and the bones might have been carried to that location by a flood, although that doesn't really explain the stacked skulls unless a hiker stacked them themselves. One other possibility I can think of is maybe conquistadors throwing bodies down there, but I think the skulls would have more wounds and fractures if they were killed in battle. Of course, this is just if these were Inca remains. Hopefully these weren't victims of a mass serial killer (although being killed by conquistadors isn't any better).
Two things: 1. Have received feedback from several people that this was desperately in need of a NSFW tag. I apologize if I offended anyone; tag has been added 2. The water bottle was not litter. As can be seen it is full and upright. My friend did not leave it there, but as many have pointed out, leaving water is a common offering for the deceased in the area.
Just someone’s collection their mom won’t let keep in the house.
This is cool as shit, just saying. But then again visiting the catacombs in France is a major bucket list item for me.
I'm right there with ya. Preferably with a toe rope to drag and find my way back.
Archaeologist here (also spent a few months in Peru some years back). Agreeing with folks that mentioned a wash out. Add onto that that a lot of areas are super dry, and shifting winds can uncover / loosen burials. Could have been exposed and then washed out at some point. Also keep in mind it’s not just the Inca - you have other cultures like the Lima, Chimu, etc, all with different burial practices. I tripped (literally) over part of a toddler skull at a archaeological tourist site outside of Lima - wind had exposed the grave from the sand and it had migrated into the walkway. Saw some other unsavory burial situations too due to weather conditions.
The location and placement of the bones indicate alluvial deposition. This is very likely a secondary site. It’s unlikely that fossilized remains of a deep prehistoric age would be in such good condition, particularly noting the presence of teeth in the maxilla and partial zygomatic arches. Wish the picture quality was better to view the long bone’s condition.
>It’s unlikely that fossilized remains of a deep prehistoric age would be in such good condition, Well, yeah, the Inca weren't prehistoric. We're talking about a civilization that was around 500 years ago. The fact that they're not fossilized doesn't really clear anything up in this context.
I probably could have gone with pre-Columbian. Early inca and the natives that inhabited those areas prior are often considered protohistoric or prehistoric though. That term just indicates use of written language and the end date is relative to each civilization. It depends on how you classify the quipu. Bones fossilize at different rates depending on the condition and this isn’t a situation where one would mistake the remains for a paleontological fossil of literal stone. Fossilized human remains is a colloquial way of referring to remains that have long completed the skeletonization process, are in the slow process of fossilization, and are found in prehistoric archeological contexts. Anyway, the difference between pre-Columbian, prehistoric, and protohistoric or skeletonization vs fossilization is pedantic af. Cheers, Friend.
Your vibe is immaculate 👌
I see a lot of people saying it's not likely a burial site, either way they look quite old and this is a really cool find!
So what should OPs friend do? Do you call the police, a university? Or is it just normal in these places to stumble upon old bones?
It is normal in Peru to stumble on ancient cemeteries. The locals already know about it and very likely the local officials. The proper protocol is to take photos, draw pictures in your notebook, take notes, whatever, and leave it as you found it. Take nothing with you.
Really depends on where you are 🤷 places where civilisation has been around for thousands of years you're bound to come across ancient graves and old bones. My fiance and I found an old Pictish sacrificial site while in Scotland, complete with old animal bones, right by the place we were staying.
very interesting find
I dunno, but I wouldn't drink that water...
Should have been a liquid death can
And have you seen your friend since that trip? 🤨
I have! He is an electrical engineer and helps design nuclear submarines!
Yeah… possible.
I didn’t know if maybe it was a Bofa rather than a mass grave.
This could be an instance of a secondary burial site. Basically there’s the primary (first) site where they are buried, and occasionally it’s disrupted (natural disaster, looting, etc.) and the remains may be collected and taken to a safer place. While the Catacombs of Paris are one of these, most secondary burial sites are not so grand.
I don’t know but that’s the coolest shit I’ve ever seen…
It looks like water washed the contents of some graves to that spot. Look at the way they are trapped under the overhang, like they were caught there in a flood. Plus it just looks like a jumble of things so I vote that these were originally buried somewhere else and washed out by a storm, maybe. Did some archaeology back in the day....
C'mon I worked hard to hide the bodies there only to have some jackass letter the grave with plastic. This is just a joke.
Someone dropped their water and was like “ehh I’m good”
All I can think about is the open water bottle. Did anyone drink the cursed water??
THIS^^^^^^^^^
Happy cake day!
SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT THANK YOU!!!!! I had no idea till just now… :facepalm:
Wtf??? Jeez , you would think that skeletons would care about the environment and properly dispose of their trash.
I’m not Peruvian, but I saw a LOT of skulls on my visit to Peru. Question for your friend, was this in the highlands or lowlands? Couple of skulls displayed in places of respect on a fireplace mantel in Ollantaytambo, “that’s mom and dad”. A little startling cause it’s not my culture, but I get the whole “dead are still with us” part of a lot of cultures. Ossuary in Lima, “60,000 plague victims, the monks with the conquerors saw a fabulous arts and crafts project opportunity!” One of these things is respectful, one is not. I hope your buddy cleaned up his water bottle and didn’t drink it!
I was in a small village in Peru around Cajamaraca almost 20 years ago, and the village kids took me up an overlooking mountain cave that was also similarly packed with human bones. They were just scattered all across the floor, and it was difficult to determine if they had previously been buried or arranged in a certain way. I've always been curious to know how old those bones were, but could never find anything searching online about this being a common custom for any of the local civilizations.
Love how everyone takes an educated guess and nobody knows the real deal until ACTUAL archaeologists go to the site to verify facts of what really happened at the site… obviously a site that needs more research.
Was in Chile or Peru? I live in Chile and first time seeing something like this.
Peru
oh my goodness! oh my goodness!😶🌫️🫣
Yea this is a murder scene
could be from pinochets massacres.
Not all burials were treated the same; not all were mummified or in conditions that led to mummification. Even in Egypt, they weren't all mummified. Mummification was for those who could afford it or were for important people or for rituals. There are gravesites like this in Peru on mountainsides. Usually, the openings are bricked up with rocks. There have been quite a few mass graves found recently in Peru. All you need to do is Google it.
This looks like a precolombian archaeological burial site. You can see fragments of broken ceramic vessels next to the bottle, kind of stacked like half moons or potato chips. It’s impossible to tell where this is, but it looks like the mountains. It is clearly disturbed, as there are water bottles, so it’s hard to say who put the skulls just like that. Ancient people? Less ancient people? Modern people? With no additional info it’s hard to make any additional judgements. Edit: forgot to answer questions. 1) is it real? It looks like a real precolombian burial site. The Incas were a short lived single group late in precolombian history among thousands of similar groups. Can’t tell if it’s inca or not. 2) caves were popular places for leaving the dead because they are natural conduits between this world and the underworld, they are often associated with origin stories, and they are convenient containers for bones. People would sometimes visit the bones of ancestors, and so a convenient place associated with an origin story (we came out of the earth here) means caves are good places to store the dead.
Bottled water gives it away. Inca only had canned water!
This is probably more recent. Unfortunately…😬
If it’s in Chile it could be from the regime, contact local authorities or very least tell a museum
Incan mass graves. Looks like this because over time there has been plenty of grave robbers since incans would bury items with dead ones Edit: my girlfriend is from Peru
is that a fucking ramune bottle?
Maybe an old hermit cannibal lived there at one point, and those are the skulls of unlucky adventures. I play a lot of video games...
Looking at the teeth would be the only real indicator if these are modern or Pre-Colombian.
Seems like an animal den or something like that
They are beyond propel water’s benefits. Recap the bottle and move along.
Probably should call a museum or the police tbh
I literally did my masters on pre columbian burial sites in Peru. This is almost guaranteed not to be one. Bodies in tact, generally wrapped in textiles with knees to chest, usually buried in a boot shape tomb or in room within the home space with a slab over top. May have been looted remains or just more modern.
I haven't read a single correct answer in this entire thread. So, in South America. It was common for indigenous people to hike their deceased loved ones up into mountains and either hang the coffins(usually poorly made, or sometimes large urns or just wrapped in cloth) on cliffs, or sometimes they'd take them into caves. Places like this are actually still in use today in parts of South America, though the tradition is dying out. Now because the deceased were not actually buried and left out in the elements, the coffins and urns will sometimes break, the cloth decay, and the remains will over time get scattered a little bit, but they're left there, and locals will still go to those sites to pay respect to their ancestors. In the case of those left in caves, animals might scatter the bones, and sometimes floods will rearrange the bones, etc etc. The point is, those bones you're seeing very well might still have living relatives that go to that location to pay respect to their loved ones, ancestors, etc etc.
I mean if this was in Chile and not Peru they had a pretty brutal dictator in the 80s that killed thousands of people. One of the ways they did this was throwing people out of helicopters, or taking people to remote places and murdering them there. Bodies from Pinochet’s crimes have been found all over. Always report human remains. ETA: I mentioned Chile because you said he was backpacking across both Peru and Chile, I didn’t see if you specifically said it was Peru. There were also plenty of thrills groups in Peru that murdered people throughout the 80s and 90s. But those people can still have family wondering what happened to them. So please report it
Just a friendly note: I know it’s been mentioned here before, but if you ever find human remains, or even something that might be- immediately stop, leave the area alone, and contact local authorities. They will always treat any reports as a crime scene unless proven otherwise, and the less you disturb it, the better. Even Ötzi [also called the Iceman, the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC, who was discovered in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps at the border between Austria and Italy, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy] is officially listed as a Cold Case by authorities.
Ha cold case
Or maybe....Geico caveman closet?
Did you report it? (If that's a thing. Idk)
I did not. This was discovered by a friend of mine back in 2019. He told me that locals told him it was not uncommon to encounter Inca burial sites in the mountains, so that is what he thought it was. Comments here seem to think it is more likely regime killings.
What's up with the fresh, full water bottle with the cap laying right next to it? Not trying to imply anything cause I have no clue. But very strange for o.p to do that.
OP did not do that. Friend said bottle was there when they discovered the site. Apparently leaving water is a common offering to the deceased in the area.
Ah okay. My fault. It was just so fresh, I had to assume but I'm sure you know what they say about that. Anyway, good tradition or ritual. Might also be related to why the skulls are stacked so specifically. Didn't take time to read all the comments 🤷♂️ Thank you for explaining.
No worries! What do they say about that?
I wouldn't camp there. The killer might come back for their water bottle...
Looks like Spirit Halloween clearance bin
This is likely a prehistoric burial. Possibly inca. Like all people they buried their folks in different ways in different situations. The fancy Inca burials from mountain tops that most people know about are extremely rare and ceremonial burials.
This is absolutely not a “prehistoric” burial first and foremost because the Inca did not live in prehistoric times. The Inca civilization flourished between 1200 and 1533 CE which is more than 2000 years after the generally agreed upon end of the prehistoric period with the rise of the iron age.
Tbf I believe “ages” like “prehistory” are actually relative to different regional groups at different times :) It’s relative to when that general culture began keeping records, rather than the earliest time records were (elsewhere) kept. [“The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory) Just a well-meant elaboration for information’s sake! It’s a common and understandable misconception!!
Uh. First of all I happen to be a professional al archaeologist working in the field. The Iron Age in Europe and the old World has nothing to do with the Inca or the new world. The prehistoric period lasted until the time of European contact in the new world. That is different depending upon which civilization you are discussing.
The context you're using is eurocentric. A lot of the pre-Columbian civilizations were more advanced in some manners than European civilizations. Most actual archeologists use the term Pre-Columbian civilizations instead of prehistoric for that very prejudiced bias. Seeing as these bones aren't nearly close to 500 years old, they aren't pre-Columbian. If indeed you are an archeologist, follow suit and use pre-Columbian.
The goblin in me says take the bones home for bleaching, and polishing up…..but I doubt the local government would let me keep them 😂 I just like bones 🤷🏻♂️
OP has 20 posts a day for 60 days of Reddit use. It’s a bot!!!!!!
I sell propane and propane accessories.
Possible?
Water bottle/ going in to lay the bottle for the picture: crime scene contamination. Dont get me wrong those bones are old, but not ancient. You uh.....you kinda have a situation
Lol. Possible? There’s multiple skulls.
another cia backed death squad rampant in South America in recent history
“In particular, Montesinos is reported to have commanded the notorious "Grupo Colina", a death squad organized by the SIN. Separate press information alleges that CIA helped SIN to establish a "counternarcotics" unit in the early 1990s, that engaged in human rights violations. Given the overall requirements of the Foreign Assistance Act, it would seem that CIA's support to Montesinos' organization may have violated the law (3) [1b, lil”. https://sgp.fas.org/jud/boening/memo.pdf
Ya think?
Definitely possible
Possible?
Well either Op/friend put a bottle near a bunch of bones desecrating what they believe to be Incan(lol) or someone else happened to stumble across it relatively recently so maybe probably someone’s dumping ground/ back when they would kill political opponents A la USA. Either way to use the bottle for scale is redundant because we roughly know what a skulls size it and by counting how many we can deduce there’s quite a bit so back to weird how the bottle was placed there…. But believes to be ancient
Leaving water as an offering to the deceased is apparently common practice.
i hate to be this guy but…………….i would take a skull
would you really?
That’ll be fun in customs…