192 Human Spines Skewered On Sticks Found In Peru

Nearly 200 sets of reconstructed human spines that date all the way back to the 16th century were found in a valley in Peru, researchers revealed in a study.

Most of the 192 spines — dubbed "vertebrae-on-posts” or simply “posts” — were found in large Indigenous graves known as "chullpas" in Peru's Chincha Valley, CNN reported, citing a study published Tuesday in the archaeology journal Antiquity.

Each set typically consisted of four to 10 bones threaded onto a straight stick, with some exceptions being a stick that held 16 vertebrae and a set that was capped by a skull, according to National Geographic.

One case had the vertebrae of two people, an adult and a juvenile, but most were an attempt to restore the spine of a distinct individual, according to archaeologist Jacob Bongers, the study's lead author.

While the spines, which may have originally been placed upright, were found only in the Chincha Valley, they would have also been used by different communities at locations miles away.

Adults and juveniles — defined as people under the age of 20 — were chosen for the practice, with most of the spines being from the former and the latter comprising a sixth of all cases, researchers said.

The spines belonged to people buried in the early 1500s—around the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the region in the mid-1530s—but they were threaded onto the sticks about 40 years later. According to researchers, this suggested that the practice was conducted long after the people were buried and their remains were skeletonized.

The period when the "vertebrae-on-posts" were thought to have been created, between 1450 and 1650, saw the rule of the Inca Empire come to an end and European colonization become widespread and dominant in the region.

Bongers, who is also a senior research associate at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., said the period was "turbulent" in the history of the Chincha Valley as "epidemics and famines decimated local people."

The Chincha Valley had been home to the Chincha Kingdom between 1000 and 1400 and had established an alliance with the Inca Empire. However, the population declined from more than 30,000 heads of household in 1533 to just 979 by 1583 as European colonizers swept into the region.

Analysis of the spines suggested that they may have been a "direct, ritualized and indigenous response to European colonialism" and grave looting, Bongers said.

"Looting of indigenous graves was widespread across the Chincha Valley in the colonial period. Looting was primarily intended to remove grave goods made of gold and silver and would have gone hand in hand with European efforts to eradicate indigenous religious practices and funerary customs," Bongers said in a news release.

Bodily integrity of the dead was important in the ancestral worship practiced by people who belonged to Andean civilizations, but that integrity was often disrupted by looters who scattered bones from graves, according to the researchers.

This may have resulted in people collecting vertebrae and restoring the spines of their ancestors, Bongers said.

"This work is reminding us of the horrors of what indigenous communities experienced at the hands of the European colonialists. It reflects the native people’s attempts to cope, and to resist these traumatic transformations to their way of life," Tiffiny Tung, a bioarchaeologist at Vanderbilt University who was also not involved in the study, was quoted as saying.