El Niño, a periodic weather phenomenon that can lead to intense rains and flooding in Peru and droughts in other parts of South and Central America.
"We have one example at the site of Sicán where around [A.D.] 1050/1100, around 200 individuals were killed and ritualistically buried during an intense El Niño event," study co-author Haagen Klaus, an anthropology professor at George Mason University in Virginia, told Live Science in an email.
Other human sacrifice findings include more than 200 children found near the modern-day town of Huanchaco who were sacrificed sometime between 600 and 800 years ago, possibly during an El Niño.
However, despite the occurrence of human sacrifice, levels of violence unrelated to sacrifice were actually quite low in the Lambayeque Valley. In the study, scientists analyzed the skeletal remains of 1,519 people from the Lambayeque Valley who lived between roughly 1500 B.C. and A.D. 1800, and whose remains were preserved enough to detect signs of violent trauma, including interpersonal violence.
A skull showing blunt force trauma that dates to the Chimu period, roughly 1375 to 1490. (Image credit: Haagen Klaus)Of these skeletons, "only 25 (1.6%) exhibited traumatic lesions consistent with interpersonal conflict, and 77 exhibited post-cranial traumatic lesions consistent with accidental trauma (5.1%)," Klaus and co-author Thomas Snyder, a bioarchaeologist at New York University, wrote in the paper, which was published Nov. 8 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.
The team didn't find any link between a person's sex and violence, they noted. The findings mean that despite the presence of human sacrifice, the amount of violence unrelated to sacrifice was low. This leaves a question: Why?
A healed fracture on the left leg of a person who lived sometime between 1000 to 650 B.C. The fracture may have been from an accident. (Image credit: Haagen Klaus )"Ritual violence may have alleviated non-ritual violence by creating spaces where social tensions could get worked out in a few different ways," Klaus said.
It's important to remember that other areas of Peru also practiced human sacrifice but didn't have the same low levels of interpersonal violence. Klaus noted that areas in the Peruvian highlands sometimes had higher rates of interpersonal violence. In their paper, Klaus and Snyder noted that societies that originated in the highlands, such as the Tiwanaku, Wari and Inca had to grapple with poorer soils and cold temperatures, and these challenges may have been a factor in increasing the levels of interpersonal violence.
The "evidence of sub-lethal and lethal violence forceful enough to break bone is significantly higher in some areas of Peru's highlands," Klaus said. He and Snyder noted in their paper that the inhabitants of the Lambayeque Valley may have had better access to marine and water resources, such as seafood and rivers that could be used for agricultural irrigation, than those who lived in highland areas. Access to these resources may have helped alleviate interpersonal violence in the valley by providing more food resources, they wrote.
Scholars react
Aside from practicing human sacrifice, people in the valley may have engaged in other practices that helped lower levels of interpersonal violence, researchers who were not involved in the new study told Live Science.
Environmental conditions may have helped reduce conflict or there could be "really unusual cultural practices in this region of avoiding or mediating conflict — both between and within groups," Elizabeth Arkush, an anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said in an email.
Constanza Ceruti, an anthropologist and explorer with the National Geographic Society, said in an email that she's glad that researchers are studying human sacrifices "after decades of being ignored as a taboo topic in academic discussion." She praised the study’s large sample size and noted that human sacrifice is a "phenomenon primarily associated [with] the manipulation and concentration of power by elites."
Jordi Rivera Prince, an anthropology professor at Tulane University, said that the findings dovetail with her excavations in the region, where she has "found little evidence of violent trauma during the Salinar (400-200 BCE), a period of great social change in the Andes."
Weston McCool, an archaeology professor at Cal Poly, said in an email that the newly published paper "is an interesting study that provides additional evidence for a sharp break in patterns of violence between the Andean coast and highlands." He noted that it "supports the hypothesis that coastal populations were buffered from terrestrial environmental downturns in ways that highland populations were not. The nature of that resilience, however, remains an important question for future research."
'> Did human sacrifice help lower violence? New research in Peru leaves intriguing question
The chicken-shaped, black-glazed vase has an abecedarium — an inscription with the 26 letters of the Etruscan alphabet in order. (Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Fletcher Fund, 1924; Creative Commons Zero (CC0))QUICK FACTS
Name: Terracotta cockerel vase
What it is: A bird-shaped ceramic inkwell
Where it is from: Viterbo, Italy
When it was made: Circa 650 to 600 B.C.
This small terra-cotta vase, which is shaped like a cockerel or young male chicken with human feet, was discovered in central Italy and was made by the ancient Etruscans. The potter inscribed the Etruscan alphabet on the body of the chicken, giving modern researchers clues to a language that has never been fully deciphered.
The vase stands just over 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The dark-black ceramic, known as bucchero, was made through a unique firing method that prevented the kiln from getting enough oxygen, which caused the clay to absorb carbon. Bucchero is considered the trademark Etruscan ceramic, and it was produced from the seventh to the fourth centuries B.C. by this pre-Roman society. It is unclear where the cockerel vase was originally found, but it may have been discovered in a grave in one of the many cemeteries that surround Viterbo, which was originally an Etruscan town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of modern-day Rome.
According to The Met, the vase may have been a portable inkwell used by an ancient Etruscan who was learning how to write. The cockerel's head was the stopper, and it was loosely attached to the body by a cord through a set of loops. The inscription on the body of the vase is known as an abecedarium — the sequential list of letters in an alphabet.
The Etruscan alphabet is well known, since it was adopted from a regional version of the Greek alphabet in the early eighth century B.C. There were 26 letters in the Etruscan alphabet, but one of them in this abecedarium is incorrect. A close look at the end of the alphabet shows that someone inscribed an S twice; the second one should look more like an X, according to The Met.
The terracotta cockerel vase was one of several ancient Etruscan artifacts that helped experts partially decode the mysterious ancient language, as it preserved the order of the letters in the early alphabet, archaeologist Gisela Richter wrote in a 1930 catalog of The Met's classical artifacts.
Thanks to the adoption of the Greek alphabet, it's possible to fully sound out the Etruscan language. But although more than 10,000 Etruscan inscriptions have been found, the language is still only partially understood because those inscriptions are short and any lengthy Etruscan literature that once existed has been lost.
For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.
Birdman Copper Plate
Inuit Carving of Norseman
Can you put together last week's Astonishing Artifact?
'> Terracotta cockerel vase: A 2,600-year-old Etruscan inkwell featuring 26 letters of the undeciphered ancient language
Called lucid dreaming, this phenomenon occurs when we suddenly regain our capacity for metacognition, or thinking about our own thoughts, in the middle of a dream. Lucid dreamers can sometimes even control the content or trajectory of their dreams. Now, researchers claim that they've found a way to "train" people to lucid dream by having them meditate and complete virtual-reality-augmented exercises while they're awake.
In a study involving a few dozen participants, the scientists found that repeating this training twice a week for a month significantly increased how often participants experienced lucid dreaming. They say the approach could have practical applications as an intervention for people with nightmares, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder — but those applications are theoretical, for now.
If you could learn how to lucid dream, would you? Let us know in the poll below, and add your thoughts in the comments.
'> Would you learn to lucid dream if you could? Several of the burials included gold-and-garnet accessories on weapons and clothing. (Image credit: © L. Sornin-Petit, Inrap)Archaeologists discovered 11 adult graves, three graves of children and two horse burials at the site, according to the statement. In two of the female burials, archaeologists found silver bird-shaped brooches, glass bead necklaces and a bone comb, suggesting that these may have been high-status women.
But two of the male burials, in particular, stood out because of their high-quality grave goods, including a sword with a partially preserved wooden scabbard, a shield, a javelin and a scramasax, a type of Germanic short sword, which was decorated with a gold-and-garnet accessory. The weapons are characteristic of the burials of Germanic chieftains or mercenaries, according to the archaeologists, and two horses were buried nearby with their harnesses.
Two horse burials were discovered in the cemetery. (Image credit: © H. Cicutta, Inrap)In addition to the weapons and warhorses, archaeologists noticed evidence on the men's bones that hinted that the individuals were likely warriors. Two people suffered stab wounds that showed no signs of healing, which suggests they died quickly and violently, according to the statement. And another man's right knee bones had completely fused together, which would have prevented him from bending it. This condition, called ankylosis, commonly results from an improperly healed injury.
The archaeologists believe the warrior's grave goods weren't just for show, but further study of the skeletons is planned to confirm whether the injuries seen during the excavation could have been sustained in a conflict.
Few Germanic settlements and cemeteries from the fifth century have been found, so the newly excavated site should provide important information about the upheavals linked to the fall of the Western Roman Empire and how that political collapse affected communities on the edge of the empire.
Can you identify these historical objects of war? Test your smarts with our weapons of the world quiz!
'> Rare fifth-century burials of Germanic chieftains with dazzling weapons and warhorses discovered in France
burning up in the sky over Sumatra. It was a fitting, fiery end for a telescope that spent 22 years studying the most powerful explosions in the universe — and, even with Swift gone, its observations will continue to feed scientific curiosity for years to come.
Swift's most important contributions to astronomy are not exactly eye candy. Designed to swivel toward deep-space explosions at a moment's notice, Swift excelled at capturing bright, fleeting and faraway specks of light. The multiwavelength observatory was equipped with optical, ultraviolet (UV) and X-ray instruments, allowing it to catch cosmic bursts of energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, zeroing in on flares of light that other telescopes might miss.
One of its most significant detections was a gamma-ray burst — an incredibly bright blast, likely emitted by a giant star as it exploded in a supernova before collapsing into a black hole. Swift's famous image of GRB 221009A, or the BOAT — short for "brightest of all time" — looks like a speckled orange bull's-eye, caused by waves from the explosion rippling across space.
How the Swift Observatory saw the gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A, which may be the most energetic emission of this kind ever seen. (Image credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester))But Swift also took millions of observations of the nearby universe, including galaxies in our backyard. One of its most jaw-dropping images is this 24-hour exposure of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth.
More space photos
(Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Tyler Desjardins (STScI)) Andromeda is the closest major galaxy to ours, and it may be destined for a shared fate. Scientists suspect that Andromeda and the Milky Way are drawing closer together and might eventually collide. The merger would add Andromeda's roughly 1 trillion stars to our sky, though there probably wouldn't be any life left on Earth to appreciate it.
In Swift's view of our encroaching neighbor, captured with the observatory's ultraviolet instrument, tens of thousands of Andromeda's stars shine like sapphires set in a sparkling ring.
According to NASA, the observatory detected some 20,000 ultraviolet light sources in this image, captured over two months from May to July 2008. These sources include thousands of dense, hot star clusters scattered across Andromeda's 150,000-light-year-wide ring, as well as the distant galaxy M32 (seen as a bright orb of light to the bottom right of Andromeda's center).
In visible-light images of Andromeda taken with ground-based telescopes, the galaxy's bright center bleaches out many of the fiery young stars that emerge in Swift's view. While Swift likely won't be remembered best for shimmering starscapes like this one, it's a powerful reminder that looking at familiar structures in a new light can change everything.
'> NASA's destroyed Swift Observatory took one of the best-ever photos of bright Andromeda