(via How Erotic Peruvian Artifacts Inspired a Controversial Roadside Attraction - Atlas Obscura)
Ofelia Montesco
…Archaeologist Lorna Tilley and her colleagues have taken a second look at that study in an effort to reconstruct details of the child’s experience with his illness and disability, the kind of care he probably received, and what that reveals about the culture in which he lived. “I rely on taking the information available from the work of other archaeologists and synthesizing it, hoping that I’ve understood their research results and providing copious references so that readers can go to the sources themselves,” Tilley told Ars Technica.
Did this week seem long to you, too?
Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustáriz, Antigüedades peruanas, 1851.
Jean Patchett Vogue Fashion Photograph Café in Lima, Peru 1948
Photo Irving Penn
Grumman J2F-2 (by San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)
Carl Jonshon and other men
USS Ranger at Lima, Peru, 17Sep37
Pilot Lt WF Rodee
(via Ancient Popcorn Unearthed in Peru | Around The Mall)
Some of the ancient corn cobs discovered in Peru. Photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum
Popcorn dates pretty far back—way earlier than Orville Redenbacher—according to a study published last week. The paper, which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was co-authored by Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at theMuseum of Natural History, reveals that archaeologists have unearthed a number of corn samples from a pair of Peruvian excavation sites. Several of the specimens indicate that among many uses the ancient Peruvians found for the maize was one we still know well today: popcorn.
The samples include corncobs, husks and stalks, and date to 6,700 to 3,000 years ago, making the discovery the oldest corn sample ever found in South America, says Piperno. “Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte,” she says. “Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America, where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began…”