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Mask of Mictlantecuhtli: A 500-year-old mask of the Aztec god of the underworld, who tore apart the dead as they entered his realmAstonishing Artifacts This skull-shaped mask was made to be used in a ritual involving the Aztec god of death.
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'Political motivations' of Inca emperor led to the sacrifice of 3 children on a snow-capped volcano over 500 years ago, study suggestsAn analysis of corn, cassava and coca plants discovered with sacrificed Inca children reveals they died during the reign of one of the last Inca emperors.
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Thanks to natural selection, Indigenous Andeans may digest potatoes better than anyone else in the world, study findsAfter domesticating potatoes 10,000 years ago, the ancient people of the Andes evolved to have more copies of a key gene involved in digesting starch.
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8-year-old African American boy from Colonial Maryland found buried with white Colonists, and it's unclear if he was enslavedA 17th-century cemetery from Colonial Maryland held the remains of an 8-year-old boy with majority African ancestry, as well as two indentured servants.
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'Speculation' and 'egregious failure': 30 researchers publish scathing critiques of study that questioned date of early human occupation of Monte Verde in ChileDozens of scientists have banded together to pen scathing research letters to the journal Science about the publication of a study claiming the 14,500-year-old Monte Verde archaeological site in Chile is much younger than shown.
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Miniature camelid effigy: A 600-year-old sculpture of a llama that may have been sacrificed in an Inca ritualAstonishing Artifacts Llamas were vital to the Inca Empire and were seen as both useful pack animals and sacred beings.
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DNA study of nearly 200 Indigenous genomes reveals unknown Asian 'ghost' population contributed to American ancestryNew genetic results reveal a previously unknown wave of people settled in South America 1,300 years ago and that Indigenous Americans carry remnants of a "ghost lineage."
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700-year-old mummy from Bolivia contains earliest confirmed evidence of strep throat bacteria in the AmericasA DNA analysis of pathogens from a pre-Hispanic mummy revealed that the bacterium that causes scarlet fever and strep throat was present in the Americas prior to European colonization.
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16th-century silver coin discovered near Strait of Magellan marks the spot of a doomed Spanish colonyThe newfound coin dates to the 1584 founding of a doomed Spanish settlement in southern Chile.
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