Kim MacQuarrie’s Peru & South America Blog

Mysterious Lines Explained in Peru’s Nazca Desert

posted on January 4th, 2013 in Archaeology, Nazca Lines and Culture, Peru, Recent Discoveries

Labyrinth Lies Within Mysterious Desert Drawing

Dec 11, 2012

Discovery.com

A large labyrinth lies in the midst of Peru’s Nazca Lines, according to the most detailed study on the enigmatic desert etchings created between 2,100 and 1,300 years ago.

Completely hidden in the flat and featureless landscape, the labyrinth was identified after a five-year investigation into the arid Peruvian coastal plain land, about 250 miles south of Lima, where the mysterious geoglyphs are located.

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Yale At Last Returns Final Machu Picchu Artifacts to Peru

posted on November 28th, 2012 in Machu Picchu, Peru, Peru-Yale Controversy

Yale University’s and Peru’s flags flying in front of the  Casa Concha Museum in Cusco, Peru

Nov 12, 2012

Yale Daily News

Earlier today, Yale quietly returned the third and final batch of thousands of Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru, marking an end to the years-long dispute between Peru and Yale that led to a lawsuit four years ago.

The touchdown of today’s 127-box shipment was the final of three deliveries, which was financed by Yale. The University shipped the first fraction of the artifacts in March 2011 and the second last December. Yale and Peru resolved the lawsuit in November 2010,  when the University agreed to return the pottery shards and other artifacts that Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham III recovered during trips to Machu Picchu between 1911 and 1916. Tensions grew over the ownership of the artifacts and culminated in December 2008 when Peru sued Yale over the relics.

The dispute lasted years, garnering national media attention and responses from the Yale community.
Though the Peruvian government threatened to sue University President Richard Levin personally in 2008, Peruvian Ambassador to the United States Harold Forsyth presented Levin with the “Orden del Sol,” or the “Great Cross” grade of the Order “The Sun of Peru” last September.

Many of the artifacts are currently on display at the Casa Concha Museum in Cusco, Peru.

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Climate Change May Have Led to Earliest South American Mummies

posted on October 26th, 2012 in Archaeology, Chile, Peru, Peruvian Mummies

A 7,000-year-old mummy from the Chinchorro culture, along the border of Chile and Peru, whose skin, hair and clothing still remain (photos: National Geographic)

Changing Climate May Have Led To Earliest Mummies

NPR

August 15, 2012

A couple of thousand years before the Egyptians preserved some of their dead, a much simpler society made the first known mummies.

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