Category: "News"

The Peru Pishtacos [Featured]

December 1st, 2009 |

This long told urban myth in Peru about the “Pishtacos” that has now gone global – like many of Peru’s inventions – currently has police chiefs in hot water.

So little progress has been made on the investigation, and so little evidence uncovered that the regularly ridiculed national police of Peru are being taken even less seriously. “What’s next?”, people ask, “ghosts, goblins and vampires?”.

Last descendant of Inca Pachacútec honoured in Cusco

November 18th, 2009 |

Authorities in Cusco’s San Jerónimo district have bestowed the municipal medal on an 86-year-old woman who is the last descendant of Inca Pachacutec, the greatest ruler of the Inca Empire in ancient Peru. Isabel Atayupanqui Pachacútec received the medal from the hands of local mayor Adolfo Zúñiga in a special ceremony held Monday morning in the Andean city of Cusco.

Pachacutec, whose given name was Cusi Yupanqui, was the first Inca to expand beyond the valley of Cusco after his epic victory over the Chancas.

Hundreds of Sea Lions poisoned in Colán

November 14th, 2009 |

A terrible sight on Piura’s most picturesque beach – hundreds of Sea Lions washed up dead on the white sands. In front of homes and hotels, the bodies of these animals rot, all so that the fishermen that poisoned them can continue dangerous and unsustainable over-fishing the seas.

Severed heads among discovery at Sacsayhuamán

November 13th, 2009 |

Above the Inca capital of Cusco (Q’osco) sits the important ceremonial site and one of human-kinds most impressive constructions called Sacsayhuamán, which despite its global fame still offers up secrets to investigators. Yesterday the discovery was announced of three burials, one of which contained the severed heads of the Inca’s enemies.

The tale of the stolen, but not so stolen, human lung

November 12th, 2009 |

It is an exhibition that has excited, enthralled and disgusted its visitors successfully in equal measure since it was conceived and went on tour around the world. Bodies:The Exhibition features real human corpses, preserved, their skin removed and their internal organs on display for all to see. I myself had visited two years ago in Buenos Aires, and it is definitely something I’ll remember. It’s a cross between a freak-show and a serious educational experience. It then finally came to Lima, Peru, and became a scandal for a less predictable reason.

Priestess of Cahuachi

November 7th, 2009 |

Tomb discovered of an elite child dating to the early Nasca Period. With the mummy were various pieces of jewellery made from gold, silver and precious stones.

Paying for a guardian out of his own pocket for 27 years turned out to be worth it for the Italian archaeologists Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nasca Project. Not reimbursed by his supervisors in Italy nor (shamefully but all too predictably) by the Peruvian state, it is thanks to the Italian’s dedication at the heavily tomb-raided ceremonial city of Cahuachi, a expansive adobe city of countless buried pyramids, that a recent discovery was able to be made.

Land grabs by technicality in the Amazon

October 28th, 2009 |

Indigenous Amazonians risk loosing their ancestral lands by way of a Government slight-of-hand which grants concessions and exploration rights to wealthy foreign energy companies. One of these, US oil company Hunt Oil, which has been granted rights to one of the world’s last untouched areas…

Youngest Moche noble yet at Sipán site

October 27th, 2009 |

Two thousand years ago, a young man was buried in the royal mausoleum next to a huge and brightly decorated Moche pyramid, now known as the Huaca Rajada, at the site of Sipán. Studies have been conducted on this recent discovery that have determined his age at time of death to be just 21, making him the youngest Moche noble yet found.