LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA—In the mortuary complex at Bolivia’s site of Khonkho Wankane, Scott C. Smith of Franklin & Marshall College and Pérez Arias of the University of Pittsburgh unearthed human body parts that may have been defleshed and processed into easy-to-carry pieces. These were “portable ancestors for a mobile population,” Smith told USA Today. In one stone and adobe building, the team discovered nearly 1,000 teeth and small bones that were coated with a thin layer of white plaster, in addition to white-coated pots and tools made of llama bones. White blocks, probably quicklime, were also discovered. Quicklime, which turns to white plaster when exposed to air, is still used to clean skeletons. And an image of a person with defleshed ribs was found carved on a stone pillar outside the mortuary. Researchers think that from the first through fifth centuries A.D. itinerant llama herders used the site to strip flesh and clean the bones of the dead so that they could be carried from place to place. “The dead still played an active and important role in the lives of the living,” Smith explained.To read about another recent discovery made in Bolivia, see "Tiwanaku Drug Paraphernalia Found."
