Two of the oldest mummies found in Peru - so well preserved that one had an eye and internal organs intact - have gone on display after their discovery by building workers two weeks ago.
Officials from the National Institute of Culture said the mummies - a young boy and a man in his mid-30s - were at least 700 years old.
They came from a culture that predated the Incas, who dominated a vast swathe of South America from Colombia to Chile until they were toppled by Spanish invaders in the 1530s.
An archaeologist at the National Culture Institute, Lucy Linares, said: "Two mummies have been found - a boy of about five and a farmer, about 35 years old, dating from between 1100 and 1300, the Chiribaya culture. What is striking is the level of conservation [of the mummies]."
The man had one eye open and "you can see his eyeball. It's perfectly preserved."
I admit to being somewhat flummoxed by this. Apparently the bodies were preserved due to dessication, but, eyes being mostly water, would presumably have dried out long ago. Even Egyptian mummies, which were deliberately dried for preservation, did not retain the eyes. (As far as I know) So, take what you will.
Arabs want ancient artefacts back
A regional conference in Egypt has called on Western museums to return "stolen" Middle Eastern artefacts to their country of origin.
Lawyers taking part in the event said monuments such as the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum had been plundered and should be handed back.
Shaheen Abou-Alfoutouh, one of the Egyptian organisers, said the West should agree to protect human heritage.
He said he hoped citizens in the UK and Europe would support the campaign.
Doubt it will have much effect. The vast bulk of antiquities removed from various countries in the Middle East were done with the permission of the governments then in charge. And there's something to be said for having artifacts spread widely: natural disasters or a sudden turn of the political fortunes of any individual country (e.g., the Taliban) would be unlikely to destroy the whole kit-n-kaboodle.
Hills of the Dead: Archaeologists seek to unearth city's secrets
From high above Guatemala City, Kaminaljuya Park resembles a keyhole -- a rare undeveloped spot in a sprawling metropolis hungry for land to develop. Archaeologists from Brigham Young University and other U.S. institutions are helping their Guatemalan counterparts to pick this massive lock in hopes of revealing the secrets buried deep within the park. This oasis in the city of more than a million represents the last window into an ancient Mesoamerican city that first rose to power between 500 and 200 B.C.
BYU's Stephen Houston said Kaminaljuya translates in a Mayan language to "Hills of the Dead," named for the burial mounds found throughout the area. The city's original name is lost to time, since so few examples of the culture's writing system survived.
Despite being one of the major population centers of the ancient Americas, archaeologists know little about Kaminaljuyœ. Information gleaned from this site could help explain the evolution of the region's culture as well as how cities in the region interacted.
Fight! Fight! errr. . Stoush! Stoush!Prehistoric row erupts over hunter-gatherer riddle
A team of Australian archaeologists have sparked an academic row by claiming to have solved the riddle of a missing 1,000 years in human prehistory.
The scientists from Melbourne's La Trobe University have found remnants of grains on the shore of the Dead Sea in Jordan that they believe help fill the 1,000-year gap in our knowledge of man's transition from nomad to farmer.
But not everyone agrees, and the Australian team is now muscling up for an academic arm wrestle next month with the exponents of different theories in France.
Re., 'Stoush": Never heard of it.