Like most Westerners, I live a very "civilised" and "sanitised" life, and you just dont run into them. I mean, we just dont leave these things laying around in public you know; So its really no surprise that I havent come across one before.
Where Im from, if somebody does come across one "out in the public" then it gets "looked into" immediately by the authorities, and there is a big fuss in the media etc.
Now, Ive seen them in museums of course, and Ive seen the occasional one in a doctors office, but this was a bit of a surprise to just see it there on the side of the road!
About the only place I think you would be likely to come across these things out in the open and at "random" might possibly be some places in South East Asia or, far more likely, in Africa. Places with very violent recent histories...
If you havnt figured it out yet, Im talking about a Human Skull!
Yep, There were several of them just laying in the sand off the side of the PanAmerican highway, just south of a little town in the desert called Ocona.
I was riding south (as usual) and marvelling at the variety of landscapes that Peru has to offer here on the coast, just using sand and rock... No vegetation at all!
Anyway, I had just come through another of those amazingly narrow (about 2km wide) but fertile and green little valleys where a river runs down to the ocean. And as I rode back out the other side into the completely barren desert landscape of sand dunes, I noticed some white bits in the sand on the side of the highway.
There were quite a few of them, and as I looked a bit closer I could immediately see that they were bones... Nothing too unusual there though... There are plenty of domestic animals about, and things get hit by cars or dumped etc... No big issue.
But as I looked, some of the bones were seeming "a bit interesting" so to speak... It was the larger bones... They seemed to be larger than for dogs and sheep or goats... And the shape was not right for horses or cows...Hmmm
And I keep looking for the next few hundred meters of road side, and there are quite a lot of them, and there are other bones that are shoulder and hip shaped and sized as well as ribs... And they all seem to be of a size and shape that " holds my attention"... But nothing conclusive... No doubt its just my imagination though, so I suppress the idea... :)))
I ride along without slowing, and Im still scanning with my eyes... though Im watching traffic and other stuff as well, so Im not "focused" on the bones.
But, just as Im passing the last patch with the bones and rounding a bend, I get a glimpse of a bone up on a small dune ... only in sight of the road traffic for a moment... and its the size and shape, and with the right "shadowing"...
And my mental "pattern recognition" processes set off the "alarm"!... I ride on a little more and Im thinking...
Did I just see what I think I saw??.. Noo, Cant be... But, the other bones were the right size and shape... Yep, I gotta admit, that did look like it was one...... OK, I gotta go back and check on that!
So I slowed down, stopped, and turned the big bike around on the narrow road to go back and have a look. I got off the bike and took the helmet and gloves off. Then I hiked up the 10m high dune to where the "bone" was, and yes indeed its a skull. I walk around (as respectfully as I can) and have a look at the other bones, and they are all human. There are not many skulls and many are broken and disassembled, but clearly this is/was a cemetery of some sort. I try to figure out whats going on. There are clearly holes and mounds, and they are larger than animals would make, so I conclude that the digging here is relatively recent and is by humans... And thats what is scattering the bones around... They were buried but now they are not.
I look some more and I can see that there is fabric buried here and there, but it doesnt seem to be clothing... Its more like heavy duty Hessian sacking... I look some more, and it seems that the sacking is either covering or wrapping the bodies, but I dont interfere with anything.. It doent seem like the right thing to do.
I look some more, and clearly there is disorganised "grave robbing" going on, but at the site of the first skull I saw, there is also a heavy duty clear plastic bag with some "stuff" in it... This looks like what I would expect from a archaeological or scientific investigation...But why is it just left here in the open...No rain here I guess so why not... But why not fence it off... If its a pre-colombian burial site Id expect it to be well protected and a major investigation site... If its recent then Id expect it to be in a proper cemetery... Did they run the highway through a cemetery and just move the headstones and not the bodies??? - classic cheap but bad taste solution if thats it!
I cant tell how old the bones are... They are certainly not less than 10-20 years old and probably more like 50-100 years but Im just guessing there. They all seem to be "intact" and the skulls that are in pieces seem to be that way because they are old not because of the use of force... There does not seem to be clothing or any modern artefacts... But there are no old artefacts either. There are no wooden coffins that I would expect from modern burials but we are in a really arid desert and there are no trees here for wood, so that could explain the use of the sacking...
I just dont know...
I decided to take a few pictures but I dont touch anything... And then I go back to the bike and ride on...
And while Im posting pictures oif human remains, here are a couple of pictures of mummified bodies from one of the museums Ive been to as well...
But Im still wondering what the origin of this grave site is... I guess Ill ask at the next museum I visit!
