New World's First Victim of Gunshot is Uncovered

Jun 20, 10:39 AM

Current Headlines: By John Noble Wilford

Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the human skeleton of what they conclude is the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World. Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came upon well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than two and a half centimeters, or one inch, in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely had been shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball.

Ceramics and other artifacts in the 72 examined graves established the approximate time of the burials, archaeologists said, and this indicated that these were casualties of combat between Inca warriors and Spanish invaders, who seized the Andean empire in 1532. Spanish chronicles describe a pitched battle, a last stand of the Incas that was fought in the vicinity in 1536.

Conquistadors were equipped with some of the first effective firearms, which had been developed recently in Europe, military historians say.

The National Geographic Society announced Monday the discovery of the gunshot victim by the independent Peruvian archaeologists Guillermo Cock and Elena Goycochea, who have conducted research at the Puruchuco cemetery for years. A NOVA-National Geographic television program on the research is scheduled for next Tuesday in the United States.

In a telephone interview Monday, Cock said that at least 35 of the excavated skeletons bore evidence of violent wounds: Cheekbones crushed by heavy blows, broken hands and limbs, a smashed chest.

Some had presumably fallen in hand-to-hand combat or been trampled by Spanish horses, another instrument of warfare new to the Americas.

No similar evidence of a death by gunshot this early has been found elsewhere in the Americas, Cock said. The musket shot appeared to have entered the back of the man's skull, punching a piece of bone from outside to inside, and emerged through the face.

Forensic experts at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut, confirmed the violent nature of the deaths. Albert Harper, executive director of the university's Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science, said, "We tried to rule out all kinds of causes of the hole - a rock from a slingshot, spear, sledgehammer."

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