2007-11-27, First Gunshot Victim - 史上第一个倒在枪口下的人（在线收听） |
| Archaeologists in Peru have discovered the nearly 500-year-old skeleton of a man who died in a surprisingly modern way, from a gunshot wound to the head. A team of experts believes the man is the first documented victim of a shooting in the new world. The skeleton was uncovered by a team of archeologists headed by Guillermo Cock, a National Geographic society grantee who began excavating this ancient Inca cemetery in 2004. The Inca once ruled the entire Andes region until they were conquered by the Spanish in the 1530s,the scientists realized the cemetery was unusual when they found bodies buried in unexpected ways. It was evident that they didn't follow the burial rituals. They were without, not the proper offerings. Now the question is why these individuals have been buried in such an unusual way. Many of the bones revealed fractures, puncture wounds and signs of violent death. One skull stood out,marked with what appeared to be the entrance wound from a musket ball. "What's especially exceptional about this is not only that we have, in fact, the entrance wound,but also that I recovered the plug of bone that actually was in this position on the inside of the skull." To test their theory, the team X-Rayed the skull,searching for the metal fragments a musket ball would leave behind. When the X-Ray came up negative, the scientists turned to a more sensitive tool. A scanning electron microscope hit pay dirt, revealing bits of iron embeded in the bone.It appeared that as the musket ball punched into the back of the skull and passed through the head, it left iron fragments deep inside the bone which stayed there for some 500 years. Guillermo Cock believes the wound and the hastily buried bodies in the cemetery point to one conclusion: the victim was killed by a Spanish conquistador wielding a primitive gun called an arquebus .The Inca battled the Spanish outside Lima in 1536 near the site of the graveyard. Cock believes that the bodies buried there are the first ever forensic remains from the battles of Spanish conquest. |
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