In Huanchaco, northern Peru, a small team of American bioarchaeologists and anthropologists spotted smallpox marks on the skeletons of two Inca children. The latter, aged between 1 and 2 years, had been resting since around 1540 in the city cemetery, adjacent to a Spanish colonial church.
“The cemetery around the Iglesia de Huanchaco contains burials from the end of the Chimu-Inka period and the beginning of the colonial period,” indicate the scientists in their article published in the International Journal of Paleopathology.
For their study, they analyzed “extremely well-preserved human remains”. Their work shows that they present “multiple skeletal lesions”, suggesting “a very consistent diagnosis of variola osteomyelitis”, an infection triggered by the smallpox virus.
“In infants and children, variola osteomyelitis can begin weeks after the onset of infection,” they specify.
The discovery is interesting because the date of the children’s deaths is consistent with the arrival of Spanish settlers and their illnesses in the region. Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his soldiers were around Huanchaco in early 1533 and founded the Spanish town of Trujillo in late 1534, the authors report.
Quickly, smallpox decimated a majority of the local Incas, who had never encountered this viral infection. “The north coast lost 71% of its total population between 1570 (…)
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