Giant skeletons uncovered in Ecuador and Peru Amazon regions sent for scientific testing

Liz Leafloor
Ancient Origins

Strikingly tall skeletons uncovered in the Ecuador and Peru Amazon region are undergoing examination in Germany, according to a research team headed by British anthropologist Russell Dement. Will these remains prove that a race of tall people existed hundreds of years ago deep in the Amazonian rainforest?

According to a Cuenca news site, since 2013 the team has found half a dozen human skeletons dating to the early 1400s and the mid-1500s which measure between seven and eight feet (213 to 243 centimeters) in height.

Dement said,

"We are very early in our research and I am only able to provide a general overview of what we have found. I don't want to make claims based on speculation since our work is ongoing. Because of the size of the skeletons, this has both anthropological and medical implications," reports Cuenca Highlife.

Skeletal Remains in Ecuador and Peru

In late 2013 Dement received word that a skeleton had been uncovered by a Shuar local, approximately 70 miles (112 kilometers) from Cuenca, in Loja Province, Ecuador. Dement traveled to the site and recovered a rib cage and skull of a female which had been exposed by flooding. The bones were thought to date to 600 years ago. The rest of the skeleton was located and, once assembled, reportedly measured seven feet, four inches (223.5 centimeters) in height.
This prompted the formation of a research team including four researchers from Freie Universität in Germany, and the assistance of Shuar locals. Funding was provided by the university for excavation and investigation.

Recognizing it is a controversial area of research, Dement noted "Even though I had been working with Freie for many years, I was concerned that they might not give a grant for someone looking for giants. To outsiders, especially scientists, I understand this sounds a little hair-brained. [...]

"Because of the sensational nature of this, we have to be extremely diligent in our research since it will be met with a great deal of skepticism," he said.

Within six months of excavations and mapping at two different sites: the one outside of Cuenca, and another settlement dating to about 1550, approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers) away on the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border, the team had found five more tall skeletons, as well as artifacts. It is believed by Dement and colleagues that the tribe at the second site had been at the settlement for at least 150 years.

The three complete skeletons and two partial skeletons had no disfiguration and suggested they were relatively healthy.

Dement said,

"The skeletons show no signs of diseases such as the hormonal growth problems that are common in most cases of gigantism. In all the skeletons, the joints seemed healthy and lung cavity appeared large. One of the skeletons that we have dated was of a female who was about 60 when she died, much older than typical cases of gigantism," reports Cuenca Highlife.

The burials were elaborate. Bodies were wrapped in leaves and buried in thick clay. This sealed the skeletons and protected against water intrusion, leaving the remains in fairly good condition. 

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Desert Billboard Makes Clean Drinking Water From Thin Air

gajitz.com
Access to potable water is a problem in much of the world, but the impact is felt especially hard in the coastal deserts of Peru. There, annual rainfall is a mere half an inch, but atmospheric humidity is abundant – about 98 percent. Researchers at Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology believed that they could turn that humidity into life-preserving water.

Before this experiment, the people in the villages surrounding Lima got their drinking water from wells. The wells were dirty and polluted, and certainly didn’t provide water that anyone would want to drink. Then a billboard went up that would make life easier for everyone in the area.

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Peru's Top Indigenous Leader Says Industry, Traffickers Behind Shaman Slayings

Shaman Wilson showing plants used in preparing a 

'pusanga' in Peru, September, 2009.(Photo: Howard G Charing)

Truthout

Darrin Mortenson

Iquitos, Peru - It's been more than one month since Peru's government sent investigators to the Amazon to probe the brutal murders and mutilation of at least 14 shamans, traditional healers or medicos, of the indigenous Shawi people of Peru's northern border region near Ecuador.

Since then, the government has remained mum and, so far, has made no arrests, or at least has not made any known. Early reports focused on the Evangelical Christian mayor of the river port town of Balsapuerto, citing officials who accused him of instigating a fanatical religious purge.

But Alberto Pizango, Peru's top indigenous leader and president of the country's most powerful indigenous organization, the Interethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (known by its Spanish acronym, AIDESEP) paints a more complex picture of the case, blaming cash and pressure from legal and illegal industries in the Amazon who poach natural resources from indigenous lands.

"What is happening now in my community is organized crime," said Pizango, himself a Shawi medico who studied for seven years under a master shaman.

"This work, I would say, is done in a very subtle way by the extractive industries," Pizango said, naming the timber and oil industries as well as those involved in producing illegal drugs.

"Divide and conquer," he said. "That is exactly what is happening here."

Masking Ambition

Pizango explained that Shawi tradition used to allow certain shamans, often ones who had quit their apprenticeships and used their powers for "bad things," to be killed or banished by others in the community. Now, he said, a "bad interpretation" of that tradition has been used to cover up corruption and greed.

"The criminals accuse someone, [they say], "He is a brujo! He is evil! He was killed because he was evil!" Pizango said. "That was ancestral justice," he said. "But now it is just organized crime." 

Original reports cited public prosecutors from the nearby port of Yurimaguas who specifically named Balsapuerto mayor Alfredo Torres and his brother Augusto, also known locally as a matabrujos or "witch killer," as suspects in at least some of the murders. One early report said at least seven additional shamans were still missing from Shawi territory and listed as dead by local officials of the Catholic Church - making it more than 20 shamans killed in the region in less than two years.

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Peru’s Congress approves 10-year GMO ban

Capital FM
 

LIMA, Nov 5 – Peru’s Congress announced Friday it overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity.

The measure bars GMOs — including seeds, livestock, and fish — from being imported for cultivation or to be raised locally.

Exceptions include the use of GMO products for research purposes in a closed environment, but those will be closely monitored, the legislature’s official news service said.

The bill, approved late Thursday, now goes to President Ollanta Humala to be signed into law. Humala, who has been in power since late July, has repeatedly said he opposes GM programs.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, Peru is one of the world’s leading exporters of organic food, including coffee and cocoa, with $3 billion a year in revenues and 40,000 certified producers.

Congress approved a similar 10-year moratorium in June, but outgoing president Alan Garcia, who was seen as being favorable to GM, did not ratify the ban.

There was friction over GM in the previous government’s ministries of agriculture and environment.

The head of Peru’s Consumer Agency, Jaime Delgado, said the moratorium is long enough to learn from scientific studies that will emerge on the effects of GMO products.

The country’s leading group representing farmers and ranchers, the National Agrarian Convention, said that by this measure Peru “defends its biodiversity, its agriculture, its gastronomy and its health.”