Last year archaeologists in Peru announced the discovery of a centuries-old ritual massacre, at a site they believed was the largest known case of child sacrifice ever found.

Buried beneath the sands of a 15th-century site called Huanchaquito-Las Llamas were nearly 140 child skeletons, as well as the remains of 200 llamas.

While the reasoning behind the gruesome mass murder of the boys and girls - who were only between the ages of 5 and 14 - cannot be definitively determined, the researchers now say the act was done out of desperation in response to a disastrous climatic event: El Niño.

Peter Pan, the beloved children's classic, is sure to stun modern readers with its descriptions of "redskins" carrying "tomahawks and knives," their naked bodies glistening with oil. "Strung around them are scalps, of boys as well as of pirates," J.M. Barrie writes. The language, and the characterization, would be read as an offensive stereotype today, hardly helpful in creating realistic or healthy views of Indigenous peoples.

Such characterizations, it turns out, are rife-and not just in older, "classic" works that might be explicable as products of their time. They are evident in television and literature modern enough to have fed the brains of people now parenting children of their own.

As a person of Indigenous heritage, a Native American media scholar, and an avid (almost worryingly avid) fan of all things pop culture, I've seen a range of representations of Indigenous people on TV shows and in books. In graduate school, I decided to turn a more academic lens on the situation. I analyzed approximately 60 popular TV shows, films, and books from the early 1990s to 2011-ones that were set in modern times or had contemporary elements, as opposed to works of historical fiction. My goal was to find out what impression the average non-Native consumer would have of today's Native Americans from the media they grew up with.

What I found was a heavy dose of stereotypes, with-perhaps surprisingly-little sign of improvement over the decades. While some of the details changed, the overall picture was a harsh split between "good" and "bad" Indigenous characters. The negatively portrayed Indigenous characters were generally out of touch with their culture; they also often received benefits, operated casinos, were untrustworthy, and were frequently suggested to be "fake" Native Americans (especially in the eastern half of the country, where lineage is more likely to be "mixed"). Meanwhile, the more positively portrayed Indigenous characters were poor, living on reservations, honest, culturally knowledgeable, and often involved in supernatural occurrences.

The implication was that "real" Indigenous people must be impoverished, helpful to outsiders, and totally immersed in traditional Indigenous culture.

Archaeologists have announced the discovery of a drink that was said to promise everlasting life. It was found secretly stowed away in a 2,000-year-old bronze pot in an ancient tomb in central China's Henan province.

Around 3.5 litres of the "elixir of immortality" were found in the tomb in the city of Luoyang during excavations last October. It was initially thought that the liquid was liquor because it smelled like alcohol.

However, it was announced this week that, lab testing has revealed that the mysterious liquid is mainly comprised of potassium nitrate and alunite, which are the main ingredients of an immortality draught recorded in an ancient Taoist text.

Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula have accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects-untouched for more than a thousand years-in a series of cave chambers that may hold clues to the rise and fall of the ancient Maya. The discovery of the cave system, known as Balamku or "Jaguar God," was announced by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a press conference held today in Mexico City.

After its initial discovery by farmers in 1966, Balamku was visited by archaeologist Víctor Segovia Pinto, who wrote up a report noting the presence of an extensive amount of archaeological material. But instead of excavating the site, Segovia then directed the farmers to seal up the entrance, and all records of the discovery of the cave seemed to vanish.

Balamku remained sealed for more than 50 years, until it was reopened in 2018 by National Geographic Explorer Guillermo de Anda and his team of investigators from the Great Maya Aquifer Project during their search for the water table beneath Chichén Itzá. Exploration of the system was funded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society.

A chunk of a Denisovan skull has been identified for the first time-a dramatic contribution to the handful of known samples from one of the most obscure branches of the hominin family tree. Paleoanthropologist Bence Viola from the University of Toronto will discuss the as-yet-unpublished discovery at the upcoming meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of March.

Very little is known about the Denisovans, an extinct branch of hominins that was a sister group to Neanderthals. Only four individual Denisovans had been identified previously, all from one cave in Siberia. The first Denisovan was described in 2010 from the fragment of a pinky finger bone, and three more were identified from teeth. This skull piece, excavated about three years ago in that same Siberian cave, represents a fifth individual.

"It's very nice that we finally have fragments like this," says Viola. "It's not a full skull, but it's a piece of a skull. It gives us more. Compared to the finger and the teeth, it's nice to have." But, he adds, it's hardly a full skeleton. "We're always greedy," he laughs. "We want more."

Marks on a skullcap and other well-scraped human bones suggest that cannibalism was prevalent among prehistoric people in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.

Archaeologists discovered the 6,000-year-old remains inside a Spanish cave. On closer inspection, Jonathan Santana at Durham University, UK, and his colleagues found marks on some of the bones that indicated someone had chewed them and sucked their nutrient-rich marrow. In addition, a skullcap had been skinned, polished and boiled, apparently to give it a smooth appearance. This carefully prepared cranium, known as a skull cup, might have been used in cannibalistic rituals.

The finds strongly indicate that early Iberian farming communities included human flesh in their diets. But why they ate their kin and carved their skulls is unclear.

Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of the start of the infamous 51-day standoff near Waco, Texas, between the FBI, ATF and a religious group called the Branch Davidians - the horrific conclusion of which left 76 people dead, including 25 children.

The Gateway Pundit interviewed two people who were each intimately involved with the 1993 siege. One of the men was with law enforcement on the outside and the other was a survivor who viewed it from the inside.

The deadly assault on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound took place from February 28 through April 19 over suspected weapons violations. The ATF had attempted to raid the compound and a gun battle ensued, leaving four government agents and six Branch Davidians dead. For the next 50 days, the government would use psychological warfare, such as playing the sound of animals being slaughtered, until ultimately the compound was burned to the ground with nearly everyone still inside.

Harvard's Gernot Wagner wants to save the world from global warming. His method? Develop a new type of plane that will fly more than 4,000 missions a year dumping particulates into the stratosphere.

Wagner and his colleague Wake Smith call the proposed plane "SAI Lofter (SAIL)." Anonymous individuals at "Airbus, Atlas Air, Boeing, Bombardier, GE Engines, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Near Space Corporation, Northrup Grumman, Rolls Royce Engines, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, and Virgin Orbit" provided input.

Estimates for SAIL's design and operation seem sophisticated but are fabricated. Wagner and Smith admit, "No existing aircraft design-even with extensive modifications-can reasonably fulfill [their] mission."

Red cedar "ghost forests," a Japanese villager's handwritten notes, and Native American oral histories: They all offered clues that led scientists to precisely date the last megaquake that rocked the Pacific Northwest.

It occurred on Jan. 26, 1700.

Unraveling the clues was similar to being a detective investigating a "not-so-ancient geological crime," U.S. Geological Survey scientist Brian Atwater said during a presentation to a full house at LCC's Health and Science lecture hall Wednesday night.

But "there's an edge to this story," he said. "It's a frightening thing. ... The effects of the tsunami are not so pretty."

That is because the next quake could come at any time, though they recur on average every 500 years or so. But the intervals are highly variable, and researchers estimate that there's a 10 percent chance the region will be hit with the next magnitude 8 or larger earthquake within the next 50 years.

Whenever it occurs, it will shake the ground for several minutes from Vancouver Island to Northern California and churn up tsunamis that swamp coastal communities. Thousands may die, and the region's highway and utility infrastructure and thousands of buildings will collapse, geologists say.

Atwater is a pioneer whose research helped determine that giant "subduction zone" earthquakes have occurred in the Pacific Northwest in the past and will do so again.

In 2003, when the US declared its occupation of Iraq, journalists used to reach the country embedded with the occupation forces through their air transport or via Kuwait. I did not have this luxury. I took a taxi from Beirut to Damascus and from the Syrian capital to Baghdad. It was a long drive, and I had no information on how to travel alone in a new country I had never visited before, but that in itself was not a new experience for me.

It was my first time in Iraq but I never imagined I was about to spend the next nine years in the country. I reached the al-Tanf border crossing, and waved goodbye to the final Syrian checkpoint behind me. Al-Tanf became my favourite destination for years to come until, years later, Baghdad (and Mosul) airport started civilian flights from and to Iraq. I was oblivious to the fact that this desert signpost, over 100 km from the nearest gasoline station, would someday become known worldwide due to US occupation of this crossing in 2017.

The borders on the Iraqi side were empty: unusually, no visa was required nor was anyone present to ask for it. No border guards were there on the Iraqi side. The first few kilometres in Iraq were punctuated by craters a couple of meters deep caused by the US bombing; this made driving quite acrobatic but possible for skillful drivers. The high fares taxi drivers asked for the ride seemed quite understandable.

Life in Baghdad in 2003 was not very difficult for a war zone journalist with experience in besieged cities like Beirut in 1982 or Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, under tight siege in 1993-1994 (it became less difficult in following years). Seasonal vegetables and fruits were not lacking, although nothing was exported except for bananas. Talking to people was easy but communication systems and internet contact with the outside world were absent and only possible via Thuraya satellite phone or similar means. The language was a barrier at first, but with time I learned to understand and then speak the local Arabic dialect, which is different from the Levantine dialect familiar to me from the many years I spent covering other wars.