Hemisphere's First Gunshot Victim Found?

Archaeologists Find Skull In Peru From Early 1500s With Round Hole In It

(AP)  The musket blast was sudden and deadly — the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere.

"We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost-round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru.

But he realized that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said in a telephone interview.

The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient Incas, who had died violently in the early 1500s as the Spanish Conquistadors battled the native empire.

The bones were in shallow graves, leading the archaeologist to speculate the burials were done hurriedly during conflict, perhaps an uprising against the Spanish in 1536.

To be sure this was a gunshot wound — making it the earliest one documented in the Americas — the skull was studied by forensics expert Tim Palmbach at the University of New Haven, who brought in other experts.

Al Harper, director of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science in New Haven, Conn., said the team "tried to rule out all kinds of causes of the hole — a rock from a slingshot, spear, sledgehammer." Harper and Palmbach studied the skull with a powerful scanning electronic microscope.

"We all thought it was a million-to-one chance that we would find any traces of metal on a skull that old, but it was worth a try," Harper said in a statement.

But there they were, fragments of metal from a musket ball impregnated the area surrounding the hole.

Cock and archaeologist Elena Goycochea discovered the burials in a Lima suburb in 2004 and have since recovered 72 apparent victims of violence from the site.

"These bodies were strangely buried," Cock said. "They were not facing the right direction, they were tied up or hastily wrapped in a simple cloth, they had no offerings and they were buried at a shallow depth.

"Some of the bodies also showed signs of terrible violence. They had been hacked, torn, impaled — injuries that looked as if they had been caused by iron weapons — and several had injuries on their heads and faces that looked as if they were caused by gunshots."

One skull in particular had both an entrance and exit wound, suggestive of a musket ball and prompting him to seek experts to study it. A plug of bone from one of the holes was recovered nearby, he added.

The conclusion: A musket ball less than an inch in diameter struck the back of the skull and passed through the head.

"This conclusively proves that the person was killed by a gunshot, and he is the first identified shooting victim in the Americas," Cock said.

Since the initial find, at least two other apparent gunshot victims have been identified and the research is continuing.

Cock discussed his find during a visit to the National Geographic Society, which supported the work. His findings will be detailed June 26 on a NOVA/National Geographic television special, "The Great Inca Rebellion."

In 2002, Cock reported finding more than 2,000 Inca mummies buried beneath a shantytown near Lima, a find he said helped shed light on the life, health and culture of this civilization.

[ubrew12]

Hemisphere's First Gunshot Victim Found?
It would be news if they found the last

[billpl-2009]

his name was "Vito"

[jabberwock11]

"It would be news if they found the last"

Unfortunately that changes ever few seconds.

[bogusbones]

Was he shot with a Glock or an AK - 47?

What an honor and all the time I thought it would have happened in Miami, Detroit or LA.

[hawksprings]

Guns don't kill Peruvians, Spaniards do.

[rushlimpdrug]

I hope they catch the bastardd that did this and throw the book at him.

[mitdgreenb]

Zoe -- right on.
Hawk -- LOL

[Hybdiesel]

Bet old G. Bush had something to do with that.

[godseyesore-2009]

He was probably hunting with an ancestor of cheney.

[godseyesore-2009]

Oh...on second thought, it was cheney himself. Evil never dies.

[incog-nito]

What if the scientists are wrong? What if he was not the first, but the second gunshot victim in the hemisphere?

[octavianfdlr]

Wasn't the first gunshot victim in Florida (about the time of its discovery by Juan Ponce de Leon, 1513? (That's ignoring deaths on islands.)

Oh yes. The claim is that this is "the first identified shooting victim in the Americas." The earliest gunshot victim who has been dug up and identified as a gunshot victim. Not the first victim.

Why call him "the first?"

[talkingham]

I'm never surprised by the level of idiocy on this forum. It's obvious that this is not the first gunshot victim in the W hemisphere only the first documented victim. Cortez and his band of religious zealots and gold hording thugs killed thousands in Mexico before this and of course Columbus and his group of thieves killed thousands in the islands before Cortez. In the Souteastern US 98% of the natives disappeared wherever Desoto and his band of murderers lingered and killed through violence and disease. They always made sure they murdered the people who knew when to plant the crops and anyone else key to the native culture structure. And 300 years later the US government did it all over again with the trail of tears in the southern states, ethnically cleansing the native populations and moving them to places where they thought they'd just die out in Oklahouma and elsewhere. America is too busy watching reality programs such as America Has Talent and American Idle to give a hoot about any real reality as evidenced by the idiot comments on the CBS forum.

Great legacy for the kids...

[bkylws]

Don't forget the dinasaurs. The did some killin' too. Oh, wait! No guns yet.

[deadjester1]

man i love the comments on here! its great. i gotta say though, fer all the hate against the explorers of the past, they were just being people and doing their jobs. so some indians got killed, big deal, thats natural selection at work. perfect example of it really. they weren't strong enough to kill the folks invading them and so they died. its the way of the world man. since the begining of human history we've been doing this. you cant hate on history and you cant hate on mother nature thinning the heards out. its just the world at work man.

[deadjester1]

man i love the comments on here! its great. i gotta say though, fer all the hate against the explorers of the past, they were just being people and doing their jobs. so some indians got killed, big deal, thats natural selection at work. perfect example of it really. they weren't strong enough to kill the folks invading them and so they died. its the way of the world man. since the begining of human history we've been doing this. you cant hate on history and you cant hate on mother nature thinning the heards out. its just the world at work man.

[rushlimpdrug]

. . they weren't strong enough to kill the folks invading them and so they died. its the way of the world man. . . . you cant hate on mother nature thinning the heards out. its just the world at work man.
Posted by deadjester1

You probably have a 3rd grade education with a nice GED.
IF you had half a monkey brain you would realize that the "heards" survived. Nature allowed infestation from europe africa, asia to populate the Western Hemisphere. Even the nitwit Nazi's ran like rats to take cover in this hemisphere. So get a grip and climb back into your tree man.

[incog-nito]

See what happens when you have gun control? If these people had carried firearms they would have been able to defend themselves!

And so goes the argument...

[brianbwb-2009]

"He was probably hunting with an ancestor of cheney."
Posted by godseyesore

LOL. Nah, he was hunting with Cheney himself. Cheney looks old enough...