Archaeologists working in the Lima, Peru, suburb of Puruchuco recently uncovered a mass Inca burial site containing both traditionally prepared mummies and 72 skeletons buried hastily without the usual elaborate Inca customsincluding at least three apparent gunshot victims.

The scientists were there at the request of the Lima government, which had planned a road through the area. But the 500-year-old Inca cemetery contains the first documented gunshot victim of the New World, archaeologists say. The man, believed to be a casualty of the Spanish conquest, may be the oldest person in the Americas to be killed by a firearm, the experts add.

"We do not have evidence of individuals murdered by firearms and linked to the epoch of [Spanish-New World] contact except for these findings in Puruchuco," said Carlos G. Elera, director of the Sicán National Museum of Peru.

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