Wider WorldMiddle Nasca · Jauranga, Palpa Valley, Ica, Peru
1,600-year-old Nasca infant from Peru had a single central eye socket, and DNA shows why
Genome sequencing found an extra copy of chromosome 13 in a baby girl buried in an urn at Jauranga, in the valley of the Nazca Lines.
In brief 3 key points
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- Skull of a Nasca-period baby girl has one eye socket in the middle of the face
- DNA shows trisomy 13, a known chromosomal cause of cyclopia
- She was buried in an ordinary urn with a second infant, without special grave goods
Archaeologists in Peru have found the skeleton of a baby girl whose skull has a single eye socket in the middle of the face. DNA from the bones shows she had trisomy 13, an extra copy of chromosome 13. She was buried more than 1,600 years ago at Jauranga, in the Palpa Valley of southern Peru.
The study was published on 9 November in the journal PNAS. Its first author is Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, an archaeologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Lars Fehren-Schmitz, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a co-author.
A burial among dozens of others
The Palpa Valley is one of the areas where the Nazca Lines, the giant geoglyphs, are found. At Jauranga the team uncovered several dozen burials from the Middle Nasca period, about AD 325 to 440.
The girl lay at the bottom of a ceramic urn. Burial in urns was common in the Nasca period. A second baby girl, with no skeletal abnormalities, lay on top of her. The genetic analysis showed that the two infants had different mothers.
“The baby with cyclopia was at the bottom of the jar, while the other baby was on top. Nevertheless, it appears that they were interred in a single event.”
Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, to Live Science
Two infants in one urn is unusual for this culture, the researchers say. There is not enough evidence to conclude that the girl received a different kind of burial.
What the skull shows
The skull is very small, with one eye socket in the middle of the face and other changes to the cranial bones. These traits match modern clinical descriptions of cyclopia. The condition is lethal. It arises when the front of the developing brain fails to divide into left and right halves.
Cyclopia occurs in about 1 in 100,000 births. To learn more, the team sequenced the infant's genome. It showed two X chromosomes, typical of a girl, and an extra chromosome 13. Trisomy 13, also called Patau syndrome, is a major chromosomal cause of cyclopia. Only a small share of trisomy 13 cases involve it.
Trisomy 13 is linked to older mothers. Fehren-Schmitz said it is not clear whether that was the case here.
Treated like other infants
Siân Halcrow, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who was not involved, said this is the first archaeological example of the condition she knows of. Cases are known from historic and modern anatomical collections. The age estimate suggests the girl may have lived for several weeks or months after birth, Halcrow said.
Fehren-Schmitz said the team cannot say how long the baby survived. The burial in a regular cemetery, beside a healthy infant and without special grave goods, suggests she was neither excluded nor treated in a special way in death.
“The burial of this infant suggests that the Nasca treated this individual in death like most other infants.”
Lars Fehren-Schmitz, to Live Science
Sources (2)
Peer-reviewed paperfrom Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and University of California, Santa Cruz
- Nazca infant had rare, fatal birth defect that left her with one central eye 1,600 years ago (Live Science: archaeology)
- Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. (PNAS (PMC))
Paper: Tomasto-Cagigao et al., A Nasca-period perinatal burial reveals cyclopia associated with trisomy 13 in southern Peru, PNAS (2026)
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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