At first, the reeds festooned with human vertebrae and skulls seemed too macabre to be anything more than a sick joke. When archaeologist Jacob Bongers and his team came across the strange sight in Peru’s Chincha Valley, they chalked it up to looters who had come before, disturbed ancient tombs in the area, and left the reeds as a calling card. The locals knew all about the skeleton sticks — but when Bongers asked about them, all they told him, he says, was that “they’re antiguo. They’re definitely old.” But beyond that, their origin and purpose remained a mystery to the archaeologists — one they became determined to solve.
