Ancient Incan company may have asserted their superpower over boisterous field by displaying the severed , mutilated heads of protestors along a rope , according to new research published in the journalLatin American Antiquity .

archaeologist excavating Iglesia Colorada , one of Chile ’s most illustrious Inca - style settlements , have discover the modified skull of three young females between the age of 16 and 30 and that of a child ’s tossed in an ancient rubbish pile alongside animate being bones . Characteristics of the skulls , like a lack of tooth , point that the four individuals had a like pathological visibility , either from emphasis , infection , or genetic causes .

The skulls all shared another law of similarity : each had two circular holes bored into the frontal lobe and a third in the parietal , in all probability so they could be strung together in what the author identify as “ lurid and powerful display of violence ” .

Such methods of might have been keep in other ancient societies in the region . The nearby Paracas and Nasca cultures create cave art that showed mutilated bodies and they adorned pottery with people holding sever head word . In the Ica and Acarí Valleys , archaeologists have found hundreds of trophy heads with post - mortem alterations , such as enlarged   part of the skull , removed   vertebra , preserved   facial sonant tissue , and the mouth and eyes sewed shut .

In Chile , heads have been found inside net bags as a lowly interment following death , while there are representations of break up heads in snuffing tablets in the Atacama Desert . Dismembered heads in this part of the world served as a “ powerful and iconic”symbolof triumph and influence over foe .   But before now , there was no evidence that such practice occurred in the marginalized cultural find at Iglesia Colorada .

carbon 14 dating suggest that the heads were decapitated in the settlement during a clip of transition from Diaguita to Incan convention , suggesting   the “ celebrate pattern of discerp psyche modification may represent new ideologic elbow grease for control possible social fermentation . " Economic change and political agenda may have created social stresses that they believed   yell for avow dominance and control over newly acquire subjects .

The caput are now preserved at the Museo Regional de Atacama .