It has been suggested that an area of scorched earth at Cahuachi (later the principal religious centre of the Nazca people) was used in Paracas times, around 500 BC, as a place where the dead were smoked to preserve them before burial in mummy bundles in the cemeteries at Paracas.
The skulls of Paracas people and their Nazca descendants were elongated by artificial deformation in early infancy: babies' heads were bound between two wooden boards, and some infant skulls at Paracas still had the boards in place.
A large number of Paracas skulls had also been trepanned: a circle or square of bone had been cut from the skull, perhaps to relieve migraines or brain tumours, perhaps for less obvious, ritual, reasons. Many of the trepanned skulls had new bone growth over the hole, showing that patients survived the extraordinary and risky operation.
Much later, after AD 200, when Cahuachi had been abandoned as the major Nazca centre, it was used as the burial place for thousands of Nazca people. Most of the graves have unfortunately been looted to remove the beautiful pottery.
