What Was This 2,000-Year-Old Parrot Mummy Doing in Mexico?
As the oldest known macaw mummy in the world, the find could give insights on trade between present-day Southwest U.S. and Mexico.
In 2016, a rancher living about 300 miles south of the Texas border was doing construction on his property. His goal was to level a cave, so he brought in some workers and a bulldozer to help with the project. Little did they know they were about to unearth an archaeological gold mine.
As they were plowing through Avendaños Cave, the workers started turning up some strange artifacts on the San Francisco de Borja property, located in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. The rancher halted construction, took a picture of the finds, and sent them to archaeologist Emiliano Gallaga, the director of the School of Anthropology North of Mexico at the National Institute of
