RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA—According to a report in Forbes, osteological analysis of three skulls dating between A.D. 200 and 800 from the site of Wata Wata in Bolivia suggests that the one man and two women experienced extreme violence at or near the time of death. The victims were incapacitated, but may have still been alive at the time of the torture. Sara Becker, now of the University of California at Riverside, and Sonia Alconini of the University of Texas at San Antonio wrote in the journal Latin American Antiquity that the marks on the skull of the first woman show that she had been scalped and beheaded. Cut marks on her upper cheekbones, around her eyes indicate that her eyes may have been gouged out. The man had suffered a broken nose that had healed before his death, but he also had a large, unhealed skull fracture and there are cut marks around his eye orbit. The second woman had also experienced a blow to the head. Cut marks indicate that her head was defleshed, and her lower jaw and eyes were removed. “The physical extraction of the eyes of the Wata Wata heads may be a symbol of blindness and blinding the power of these individuals,” they said. Becker and Alconini think the three may have been decapitated, dismembered, and buried by a new regime during a political transition. For more on ancient political machinations in the Andes, see "The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui."