Winter Garden, Florida - When human bones were found in Winter Garden in January, it was thought they could date back to the 1970's. That estimate was wrong, very wrong. "It's a fascinating case. a lot of fun," said Orange County's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia.
Crews digging to build a pool in Winter Garden's Carriage Pointe subdivision stumbled upon these in January. Because of these newspaper clippings dated 1978, the chief medical examiner thought she might be trying help solve a crime. She was shocked when the head of UCF's archaeology department dated bones and trinkets as being ancient. "According to archaeologist they appear to be from the South Peruvian region, dating them between 1200 and 1400," said Dr. Jan Garavaglia.
Looking back Dr. G recalls something on the smaller skull that first made her doubt these were from the late 1970's. "In this case it was the skull of a rather young person. I X-rayed it immediately. There was some mummified soft tissue which we don't usually see here in Florida in older," said Dr. Garavaglia.
Then she noticed an extra bone on the larger skull. "The Inca bone, it gets caught up in the suture very commonly called the inca bone because it was prominent in mummies they'd find. That one was much more readily identifiable as being old, a lot of pitting," said Dr. Garavaglia.
The archaeologists helping Dr. G did not carbon date the bones. Along with those identifying details on the bones, they used clues from the purse and tapestries. "The archaeology department says these are really slings, crude slings," said Dr. Garavaglia.
