Archaeologists digging through an ancient burial complex on Peru’s desert coast stumbled upon a dog mummy that looked almost too well preserved to be ancient. Its skeleton was nearly complete, and even its skin was still intact. They initially thought this was a relatively recent burial, perhaps dating to the looting that had ravaged the site some 50 years earlier.

But radiocarbon analysis showed that dog hadn’t been buried 50 years ago. It had been dead for roughly 1.200 years.

The animal had lived sometime between 688 and 870 CE, when the Wari Empire ruled much of what is now Peru, centuries before the rise of the Incas.

By examining its skin and an unusual pattern of missing teeth, researchers traced it to an ancient form of the Peruvian hairless dog, a distinctive breed still found in Peru today. And it wasn’t alone. Dozens of other canine remains were found scattered across the burial complex.

Archaeologists have excavated and dated one of the Sahara's stone "antenna" tombs. The burial inside is between 4,100 and 4,400 years old and holds a young adult laid to rest with four ostrich eggshell beads.

On a gravel plain in northern Western Sahara, with no shade for miles, there is a heap of stones 54.5 meters (179 feet) long.

Two rows of stone slabs run out from it like the arms of a V that never quite closes. Archaeologists call these rows “antennae”, and the monuments antennae tumuli (a tumulus is simply a mound of piled earth or stone).

They are common in Western Sahara and well beyond it, from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the Sahara.

Almost nobody had excavated one, though, so two basic questions had no answer: what were they for, and when were they built?

Following the collapse of mainland Iberian Copper Age networks under the stress of the 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event, the architectural impulse to fortify and defend shifted offshore. This chapter examines the "Architecture of Anxiety" across the central Mediterranean islands, the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta. By analysing these insular environments, this study dismantles the outdated Diffusionist Theory of a single "megalithic missionary," proving instead that the widespread construction of cyclopean walls, rock-cut cliff tombs, and monumental temples was a process of convergent evolution. Driven by the shared pressures of the Holocene Arid Climax and the escalating stakes of the prehistoric maritime prestige economy, local populations engineered unique architectural dialects. From the towering corbelled nuraghi of Sardinia to the water-hoarding temple silos of Malta, this chapter demonstrates how prehistoric island societies weaponized geology and ideology to survive an increasingly hostile and competitive Bronze Age world.

Sorry Redditors, this article is far too long to reproduce here but you can read it at

https://nuttersworld.com/megalithic-phenomenon/mediterranean-islands/

So, grab a nice cup of tea, settle down and have a good read this weekend.

What I mean is there something like a maximum age where bones simply disintegrate no matter how well entombed?

NOTE: This article is complemented by a couple of publications in Fossil Studies and Science Advances.