if we have each other

Two infants were buried some 2,100 years ago wearing “helmets” made from the skulls of other children, archaeologists have discovered.

The remains of the two infants were found with nine other burials at a site called Salango, on the coast of central Ecuador. The archaeologists who excavated the burials between 2014 and 2016 recently published the details of their findings in the journal Latin American Antiquity.

The team says this is the only known case in which children’s skulls were used as helmets for infants being buried. The scientists don’t know what killed the infants and children.

The helmets were placed tightly over the infants’ heads, the archaeologists found. It’s likely that the older children’s skulls still had flesh on them when they were turned into helmets, because without flesh, the helmets likely would not have held together, the archaeologists noted.