Ancient DNA Identifies Cyclopia’s Cause in a 1,600-Year-Old Infant

The Nasca infant had one eye socket in the center of her face, and her nose had not developed normally.

One early developmental failure can account for the central eye socket and abnormal nose.

Did she survive for months?

Archaeologists discovered the infant at Jauranga in Peru’s Palpa Valley, a region known for the enormous geoglyphs called the Nazca Lines. She lay at the bottom of a ceramic urn beneath another infant girl. Both infants belonged to the Middle Nasca period, between 325 and 440 CE.

Her developing teeth resembled those of a two- to four-month-old. But her thigh bones and other long bones matched those of a fetus at about 36 to 40 weeks of pregnancy, near the time of birth. Normally, those measurements help estimate age at death. Here, they pointed in opposite directions.

One possibility is that she survived for weeks or months after birth while her condition severely restricted skeletal growth. Another is that trisomy 13 disrupted tooth development, making her appear older than she really was.

“We cannot really say how long this individual survived,” anthropologist Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a study co-author at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Live Science. “[But] the burial of this infant suggests that the Nasca treated this individual in death like most other infants.”

The bones and teeth do not establish how long she lived.

What did the burial show?

Both infants went into the urn during what appears to have been a single burial event. DNA showed that they came from different maternal family lines. They may have shared a father, but they also may have come from different families.

Urn burials were common for Nasca children and account for about one-quarter of documented graves in Palpa. The infant with cyclopia had no unusual grave goods and no obvious sign of different funerary treatment. That pattern suggests her community included her in established burial traditions. It does not show whether anyone gave her special care while she was alive.

This case fits a growing collection of burials of children with rare, severe conditions. A 2024 genetic study identified six infants with Down syndrome and one with Edwards syndrome, dating from around 5,000 years ago to the 18th century, in Bulgaria, Greece, Spain and Finland. Some died before birth, while others survived for months.

In Iron Age Spain, people buried an infant with Down syndrome alongside multiple offerings, suggesting that ancient communities sometimes gave children with severe genetic conditions careful funerary treatment.

The shared urn and lack of exceptional grave goods point to inclusion in usual Nasca child burial practice.

What remains unknown?

The remains do not show whether the infant was born alive, or whether she survived for days, weeks or months. They cannot reveal what her brief life was like or how the people around her responded to her condition. Her DNA identifies a condition present from fertilization; her bones and teeth offer conflicting clues about what followed.

Researchers published the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The cause is known; the length and quality of her life remain unknown.