When a plumber discovered two skulls buried in the ground of a Florida backyard last January, police thought they had a murder mystery to solve. Turns out, this is one case that won't crack anytime soon.
A medical examiner in Winter Gardens says that the pair of skulls -- that of a 10-year-old boy and an older man -- date back to between 1200 and 1400 and likely originated in Peru or other regions in South America.
"The mystery is how they ended up there," medical examiner Jan Garavaglia said, according to Newser. "We don't have any way of finding out."
The plumber who first encountered the objects was installing an in-ground swimming pool when he struck bone. He reported the discovery to police.
ABC News reported:
When x-rayed by the medical examiner's office, it was clear that the bones were hundreds of years old, and that the human tissue on the cheek of the skull had been mummified. The skulls featured an "Inca bone," a telltale sign of a human from the Incan culture of Peru, Garavaglia said.
Experts from the University of Central Florida and Yale University also identified cloth items representing primitive slings. The items may have belonged to a tourist when laws restricting the transport of human remains were less strict, the Orlando Sentinel reported.