A mummified hairless dog at least 1,200 years old turned up in a Wari burial ground in Peru

A naturally mummified male dog, nearly complete except for its lower front limbs, lay in a shallow pit at Castillo de Huarmey on Peru’s northern coast, and radiocarbon dating shows it is at least 1,200 years old. Its skin was hairless, and its skull bore no first premolars, two traits that led archaeologist Weronika Tomczyk of Dartmouth College to identify it as a Peruvian hairless dog. It is the oldest radiocarbon-dated specimen from the site so far.

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Tomczyk and her co-authors Miłosz Giersz, Wiesław Więckowski and Roberto Pimentel Nita of the University of Warsaw, and Claire Ebert of the University of Pittsburgh, reported the find in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. The work was released in spring 2026 and ScienceDaily republished a summary of it in mid-October.

A mummy first mistaken for a looter-era burial

Castillo de Huarmey sits about 190 miles north of Lima and covers roughly 110 acres. It served as an administrative and burial center for the Wari Empire from about 600 to 1050 CE, and it is the only known Wari site on the northern coast. Because a 1970 earthquake and the looting that followed disturbed the upper layers, where most animal remains turned up, the team first suspected the mummified dog was a recent burial from the looting period. Its hairlessness and missing teeth argued otherwise, and the radiocarbon date settled the matter.

The dog was not alone. According to Dartmouth’s news release on the study, the researchers recovered 341 dog bone specimens from at least 19 individuals, along with a mummified skull whose hairless skin and attached ears had been painted with cinnabar, a red pigment used in Peruvian funerary practice, and a second, larger skull. A ceramic vessel shows a seated hairless dog with human-like features.

Earlier work at the site had already turned up an undisturbed elite tomb in 2012 and the burials of elite craftspeople in 2022, which is the setting in which the dog remains were then re-examined and compared against that human record.

Missing premolars as the identification key

Hairlessness rarely survives in bone, so Tomczyk looked at teeth. All three of the dogs she identified lacked first premolars, and some teeth had never erupted rather than being lost after death. Published research links the gene responsible for hairlessness in dogs to a reduced number of teeth, and Tomczyk put it this way: “the same gene which is responsible for hairlessness in dogs is responsible for a reduced number of teeth.” The study is described as the first physical evidence of hairless dogs at a Wari site, although such dogs appear in Wari art.

The identification rests on that dental signature, which is why Archaeology magazine notes that hairlessness was inferred from the teeth, not seen on every animal. The paper itself is catalogued as “The many lives of companion species”, volume 82 of the journal, article 101767.

Maize diets and burials beside people

Isotope analysis of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium showed that most of the dogs ate at least some maize, a staple in the pre-Hispanic Andes, so their diets overlapped with the human diet. Hairless puppies ate in ways that resembled human children, while older hairless dogs ate a wider range of foods. That pattern may point to organized breeding or special care, but Tomczyk cautioned that it is unknown whether the dogs were intentionally fed maize or were simply eating leftovers or trash.

Burial context hints at status. A puppy about 6 to 8 weeks old was buried near an elite craftsperson nicknamed the Master Basketmaker, an adult dog was interred inside the site’s palace, and part of a puppy skeleton lay with a male individual, probably sacrificed as a tomb guardian, who is called “XY.” Few bones carried butchery marks, which suggests dogs were rarely eaten. Tomczyk has said that if dogs are buried in close association with humans, there must have been some kind of bond, and a Dartmouth anthropology profile adds that the Wari may have chosen such dogs to guide important people into the afterlife, a possibility the page presents with a hedge.

The limits are real. The disturbed upper layers mix materials together, and only the deeper, unlooted layer preserves the original Wari context. The evidence cannot show whether the dogs were pets, working animals or something else, and Tomczyk said reconstructing the bond is challenging because past emotions are hard to capture with archaeological methods. Peruvian hairless dogs are an Indigenous breed that survives today, recognized by the American Kennel Club in one variety as the Peruvian Inca Orchid and designated part of Peru’s cultural heritage in 2000, which is why a 1,200-year-old mummy at Huarmey carries so much interest, though the study does not address how closely those Wari-era animals are related to the living breed, and the burial evidence says little about whether people in the Wari period valued the dogs as companions, guardians or something else.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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