2 Infants buried in Peru about 1,600 years ago; one had a rare fatal birth defect called cyclopia

We often look back in time through the eyes of the victors, the rulers and the elite. Even in their funerals, they are commemorated as such so we learn a lot about them. Sometimes, we learn about the past through ordinary men and women, discovering their stories and lives.Rarely do we find stories from babies.

Their lives are often too brief to leave behind much of a historical record, and their remains can tell us only so much. In southern Peru, archaeologists discovered the remains of two infants buried together in a ceramic vessel. One of them had a single eye socket in the centre of her face, a rare congenital condition known as cyclopia.

Now, researchers have used ancient DNA to identify the genetic condition behind it, revealing an extraordinary piece of the history of human development.The discovery, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), offers a rare opportunity to understand a congenital condition that has left little evidence in the archaeological record.