A 7,000-year-old mummy from the Chinchorro culture, along the border of Chile and Peru, whose skin, hair and clothing still remain (photos: National Geographic)
Changing Climate May Have Led To Earliest Mummies
NPR
August 15, 2012
A couple of thousand years before the Egyptians preserved some of their dead, a much simpler society made the first known mummies.
(Note: Since the early 20th century, glaciers around the world have been retreating, presumably as a result of humans burning greater and greater quantities of oil and coal, rampant deforestation, and the raising of livestock, which create greenhouse gases that absorb more sunlight and thus heat the atmosphere. Mt Kilamanjaro’s glacier in Tanzania, for example, which has been around for 12,000 years, is expected to completely disappear by 2020… (more…)
The Frozen Mummy of an Inca Girl Found On Top Of A Mountain In Argentina In 1999
(Note: Readers of this blog will recall that a German adventurer, Augusto R. Berns, claimed to have discovered a cave full of Inca mummies on a piece of property he… (more…)
Oh mummy! Archaeologists Unearth Ancient Tribe Members Sacrificed 1,300 Years Ago
The Daily Mail
August 27, 2008
Archaeologists working at an ancient Peruvian burial site have unearthed the first intact ruins belonging to a tribe which existed centuries before the mighty Incas…
(Above: Scientists examine a 15-year-old girl who lived in the Inca Empire, then was sacrificed and remained frozen for 500 years)
Incas fattened up their children before sacrifice on the volcano
The Times
October 2, 2007
Grim evidence of how the Incas “fattened up” children before sacrificing them to their gods has emerged from a new analysis of hair from two 500-year-old mummies preserved near the summit of a volcano…
(Above: The 15-year-old “Llullaillaco Maiden” was sacrificed along with two other children on top of Mt. Llullaillco, in northern Argentina, at 22,000 feet)
In Argentina, A Museum Unveils A Long-Frozen Maiden
September 11, 2007
NYT
SALTA, Argentina — The maiden, the boy, the girl of lightning: they were three Inca children, entombed on a bleak and frigid mountaintop 500 years ago as a religious sacrifice…
(Above: The Inca ruins of Sacsayhuaman (also Saqsaywaman) lie just above the city of Cuzco, Peru, at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet)
Ancient Temple Discovered Among Inca Ruins
National Geographic News
March 31, 2008
A temple thought to have once housed idols and mummies has been unearthed near an ancient Inca site in Cusco, Peru…