RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – While excavating in an ancient urban mud complex on the outskirts of Lima, Peruvian archaeologists found a pre-Inca mummy between 1,200 and 800 years old tied with ropes.
The remains belong to a male person who would have been between 18 and 22 years old at the time of his death and whose face was covered by his hands.
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The discovery occurred inside a burial chamber about three meters long and at a depth of 1.40 meters in the Cajamarquilla archaeological site, east of Lima.
“We have achieved the discovery of a mummy that was located inside a funerary structure of conical subway shape, and when we saw the characteristics, it was a mummy that was tied with ropes,” archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen, responsible for the Cajamarquilla project, told AFP news agency.
“It is a peculiar and unique feature of this funerary context,” Van Dalen stressed about the finding in this excavation. “The mummy would have been buried between 800 to 1200 AD,” he said.
Next to the mummy, the skeleton of an Andean guinea pig and what appears to be a dog were found, according to researchers from the University of San Marcos. Remains of corn and other vegetables were also discovered in the burial chamber.
THE CAJAMARQUILLA ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
Cajamarquilla “was an urban center where multiple functions were developed, it has a great variety of sectors, administrative, domestic, residential,” Van Dalen added. According to the researcher, Cajamarquilla “was a huge city that could have housed between 10,000 and 20,000 people in a total of 167 hectares.” It was built around 200 B.C. and was occupied until 1500.
Cajamarquilla is located 24 kilometers east of Lima and is one of the most significant archaeological complexes near the country’s capital.
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