Every time archaeologists discover an ancient mummy, excitement soon follows. Mummies, of course, are often so well preserved that they capture the essence of who ancient peoples were when they were alive. As well as what ancient peoples decided to do with their bodies after they died. In a new discovery from an archaeological site outside of Lima, Peru, archaeologists have unearthed an 800-year-old mummy that had been tied up in ropes at the time of its burial. In a way such that its hands covered its face.
Design Taxi picked up on the mummy discovery, which occurred inside one of the hundreds of archaeological sites in Peru; sites that continuously give new insights into native cultures from both before and after the Inca Empire.
Archaeologists found this particular mummy in an underground structure on the outskirts of the city of Lima. Reuters reports that the “mummified remains were of a person from [a] culture that developed between the coast and mountains” of Peru. Pieter Van Dalen Luna, one archaeologist responsible for the find, also told Reuters that he and his colleagues have yet to identify the mummy’s gender.
“The main characteristic of the mummy is that the whole body was tied up by ropes and with the hands covering the face, which would be part of the local funeral pattern,” Van Dalen Luna, who’s at the State University of San Marcos, told Reuters. He added that identifying the exact age of the mummy will require radiocarbon dating.
Alongside the mummy archaeologists also discovered small pieces of pottery. As well as stone tools, and even trace evidence of vegetables. A reasonable offering for somebody’s journey through the afterlife considering the region was a strategic place for commercial exchange. Also, a testament to the idea that, even in the afterlife, nobody wants to eat their vegetables.
