2023-06-15 22:48:02
LIMA (AP) — Peruvian archaeologists have found a pre-Hispanic mummy, surrounded by coca leaves, on a hill in Lima next to a training ground for a professional soccer club.
An Associated Press team verified Thursday that the skeleton with long black hair was lying on its back, face up. Its lower extremities were tied with a braided rope of vines of vegetable origin and a set of stones surrounded the mummy buried one meter from the surface of the top.
Miguel Aguilar, a professor of archeology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and an archaeologist from the Lima municipality of Rímac, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the mummy was buried under a ritual that included coca leaves and seashells. It was located on top of a destroyed U-shaped clay temple, a characteristic of some pre-Hispanic buildings. The mummy has not yet been subjected to radiocarbon dating to determine its antiquity.
Pieter Van Dalen, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and an expert in archeology of the Peruvian coast who is not involved in the project, said the rope that ties the mummy’s lower extremities is an example of the pattern in ceremonial contexts. He cited the case of another mummy found in another area of Lima, called Cajamarquilla, whose body was tied with vegetable ropes.
Aguilar, who is also manager of the Historical and Cultural Center of the Municipality of Rímac, said that old fly eggs were found next to the male skeleton, from which they deduce that the body was exposed at least several days before be covered with earth. The municipality of Rímac is separated by a river of the same name from the oldest part of the capital.
The team of excavators —which included archeology students from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos— worked the first months of the year collecting up to eight tons of garbage that covered the top of the hill, located next to the training field and institutional headquarters of the Peruvian professional soccer team Sporting Cristal. The municipal police also had to remove homeless people or drug addicts who used to seek refuge in the surroundings of the hill.
The hill, which has remains of ancient mud walls, was a special site for pre-Hispanic cultures and was called “huaca”, a Quechua word meaning oracle or sacred place. In Lima, there are more than 400 huacas, according to the Ministry of Culture. These sacred places are distributed throughout the city and are part of the daily landscape of the Peruvian capital.
The AP has reported findings of mummies or pre-Hispanic remains in the most unusual places. Teams of workers who excavate the streets of Lima to expand the natural gas connection or squads that expand the underground drinking water network often find mummified human remains, some of children inside large clay vessels. Ceramics in the shape of small human figures have also been found, called “Cuchimilco”, a kind of guide for the deceased in the world of the dead of pre-Hispanic cultures, according to experts.
There are even cases of neighbors like Hipólito Tica, who found three pre-Hispanic mummies in a hole in the patio of his house and lived with them for a quarter of a century until in 2022 they were removed by another team of archaeologists with the permission of the Ministry of Culture, according to checked the AP.
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