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The tomb of the pre-Inca mummy discovered in Peru at the end of 2021, tied with ropes and with his hands covering his face, does not stop giving surprises. Archaeologists from the National University of San Marcos have discovered six child mummies wrapped in bales of cotton, between 1,000 and 1,200 years old, which might have been sacrificed to accompany this important character from Cajamarquilla, on the outskirts of Lima, on his journey to the followinglife.
To the team of researchers who lead Peter Van Dalen Y Yomira Huamán He had been struck by the dimensions and characteristics of the tomb where they found the mummy between 800 and 1,200 years old, which has been identified as a man of high class.
The tomb was too large and elaborate for a single character, so they continued to dig around it. According to the archaeologist
Yomira Huamán to RTV San Marcos, “not less than a step away”, in a passageway that gave access to the tomb, they ran into two other funerary graves. The first contained the mummies of four adults and one child, and in the second they found the remains of two adults with evidence of having been sacrificed.
Very close, also linked to the first mummy, they found two other tombs very similar to this one, although of small dimensions. Both were sealed, covered with mud and stones. Inside one of them, the researchers discovered a woman with a baby along with a large amount of ceramic material, gourds, knitting sticks and food remains (chili, corn…).
In total, they discovered the mummies of the six children and the skeletal remains of seven adults that, unlike the infants, were not wrapped in bundles. “The children, according to our working hypothesis, would have been sacrificed to accompany the mummy on the way to the world of the dead,” archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen told AFP. According to the person in charge of the Cajamarquilla project, “the children might be close relatives and were placed inside funerary wrappings made up of fabrics placed in various parts from the entrance of the tomb of the mummy (of the character), one on top of the other”.
The antiquity of these mummies “would be between the year 800 to the year 1000 following Christ,” he said.
Bone remains of camelids, such as llamas, were also found at the site.
The discovery occurred near the burial chamber of regarding three meters long and at a depth of 1.40 meters, where in November the mummy of who is now presumed to be an important person was found. That character “achieved economic and social status, (and was) a possibly political authority” and we might even call him “Lord of Cajamarca“.
The mummy found at the end of November 2021 is of a male person who was possibly between 18 and 22 years old at the time of his death. She wore her face covered by her hands and was tied with ropes.
In the tomb of the Lord of Sipán, along with the remains of the Mochica ruler dated to 250 AD, the remains of three women, four men and one child, as well as animals, were also found.
“This might be the oldest mass sacrifice of children ever discovered in Peru,” says the newspaper La República.
Cajamarquilla “was an urban center where multiple functions were developed,” with “administrative, domestic, residential” sectors, Van Dalen added.
This pre-Hispanic mud city might have housed between 10,000 and 20,000 people in a total of 167 hectares. It was built around the year 200 BC and was occupied until the year 1500.
The city is located 24 km east of Lima and is one of the largest archaeological complexes in the Peruvian capital, a metropolis that today has 10 million inhabitants.
