“The discovery of Incas mummies, some of them bundled together in groups of up to seven, has been unearthed from an ancient cemetery under a shantytown near Lima in Peru.

Believed to be the largest cemetery from one time period excavated in Peru, lead archaeologist Guillermo Cock said as many as 10,000 Incas were possibly buried at the site at Puruchuco in Peru’s Rimac Valley between 1480 and 1535.

But Cock, a Peruvian archaeologist, said the site was being destroyed at an alarming rate by humans, including the release of thousands of gallons of sewage daily into the shantytown’s streets that had seeped underneath from ancient cemeteries.

“The consequences of humanity on these burials are terrible,” said Cock, adding that some of the mummies were riddled with worms. “It was not a pretty sight.”

Cock, who estimates they uncovered the remains of between 2,200 and 2,400 Incas, said the cemetery provided a huge scientific sampling of the Inca people from infants to the elderly and from the rich to the very poor.

“We have what in sociological terms, we would call the perfect sample to project presidential elections. Each social class and group are proportionally represented,” Cock told a news conference at National Geographic’s Washington headquarters.

“This will give us a unique opportunity to look into the Inca community, study their lives, their health and their culture,” added Cock, who has been doing archaeological work in Peru since 1983 and is an adviser to the Peruvian government.

The Nasca culture was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley.

The Incas once ruled a vast swath of South American stretching from Colombia to Chile but were overthrown by Spanish conquerors led by Francisco Pizarro and his band of 160 treasure hunters, using cannons and horses, brought them down in 1533.

Some of the “mummy bundles” contained as many as seven people buried along with their possessions and weighed down by hundreds of pounds of stone and pottery.

The bodies were not embalmed, he said but were mummified by placing them in dry soil packed with textiles that helped them dry out more quickly.

“The process, although natural, was intentional,” he said. So far, Cock said only three bundles had been properly examined when a key person died his body was put aside until the remainder of his party died and could be buried with him.

“Many bundles are like time capsules from the Inca,” said Johan Reinhard, explorer-in-residence at National Geographic Society. “The huge number of mummies from one period of time provides for new information about the Incas.”

About 50,000 to 60,000 artifacts were retrieved from the site and 22 of these are on display at National Geographic, including ancient ceramic pots and patterned textiles. Cock and his team worked at a frenetic pace over the past three years to salvage as much as they could from the cemetery before…