Large number of Inca mummies, some of them packaged together in gatherings of up to seven, have been uncovered from an old burial ground under a shantytown close to Lima in Peru.
Accepted to be the biggest graveyard from one time span uncovered in Peru, lead classicist Guillermo Chicken said upwards of 10,000 Incas were perhaps covered at the site at Puruchuco in Peru’s Rimac Valley somewhere in the range of 1480 and 1535.
Authentic unearthings of preinca Nazca or Nasca civilisation burial ground of Chauchilla at Nazca region in Peru
“Before our unearthings, only one falsas cabezas group from the Inca Time frame had been recuperated by an excavator, in 1956,” said Rooster.
Chicken said it was muddled whether the bodies in these groups were all related however most likely when a key individual passed on his body was set to the side until the rest of his party kicked the bucket and could be covered with him.
According to the National Geographic Society’s explorer-in-residence Johan Reinhard, “mummy bundles are like time capsules from the Inca.” The abundance of one-period mummies presents a rare opportunity to learn new information about the Incas.
22 of the 50,000-60,000 artifacts that were recovered from the site are on display at National Geographic, including patterned textiles and ancient ceramic pots. Over the past three years, Cock and his team worked tirelessly to salvage as much as possible from the cemetery before the shantytown was demolished for development.
The 1,240 families that arrived there in 1989 to flee guerrilla fighting in the Peruvian highlands gave the location its name, Tupac Amaru. Other graves were destroyed by bulldozers in 1998, in addition to the toll that the cemetery has taken from the tens of thousands of gallons of liquid that are dumped into the ground each day.
Archaeologists turned the area into a massive dig and constructed bridges for people to cross the streets as Shantytown residents fought to remain on the site. The dig was helped along by some of the locals. A portion of the graves were seen as extremely near the surface, particularly in a dusty school jungle gym which had been evened out quite a long while prior.