Lima, Peru — Archaeologists have found a pre-Hispanic mummy surrounded by coca leaves on a hilltop in the Peruvian capital, next to a professional soccer club’s practice field.
A team from The Associated Press on Thursday saw the skeleton with long black hair, the lower ends of which were tied with rope hanging from vines of vegetable origin. The mummy buried one meter (three feet) below was surrounded by stones from all sides.
Miguel Aguilar, a professor of archeology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, said the mummy was buried in a ritual that included coca leaves and oysters.
The burial was on top of a U-shaped earthen temple, a characteristic of some pre-Hispanic buildings. Aguilar said the mummy has not yet been subjected to radiocarbon dating to determine its age.
They said old fly eggs were found next to the male skeleton, leading them to believe that the body had been exposed for at least several days before being covered with dirt.
It was found in Rimac, a district separated from the oldest part of Lima by a river of the same name. Aguilar also heads the historical and cultural center of the municipality of Rímac.
Peter Van Daalen, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, an expert on the archeology of the Peruvian coast, but not involved in the project, said the rope binding the lower parts of the mummy is an example of a pattern seen in ceremonies. , He cited another mummy found in a different area of Lima, whose body was also bound with vegetable ropes.
Teams of excavators worked in the first months of this year to collect eight tonnes of rubbish that covered the top of the hill, which is next to the training area and headquarters of the Sporting Crystal soccer club. The police also removed homeless people and drug addicts who were camping around the hill.
The hill, which has the remains of ancient earthen walls, was a “huaca”, a Quechua word meaning oracle or sacred place. According to the Ministry of Culture, there are over 400 huaca in Lima.
Mummies and other pre-Hispanic remains have been found in unusual places in the city. Workers installing natural gas lines or water mains have found mummies, sometimes children, inside large clay pots.
There are also cases of discoveries by residents, such as Hipólito Tica, who found three pre-Hispanic mummies in a hole in the courtyard of his house. He kept silent about them for a quarter of a century, until they were unearthed in 2022 by archaeologists with the permission of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.
