Online:
Visits:
Stories:
Profile image
Story Views

Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

Thousands of 1200-year-old mummies discovered in Peru

Sunday, April 19, 2015 19:04
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

Archeologists have discovered an ancient ceremonial site called Tenahaha in Peru’s remote Cotahuasi Valley that contains an estimated several thousand mummies dating back to about 1000 BC. Dozens of tombs filled with as many as 40 mummies each dot the surrounding small hills, according to a report byLive Science.

“The dead, likely numbering in the low thousands, towered over the living,” writes archeologist and author Justin Jennings, a curator at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, in a chapter of his recently published book ‘Tenahaha and the Wari State: A View of the Middle Horizon from the Cotahuasi Valley’ (University of Alabama Press, 2015.)

The dead, who likely lived in nearby villages and ranged in age from fetuses to elderly adults, were buried with their knees pulled up against their chests, wrapped in layers of cloth, and bound with rope, researchers say. Infants were buried in jars.

Sadly, water damage and destruction by rodents have left the mummies in pretty bad shape. Also, in some cases, it appears the mummies’ bones were intentionally scattered and moved about between the tombs. One tomb contains nearly 400 separate human body parts, including feet, hands, and teeth.

Jennings suggests that the action of breaking apart and moving mummy parts may have promoted a sense of community.

“In the Andes, death is a process,” said Jennings in an interview with Live Science, “it’s not as if you bury someone and you’re done.”

Tenahaha was being used between about 800 A.D. and 1000 A.D, according to radiocarbon dating. The site has storerooms, outside arenas for feasts, and shows little evidence that violence played much of a role in these ancient people’s lives, even though coastal Peruvian sites reveal a society that was in the midst of great social upheaval during this time period. Pottery shards found at Tenahaha are painted with what look like ‘smiley faces,’ archeologists say.

“It’s a period of great change and one of the ways which humans around the world deal with that is through violence,” Jennings said in the interview. “What we are suggesting is that Tenahaha was placed in part to deal with those changes, to find a way outside violence, to deal with periods of radical culture change.”

To date, archeologists have excavated seven tombs and 171 mummies from the Tenhaha site, according to Live Science.

The post Thousands of 1200-year-old mummies discovered in Peru appeared first on .



Source: http://www.anonymousmags.com/thousands-1200yearold-mummies-discovered-peru/

Report abuse

Comments

Your Comments
Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

Top Stories
Recent Stories

Register

Newsletter

Email this story
Email this story

If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.