Scientists Set to Unravel Secrets of Oldest Peruvian Mummies Ever Found

Ancient people in the mountains of Peru revered their ancestors so much they mummified them and included their bodies in community activities, archaeologists say. Now a new study of four 8,000- to 10,000-year-old mummies from Peru's Tres Ventanas (‘Three Windows’) cave may help researchers understand more about these people, who cultivated potatoes and corn and domesticated animals around the same time as farmers in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

In recent years mummies from around the world have undergone analysis using modern scientific and medical techniques. The entire June 2015 issue of the scientific journal The Anatomical Record, all 26 articles, is devoted to studies of mummies.

What scientists learned about the Tres Ventanas mummies is detailed in a new study conducted by medical and archaeological scholars. The authors, led by L. Samuel Wann of the Paleocardiology Founation of Columbia St. Mary's Healthcare in the U.S. city of Milwaukee, wrote: