Dozens of mummies of children and babies unearthed in Peru: photos

A team of Polish-Peruvian scientists discovered 22 mummified burials of children and newborns at an archaeological site in the Peruvian city of Barranca. The discovery was made on the Cerro Colorado hill in the Pativilca Valley.

According to archaeologists, six of the burial bundles found belonged to adults, and the remaining 16, located at a distance, belonged to children, most likely of different ages, Nauka W Polsce reports.

"These are clearly children no older than 2 years old (judging by the length of the bundles), some of them newborns or babies," says bioarchaeologist Lukasz Majczak.

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All the burials are located at a depth, at the height of the heads of the deceased adults. All of them are in a horizontal position, while the bodies of adults are in the fetal position with the upper and lower limbs tucked under the chest. The bodies of adults are arranged vertically, which gives the impression that they are sitting. All of them have a similar appearance, wrapped in a dense cloth and braided with rope.

"At this time, it is difficult to give a single interpretation of this discovery. Perhaps the whole community simply buried children in this place. Perhaps, for some reason, older children were buried in other parts of the cemetery," said Maichrzak.

So far, the team has only examined an area of 20 square meters. Scientists have uncovered one baby bundle in which a newborn was buried.

"We made a tomography of two more bundles, so we know that one child was a little older, and the other was also a newborn," the bioarchaeologist said.

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The fabric of one of the already unwrapped bundles is decorated with geometric ornaments. The rest of the bundles, according to Majhrzak, may contain images of animals and gods. The materials in which the dead were wrapped were supposed to be useful in the afterlife.

"In the posthumous vision of the Andes, a person travels for a year until he reaches his destination. That's why he needs food. We even found ears of corn and other unidentified plant materials in several packs," the scientist added.

The researchers plan to conduct additional studies to learn more about these burials. In particular, they want to conduct radiocarbon dating to determine the exact time of their creation, as well as chemical and isotopic analysis to learn more about the origin of the dead.

As a reminder, cone-shaped tombs with human remains that are over 3000 years old were found in Mexico.

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