In Argentina, A Museum Unveils A Long-Frozen Maiden
The maiden, the boy, the girl of lightning: they were three Inca children, entombed on a bleak and frigid mountaintop 500 years ago as a religious sacrifice...
Unearthed in 1999 from the 22,000-foot summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano 300 miles west of here near the Chilean border, their frozen bodies were among the best preserved mummies ever found, with internal organs intact, blood still present in the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed. No special effort had been made to preserve them. The cold and the dry, thin air did all the work. They froze to death as they slept, and 500 years later still looked like sleeping children, not mummies.
In the eight years since their discovery, the mummies, known here simply as Los Niños or "the children," have been photographed, X-rayed, CT scanned and biopsied for DNA. The cloth, pottery and figurines buried with them have been meticulously thawed and preserved. But the bodies themselves were kept in freezers and never shown to the public — until last week, when La Doncella, the maiden, a 15-year-old girl, was exhibited for the first time, at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology, which was created in Salta expressly to display them.
500 years ago is not really that long. I saw a TV programme some years back about these mummies.
After that the Myans and Incas were by me viewed with revulsion.
I do not view them as an enlightened race of people. The things they left behind were of torture and death.
Even now villagers in the Andes have a festival each year where they beat each other up, women included join in.
When they are fighting you can see pure hatred in their faces.
Frances.
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