originally podted in NYT Science
Researchers at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology
preparing the frozen mummy
of a 15-year-old girl, called La Doncella, “the maiden,”
for exhibition.
SALTA,
Argentina — 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.
Although
the mummies captured
headlines when they were found, officials here
decided to open the exhibit quietly, without any of the
fanfare or celebration that might have been expected.
“These are dead people, Indian people,” said Gabriel E.
Miremont, 39, the museum’s designer and director.
“It’s not a situation for a party.”
The
two other mummies have not yet been shown, but will be put
on display within the next six months or so.
The
children were
sacrificed as
part of a religious ritual, known as capacocha.
They walked hundreds of miles to and from ceremonies
in Cuzco and were then taken to the summit of Llullaillaco
(yoo-yeye-YAH-co), given chicha (maize beer), and, once they
were asleep, placed in underground niches, where they froze
to death. Only beautiful, healthy, physically perfect
children were sacrificed, and it was an honor to be chosen.
According to Inca beliefs, the children did not die, but
joined their ancestors and watched over their villages from
the mountaintops like angels.
The
solution turned out to be a case within a case — an
acrylic cylinder inside a box made of triple-paned glass. A
computerized climate control system replicates mountaintop
conditions inside the case — low oxygen, humidity and
pressure, and a temperature of 0 degrees Fahrenheit. In part
because Salta is in an earthquake zone, the museum has three
backup generators and freezers, in case of power failures or
equipment breakdowns, and the provincial governor’s
airplane will fly the mummies out in an emergency, Dr.
Miremont said.
Asked
where they would be taken, he replied, “Anywhere we can
plug them in.”
The
room holding La Doncella is
dimly lighted, and the case itself is dark; visitors
must turn on a light to see her.
“This
was important for us,” Dr. Miremont said. “If you
don’t want to see a dead body, don’t press the button.
It’s your decision. You can still see the other parts of
the exhibit.”
He
designed the lighting partly in hope of avoiding further
offense to people who find it disturbing that the children,
part of a religious
ritual,
were taken from the mountaintop shrine.
Whatever
the intention, the effect is stunning. Late in August,
before the exhibit opened, Dr. Miremont showed visitors La
Doncella. At a touch of the
button, she seemed to materialize from the darkness, sitting
cross-legged in her brown dress and striped sandals, bits of
coca leaf still clinging to her upper lip, her long hair
woven into many fine braids, a crease in one cheek where it
leaned against her shawl as she slept.
The
bodies seemed so much like sleeping children that working
with them felt “almost more like a kidnapping than
archaeological work,” Dr. Miremont said.
Scientists
worked with the bodies in a special laboratory where the
temperature of the entire lab could be dropped to 0 degrees
Fahrenheit, and the mummies were never exposed to higher
temperatures for more than 20 minutes at a time, to
preventing thawing.
DNA
tests revealed that the children were unrelated, and CT
scans showed that they were well
nourished and had no broken bones or other injuries.
La Doncella apparently had sinusitis,
as well as a lung condition called bronchiolitis obliterans,
possibly the result of an infection.
“There
are two sides,” Dr. Miremont said. “The scientific —
we can read the past from the mummies and the objects. The
other side says these people came from a culture still
alive, and a holy place on the mountain.”
Some
regard the exhibit as they would a church, Dr. Miremont
said.
“To
me, it’s a museum, not a holy place,” he said. “The
holy place is on top of the mountain.”
The
mountains around Salta are home to at least 40 other burial
sites from ritual sacrifices, but Dr. Miremont said the
native people who live in those regions do not want more
bodies taken away.
“We
will respect their wishes,” Dr. Miremont said, adding that
three mummies were enough. “It is not necessary to break
any more graves. We would like to have good relations with
the Indian people.”
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