Making friends with 2200 year old folks?
Why not!
That’s what we did when we visited the Chauchilla Cemetery in the city of Nazca, Peru.
Mummified human remains, Rastafarian style!
This cemetery now turned into open-air museum is home to a collection of mummies that date as far back as 200 A.D. The impressive thing is that, despite their ancient, age, they are extremely well preserved. The dry climate found in the Nazca desert is key factor for this.
Mummified person and house tools
A hairy mummy and a bold one!
A family tomb
The skulls still have visible over-grown hair (very often Rastafarian style) and sit next to some of the house-hold objects that used to be buried with families back then. The tombs are not individual, but were instead the “eternal home” for the entire family and their possessions.
Even the fabrics used to wrap the bodies are still visibly colored with bright tones that haven’t completely faded away during all these centuries.
The dry climate of the Nazca desert helped preserved these mummies
When the mummies were unburied years ago by a archeologist form the USA (around 1920), many utensils and fabrics were taken away.
But everything that still remains on site, serves as a very good window into those ancient times!
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