The Children of Llullaillaco are three Inca child mummies discovered in 1999. The mummies were found near the summit of a 6,739m stratovolcano. The children were sacrificed in an Inca religious ritual that took place around the year 1500. The extreme dryness of the air is a major reason for the excellent preservation of the mummy for 500 years.
About Children of Llullaillaco in brief
The Children of Llullaillaco are three Inca child mummies discovered in 1999. The mummies were found near the summit of a 6,739m stratovolcano. The children were sacrificed in an Inca religious ritual that took place around the year 1500. Since 2007, the mummies have been on exhibition in the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in the Argentine city of Salta. The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, and possibly the largest Empire in the world during the early 16th century. Child sacrifice was an important part of the Inca religion and was often used to commemorate important events, such as the death of a Sapa Inca. According to traditional Inca belief, children who are sacrificed do not truly die, but instead watch over the land from their mountaintop perches, alongside their ancestors. The extreme dryness of the air is a major reason for the excellent preservation of the mummy for 500 years. Dryness and cold temperatures are both known to significantly reduce the decomposition rate of human remains. Several gold, shell, and silver statues, statues, and textiles were also found in the graves. Several times, the team came close to failure in the acclimatization process, including a month exploring a lower-elevation mountain.
The other two mummies, a boy and a girl, had been struck by lightning after death, causing burn damage on her body, especially her face and shoulder. The site has been described as ‘the world’s highest archaeological site’ and is located in the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar desert on Earth. It sits in the Andes mountains on the modern border separating Chile and Argentina. The burial site was covered by five feet of earth and rock at the time of discovery, and the burial site has since been covered by 5 feet of rock and earth. It is believed that the children were drugged, then placed inside a small chamber 1. 5 metres beneath the ground, where they were left to die. On 20 June 2001, Argentina’s National Commission of Museums, Monuments, and Historic Places declared the Children of Lloydillaco to be National Historic Property of Argentina. Many other well-preserved mummies,. such as Mummy Juanita, have also been found on Andean mountaintops. They were chosen from all over the sprawling Inca empire, and were picked primarily based on their physical perfection.
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This page is based on the article Children of Llullaillaco published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
