700-Year-Old Peruvian Mummies Are Put on Display

Two of the oldest mummies ever found in Peru -- so well-preserved that one had an eye and internal organs intact -- went on display Monday after being discovered by construction workers at a school.

Officials from the National Institute of Culture said the two mummies -- of a young boy about 5 years old and a man in his mid-30s -- were at least 700 years old. They came from a culture that predated the Incas, who dominated a vast swath of South America from Colombia to Chile until being toppled by Spanish conquerors in the 1530s.

The clothing on the mummies and their style of burial identified them as being of the Chiribaya culture, which developed in the arid coastal stretch of northern Chile and southern Peru around AD 800 to 1350. The Chiribaya were noted for their highly decorative ceramics, according to historians.

The mummies were found Feb. 12 by workers in the coastal province of Islay, 79 miles south of Peru’s second-biggest city, Arequipa.

The bodies were buried separately, wrapped in red and blue alpaca cloth and tied with rope. They were placed in the fetal position at a depth of 10 feet.

“It looks like it was a natural death,” said Lucy Linares, an archeologist at the National Institute of Culture. “It seems the place was a cemetery.”

Archeologists searched but found no more bodies.

Linares said the man was probably a farmer because he had bags of seeds attached to his belt and a spade by his side. The boy was buried in a small tomb of stones.