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.
The new and the old are at home in Salta. The museum
faces a historic plaza where a mirrored bank reflects a
century-old basilica with a sign warning churchgoers not
to use the holy water for witchcraft. Now a city of
500,000 and the provincial capital, Salta was part of
the Inca empire until the 1500s, when it was invaded by
the Spanish conquistadors.
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.
Discussing why it took eight years to prepare the
exhibit, Dr. Miremont smiled and said, “This is South
America,” but then went on to explain that there was
little precedent for dealing with mummies as well
preserved as these, and that it took an enormous amount
of research to figure out how to show them yet still
make sure they did not deteriorate.
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.
One of the children, a 6-year-old girl, had been
struck by lightning sometime after she died, resulting
in burns on her face, upper body and clothing. She and
the boy, who was 7, had slightly elongated skulls,
created deliberately by head wrappings — a sign of high
social status, possibly even royalty.
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.”