Researchers from the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM) were working at the archaeological site of Cajamarquilla, located in the Chosica district of Lima, when they discovered this mummy along with a group of remains and objects. After fully excavating the inert body, they deciphered that it was a male person and that he was between 18 and 22 years old at the time of his death. Another feature that stands out is that the man had his hands on his face completely covering it. Researchers cannot explain why the mummy was in that position.

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This discovery does not surprise researchers. Today there are many who believe that the Egyptians were the first to practice mummification. But this is not true. The latest findings tell us that the art of mummification came not from Egypt, but from Central and South America. In fact, according to the latest Carbon 14 dating done by scientists in the Atacama Desert between Peru and Chile, we know that the Chinchorro civilization was capable of mummifying a human being at least 7,000 years ago. Their mummies have survived more than 7,000 years.

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Where did the Chinchorros come from? How were they able to mummify their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ in that way? Why did they have this custom? These, are all things we simply do not know. Total darkness shrouds that very ancient civilization. The only thing we do know is that in their settlements there is 100 times more arsenic than normal. How this very poisonous substance was present in their settlements remains a mystery.

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Today we know that the Chinchorro prepared three types of mummies: black mummies, red mummies, and bandaged mummies. The Chinchorro knew human anatomy so well that they were able to mummify a body for 7,000 years or more. All this moves the hands of the clock of the peoples of the Americas far back in time. We now know that the first “settlers” landed in Central America at least 30,000 years ago, and they came partly from Siberia and partly from the now submerged areas near Australia and Indonesia. And given the enormous journey they were able to make, they were certainly not “cavemen.”

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What happened to their civilization?

Surprise! The world’s oldest mummies are not in Egypt

Chile has world's oldest mummies – the Chinchorro people | CNN

The first humans known to have mummified their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ did so in a rather improbable spot: the driest place on Earth.

The Chinchorro people settled in coastal bays of the Atacama Desert, in what is present-day Chile, around 7,000 BC and developed a technique for mummification around 5,000 BC.

That’s roughly 2,000 years before the ancient Egyptians. Yet, while the Egyptians were a complex civilization mummifying elite pharaohs, the Chinchorro were pre-ceramic hunter-gatherers with a more egalitarian approach to honoring the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.

Although little-known even inside Chile, the country hopes a UNESCO application for World Heritage Site status (the archeological sites are already on UNESCO’s Tentative List) may finally get these mummies the attention they deserve.

‘Sacred collection’

To understand their improbable tale – and why so few people know about them – I catch a 2.5-hour flight from Santiago to Chile’s northernmost city of Arica. From there, I hop in a colectivo (shared taxi) for a 9-mile (15km) ride into the Azapa Valley, a sinewy strip of green within the greater Atacama, to visit the San Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum in the small village of San Miguel de Azapa.

This unᴀssuming insтιтution, which has two small detached wings, holds the mummified remains of some 300 Chinchorro people, though it only displays about 10% of its collection for public view. That’s because, at the moment, there is neither the money nor the space to showcase the mummies in a way that won’t irrevocably damage them.