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Peruvian gas workers made a surprising discovery under an ancient street in Lima this week, uncovering eight mummies and numerous Pre-Inca artifacts.
AFP (via Getty Images)
Peruvian gas workers made a surprising discovery under an ancient street in Lima this week, uncovering eight mummies and numerous Pre-Inca artifacts.
“We are recovering leaves of Lima’s lost history that are only hidden under the railroad tracks and roads,” says the archeologist of Calida, a company that supplies natural gas to 10 million residents of the Peruvian capital. said scholar Jesús Bahamonde.
Bahamondo said the company has collected more than 1,900 archaeological finds, including mummies, pottery and textiles, since it began expanding its gas line system about 20 years ago.
In the latest discovery, eight mummified men were found bundled together in a ditch, wrapped in cotton cloth and tied with ropes woven from vines. Workers found the body about a foot below the ground.
Gas company archaeologists believe the men belonged to a Pre-Incan culture called Ikma. This culture was formed around 1100 AD and flourished in the valleys around Lima until it was absorbed into the Inca Empire in the late 15th century.
Archaeologist Roberto Quispe, who worked in the trench, told The Associated Press that the mummified remains were likely those of two adults and six minors.
Now the city’s economic center, Lima has been occupied by humans for more than 10,000 years, from pre-Incan cultures to the Spanish conquistadors who claimed the land in the 16th century.
Many archaeological discoveries have proven to be more recent.
In 2018, Quispe and other archaeologists working in the La Flor area discovered wooden coffins containing three Chinese immigrants buried in the 19th century.
The body was found alongside an opium pipe, hand-rolled cigarettes, shoes, Chinese playing cards, a Peruvian silver coin minted in 1898, and a certificate of completion of an employment contract dated 1875 written in Spanish.
The eight mummies were found in a chicken stew restaurant and on the road leading to Peru’s only nuclear power plant.
“When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they found the entire population living in the three valleys that occupy Lima today…What we have is a kind of continuation of history,” Bahamonde he said.
According to Bahamonde, most of the ruins discovered by Calida are burial sites found on plains.
The urbanized city of Aso is dotted with more than 400 large ruins. These ruins, known as huacas in the indigenous Quechua language, are sacred adobe structures usually found on hills.
With post wire
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