Protest over child mummies [View All]

Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
Wednesday September 21, 2005
The Guardian


They are the most perfectly preserved mummies in the world - their skin so intact that they look practically alive, their clothes still bright and new, the remains of their last meal still undigested inside their stomachs.

But plans to put on display the remains of three 500-year-old Inca children have run into resistance from Argentinian indigenous groups who consider the project an insult to their ancestors and even some scientists who have expressed misgivings about the project.


The mummies were found in 1999 by a National Geographic team on the 22,000-foot (6,700m) peak of Llullaillaco, a mountain in the Andes between Argentina and Chile. The three children, two girls and a boy aged between six and 15, were left on the peak to freeze to death in the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of Spanish colonists in America, apparently as a human sacrifice. But a combination of high altitude, low oxygen and humidity levels as well as zero-degree temperatures has produced a near-miraculous preservation.

The mummified remains are to go on display at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Argentina's Salta province in November, and are expected to become a big tourist attraction. But opposition to the plan is growing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,1574798,00.html