Ice Mummies of the Inca

It was early autumn in 1995. An American team of archaeologists led by world-renowned explorer, Dr. Johan Reinhard, had just returned from a sojourn to the Ampato volcano, the site of a remarkable discovery that has illuminated one of the greatest of all Ancient American cultures. As early evening gave way to night, a still darkness descended on Quilcata. Two hundred villagers crowded one of the small, dilapidated buildings located along the town’s dusty streets. Newsmedia personnel were there too, taking photographs and milling around the find, gaping over Reinhard’s shoulders. Jammed between the constricted walls of the room, the anxious villagers listening intently to his every word. He told them that the mummy was one of the most significant remains yet found, and contrasted them to the unearthing at Machu Picchu early that summer, making clear that those remains were mere skeletons, and that what he had on his hands now was an almost perfectly preserved Inca Ice Maiden, an apparent sacrificial victim to some unknown Andean god. The villagers were awe-struck. Some of them, unable to fit into the tiny lab, peered through the windows. They were doing much more than looking through steamy sheets of glass; they were literally loosing themselves in another place and another time. For the villagers, this was a divine revelation. In life, she climbed the mountain, perhaps already inebriated from chica (Inca beer) and hallucinogens. She stumbled, hardly able to move, with the breath piercing cold and thin air slowly suffocating her. Yet, she was not alone. A pompous procession of robed priests and crowned nobility marched beside her. They were wrapped in rich, colorful textiles decorated with gold jewelry, and wore sandals strapped with bronze and silver. This girl was much more than a victim of her own feeble constitution; she was to be ritually sacrificed to an unknown god. The Incas were not a brutal people. They sometimes conquered territories through persuasion rather than arms. Their textiles, great cities, golden idols, and other awesome achievements won over many cultures that were eager to become a part of their empire. Newcomers were brought into the state through labor taxes, issuing young members of the newly acquired territories to work in Cuzco, the capital city. Sometimes these newcomers included sacrificial children. The parents of such youths were given concessions and special gifts, and the children themselves were often taken to Cuzco to be paraded through the streets in immense celebrations. This was a rare and sacred method of placating the supernatural powers and ensuring the proper irrigation of crops, the well-being of their emperors, the sanctity a royal marriage or the guarantee of victory in battle. The people of the Andes today believe that the mountains control all aspects of life and death, just as their ancestors did half a millennium ago. If the gods were not appeased, then disaster would surely follow. But the real reason for this particular sacrifice has been lost to the winds of time. As the priest proclaimed this girl’s purity to the gods, she was clothed in a brightly colored death robe, then placed in her tomb. If only we could know her thoughts. Inca children of those times were very different than our own youth. From the moment of birth, they were instilled with a dominating sense of duty and a clarity of purpose which is unmatched in young people today. Perhaps she thought to herself, “They say I am worthy. Worthy of what? The greatest burden a child could bear, the greatest gift given to my empire. I do not fear what is about to happen. The world will go on, and thanks to my sacrifice the gods will smile pleasantly upon men. My family will always remember the greatness I represent, the iron youth of which I am a part. Death, as all things, has a purpose. And if it is meant that I shall die, or that a hundred should die, or a thousand, then so be it! Look on me no longer, and remember my face, my eyes, my hair, my gentle voice, then perhaps all of this will make sense.” She was given a glance by the priests. The final moment had come. She was bludgeoned on the back of the skull with a heavy, lethal blow. It is uncertain what the weapon was, but we do know it ended her life then and there.This vast and sophisticated pre-Columbian civilization was so resplendent and mighty that it rivaled the glories of ancient Rome. They called their gargantuan domain "Land of the Four Quarters," or Tahuantisuyu, in the native tongue. Their empire ran some 2,500 miles along the Andes from Columbia to Chile and extended from the dry coastal desert, Atacama, in the west to the Amazon in the east. It was the largest nation on the face of the Earth, and one of the most advanced. Like the Romans themselves, the Inca were superb architects. Their buildings were erected to last a thousand years, and their memory will last just as long. William Conklin, an expert in Inca culture, made the following observation: "The Inca were a cleverly imperial people. They were on one hand a military empire, but they accomplished a lot of their conquering by persuasion. They were enormously clever at confronting tribes that were alien initially, offering to worship their deities, incorporate them into the Inca kingdom, let them join the brotherhood, so to speak." At its height, the Inca Empire fostered ten million subjects, all bound by a communal, theocratic society with an socialist economic system. Yet if the Inca Empire was a contemporary nation it would far surpass the now defunct Soviet Union and even the United States. The world as we know it would be quite different. The Ancient Andean cultures practiced mountain worship as the primary basis of their theology. Conklin continues, “The people of the Andes previous to the Incas did worship mountains, but in a different way. They seemed to have worshiped mountains from a distance, but the Incas are the ones who got the idea of climbing a ladder to heaven and going up to the top of the mountain and actually engaging in their ritual practices at that spot which must have been their concept of Heaven." While investigating the slopes of Mt. Sara Sara, the archaeological team led by Reinhard discovered an unexpected treasure. Unexpected evidence of sophisticated mountain worship pre-dating the Incas belonging to the Wari Culture, including artifacts, skulls, bones and other remnants of both humans and animals. This indicated possible blood sacrifices, or perhaps it was used a communal burial site where animals were entombed along with the Wari’s honored dead. This same team was about to uncover the mother lode of Inca finds. Three, almost perfectly preserved children, rendered much in the same way the 14-year-old Ice Maiden was sacrificed. CAT scans showed that all the organs were still intact, and there was even blood still frozen inside their veins and hearts.. "Human sacrifices are very rare, and this is one of only about a half dozen ever to be excavated scientifically," Reinhard told National Geographic Explorer. These children, he admitted, were the less important yet immaculate companions to the illustrious Ice Maiden. His recent discovery, following the initial find in 1995, brings the body count to four. "No other mountain has yielded four such victims." In the November 1999 issue of National Geographic, Reinhard wrote the following description of what had happened: “We had waited four days for fierce winds and a snowstorm to abate while encamped in a snow bowl 200 feet below the summit. This was followed by a day and a half of digging. It seemed only fitting, therefore, that Arcadio was the first to shout the word that caused all of us to stop work instantly, ‘Mummy!’ I put down my notebook and hurried over to the place where Arcadio was digging. He and his brother Ignacio had uncovered a section of a stone-and-gravel platform on the most exposed part of the summit. There, more than five feet down, was a bundle wrapped in textiles; the frozen body of an Inca ritual sacrifice, a boy about eight years old. Beside his left arm lay a sling and two pairs of sandals, objects presumably intended to accompany him on his journey to the afterlife.” Inca Civilization was born from blood and fire. It was also the inheritor of the glory and culture of the Western hemisphere. The Inca and the sacrificed children found at Sara Sara, Ampato and Llullaillaco were mindful of their sacred duties to their society. Let their legacy never be forgotten, lest our own civilization perish, as well! ■