Inca breakthrough: Stunned experts unwrap mummy body preserved for 600 years in shock move

The excavation and taking apart of the mummy was carefully carried out by experts who sliced through the remains, making sure not to damage the piece of history inside. Consideration was required as the mummy wasn’t regularly shaped – instead appearing bulbous and cylindrical.

Also different were the materials the body was wrapped in, being enclosed in a funeral bundle as opposed to the traditional wraps seen in other parts of South America and Egypt.

Researchers and experts from the Museum of Tucume in Peru examined the unusual human parcel, which was discovered in an area of Tucume known as Huaca Las Abejas.

In a video published by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, museum spokeswoman, Bernardo Delgado Elias, said: “The skull area is protected by additional clothing. Moreover, there was cotton placed between the skull and the clothing.”

She added: “This means they were very careful during the embalming process, which suggests he may have been a nobleman during that time.”

Archaeologist Manuel Escudero Villalta said: “The embalming process, clothes and offerings make us believe he was a member of the Incan elite in Tucume.”

The funeral bundle was said to be wrapped in a cover that was decorated in ancient symbols.

A similar bundle was found in the same area during excavations between 1989 and 1992.

This parcel also featured an artistic cover closely related to the one recently found.

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Artefacts and human remains are regularly unearthed from sites around South America, often giving a brief glimpse at the once ancient mega cities that ruled over the vast continent.

Late last year, a notably gruesome discovery was made in Chile, again from the Incas, when multiple skulls were found with puncture holes, all severed from the original body.

The paper detailing the discovery, published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, revealed how the heads of women and children may have been used as a tactic to maintain power.

At the time, researchers claimed the find pointed towards a period of near chaos as Inca ruled came to an end.

Experts claim “new forms of ideological violence” began to form at the fraying edges of the empire.

The team from the Museo Nacional de Historia drew attention to the soul formations from the period, of which showed perforations and modifications.

The evidence suggests that these skulls would have been impaled on spikes, with bits of flesh sliced and hung from them as a warning to any dissenters or opportunists.

Researchers also believe the skulls to belong to women and children who had illness or nutritional deficiencies.

They said: “The selection of female individuals with nutritional stress, in preference to young males in good health condition, may be related to the state’s interest in not affecting the labour structure of the population serving as taxpayers in their corvée labour system.

“Trophy heads could be a mode of repressing internal tension and conflict, before it increased to levels that could threaten the imperial rule in this far provincial context.”

The four skulls analysed were dated back to the Late Horizon period of the Inca Empire, which lasted from around 1476 to 1534 AD.

source: express.co.uk