Inca mummies emerge from deep freeze.Archaeologists have made an explosive find at a South American volcano volcano, vents or fissures in the earth's crust through which gases, molten rock, or lava, and solid fragments are discharged. Their study is called volcanology. . Investigators announced last week that they have recovered the mummified mum·mi·fy v. mum·mi·fied, mum·mi·fy·ing, mum·mi·fies v.tr. 1. To make into a mummy by embalming and drying. 2. To cause to shrivel and dry up. v.intr. remains of three children sacrificed around 500 years ago as part of an Inca ritual. The bodies were discovered last month in burials on top of Argentina's Mount Llullaillaco. Interred under 5 feet of rock and earth, the two girls and a boy lay in separate graves surrounded by offerings to Inca gods, including statuettes, pottery, and bundles of woven material. Frigid frig·id adj. 1. Extremely cold. 2. Persistently averse to sexual intercourse. weather at the volcano's 22,000-foot-high summit freeze-dried and mummified the youngsters' bodies. "They appear to be the best preserved of any mummy I've seen, "says archaeologist Johan Reinhard Dr. Johan Reinhard is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at The Mountain Institute, West Virginia, a Visiting Professor at Catholic University, Salta, Argentina, and an Honorary Professor of Catholic University, of the Mountain Institute in Franklin, W. Va., coleader of a U.S.-Argentine-Peruvian team supported by the National Geographic Society National Geographic Society U.S. scientific society founded in 1888 in Washington, D.C., by a small group of eminent explorers and scientists “for the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge. in Washington, D.C. Reinhard has helped to recover 16 other Inca mummies. In the photo above, Reinhard sits with two of the mummies near their burial sites. Initial analyses of the mummies, done in the nearby city of Salta, revealed intact internal organs and some blood remaining in the heart and lungs. The means of the deaths remain unknown. Lightning had partially damaged one of the female mummies. |
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