The Ice Maiden of the Incas is a perfectly preserved mummy in the mountains. The most creepy mummies in the world Two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo

A teenage girl of 14-15 years old, who was sacrificed about 500 years ago, spent all the past centuries in the ice at the top of a six-thousander, which contributed to excellent preservation. Next to her were found the frozen bodies of two more young victims: a seven-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.

1. Instead of traditional DNA testing, scientists examined proteins in the tissue and determined that the apparently healthy girl had a bacterial lung infection resembling tuberculosis. For the first time, an infection has been detected in a mummy.

2. A group of researchers from the City University of New York, led by Angelique Corthals, studied samples of the mummy (the so-called Maiden, “Maiden”).

3. A unique mummy was discovered in 1999 on the slope of the Llullaillaco volcano, rising 6739 meters above sea level on the border of Argentina and Chile.

4. Three mummies were found, which, unlike their embalmed Egyptian “colleagues,” were deep frozen. They also began to study the body of a seven-year-old boy, but scientists have not yet decided to examine the remains of a six-year-old girl. It was probably hit by lightning at some point, which may affect the accuracy of the research results.

5. Most likely, three children were sacrificed, as evidenced by the artifacts located next to them: gold, silver, clothes, bowls of food and an extravagant headdress made of white feathers of unknown birds.

6. Historians suggest that children were chosen by the Incas for their beauty (in addition, children were considered purer creatures than adults). The Incas did not sacrifice children very often.

7. In previous studies, it was established that before children were sacrificed, for a year they were fed “elite” foods - maize and dried llama meat, although before that they ate exclusively peasant food, consisting of potatoes and vegetables.

The Evil Dead has always captured the human imagination. However, in reality, mummies do not carry anything terrible; on the contrary, they represent incredible archaeological value.

A mummy is the body of a deceased person specially treated with a chemical substance, in which the process of tissue decomposition is thus slowed down. Dried corpses can be stored for hundreds, even thousands of years. They contain the most interesting information about the life of the ancient world, customs, health and diet of our ancestors.

Screaming Mummy

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico contains 111 bodies, which are naturally preserved mummified bodies of people, most of whom died in the second half of the 19th century. and the first half of the 20th century. and buried in the local cemetery "Pantheon of St. Paula".

The museum's exhibits were exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, the relatives lost the right to the burial site, and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery. Distorted facial expressions on some of the corpses indicate that they were buried alive.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where the deceased were kept. The official date for the establishment of the Guanajuato Museum of Mummies is 1969, when the corpses were exhibited in glass shelves.

Boy from Greenland

Near the Greenlandic settlement of Qilakitsoq, located on the western coast of the largest island in the world, an entire family was discovered in 1972, naturally mummified due to low temperatures. Nine perfectly preserved bodies of the ancestors of the Eskimos who died on the territory of Greenland during the Middle Ages aroused keen interest of scientists, while one of them became famous throughout the world and beyond the scientific framework. Belonging to a one-year-old child (as anthropologists found, who suffered from Down syndrome), it, more like some kind of doll, makes an indelible impression on visitors to the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk.

Two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo

The symbol of the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, Italy, is the perfectly preserved body of Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died of pneumonia in 1920. Her father, unable to cope with grief, turned to the famous physician Alfredo Salafia with a request to preserve his daughter’s body. The baby’s face, amazingly preserved, is peaceful and so alive that it seems as if Rosalia only dozed off for a short time.

Juanita from the Peruvian Andes

Either still a girl, or already a girl (the age of the deceased at the time of death was from 11 to 15 years), named Juanita, gained worldwide fame in 1995, being included in the ranking of the best scientific discoveries according to Time magazine. This is the mummy of a young Peruvian woman, found in the Andes in almost perfect condition. Historians have told about the terrible end of the unfortunate woman: Juanita was sacrificed to the gods in the 15th century. Now her body is in the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in the city of Arequipa, but the mummy “does not sit still.” It is especially often exhibited at many venues in Japan, which is distinguished by a strange love for mummified bodies.

Knight Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz

This German knight lived from 1651 to 1702. After his death, his body turned into a mummy naturally and is now on display for everyone to see. According to legend, the knight Kalbutz was a great fan of taking advantage of the “right of the first night.” The loving Christian had 11 of his own children and about three dozen illegitimate offspring. In July 1690, he declared his “right of the first night” regarding the young bride of a shepherd from the town of Buckwitz, but the girl refused him, after which the knight killed her newly-made husband. Taken into custody, he swore before the judges that he was not guilty and promised that otherwise “after death his body will not crumble to dust.”

Since Kalbutz was an aristocrat, his word of honor was enough to get him acquitted and released. The knight died in 1702 at the age of 52 and was buried in the von Kalbutze family tomb. In 1783, the last representative of this dynasty died, and in 1794, restoration work was started in the local church, during which the crypt was opened in order to rebury all the dead of the von Kalbutz family in a regular cemetery. It turned out that all of them, except Christian Friedrich, had decayed. The latter turned into a mummy, which proved the fact that the loving knight was still an oathbreaker.

Pharaoh Ramses the Great

He died in 1213 BC. BC, and is one of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs. It is believed that he ruled Egypt during the campaign of Moses. A distinctive feature of the mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set, the patron of royal power.

In 1974, Egyptologists discovered that the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II was rapidly deteriorating. It was decided to immediately fly it to France for examination and restoration, for which the mummies were issued a modern Egyptian passport, and in the “occupation” column they wrote “king (deceased).” At the Paris airport, the mummy was greeted with all the military honors due to the visit of the head of state.

Young Danish woman

A young Danish woman who died at the age of 18-19 was buried in 1300 BC. e. The deceased was tall, slender, with long blond hair styled in an intricate hairstyle, somewhat reminiscent of a 1960s babette. Judging by her expensive clothes and jewelry, it can be assumed that the deceased belonged to a family of the local elite.

The girl was buried in an oak coffin lined with herbs, so her body and clothes were surprisingly well preserved. The preservation would have been even better if the soil layer above the grave had not been damaged several years before this mummy was discovered.

Iceman Ötzi

Similaun Man, who was about 5,300 years old at the time of his discovery, making him the oldest European mummy, was nicknamed Ötzi by scientists. Discovered on September 19, 1991 by a couple of German tourists while walking in the Tyrolean Alps, who stumbled upon the remains of a Chalcolithic inhabitant, perfectly preserved thanks to natural ice mummification, it created a real sensation in the scientific world - nowhere in Europe have our bodies been found perfectly preserved to this day distant ancestors.

Now the tattooed mummy can be seen in the archaeological museum of Bolzano, Italy. Like many other mummies, Ötzi is shrouded in a curse: over the course of several years, under various circumstances, several people died, one way or another connected with the study of the Iceman.

Girl from Ide

The Girl from Ide is the name given to the well-preserved body of a teenage girl discovered in a peat bog near the village of Ide in the Netherlands. This mummy was found on May 12, 1897. The body was wrapped in a woolen cape. A woven wool noose was tied around the girl’s neck, indicating that she had been executed for some crime or had been sacrificed. There is a trace of a wound in the collarbone area. The skin was not affected by decomposition, which is typical for swamp bodies.

The results of radiocarbon dating carried out in 1992 showed that she died at about 16 years of age between 54 BC. e. and 128 AD e. The corpse's head was half shaved shortly before death. The preserved hair is long and has a reddish tint. It should be noted that the hair of all corpses that fall into a swampy environment acquires a reddish color as a result of denaturalization of the coloring pigment under the influence of acids found in the swampy soil.

A computed tomography scan determined that during her lifetime the girl had a curvature of the spine. Further research led to the conclusion that the cause of this was most likely damage to the vertebrae by bone tuberculosis.

Princess of Ukok

The mummy of this woman, nicknamed the Altai Princess, was found by archaeologists in 1993 on the Ukok plateau and is one of the most significant discoveries in archeology of the late 20th century. Researchers believe that the burial was made in the V-III centuries. BC e. and belongs to the period of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.

During the excavations, archaeologists discovered that the deck in which the body of the buried woman was placed was filled with ice. That is why the woman’s mummy is well preserved. The coffin was sealed in a layer of ice. This aroused great interest among archaeologists, since very ancient things could be well preserved in such conditions. In the chamber they found 6 horses under saddles and with harnesses, as well as a wooden larch block nailed with bronze nails. The contents of the burial clearly indicated the nobility of the buried person.

The mummy lay on its side with its legs slightly pulled up. She had numerous tattoos on her arms. The deceased was dressed in a silk shirt, a woolen skirt, felt socks, a fur coat and a wig. She died at a young age (about 25 years old) and belonged to the elite of Pazyryk society.

Ice maiden from the Inca tribe

This is the famous mummy of a 14-15 year old girl who was sacrificed by the Incas more than 500 years ago. It was discovered in 1999 on the slope of the Nevado Sabancaya volcano. Next to the Ice Maiden, several more children's bodies were found, also mummified. Researchers suggest that the children were selected among others due to their beauty, after which they walked many hundreds of kilometers across the country, were specially prepared and sacrificed to the gods at the top of the volcano.

Argentine scientists found the mummy of a 13-year-old girl on the top of an extinct volcano, whom they called the “Ice Maiden.” The child was sacrificed by the inhabitants of the Inca state. The priests prepared the girl for the ritual for a long time, and then gave her an alcoholic drink and left her to die in the cold. Archaeologists, with the help of modern technology, were able to establish the “training schedule” of the victim and establish the social status of the dead girl.

The Mystery of the Ice Maiden Experts found the girl's body at the top of the volcano back in 1999. At the same peak, two more burials were found, in which were the body of a 5-year-old boy and the body of a 4-year-old girl, reports the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. All burials dated back to the Inca period.

Scientists have concluded that the Inca priests took children to the top of the volcano for sacrifice during the capacocha ritual. However, only the study of hair from the mummy of a teenage girl made it possible to guess who the “Ice Maiden” was, and how exactly the ancient inhabitants of South America prepared teenagers for death in the mountains.

Researchers looked for traces of residual products from the processing of coca and alcohol in the girl’s hair, which the Indians used to prepare victims for death.

Long preparation for death A comparative analysis of the three mummies revealed that the eldest girl received significantly more alcohol and coca than the younger Incan victims. The amount of these products in the Ice Maiden’s hair increased approximately a year before her death, and a month before her death it reached record levels.

“Apparently she consumed alcohol in significantly larger quantities than she was previously accustomed to. It was most likely used to calm the victim,” explained archaeologist and mummy researcher Andrew Wilson from the University of Bradford.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that the eldest of the Inca victims was specially prepared for sacrifice. She belonged to the "akkla" - a special group of girls who were entrusted with the technology of making beer from corn and special weaving methods. Such girls either became priestesses or were intended to be sacrificed to the gods.

The Incas took children for sacrifice from the tribes under their control. Unlike ordinary children, the girl from the Akkla group was given alcohol and coca leaves a year before her supposed death. Shortly before the sacrifice, the priests heavily watered and fed her “painkillers” on the way to the place of death. Thus, spectral analysis of hair allowed scientists to identify the internal hierarchy among the victims and understand that each time the ritual took place differently.

Capacocha ritual According to scientists, the death sacrifice on the top of the volcano was part of the complex ceremonial system of the Incas. In a solemn ceremony, children from subordinate tribes were taken from their parents and taken to a large city, such as Cusco, supposedly for “improvement.” There, certain rituals were performed on them and then they were sent to the tops of the Andes, where the sacrifice was performed.

The reason for sacrificing a child to the gods could be, for example, the death of a ruler, the birth of a son to a ruler, or victory in a war. In addition, the capacocha ritual was performed at a time when the Incan power was shaken by a natural disaster, such as drought, volcanic eruption or epidemic.

The ritual itself was described in the texts of the Spanish conquistadors who crushed the Inca Empire. According to archaeologists, today there are 20 known burials of children who were sacrificed during the capacocha ritual.

Inca Power The Inca state existed in South America from 1500 to 1752. Its center was the city of Cusco in modern Peru. The Incas knew the art of stone processing and were able to create a complex system of society with a regular army.

The ruler of the empire was the Great Inca. The empire was divided into four provinces, which were subordinate to the capital, Cusco. Units of soldiers were stationed in the provinces.

At the peak of its power, the empire occupied the space from northern Chile in the south to the borders of Ecuador in the north. The population was about 12 million people.

At the end of the 16th century, the Incas brutally exploited the tribes under their control. There was also no unity within the ruling class. The Spaniards took advantage of this and crushed the Indians with firearms. The last ruler of the Inca Empire, Tupac Amaru, was executed by the conquistadors in 1572.

They climbed the Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina and never came down, becoming part of a human sacrifice.

In 1999, scientists discovered the bodies of three mummies, so well preserved as if they had died just a few weeks ago. Since then, researchers have continually studied mummies to reconstruct the last months of their lives.

A new study has found that all three children were regularly given coke and alcohol, which may have played a role in their deaths.

Three children, including a boy, a girl and a 13-year-old "Ice Maiden" as archaeologists nicknamed her, were part of sacrificial ritual known as capacocha, during which children were killed or left to die on the top of a high mountain. The mummies found were naturally mummified by the cold and dry climate on the mountain at an altitude of over 7,000 meters.

Inca girl

"Ice Maiden" is one of the best preserved mummies in the world and looks like she just fell asleep.

Her long locks of hair, which grew at least 2 years before the sacrifice, helped reveal the secret of her death.

The ancient Incas prepared children for sacrifice long before the event itself.

Hair research has shown that an Inca girl's diet changed in the year before her death. They began to give her more privileged food, such as corn and meat. Besides the girl had to take much larger quantities of coca and alcohol.

The "Ice Maiden" was one of the chosen women of the "akkla" who were chosen during adolescence to live separately from familiar society under the guidance of priestesses.

For about six months and shortly before her death, she was given large quantities alcohol in the form of a drink known as chicha- a fermented drink made from corn and forced to chew coca leaves. Other children found near her: a 4-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy were also given drugs, but in smaller quantities.

Scientists believe that alcohol and narcotic coca leaves were given to make them more obedient, driving you into a stupor and possibly even unconsciousness. This is confirmed by the relaxed sitting position in which the Incan girl was found and the untouched artifacts nearby.

Although there were signs of violence at other sacrifice sites, such as traumatic brain injuries, these three children passed away quietly and calmly.

Ancient Incas

The Inca Empire existed since 1150 in the Cusco Valley in modern Peru. By the time the empire flourished in the 1520s, it stretched from the Pacific coast and the Andes to modern-day Ecuador and the Maule River in Chile. More than 10 million people were Incas.

- The founder of the Inca Empire was Manco Capac, who called himself the "Great Inca", the divine sun god. In total, during the Inca period, there were 13 emperors.

The official language of the Incas was Quechua. Among the Incas there was no written language. They kept their history orally from father to son. In addition, they had a unique transmission system called “kipu” in the form of colored woolen cords with knots of different lengths.

Inky good understood mathematics and agriculture. They built aqueducts, cities, temples, fortresses, tunnels, suspension bridges and long roads. They also knew about hydraulics, astronomy, and military strategy. They had a rich culture and developed music, art and poetry, wood and stone carving.

One of the most famous monuments of the Inca civilization is Machu Picchu, located in the Andes at an altitude of 2430 meters above sea level. Since 2007, it has been named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Some people live even after death. Swamps, deserts, and permafrost present surprises to scientists and sometimes preserve bodies unchanged for many centuries. We will tell you about the most interesting finds that amaze not only with their appearance and age, but also with their tragic fates.

In the vicinity of the Tarim River and the Taklamakan Desert - in places where the Great Silk Road ran - over the past quarter century, archaeologists have found more than 300 mummies of white people. Tarim mummies are tall, have blond or red hair, and blue eyes, which is not typical for the Chinese.

According to different versions of scientists, these could be both Europeans and our ancestors from Southern Siberia - representatives of the Afanasyev and Andronovo cultures. The oldest mummy was perfectly preserved and was named Loulan Beauty: this young woman of model height (180 cm) with neat braids of flaxen hair lay in the sands for 3800 years.

It was found in the vicinity of Loulan in 1980, buried nearby was a 50-year-old man, two meters tall, and a three-month-old child with an ancient “bottle” made of a cow’s horn and a teat made from a sheep’s udder. Tamir mummies well preserved due to the arid desert climate and the presence of salts.

Princess Ukok 2500 years old

In 1993, Novosibirsk archaeologists exploring the Ak-Alakha mound on the Ukok plateau discovered the mummy of a girl about 25 years old. The body lay on its side, legs bent. The deceased's clothes were well preserved: a Chinese silk shirt, a woolen skirt, a fur coat and felt stockings.

The appearance of the mummy testified to the peculiar fashion of those times: a horsehair wig was put on his shaved head, his arms and shoulders were covered with numerous tattoos. In particular, on the left shoulder was depicted a fantastic deer with the beak of a griffin and the horns of a capricorn - a sacred Altai symbol.

All signs pointed to the burial belonging to the Scythian Pazyryk culture, widespread in Altai 2500 years ago. The local population demands to bury the girl, whom the Altaians call Ak-Kadyn (White Lady), and journalists call the Princess of Ukok.

They claim that the mummy guarded the “mouth of the earth” - the entrance to the underground kingdom, which now that it is in the Anokhin National Museum remains open, and it is for this reason that natural disasters have occurred in the Altai Mountains in the last two decades. According to the latest research by Siberian scientists, Princess Ukok died of breast cancer.

Tollund Man over 2300 years old

In 1950, residents of the Danish village of Tollund were extracting peat in a bog and at a depth of 2.5 m they discovered the corpse of a man with signs of violent death. The corpse looked fresh, and the Danes immediately reported it to the police. However, the police had already heard about the swamp people (the bodies of ancient people were repeatedly found on the peat bogs of Northern Europe) and turned to scientists.

Soon the Tollund Man (as he was later called) was taken in a wooden box to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. The study revealed that this 40-year-old man, 162 cm tall, lived in the 4th century BC. e. and died from strangulation. Not only his head was perfectly preserved, but also his internal organs: liver, lungs, heart and brain.

Now the head of the mummy is on display in the Silkeborg city museum with the body of a mannequin (his own has not been preserved): stubble and tiny wrinkles can be seen on the face. This is the best-preserved man from the Iron Age: he looks as if he had not died, but fallen asleep. In total, more than 1,000 ancient people were discovered in the peat bogs of Europe.

Ice maiden 500 years

In 1999, on the border of Argentina and Chile, the body of a teenage girl from the Inca tribe was found in the ice of the Llullaillaco volcano at an altitude of 6706 m - she looked as if she had died a couple of weeks ago. Scientists have determined that this girl, 13–15 years old, who was called the Ice Maiden, was killed with a blunt blow to the head half a millennium ago, as a victim of a religious ritual.

Thanks to the low temperature, her body and hair were perfectly preserved, along with clothes and religious objects - bowls with food, figurines made of gold and silver, and an unusual headdress made of white feathers of an unknown bird were found nearby. The bodies of two more Inca victims were also discovered - a girl and a boy aged 6–7 years.

During the study, scientists found that children were prepared for the cult for a long time, fed with elite products (llama meat and maize), and stuffed with cocaine and alcohol. According to historians, the Incas chose the most beautiful children for rituals. Doctors diagnosed the Ice Maiden with the initial stage of tuberculosis. Mummies of Incan children are on display at the Museum of Highlands Archeology in Salta, Argentina.

Petrified miner about 360 years old

In 1719, Swedish miners discovered the body of their colleague deep in a mine in the city of Falun. The young man looked as if he had died recently, but none of the miners could identify him. A lot of onlookers came to look at the deceased, and in the end the corpse was identified: an elderly woman bitterly recognized him as her fiancé, Mats Israelsson, who had gone missing 42 years ago (!).

In the open air, the corpse became hard as stone - such properties were given to it by the vitriol that soaked the miner's body and clothes. The miners did not know what to do with the find: whether to consider it a mineral and give it to a museum, or bury it as a person. As a result, the Petrified Miner was put on display, but over time began to deteriorate and decompose due to the evaporation of vitriol.

In 1749, Mats Israelsson was buried in the church, but in the 1860s, during renovations, the miner was dug up again and shown to the public for another 70 years. It was only in 1930 that the petrified miner finally found peace in the church cemetery in Falun. The fate of the failed groom and his bride formed the basis of Hoffmann’s story “Falun Mines.”

Conqueror of the Arctic 189 years

In 1845, an expedition led by polar explorer John Franklin set out on two ships to the northern coast of Canada to explore the Northwest Passage, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

All 129 people disappeared without a trace. During search operations in 1850, three graves were discovered on Beechey Island. When they were finally opened and the ice was melted (this happened only in 1981), it turned out that the bodies were perfectly preserved due to permafrost conditions.

A photograph of one of the deceased - British fireman John Torrington, originally from Manchester - spread across all publications in the early 1980s and inspired James Taylor to write the song The Frozen Man. Scientists have determined that the fireman died of pneumonia aggravated by lead poisoning.

Sleeping Beauty 96 years old

Palermo in Sicily is home to one of the most famous mummies exhibitions - the Capuchin Catacombs. Since 1599, the Italian elite have been buried here: clergy, aristocracy, politicians. They rest in the form of skeletons, mummies and embalmed bodies - more than 8,000 dead in total. The last to be buried was the girl Rosalia Lombardo.

She died of pneumonia in 1920, seven days short of her second birthday. The grief-stricken father asked the famous embalmer Alfredo Salafia to preserve her body from decay. Almost a hundred years later, the girl, like a sleeping beauty, lies with her eyes slightly open in the chapel of St. Rosalia. Scientists recognize that this is one of the best embalming methods.