Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510250064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: AREQUIPA, PERU LENGTH: Short
The find, the first of its kind, has excited scientists who say it will give them a unique look at the Inca Indian tribes that ruled a large part of South America before the Spanish conquest.
Two of the bodies were partially frozen and may contain 500-year-old living organisms, scientists said.
``There have never been Inca mummies found frozen before,'' said Johan Reinhard, an American archaeologist who was a leader of the expedition. ``We're going to make a major leap in understanding the Incas.''
The bodies of two young women and a man were discovered by a joint Peruvian-American archaeology team in September and early October about 20,700 feet up Mount Ampato in southern Peru.
They were killed as human sacrifices to appease the gods of Mount Ampato, which was considered sacred, said Reinhard, a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
``The sacrificial humans were probably alive when they went up the mountain,'' he said.
In Washington, George Stuart of the National Geographic Society said the mummies would give researchers a unique look at Incan civilization.
``The objects and sites they left behind will provide a large amount of new information on their little-understood sacrificial ritual,'' Stuart said.
by CNB