Curved in mortuary ropes, a pre-Inca mummy discovered in an ancient city in Peru

She is wrapped in a network of ropes, her legs folded over her chest and her face buried in the palms of her hands, as if frozen in a weeping movement.

Discovered about fifteen kilometers from Lima, in central Peru, a mummy presenting a very good state of preservation given its venerable age has been the pride of the archaeologists of the Peruvian University of San Marcos for a few days.

The individual would not only be nearly 800 to 1200 years old, but could also deliver some precious details about the elite of a pre-Columbian city straddling two worlds.

Read alsoPeruvian archaeologists unearth a pre-Inca site of human sacrifices

Identified in an underground tomb, on the archaeological site of Cajamarquilla, in the middle of the Andes mountain range, the mummy did not belong to the Inca civilization, far too recent compared to the dating advanced by Peruvian researchers. Before parchment naturally thanks to favorable conditions of conservation, the mummy was once a young man of 25-30 years old, buried long before the foundation, in the first half of the 15th century, of the empire which would feast on the conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro.

Mown in his youth, under unknown circumstances, the deceased lay in a beautiful oval-shaped burial chamber.

archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen Luna, who took part in the excavation, told CNN. Various mollusks as well as the bones of llamas were counted by the researchers in the immediate vicinity of the tomb. Remains that did not arrive on site by chance, although the site is some 25 kilometers from the sea.

continues the archaeologist

The deceased was a young man of 25-30 years old.

Buried in a symbolically significant place - the center of a square - he could have been an important figure.

Reuters screenshot

A mummy between two worlds

Very striking, the staging of the body of the deceased in a fetal position and surrounded by ropes would be linked to pre-Columbian funerary practices more widespread in the neighboring regions, those of the highlands of Peru, rather than in the coastal foothills of the Lima region.

The mummy would thus testify to a multiethnic mix which would have taken place in the valley of Huaycoloro, to the east of the Peruvian capital.

Either in a strategic in-between, halfway between the Pre-Columbians of the coasts and those of the high mountains, underlined the archaeologists for the online review Rumbos del Perú, on November 22.

Read alsoIn Peru, discovery of a mass grave from pre-Columbian times

But the most astonishing detail of the mummy, the one that has so delighted the forty researchers involved in the excavation, is above all the place where the tomb was found. Namely in the center of a square. This situation is all the less conventional as the Cajamarquilla site was not just a second-rate agglomeration but, on the contrary, a major commercial site in this area of ​​the pre-Columbian Andes.

, also testified for CNN Yomira Huamán Santillán, co-responsible for the excavation with Pieter Van Dalen Luna. With an estimated area of ​​140 hectares punctuated by the majesty of a few pyramids, the city could have housed up to 15,000 inhabitants at its peak, say Peruvian researchers.

For those in charge of the archaeological team, the central location of the mummy's tomb, as well as the care taken there, seems to characterize a person of a certain importance. Any wren? A forgotten emperor? Perhaps a wealthy trader, Peruvian scientists cautiously argue. The most beautiful discovery made in recent years on the site of the city, the mummy of Cajamarquilla should be the subject of new carbon-14 analyzes in order to refine its dating. The young pre-Columbian unknown should live a second youth in the best laboratories of Peru. A horizon less exotic than the arid shadow of the pyramids, but sheltered from the wild dumps and looters which, according to the researchers, abound on the archaeological site.