Living in a barren desert on the northern coast of the Pacific Ocean in Chile over 7,000 years ago, the Chinchorro tribe began the mysterious practice of mummifying children – removing organs, cleaning bones, stuffing and sewing skin, and adorning the mummies with wigs and masks.
The Chinchorro mummies are the oldest artificially preserved human remains, dating back thousands of years before the Egyptian mummies came into existence. Archaeologists are tasked with uncovering why this primitive society developed such a complex ritual.
Archaeologist Bernardo Arriaza from the University of Tarapaca in Chile proposed a bold hypothesis earlier this year.
“I read a Chilean newspaper discussing arsenic and lead pollution, which mentioned that arsenic could cause miscarriages. I jumped up and exclaimed: That’s it!” Arriaza said.
Arriaza noted that the high levels of arsenic present in the drinking water of the region, which still exist today, have led to high rates of premature births, stillbirths, and miscarriages among the Chinchorro people. “We have known that Camarones, the area where the mummies were found, has a lot of arsenic and the first mummies were all children.”
He believes that the Chinchorro initially preserved children’s bodies to express personal and communal grief, later extending the practice to adults, resulting in increasingly sophisticated procedures.
By the 1960s, archaeologists had excavated over 100 lightweight, intricately preserved bodies. They were stuffed with plant materials and adorned with clay. They also found fishing hooks, baskets, and shells used as bedding, still bearing traces of red and black paint that adorned the mummies.
The Chinchorro were hunter-gatherers who lived at river mouths, catching fish with nets, spears, and hooks, and constructing portable huts made of seal skin and bones.
Their primitive lifestyle lacked domesticated animals, pottery, agriculture, and metallurgy, standing in stark contrast to the sophisticated mummification practices they developed over thousands of years, prior to the rise of the Inca civilization and its influence on mummification rituals.
“This complex funerary ritual is often associated with more advanced societies, but here they are just organized hunter-gatherers with simple political social structures,” noted archaeologist Vivien Standen from the University of Tarapaca.
This practice lasted for over 3,000 years and underwent various phases until the Chinchorro society disappeared around 2,000 BCE.
The oldest mummies resemble statues covered in black clay. Thousands of years later, the treatment of skin and bones became more technical, and the Chinchorro began decorating the mummies with red paint on their wide-mouthed masks.
Researchers continue to analyze quartz-tipped spears embedded in the bones of some mummies and the marks from blows to the left side of the face, hypothesizing that there may have been violent activities occurring during funeral rites.
M.T.
