Chinchorro mummies
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How it came to be
From about 5450 to 890 BCE, the Chinchorro, a people of marine hunter-gatherers, lived on the arid coast of the Atacama Desert in the far north of Chile. The oldest naturally preserved body, Acha Man, dates to about 7020 BCE. Deliberate mummification had begun by about 5050 BCE, and the earliest example is a child buried in the Camarones Valley.
The Chinchorro took apart and reassembled the bodies of men, women and children from every part of society to make mummies. The archaeologist Bernardo Arriaza sorted them into four types: black, red, bandaged and mud-coated. Black mummies were made from about 5000 to 2800 BCE and red ones from about 2570 to 2090 BCE.
About 282 individuals have been documented since study began in 1914. A 2016 study found that skin deteriorates sharply once relative humidity passes 75 to 80 percent. Two sites in the city of Arica and one at the mouth of the Camarones River were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2021.
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