Gas workers make astonishing find as eight mummies uncovered in Peru

The eight mummified males were found bundled up in a trench, wrapped in cotton cloth and tied with ropes braided from vines.

Peruvian gas workers made an astonishing discovery beneath the ancient streets of Lima this week — uncovering eight mummies and a number of Pre-Inca artefacts.

“We are recovering those leaves of the lost history of Lima that is just hidden under the tracks and streets,” said Jesus Bahamonde, an archaeologist with Calidda, the company that distributes natural gas to the 10 million residents of Peru’s capital city.

Since the company began expanding its gas line system nearly two decades ago, they’ve racked up more than 1,900 archaeological finds — including mummies, pottery, and textiles, Bahamonde said.

Peruvian gas workers have made an astonishing discovery beneath the ancient streets of Lima this week, uncovering eight mummies and a number of Pre-Inca artifacts. Picture: Cris Bouroncle / AFP

A work crew excavating a street in Lima to lay gas pipes found eight funerary bundles, including six children from a pre-Hispanic culture 800 to 1,000 years old, also containing pottery vessels and figurines. Picture: Cris Bouroncle / AFP

In the most recent discovery, the eight mummified males were found bundled up in the trench, wrapped in cotton cloth and tied with ropes braided from vines, the New York Post reports. Workers found the bodies about a foot below the ground.

Archaeologists with the gas company believe the men belonged to a pre-Inca culture called Ichma, which formed around A.D. 1100 and flourished in the valleys around Lima until it was absorbed into the Inca Empire in the late 15th century.

Roberto Quispe, an archaeologist who worked in the trench, told the Associated Press the mummified bodies are likely two adults and six minors.

Lima, now an urban economic hub, has been occupied by humans for more than 10,000 years, from the Pre-Incan cultures to the Spanish conquistadors who claimed the land in the 16th century.

Many archaeological finds have proven to be from more recent times.

In 2018, Quispe and other archaeologists working in the La Flor neighbourhood found wooden coffins holding three Chinese immigrants buried in the 19th century.

“We are recovering those leaves of the lost history of Lima that is just hidden under the tracks and streets,” said Jesus Bahamonde, an archaeologist with Calidda, the company that distributes natural gas to the residents of Lima, Peru. Picture: Cris Bouroncle / AFP

In this aerial view archaeologists recover ancient human remains and artifacts discovered by workers excavating a street in a rural area in the northern district of Carabayllo in Lima, on September 22, 2023. Picture: Cris Bouroncle / AFP

The bodies were found alongside opium pipes, hand-rolled cigarettes, shoes, Chinese playing cards, a Peruvian silver coin minted in 1898 and a certificate of completion of employment contract, written in Spanish and dated 1875.

The eight mummies were found amid braised chicken restaurants and a road that leads to Peru’s only nuclear power station.

“When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century they found an entire population living in the three valleys that today occupy Lima … what we have is a kind of historical continuation,” Bahamonde said.

Most of the archaeological sites uncovered by Calidda have been burial sites discovered on flat ground, Bahamonde said.

Aso scattered throughout the urbanised city are more than 400 larger archaeological sites, known in the Indigenous Quechua language as “huacas,” which are sacred adobe constructions typically found on hilltops.

With Post wires.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and has been reproduced with permission.