1,200-Year-Old Strange Mummy Tied In Net Rope Discovered In Peru (Photos)

Archaeologists excavating an underground tomb in Peru have uncovered a strange mummy preserved fully bound up in ropes, with its hands covering its face.

The remains of the individual, whose sex has not been identified, was found at the Cajamarquilla archaeological site, some 16 miles from the capital city of Lima.

According to the team, the mummy dates back 1,200 years and belonged to the pre-Inca civilisation that developed between the Peruvian coast and mountains.

The excavation at Cajamarquilla is being led by archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen Luna of the California State University San Marcos.

‘The main characteristic of the mummy is that the whole body was tied up by ropes and with the hands covering the face,’ Professor Van Dalen Luna said.

This elaborate binding, he explained, ‘would be part of the local funeral pattern.’

The underground tomb in which the mummy was found also harboured other funerary offerings.

Among these discoveries were stone tools and ceramic pots within which were traces of vegetable matter, the archaeologists said.

Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites derived from cultures that developed both before and after the Inca Empire.

Child sacrifice seems to have been a relatively common occurrence in the cultures of ancient Peru. Among the finds revealing this ritual behaviour were the mummified remains of a child’s body (pictured), discovered in 1985 by a group of mountaineers

The boy is thought to have been a victim of an Inca ritual called capacocha, where children of great beauty and health were sacrificed by drugging them and taking them into the mountains to freeze to death.