Uploaded August 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
There are mummies older than anything found in Egypt! The Chinchorro people of Chile were preserving their dead 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. The earliest mummy that has been found in Egypt dated around 3000 BCE, while the oldest anthropogenically modified Chinchorro mummy dates from around 5050 BCE. This video shows a museum of 48 of those ancient mummified bodies.
In Arica, Chile, we walked from the port to the In Situ Colon 10 Museum (Museo de Sitio Colón 10), a small museum that houses some of the world's oldest mummies. An architect planned a hotel at this site but found the mummies when construction started. They were studied by the university and considered too fragile to move, so the museum was created with them in situ, right in the spot where they were found, A glass floor now covers them and the wall beside the glass floor explains each mummy, which is numbered. When we were buying tickets, the lady at the ticket desk gave us a copy of the English translation of the information on the wall. Many of the mummies have wigs, wrappings and one even has the red clay mask used by the Chinchorro people. While I have read comments online about these are just skeletons, archaeologically, they are mummies because they show intentional mummification. While bodies can be mummified by the desert, and these people lived in the Atacama desert, these bodies were prepared and attempts were made to preserve them.
The museum offers signs with information on the mummies and the Chinchorro people and exhibits upstairs show how the Chinchorro lived. There is also a beautiful view of Arica from the upstairs.
More mummies can be found just outside Arica at the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa but it was closed on Mondays and we were there on a Monday. The mummies in this museum show many more red clay faces, one of the signatures of Chinchorro mummification.
#chile #mummy #oldestmummies #aricachile #arica #insitu #atacamadesert
There are mummies older than anything found in Egypt! The Chinchorro people of Chile were preserving their dead 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. The earliest mummy that has been found in Egypt dated around 3000 BCE, while the oldest anthropogenically modified Chinchorro mummy dates from around 5050 BCE. This video shows a museum of 48 of those ancient mummified bodies.
In Arica, Chile, we walked from the port to the In Situ Colon 10 Museum (Museo de Sitio Colón 10), a small museum that houses some of the world's oldest mummies. An architect planned a hotel at this site but found the mummies when construction started. They were studied by the university and considered too fragile to move, so the museum was created with them in situ, right in the spot where they were found, A glass floor now covers them and the wall beside the glass floor explains each mummy, which is numbered. When we were buying tickets, the lady at the ticket desk gave us a copy of the English translation of the information on the wall. Many of the mummies have wigs, wrappings and one even has the red clay mask used by the Chinchorro people. While I have read comments online about these are just skeletons, archaeologically, they are mummies because they show intentional mummification. While bodies can be mummified by the desert, and these people lived in the Atacama desert, these bodies were prepared and attempts were made to preserve them.
The museum offers signs with information on the mummies and the Chinchorro people and exhibits upstairs show how the Chinchorro lived. There is also a beautiful view of Arica from the upstairs.
More mummies can be found just outside Arica at the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa but it was closed on Mondays and we were there on a Monday. The mummies in this museum show many more red clay faces, one of the signatures of Chinchorro mummification.
#chile #mummy #oldestmummies #aricachile #arica #insitu #atacamadesert
