A three-thousand-year-old mummy has been found in the Latin American country of Peru. Students from San Marcos University first found the head and hair of the mummy under a garbage dump in the Peruvian capital of Lima.

They removed about eight thousand tonnes of garbage before starting the excavation. Confirming the discovery of the mummy, Archaeologist Miguel Aguilar said that the mummy appears to belong to Manchay culture. Manchay culture flourished around present-day Lima from about 1500 BC to 1000 BC.

People of the Manchay culture are known for building U-shaped temples directed towards the rising sun. Aguilar said that the mummy was found in a tomb in a U-shaped temple. The body was laid out flat, this is a characteristic of the Manchay people.

The archaeologist said further that the person was left as a sacrifice in the temple. This was in practice in Machay culture, in the beginning, dating back to 3000 BC.

Mummification was a part of the culture in different communities in Latin America before the Spanish invasion.
Earlier, archaeologists found 25 bodies in a mass grave in Peru’ Chan Chan City. Present-day Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimu empire that ruled Peru up to15th century. The Chimu empire was defeated and destroyed by the Incas.
Chan Chan was the largest mud citadel in the pre-Columbian era.

Archaeologists believe that the mass grave was the resting place of the Chimu elite. Archaeologists are also confused by the fact that most of the people buried were women, and none of them was above the age of 30. But they fail to decide the reason for death at such a younger age.