How it began
The Chinchorro were fishing people of the Pacific coast in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru. Deliberate mummification began by about 5050 BCE. The earliest known example is a child buried in the Camarones Valley, south of Arica. UNESCO states that the sites in the Arica and Parinacota Region hold the oldest known archaeological evidence of artificial mummification. The ancient culture counts for present-day Chile because the sites lie in its territory. The Atacama Desert preserves bodies naturally, and the oldest naturally preserved Chinchorro individual dates to about 7020 BCE. Chinchorro cemeteries hold both kinds: bodies preserved by the environment and bodies prepared by hand.
How it works
In the black mummy technique, used from about 5000 to 2800 BCE, the skin, soft tissue and organs were removed and the skeleton was taken apart. The bones were cleaned, put back in position and stiffened with thin wooden poles tied with reed cord. The body was filled with grasses, modeled with gray clay 2 to 4 centimeters thick, covered again with skin, given a wig of human hair and painted with black manganese paint. Red mummies, from about 2570 to 2090 BCE, were emptied through cuts, dried with hot coals, packed, sewn up and coated in red ocher. Later bodies were simply coated in mud.
What changed first
Men, women and children across the community were mummified, not only an elite, which sets the practice apart from later societies such as ancient Egypt. The work required a chain of tasks. A recent study reported in Discover estimated that one adult black mummy needed about 1.4 kilograms of manganese, which had to be found, carried, crushed and mixed.
Where it stands today
The tradition lasted about 3,000 years and ended around 1800 BCE. Systematic study began in 1914, when the German archaeologist Max Uhle excavated cemeteries around Arica. In 2021 UNESCO inscribed the settlement and artificial mummification of the Chinchorro culture as a World Heritage Site. Some mummies stored at the University of Tarapaca have begun to decay as humidity rises, and unexcavated remains are exposed to construction and erosion.
