NOVA Online | Ice Mummies of the Inca | The Mummy's Journey (4)

The Mummy's Journey
Part 4 (back to Part 3)

Return to Civilization
The townspeople of Quilcata greet us to celebrate our success. Two hundred of the villagers cram into a room to hear details of the expedition from Johan and Jose Antonio. It's standing room only, with several people peering in through windows. Was it truly a mummy that was found a few days ago on their sacred mountain, Sara Sara?

mummy in a pit

"We haven't unwrapped the mummy yet," Johan reminds the gathered pueblo folk, "so we don't know exactly what we'll find underneath the textiles. But it IS a mummy. We got it out of its intact tomb, complete with its attendant textile wrappings, unlike the skeletons we found this summer on Pichu Pichu. Those were really skeletons, only bones. The Sara Sara mummy is much more intact. It may have some flesh and more textiles or artefacts accompanying it." Townsfolk ask questions and then it is decided that the mummy should be named "Sarita" as in 'Little Sara,' after the mountain upon which the mummy was sacrificed by the Inca 500 years ago.

citizens

Journey to the Future
Ten minutes out of town the bus comes to a complete stop. Quilcata sits in a deep valley and the only way out of town is up. All of our gear is strapped to the top of the bus.... including the mummy. We get out and push from behind as the bus strains forward. It's clearly going to be a long day of travel to Arequipa and the lab at Catholic University where Sarita will be preserved, and eventually unwrapped.

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