Juanita the snow maiden

Juanita's 500-year-old, well-preserved hand.Momia Juanita (Spanish for "Mummy Juanita"), better known in English as the "Ice Maiden," is an Inca mummy of a girl, or more precisely, a frozen body, between 12-14 years old, who died sometime between 1440 and 1450.

She was discovered in southern Peru in 1995 by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner Miguel Zarate. Also known as the Lady of Ampato and the Frozen Lady, Juanita was taken on tour in the United States in 1996 and in Japan in 1999 before she was returned to Peru.

The mummy was remarkably well-preserved after 500 years, making her one of the more important recent mummy finds; indeed, this discovery was chosen by Time magazine, in 1995, as one of the world's top ten discoveries.


According to Reinhard, when found in Mount Ampato (part of the Andes cordillera), the mummy weighed approximately 80 pounds. Reinhard and his partner then realized that the heavy body mass was due to freezing of the flesh. This preservation allowed biological tests to be run on the lung, liver, and muscle tissue. These offered new insights into Inca health and nutrition during the reign of the Sapa Inca Pachacuti.

Discovery

Johan Reinhard had made various ascents in several mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas (in Nepal) and the Peruvian Andes. As an archaeologist, he had studied Machu Picchu, Chavín, and the Nazca Lines. He became very familiar with the Peruvian heights and the region's native inhabitants. He and his partner, Miguel Zárate, a guide from Arequipa, regularly climbed the mountains that were legendarily the homes of the Apus, mountain spirits that Peruvians have feared and worshipped since the time of the Inca.

In 1995, during an ascent of Mt. Ampato, Reinhard and Zarate found, inside the summit crater, a bundle that had fallen from an Inca site owing to melting caused by volcanic ash from the nearby volcano of Sabancaya. To their astonishment, the bundle turned out to contain a remarkably well-preserved mummy of a young girl. In addition, they found—strewn about the mountain slope down which the mummy had fallen&mdash many items that had been left as offerings to the Inca gods; these included statues and food items. A couple of days later, the mummy and the objects were taken to Arequipa. The mummy was initially kept in a special refrigerator.

The mummy caused a sensation in the scientific world due to its well-preserved condition. Between May and June of 1996, it was exhibited in the headquarters of National Geographic Society in Washington D.C., in a specially acclimatized conservation/display unit. In its June, 1996, issue, [[National Geographic]] included an article dedicated to the discovery of Juanita, and in 2005, Johan Reinhard published a detailed account in his book The Ice Maiden: Inca Mummies, Mountain Gods, and Sacred Sites in the Andes (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society).

Identity

The young girl's body was taken to the United States and underwent a virtual autopsy in the laboratories of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. The mummy was subjected totomographies and X-ray examinations. Scientists reached the following conclusions:

she had died at the age of 14, between approximately 1440 and 1450;
she had had a stature of 1.40 meters;
she had weighed 80 pounds at the time of death;
she was slender in build and body shape;
she had not suffered of any illness;
she had had a perfect denture and strong bones;
she had had a good and well-balanced diet;
she had fasted one day before the sacrifice;
she had a 5cm fissure in the skull; and
she had died from blunt force trauma to the head
It is believed by some archaeologists that the Ice Maiden was in fact a human sacrifice to the Inca mountain god (Apus). The Ice Maiden was then buried by the Inca priests atop Mount Ampato (20,700 feet, or 6,309 m) in Peru, and left undisturbed until discovered by Johann Reinhard in 1995.

These discoveries seem to support the theory that during the Inca empire, human sacrifice rituals were still practiced, contrary to the common theories of some archaeologists and historians who deny it. Indeed the mummy was, in Reinhard's opinion, "a young sacrifice victim killed by Inca priests to appease the gods, especially the gods of the mountain." However, what indeed is indicated is that during this epoch, neither anthropophagy nor necrophagy were practiced; on the contrary, both were punished.

Konrad Spindler has said that Juanita is "the best conserved human being from America", adding that she is "the first woman found in Andes closer to Cuzco [...] she could have been from Cuzco and had arrived alive to the snowy mountains and then sacrificed in a couple".

DNA samples

The scientists of Maryland's Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) performed laboratory tests on Juanita's body and were able to recover the heart tissues of the young girl. These tests served to identify her DNA and compare it with the Human Genome Project.

The studies demonstrated that Juanita had a close relationship with the Ngoge tribe of Panama and with old Taiwanese and Korean races. During five years, those involved in the Human Genome Project had compiled samples of blood of every nation of Earth, allocating the groups of DNA geographically. According to that world sample, "the human race descended from the trees of northeast Africa and spread through all the corners of the world".

Whereabouts

Juanita is now housed in the Museum of the Universidad Católica de Santa María of Arequipa, Peru. She is currently encased in a special glass box at a constantly cold temperature to continue preserving her body. The interior of the urn is kept at a temperature between -19.2 °C and -19.5 °C to avoid the dehydration of her body.

In the same museum are "Urpicha" (palomita, "little dove" in Spanish, a mummy found on the volcano Pichu Pichu of Arequipa); "Sarita" (found on the Sarasara volcano, between Arequipa and Ayacucho), and five other mummies found in El Misti volcano, also near Arequipa.

The Sacrificial Ceremony

by Liesl Clark

The Tanta Carhua Story"Beautiful beyond exaggeration," is how one Spanish chronicler described Tanta Carhua. Carhua was a ten-year old Inca child whose father offered her to the Inca Emperor as a Capacocha sacrifice. She was taken by priests to Cuzco where she met the Inca Emperor, and on her return journey to the mountain where she would be sacrificed the procession passed through her home village. According to the legends, Tanta Carhua told the village: "You can finish with me now because I could not be more honoured than by the feasts which they celebrated for me in Cuzco."Tanta Carhua was then taken to a high Andean mountain, placed in a shaft-tomb and walled in alive. Chicha, a maize alcohol, was fed to her both before and after her death. And in death, this beautiful ten-year old child became a goddess, speaking to her people as an oracle from the mountain, which was reconsecrated in her name.CapacochaVery little is known about Capacocha, the sacred Inca ceremony of human sacrifice, but with each new archaeological discovery of a sacrificial mummy, more is revealed. The earliest and only known written accounts of the ritual are chronicles written by Spanish conquistador historians. From the chronicles and from each new discovery of a mummy, the pieces of this great puzzle are put together to reveal an intricate and extremely important ritual that involved sacrifice of children, worship of mountains as gods, and elaborate burial procedures. Sacrifices were often made during or after a portentous event: an earthquake, an epidemic, a drought, or after the death of an Inca Emperor. According to archaeologist Juan Schobinger, "Inca sacrifices often involved the child of a chief. The sacrificed child was thought of as a deity, ensuring a tie between the chief and the Inca emperor, who was considered a descendant of the Sun god. The sacrifice also bestowed an elevated status on the chief's family and descendants." The honour of sacrifice was bestowed not only on the family, but was forever immortalized in the child. It is believed that the sacrificial children had to be perfect, without so much as a blemish or irregularity in their physical beauty. After a child was chosen or offered to the emperor, a procession would begin from the child's home village to Cuzco, the crown seat of the Inca empire. Priests, family members, and chiefs would accompany the child on this great journey to meet the emperor. Huge ceremonial feasts would take place in Cuzco where the child would meet the emperor and forever bring credit to the family in this important event. Priests would then lead the grand procession to the designated high mountain. Often, a base camp would be established lower on the mountain, at a more comfortable elevation. Here, llamas (which carried up 80-pound loads of soil, grass, and often stones for the camp structures from the villages below) would be coralled, and permanent stone structures would be built to offer shelter to the priests and the child.

The Sacrificial Ceremony

(Part 2 )

Meanwhile, high on the mountain's summit, the sacrificial platforms would be under construction and the burial site being prepared. The platforms were large retaining walls built of stone that formed a large tomb-like interior. The child would be placed within the platform along with many burial artifacts, like carvings of llamas, statues made of gold and silver, and ceremonial pots.On the day of the sacrifice, the child would be fed chicha, a maize alcohol, presumably to ease the pain of the cold, the altitude, and perhaps the fear of dying. Much ritual celebrating would take place at the platform as the child would be wrapped in ceremonial clothing, placed inside the tomb, and surrounded with the sacred artifacts that would accompany him/her into the Other World. This was the ultimate sacrifice the Inca could make to please the mountain gods: to offer up their own children in the highest places humans could possibly reach.Whether the children died a violent death remains a debate among scientists. Skull fractures have been found on most of the sacrificial mummies. Johan Reinhard, who admits Juanita, too, has a skull fracture on the back of her head, believes this was a quick and painless means of knocking the children out so that they wouldn't have to suffer a long and grueling death of exposure to the elements. He believes the children were knocked out with a blow to a cushioning towel on the backs of their heads.Once the child died of exposure, the priests would continue to return to the site, making offerings of coca leaves and filling in the burial site with dirt. Often a miniature figurine of the child would be placed on the surface near the burial site, along with more simple offerings like ichu, wild grass from the slopes thousands of feet below. For Jose Antonio Chavez and Johan Reinhard, these are often the first clues they look for in their search for sacrificial Inca children buried on the frozen mountain tops of the Andes.