SKIRMISHER

But it was the state of the bodies, preserved not by embalming, like Egyptian mummies, but simply by the natural deep-freeze in which they were abandoned, that scientists found most remarkable.

The younger girl’s body was slightly damaged because it had been struck by lightning. But CT scans showed that their internal organs appeared to be in perfect condition: one still had blood in its heart, the brains were completely undamaged and when the blood vessels were thawed the blood that poured out of them was crimson, as it would be in a living person.

“The doctors have been shaking their heads and saying they sure don’t look 500 years old but as if they’d died a few weeks ago,” said U.S. archaeologist and expedition member Johan Reinhard at the time.

“And a chill went down my spine the first time I saw her hands because they look like those of a person who is alive.”

It’s thought that the children were chosen by the Incas for their beauty and sacrificed in a ceremony called a capacocha.

“The Incas didn’t do this very often,” according to Reinhard.

“The sacrifices were children because they were considered to be the most pure.”

– The uncanny 500-year-old Incan “Ice Maiden“.

{Intriguing: The Victorian book of the dead}

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