--- title: Chile: Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Chinchorro Mummy description: A group of youths participating in an archaeology workshop dug up an ancient mummy in northern Chile over the weekend canonical: https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/ author: David Stout article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-27T06:02:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T08:03:00.100Z article:section: Science og:title: Chile: Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Chinchorro Mummy og:description: A group of youths participating in an archaeology workshop dug up an ancient mummy in northern Chile over the weekend og:url: https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc14e233ce02baef2/698690e1cd6848e13e094d12/mummies.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: A group of Chinchorro mummies -dated bet og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Chile: Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Chinchorro Mummy twitter:description: A group of youths participating in an archaeology workshop dug up an ancient mummy in northern Chile over the weekend twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc14e233ce02baef2/698690e1cd6848e13e094d12/mummies.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Chilean Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Mummy by [David Stout](/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout May 27, 2014 6:02 AM CUT  A group of Chinchorro mummies — dated between 5000 B.C. and 3000 B.C. — are on display during the exhibition "Arica, a Thousand-Year-Old Culture," on Aug. 27, 2008, in the cultural center of the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile A group of Chinchorro mummies — dated between 5000 B.C. and 3000 B.C. — are on display during the exhibition "Arica, a Thousand-Year-Old Culture," on Aug. 27, 2008, in the cultural center of the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, ChileClaudio Santana —AFP/Getty Images by [David Stout](/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout May 27, 2014 6:02 AM CUT Chilean students participating in an archaeological dig on Saturday near the Peruvian border hit paleontological gold after discovering the remains of a 7,000-year-old Chinchorro mummy. Officials from the Chilean National Heritage Office were sent to the dig site in Chile’s Morro de Arica to commence a complete investigation into the recovered remains. A large number of historical artifacts have reportedly been forced to the surface in swaths of the northern parts of the country following a massive 8.2 earthquake that rocked the area in April, according to AFP. Mummies from the Chinchorro culture are among some of the oldest preserved cadavers to have ever been discovered. \[[_AFP_](http://news.yahoo.com/students-discover-7-000-old-mummy-chile-203010649.html;%5Fylt=AwrBEiRWp4NTBWcAtvPQtDMD "undefined")\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/"},"headline":"Chilean Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Mummy","datePublished":"2014-05-27T06:02:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T08:03:00.100Z","description":"A group of youths participating in an archaeology workshop dug up an ancient mummy in northern Chile over the weekend","url":"https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/","keywords":["Paleontology","Chile"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc14e233ce02baef2/698690e1cd6848e13e094d12/mummies.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"David Stout","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/david-stout/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc14e233ce02baef2/698690e1cd6848e13e094d12/mummies.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"A group of Chinchorro mummies -dated bet","caption":"A group of Chinchorro mummies -dated bet","creditText":"Claudio Santana —AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/paleontology/","name":"Paleontology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/117239/chilean-students-discover-7000-year-old-chinchorro-mummy/","name":"Chilean Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Mummy"}}]}] ```