Archaeology: RETURN OF THE ICE MAIDEN

AT JUST ABOUT THE TIME COLUMBUS was sailing into the Caribbean, a young Inca girl, almost a woman, was trudging up the steep slopes of Mount Ampato (elev. 20,700 ft.), in what is now southern Peru, knowing that her life would come to an end at the summit. Her sacrifice, considered the greatest honor her people could bestow, would appease the mountain god–the source of good fortune (in the form of rain to bless the crops) and terror (snowstorms, earthquakes and avalanches) to Inca culture. Did she march bravely to the center of the ceremonial platform, or was she dragged there in a drugged stupor? Was she killed by the priests who brought her, or was she left to die from exposure, cold and very alone?

Those questions and more may soon be answered. Five hundred years after her fateful climb, the Inca maiden has returned to the world below the clouds. Her frozen body, along with those of two other youths, was discovered almost by accident last month by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and his Peruvian guide Miguel Zarate. Her tissues and bodily fluids were still intact. Researchers have found the mummified corpses of other Incas who were sacrificed, and four years ago, the freeze-dried remains of a 5,000-year-old man turned up in the Tyrolean Alps. But none were nearly as well preserved as the woman who has been dubbed Juanita by the people who found her.

Juanita might have rested undisturbed for centuries more had it not been for the rumblings of a nearby volcano. For the past five years it has spewed ash over Mount Ampato, melting its snowcap and causing the ground to shift. The movement caused Juanita’s ceremonial platform to collapse, and she literally tumbled off. Zarate had to rappel down a ravine to retrieve gold and silver statues, festooned with feathers, that were part of the traditional offering to the gods. Reinhard had scaled dozens of Andean peaks over the past 15 years searching for just such a treasure. Now he was worried that further underground movement on Mount Ampato might propel Juanita down the ravine, where she would be lost forever. “I couldn’t just leave,” Reinhard says. “I had it in my power to preserve a mummy and some beautiful statues that were about to fall.”

So Reinhard and Zarate stuffed the 90-lb. corpse, curled in its fetal position, into a backpack and climbed down after sunset. Eventually they were able to load Juanita onto the back of a mule, her body wrapped in blue foam sleeping pads to insulate it from the animal’s body heat. She made the final leg of the trip to the city of Arequipa in the baggage hold of an overnight bus. A second expedition recovered the other two bodies.

The humans sacrificed to the mountain god may prove to be a godsend to scientists. Archaeologists and anthropologists are thrilled because Juanita was found at a site that had not been looted; with all the ritual elements in place, they can reconstruct the ceremony and better understand its religious significance. Other experts are more interested in those body fluids. With support from the National Geographic Society, scientists in Arequipa, where the bodies are being kept, are preparing to make a detailed examination of Juanita’s blood, her tissues and her DNA to determine, among other things, what virus and germs may have been common five centuries ago.

–Reported by Douglass Stinson/Arequipa