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Jannina Campos walks along a sandy hillside of Arica, a port town at the edge the Atacama desert. It is the driest spot on the planet.
There are dozens of orange markers that have been placed on the slope since December. Each one indicates that there are skeletal remains that were recently discovered by unusually strong winds and more rainfall.
“Every time a body appears we place a flag, and we bury it again,” said Campos, an archaeologist. “They’ve been preserved there for 7,000 years.”
The ancient Chinchorro owns the sprawling cemetery. CultureThere are many hunters and fishers who They were painstakingly mummified. After stripping their loved one of their skin and organs they wrapped their skeletons with elaborate confections made of sea lion skins and clay, alpaca and alpaca wool and wigs of hair. They trusted the desert climate to preserve them for ever.
But their gravesites, dotted around Chile’s far north, are increasingly being disturbed by An abnormalWeather related to the climate crisis, and their remains exposed to the elements.
This presents a dilemma for cash-strapped archaeologists: either try to save everything or just cover up the cadavers so that they can focus on studying and conserving mummies already excavated.
“The museums are a bit overwhelmed with all this material,” said Bernardo Arriaza, a leading Expert on the Chinchorro at the University of Tarapacá in Arica.
Atacama is experiencing an increase in humidity It can be very damagingThe mummies are already in collections. Some are sprouting with mold, others are succumbing dry rot or being eaten by insects.
He explained that the eclectic mix of materials makes it difficult to find storage conditions that are just right. “There’s no magic solution.”
Campos pointed down the hill to a museum that housed dozens of skeletal Chinchorro body, the sand surrounding them speckled in white fragments. “That’s the bones turning to dust,” she said.
Last July, the Chinchorro Mummies were released. This was a sign of hope. InscribedAfter a 20-year process of application, the Unesco World Heritage List was established.
Many anticipate that growing appreciation for the mummies – and the beginning of construction this year of a new, climate-controlled £14m ($19m) museum near Arica – could help arrest the disappearance of what Arriaza calls “a wonder of world prehistory”.
Scholars believe that the Chinchorro mummified are the first examples of deliberate mummification anywhere on the planet.
They date back to 5,000BC – more than two millennia before Egyptian pharaohsThey were the first to be embalmed and placed in pyramids.
They also possess a striking aesthetic value – and a poignant human resonance.
Semi-nomadic coastal residents did not create any monuments nor cast any pottery. Instead, “the body becomes a kind of canvas where they express their emotions,” said Arriaza. “The Chinchorro transform their dead into genuine works of pre-Hispanic art.”
Caleta Camarones 60 miles south-east of Arica is a clue to the origin of this outpouring of emotion.
Sitting at the mouth of a green, fertile river valley gouged through barren desert, the spot is an Eden-like oasis – and its fresh drinking water and teeming animal life probably enticed the first Chinchorro to settle here. Arriaza stated that it was not without dangers.
1000 micrograms per Liter of arsenic are found in the Camarones River. This is 100 times the safe limit for humans. With every drink of water, the Chinchorro were unknowingly poisoning themselves, analysis of hair samples shows – and they sufferedHigh rates of miscarriage and infant death are a result.
These are the origins of the earliest Chinchorro mammies: stillborn and tiny babies, adorned with black manganese masks and bolstered with sticks.
Over 3,500 years, Chinchorro mummification spread to adults and evolved – via ochre-daubed corpses stuffed with feathers to bandages of pelican skin.
Caleta Camarones’ residents feel a strong connection to the Chinchorro. Jorge Ardiles is part of a group that includes artisanal fishermen families who settled here thirty years ago.
“It’s not a genetic link, but a natural connection,” he said. “They were fishermen; so are we.”
Ardiles drove his truck, battered, along the shoreline and pointed out deep excavations lined by dense banks of discarded Mollusc Shells.
“Right there is where they found the oldest mummies in the world,” he said proudly. “All this hillside is full of bodies.”
A few metres above the track, a few skeletons can be seen protruding out of the scree. These skeletons are exposed by wind and rain and now vulnerable to the elements.
“The authorities don’t care,” Ardiles lamented. “We’re the ones looking after the area.”
The fisherman argued that a museum at the basic site should feature Chinchorro artifacts such as fish hooks, quartz arrowheads, and combs made from cactus spines.
However, efforts to launch small-scale tourism initiatives have been stalled partly because the community is too small. SubjectA land dispute that has been ongoing for decades.
Cristian Zavala, the local mayor, stated that visitors are often disappointed to not find pristine cadavers within Inca-style palaces.
“If you go to Machu Picchu, it’s obvious,” he said. “But here, the history is below the ground.”
Zavala expressed hope for UNESCO’s status, Chile’s current redrafting of its dictatorship-era constitutionThe government could be forced to protect and promote the mummies by allowing them to vote.
“Look how many bodies are turning up,” the mayor added, gesturing at the bone-studded slope. “If we don’t look after the Chinchorro, they’ll vanish because of climate change.”
The ecological changes are also affecting the lives of the living. Ardiles warned that the ocean is becoming devoid of marine life. He blamed overfishing by trawlers. Warming waters.
The younger generation are abandoning fishing and entering the Atacama’s mining industry – itself increasingly Under fireFor exhaustingWater resources contaminatingThe desert.
“I can’t see the fishermen continuing here,” Ardiles reflected. “We’re going to disappear, like the Chinchorro.”
