1,100-year-old mummy found in Chile died of extensive injuries when a turquoise mine caved in, CT scans reveal
Mummified remains of a 1,100-year-old man reveal he likely died in an ancient turquoise mining accident in Chile. Extensive evidence of blunt force trauma found on the man’s skeleton suggests he died from a falling rock or mine collapse, a new study suggests.
The naturally mummified The body, along with grave goods including a bow and arrow and a snuff kit for hallucinogenic drugs, were originally discovered in the 1970s in an area just outside a pre-Hispanic turquoise mine in the northern Chilean city of El Salvador in the middle of the Atacama Desert. A visible fracture of the mummy’s left leg bone suggests the man may have been involved in an accident, but a full analysis of the body was not completed until 2023.
“It is likely that a miner would have entered the mine and used stone hammers to extract the turquoise from the surrounding rock,” Morales and Garrido said in an email to Live Science. “In the event of a rock fall, there was no protection.”
When analyzing the mummy, researchers discovered that the man was between 25 and 40 years old when he died. They carbon dated the mummy is between 894 and 1016 AD, placing it at the beginning of the Late Intermediate Period in the central Andes, between the Wari Empire (and its eventual collapse) and the rise of Inca Empire.
Multiple unhealed fractures were visible on the man’s upper spine. He also had fractures to his ribs, scapula and collarbone, suggesting “violent impact over a wide area” of his upper back, revealing that “his upper left thorax took the brunt of the impact,” Morales and Garrido wrote in the study. The impact displaced several of his vertebrae and caused his ribcage to collapse.
Additionally, researchers identified a fracture in a vertebra near the base of his spine, likely the result of the initial upper back injury. Upper and lower spinal injuries are both “commonly associated with severe spinal cord injury and high mortality,” the researchers wrote.
But no injuries were found to the man’s skull, neck or arms, indicating the impact occurred when the man was in a head-down position. He may have been actively mining or perhaps trying to protect his head with his arms when he was struck by a heavy object falling from above. This type of injury is seen on the bodies of people involved in earthquakes and workplace accidents in the forestry, construction and mining industries, the researchers wrote.
Turquoise mining had been practiced for two millennia in the Atacama Desert, according to researchers. Minors used specific equipment – including stone hammers, wooden and stone shovels, and baskets – to extract the semi-precious stone and bring it back to the mining camp, where the turquoise was made into beads. Many of these pearls were then exchanged or exchanged along the vast pre-Hispanic Inca road network.
Most old turquoise mines were open pit and shallow, so miners did not wear protective gear. But the El Salvador mine, according to researchers, was one of the few to include underground galleries.
“Given the archaeological context, this individual likely died while mining turquoise, when a rock fell on his back from the ceiling of the mine,” the researchers write in the study, but “additional research is needed to better understand the living conditions of former miners.”
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