They inhabited 7,000 years BC territories that now make up the geography of Chile. They are the chinchorro people, a community of fishermen and gatherers who developed amazing mortuary preservation techniques. They were the creators of the oldest mummies in the world, a treasure that Chileans promote to be declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.
The Chinchorro people lay the groundwork in areas of what today is the city of Arica, and in the valley of the commune of Camarones, in northern Chile, but the evidence shows that they lived from the town of Ilo in Peru, to what today is the Chilean region of Antofagasta. They lived practically naked, wearing necklaces and clay spheres.
The town owes its name to the Chinchorro beach, a resort of about two kilometers that distinguishes the city of Arica, in whose womb the German archaeologist Max Uhle found the first mummies representative of that culture. In total, by joining other reservoirs they have been found more than 200, mostly preserved in the Archaeological and Anthropological Museums of Azapa Valley, the Colón site 10 in Arica, and Natural History of Santiago and Valparaiso.
The chinchorro got to reach for their time, a great knowledge of human anatomy, dissection and dissection of bodies, allowing them to develop unique techniques of mummification, thanks to which natural or artificial mummies known as black, red and bandaged were «born», generally dating back two thousand years before the Egyptian. The desert and the high salinity of the sand preserved the bodies.
These funerary practices were applied to both men and women, including children and fetuses. The chinchorro were robust and people of small stature, with a maximum of approximately 1.62 meters.
Anemia caused by parasitic infections and osteoporosis raged between the chinchorro, causing their extinction, leaving their best legacy: the mummies, as a sign of a culture inspired by the love for eternal life.
