Juanita La Doncella is the name of a mummy of an Inca girl frozen for 500 years.
The mummy sits literally frozen in sleep at the High Country Archaeological Museum in Salta, Argentina. Scroll down for video!
The mummy is also called La Doncella or The Maiden. The girl and two other children were left on Argentina’s Llullaillaco volcano (22,100 feet or 6,700 meters) to succumb to the cold as offerings to the gods sometimes between 1450 and 1480, at approximately 11–15 years old. The excavation of the mummies at the mountain’s peak was the world’s highest archaeological dig. The mummies of the other two children remain in storage for further study.
La Doncella was found dressed in a ceremonial tunic and adorned with a headpiece, tokens of her new status as a messenger to the heavens. The girl had also drunk corn liquor, likely to put her to sleep and her mouth still held fragments of coca leaves, which the Inca chewed to lessen the effects of altitude sickness. However no tattoos have been found on her.
The researchers wrapped the frozen bodies in layers of plastic, snow, and foam insulation to keep them cold and maintain their exquisite preservation to the 500-year-old mummies of three Inca children down Argentina’s Llullaillaco volcano in 1999. The mummies were taken to the city of Salta for study.
This is the best-preserved mummy ever found, with internal organs intact, blood still present in the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed. The museum is displaying the mummy in a refrigerated, low-oxygen environment to reproduce the high-altitude conditions that allowed for its remarkable, natural preservation.