National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead Page #3

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sacrificed to fertility gods

by early farming communities.

They were plunged into the bog,

so the wheat would rise again.

More than 2,500 years ago,

the Altai mountains of Siberia

were home to a nomadic people

called the Pazyryk.

They lived by the horse,

and moved great herds across the land

in search of pasture.

Horses were their measure

of wealth and status.

The Pazyryk buried their dead in

chambers dug deep into the icy earth.

In 1993, Russian archeologists

opened an undisturbed chamber.

First, they found the remains of

six horses killed by blows to the head.

Surely, they thought, this must be

the tomb of a powerful man.

The coffin itself was

completely sealed in ice.

To everyone's surprise,

it contained a young woman-

her features gone,

but her body intact.

Tattoos of mythical creatures

adorned her sturdy hands.

Was she a Priestess? Warrior? Healer?

Her identity eludes us,

but she provides a new image of women

in this ancient culture.

On the west coast of Greenland,

a rocky cove once harbored

an Eskimo village,

home to a people called the Inuit.

Some five hundred years ago,

misfortune struck here,

and eight bodies were laid

to rest in a dry, sheltering cave.

Cause of death remains a mystery.

But these freeze? dried mummies,

in superb fur clothing,

rank as one of the most spectacular

archeological finds

from the arctic region.

The frozen heights of the Andes

preserve a record of the past.

Five hundred years ago,

the Inca ruled these highlands,

and worshiped the mountains as gods.

Traces of their sacred sites are

scattered throughout the peaks.

For nearly two decades,

anthropologist Johan Reinhard

has sought out the high altitude

sites of the Inca.

But in September 1995,

he first climbed Mount Ampato in Peru

with a different goal in mind.

"Ampato's been a peak

that's always been a mystery.

It's always stood out there and people

haven't really climbed it very often

and haven't seen much

that's been on it."

"And the idea was just to get

some pictures of another volcano

that was erupting nearby,

never really thinking we'd find

anything on the summit.

Now the reason for that is is that

it's never been seen

without a permanent

snow-capped summit."

The eruption had showered

Ampato with dark ash.

Even at more than 20,000 feet,

much of the snow had melted.

When my assistant, Miguel Zarate,

and I, we reached the summit,

I was taking some notes when

Miguel just continued on and,

all of a sudden,

gave a whistle and pointed.

And I looked and, sure enough, it was

clear from even, forty, fifty feet away,

that there were feathers

sticking out of the slope."

They adorned three Inca figurines

once buried, now exposed by a rockslide.

"We were still looking down the slope

and very quickly saw this bundle,

laying right out on the ice.

I asked Miguel to pick it up

and move it a bit.

And as he did, all of a sudden

we were looking into the face

of this dead young woman."

Mummified by the cold,

she had been sacrificed and buried

on the mountaintop

some five hundred years ago.

When her rocky tomb collapsed,

her face was exposed to the sun.

But her body was

intact-skin, muscle, bone,

even the blood in her veins

frozen solid.

Scientists estimate she was twelve

to fourteen years old when she died.

Never before had

the richly patterned clothing

of an Inca noble woman

come to light.

She is probably

the best-preserved mummy

ever discovered in the Americas.

In May 1996, the Maiden is flown,

still frozen,

to Johns Hopkins University

in Baltimore.

A state-of-the-art CAT scanner

produces a detailed three-dimensional

image of her body.

Her strong bones and teeth,

well-formed muscles and internal organs

speak volumes about

Inca nutrition and health.

It's a stunning sight for the man

who carried her down the mountain.

Then Johan Reinhard learns

the secret of the Maiden's death.

A fatal two-inch fracture

mars her skull.

"You can see it pretty nicely

just rotating it around but, uh,

would it, would it make sense

that she may have been hit by a blow?"

"Absolutely, that's, that's really

a common way that they did it-

the strangulation and blows

to the heads

were, were common ways

to do human sacrifice.

We just didn't see it."

"I kept having visions of what

it was like carrying her in the dark,

with the volcano and snowfall

and everything.

And seeing this modern machinery

and you could look at the screen

and view bones and even organs.

It was just amazing,

she just began to come alive."

To the Inca, human sacrifice

was the ultimate offering,

an act of gratitude when the gods

were generous;

a desperate plea

when they were angry.

Archeologists now know

the Ampato Maiden died

during a long-term volcanic eruption.

The cataclysm could have had

devastating effects on the region.

Daily showers of hot ash.

Air thick with smoke.

Water sources poisoned.

Crops and livestock decimated.

A circle of priests

would have led the Maiden

to the highest reaches

of Mount Ampato.

It was a grueling climb that took days.

She alone shouldered the fate

of her family and her people.

To be thus chosen was a great honor.

In exchange for her life,

she would earn an eternity of bliss

and a place among the gods.

Soon after she died,

the eruption spent itself,

and the snows returned to Ampato,

sealing the Maiden in ice

for the next five centuries.

Even now, she serves her people well.

"She's providing us

with so much information,

that I hope that we are

giving back something to her

by deepening our respect

and understanding for the culture

that she came from,

and the Inca civilization

five hundred years ago."

Across the globe,

another chain of snowy peaks

yields a messenger from the past.

The Alps seem impenetrable

from the air.

But for millennia,

shepherds and traders

have hiked their mountain passes.

Today's trekkers are mostly tourists.

Every year, millions enjoy the alpine

splendors of southern Austria.

In the fall of 1991,

unusual weather turns snow to slush.

On September 19th,

a couple of hikers stray from a marked

trail, hoping to find a shortcut.

Instead, in a melting glacier

at more than 10,000 feet,

they spot something that stops them

in their tracks.

Four days later,

delayed by bad weather,

an Austrian forensic team arrives.

This is not an uncommon sight

in the Alps.

The frozen bodies of mountaineers

are sometimes found decades

after they perish among the peaks.

But this body is so deeply icebound

the team borrows an ice axe

and ski pole from a passing hiker.

Somewhat puzzling

are the scraps of leather

pulled from the slush around the body.

Not to mention the strange artifacts.

Team members conclude this body

has been frozen a very long time.

They turn it over to experts

at the University of Innsbruck.

Still wearing a strange shoe

stuffed with grass,

it's the body of

a 25 to 40 year old man,

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