Mummies uit het museum

Hieronder een interessant stukje over de Chachapoyas, die al voor de Inca´s ´heersten´ over de Andes. On a wet day in October 1996, Lazaro and a fellow ranch hand were clearing land on this ridge, in the cloud forest of Peruvian Andes, when they spotted the telltale openings on the far side of a lake. Abandoning their work, they tramped round the shore and climbed through the dense foliage to a ledge, where they were confronted with six ancient chullpas (burial houses). The openings were small windows. Peering inside, in the aqueous light filtering down through the forest, they saw scores of mummies. Embroidered on the grubby wrappings were the images of faces gazing back at them. The Chachapoyas mummies had lain undisturbed above the Lake of the Condors for 500 years. Their eternity began when these regions were the centre of a highly developed pre-Inca culture. But over the long centuries, the world has moved away, and the mountains around the lake has become one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Andes. Lazaro was a pioneer here, clearing lands that had returned to dense forest centuries before. With the innocent aplomb of men who had never seen the Bandaged One seek his revenge in Curse of the Mummie, the two men slashed open the mummie wrappings, searching for loot. The dead were exposed. Their limbs, covered with leathery skin, were drawn up in a foetal position and their mouths gaped in silent screams. Some months after the discovery, in early 1997, when a good deal of material had already found its way to the black market in Lima, the news reached the authorities. Lazaro and his companion were arrested, and a savage operation was mounted. More than 200 mummies, among withcrates of burial gifts -ceramics, wooden carvings, gourds, tapestries, headdresses- were transported to the nearest market town, Leymebamba, 12 hours away by mule. Plans were formulated to build a museum to house the dead and their divine offerings. The tombs represented one of the most spectacular finds of this enigmatic pre-Inca culture. Even our name for them is an Inca word. Chachapoya means "people of the cloud forests". As a culture, they arose about 800AD. They had a reputation as warriors, weavers and shamans. Like most of the peoples of the Peruvian Andes, they were eventually subsumed into the Inca empire in the 15th century. With the arrival of the Spanish, a century later, disease and forced resettlement in colonial towns spelt the end of the Chachapoyan world. With time, they were forgotten. In years past, this region, on the eastern flanks of the High Andes in northern Peru, was thought to be too steep, too wet and too thickly forested to offer much hope of big archeological finds.