What did they find?

Mummies buried in a sitting position were wrapped in cotton fabric funeral bales and tied with ropes woven from ivy, the woody vines of tropical forests. Archaeologists believe this mummies were part of the pre-Inca culture known as IchmaWhich actually ceased to exist and became part of the Inca Empire in the 15th century.

In addition to the burial bales that preserved two adults and six children (no older than 923 years old), according to archaeologists, workers discovered artifacts from much more recent times, more recent:

• Pipes used to smoke opium.
• Hand-rolled cigarettes.
• Shoe.
• Chinese playing cards.
• Peruvian silver coin minted in 1898.
• A contract written in Spanish in 1875.

Finds made in Lima, Peru / Photo: The Associated Press

This isn’t the first time a construction project has revealed part of Lima’s past. Jesus Bahamonde, who works at the Calidda gas company, says that more than 1,900 archaeological finds, including mummies, ceramics and textiles, have been unearthed in the city region in the 19 years since he worked. They were most often associated with burial places on a flat surface. Bahamonde is not a builder and does not work on gas-related matters. He is an archaeologist specially hired by the company because the company’s employees are constantly digging up some artifacts.

The number of ruins in these places does not surprise anyone, because the area that is now Lima was occupied by various cultures that replaced each other for more than 10 thousand years. Then the Incas came here, and then in 1535 Spanish colonists appeared.