LIMA – The Peruvian authorities reported on Monday the discovery of a pre-Hispanic mummy, between 600 and 800 years old, in the backpack of a delivery man from a delivery company in the Peruvian region of Puno, bordering Bolivia.
The Ministry of Culture specified through a statement that the remains, classified as a national cultural asset, were identified as a mummified adult man presumably from the eastern area of Puno.
Sources from that office detailed to EFE that the individual would be over 45 years old and an approximate height of 1.51 meters, according to preliminary investigations.
The discovery, according to local media, occurred last Saturday at a viewpoint in Puno, where some police officers carried out their usual patrol and found three men consuming alcoholic beverages, one of them with a “delivery” box from the company “Pedidos Already”.
Inside, there were human remains in a fetal position and soft tissues with characteristics corresponding to a mummy, which was communicated to the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Culture.
For his part, the delivery man alleged that he kept the mummy at his parents’ house and that he took it out so that it could be seen by his friends in the neighborhood, according to the newspaper El Comercio.
After the discovery, the Ministry of Culture immediately ordered custody of the remains “in order to protect and preserve heritage.”
Now, the competent departments are making the pertinent steps for the physical and legal protection of the mummy, considered a cultural heritage of the Andean country.
Given these facts, the ministry called on the population to “actively collaborate in the defense and protection” of cultural heritage and to communicate any similar finding to the authorities.