In early 1999,archaeologist Johan Reinhard climbed over 6,700 metres to the top of one of Sout America higheht volcanoes,Llullaillaco [pronounced yo yi ya ko].The summit was covered in freezing ice and snow,and the wind often reachedspeeds of up to 113 kilometres an hour.Reinhard was there to find something very specail.He dug down through the earth and rocks beneath some ancient ruins and found a small chamber.Inside the chamber,he found what he was looking for:the frozen mummies of three Inca children.
The Incas were a great South American civilisation.Untl the sixteevth century,they ruled nearly 1 million square kilometres of western South America.Then they disappeared.Not much is known about them because they didn’t keep written records. But Reinhard has spent his life studying them. Before he found the three children on Liullaillaco,he found fiftee other Inca mummies on other mountains.He believes the frozen mummies were human sacrifices to the Inca gods.
The children on Llullaillco were very young when they died.Scientists think that the boy and two girls were between six and fifteen years old.They had been frozen on the summit of Llullaillco for over 500 years. Reinhard couledn’t believe how well the mummies had been preserved.Ther looked like they had been buried only a short time before.The mummies were carefully removed and carried down the moutain.Since then Reinhard has had the ctance to study them and has even found a living relative of one of the girls!