Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
The Face Lab archaeological research team at Liverpool John Moores University (UK) has digitally reconstructed the faces of four Andean mummies from Colombia.
These indigenous people are estimated to have lived between the 13th and 17th centuries. Buried with death masks covering their faces, they were unmasked centuries later. Specialists have created realistic images of what the faces of these ancient inhabitants of the Eastern Cordillera in the Colombian Andes might have looked like.
The mummies presented an example of an extraordinary funerary practice used by many pre-Columbian peoples of South America: molding faithful copies of the faces of the deceased. The death masks with which these deceased were buried are, to date, the only ones known to exist in Colombia, according to Felipe Cárdenas-Arroyo of the Colombian Academy of History.
The masks were made of clay, wax, resins, and corn, telling a unique story of the culture and technology of eastern Colombia at the time. In other practices, they often contained gold or other decorative elements.
The unmasked mummies are part of the collection of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH) and are of a 6- or 7-year-old boy, a woman in her 60s, and two young adult males, according to Live Science. The death masks covered their entire faces, including the jawbone, and although damaged, they were very helpful for digital reconstruction. (Text and photo: RT)
