Trujillo, Jul. 13 (ANDINA).- The remains of a Chimu Culture woman were found buried in the mud-brick citadel of Chan Chan, located in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo.
Archaeologists found the body as they were working on the restoration of the outer walls of Chan Chan, in Ñain-An Palace or Birds House, around 600 kilometres north of Lima.
Archaeologist Raul Sosaya said the skeleton corresponded to a woman who was 1.55 metres tall and aged about 22. She died around the year 1460 and belonged to the Chimu culture.
Sosaya said that one of the woman's feet had been amputated before she was hanged and her body thrown out near a wall. The gestures on her face suggest that she screamed before she died, and archaeologists think that she was sacrificed.
From what researchers know of the Chimu culture, the amputation of a foot was meant to prevent the sacrificed person from leaving the site in later lives.
"The ancient Chimus conjured themselves to ask that the rain stop. Today we have the evidence of a sacrifice that sought that climate phenomena did not destroy the monument," said Cristobal Campana, the head of the team of archaeologists.
About 40 per cent of the infrastructure of the Chan Chan site turned to mud in 1982-1983, due to rains from the climate phenomenon known as El Nino, DPA reports.
(END) OPC/DCR/LVT/EEP