Free Republic

Police in Peru made a surprise discovery when they searched a delivery man who came to their attention for acting drunk at an archaeological site in Puno. Inside his cooler bag was an ancient mummy. The man said that he had been sharing his room with the bandaged mummy and considered it "a kind of spiritual girlfriend". He had put the remains in the bag to show them off to his friends, he said. He explained that he kept "Juanita", as he had nicknamed the mummy, in a box in his room, next to the TV. He added that it...

The mummy, known as "Juanita" or the "Inca Ice Maiden", was an Inca girl who is thought to have been sacrificed in a ritual more than 500 years ago. Scientists worked with a specialist in facial reconstruction to build a silicon bust of the mummy. Johan Reinhard, the US archaeologist who first found the mummy in 1995, said the bust "makes her even more alive". A team of Peruvian and Polish scientists worked with Oscar Nilsson, a specialist in facial reconstruction from Sweden, to build the silicon bust of the teenage girl. The scientists said body scans, skull measurements, DNA...