Child mummies

Salta is one of the last cities before the Andes and as such is the base for archeological expeditions into the mountains.  One of the biggest finds was in 1999 when 3 children were excavated in nearly perfect condition from the Llullaillaco volcano.  One of the children had been struck by lightening sometime in the last 500 years, but the other two are scarily well preserved.  They don’t look alive, but very much in the way taxidermied animals don’t look alive.  Their skin, clothes and teeth are all in excellent condition (none of them had any cavities and the oldest was 15 years old).  Even scans of the internal organs showed them to be perfectly preserved down to what was in their stomachs on the day they died.    The volcano where they were found is over 6739m and it is thought that the cold combined with lack of oxygen, low atmospheric pressure and low humidity all contributed to their amazing preservation.  This is now being maintained in the museum, and the children are kept at -20C permanently.  The children were all sacrifices, but it was never stated how they died (at least in English), it seems they were just left there and expected to stay until they died.  The only abnormal finding on tests was lung shrinkage possibly from dehydration.   Our only gripe with the museum was that as it was charging 3 times the price for foreigners as locals the text (of which there was a lot) could have been translated into English.  My Spanish regarding sacrifices and religious practices of the Incas is just not good enough!!