LIMA, Peru — The possible living face of Peru’s most famous mummy, a teenage Inca girl who was ritually sacrificed more than 500 years ago atop the Andes, was revealed Tuesday.
The silicone bust depicts a young woman with prominent cheekbones, black eyes, and tan skin.
It was produced by a team of Polish and Peruvian scientists who worked with a Swedish sculptor specializing in facial reconstruction, and was presented at a ceremony at the Museum of the Andean Reserves of the Catholic University of Santa María in Arequipa.
“I thought I would never know what her face looked like when she was alive,” said Johann Reinhard, the American anthropologist who found the mummy known as Juanita and the Inca Ice Maiden.
Reinhard discovered the mummy in 1995 at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) on the snow-covered Ambato volcano.
“Now, 28 years later, this has become a reality thanks to the Oscar Nelson rebuild,” he said.
Nilsson, a Swedish archaeologist and sculptor who specializes in 3D facial reconstruction of ancient humans, told The Associated Press in an email that it took “about 400 hours of work” to model the face.
The first step in realizing Juanita’s face was “obtaining an exact copy of the skull,” Dagmara Socha, a Polish bioarchaeologist at the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw, said at the ceremony.
The university said in a statement that “body scans, DNA studies, ethnic characteristics, age and complexion” were then used to reconstruct the face.
According to anthropological studies, Juanita was sacrificed between 1440 and 1450 AD, when she was between 13 and 15 years old. She was 1.40 m (55 in) tall, weighed 35 kg (77 lb), and was well-fed.
The likely cause of death was a blunt force trauma to the right occipital lobe, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University who performed the CT scan.
Reinhard, who discovered more than 14 Inca human sacrifices high in the Andes, including three children in an ice crater at Argentina’s Yulailacu volcano, said scientists were investigating aspects of Juanita’s life, such as her diet and the items found next to her.
“These findings have helped us better understand their life and Inca culture,” he said. “Now we can see what it really looked like, which makes it even more vibrant.”
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