An international mummy mystery has been solved in Cincinnati. We now know this child mummy was 3 years old when she died of natural causes somewhere in Peru more than 500 years ago.
The Cincinnati Museum Center asked doctors at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center to take part in the "academic endeavor." Doctors spent weeks studying the remains and looking at images of the young mummy, and Monday they announced their findings.
Dr. Andrew Trout of the children's hospital said, "The images that we generated through the course of this process, we had over 12,000 images that we generated."
One of the findings is that the young girl's skull was elongated. Cody Hefner of Cincinnati Museum Center explained, "Many South American cultures believed that a long, narrow head was beautiful, leading them to bind the skulls from birth to form them."
"Tied with straps to change the shape of the girl's skull ... She also had a small hole in her spine. Doctors say it appears someone once drilled a hole in her back to get a sample for carbon dating," our partner station WCPO reported.
Many mummies are well-preserved, giving researchers the remarkable opportunity to take a look at their past.
The Ancient Origins highlights three Incan child mummies discovered in the early 2000s. In 2013, scientists found they had been drugged before they died, confirming the practice of capacocha, which ended in sacrifice.
The CT scans and results of the young mummy tested in Cincinnati are public at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
The center is currently displaying "Mummies of the World: The Exhibition," the largest exhibition of mummies.
