Muisca mummification
They mummified the higher social class members of their society, mainly the zipas, zaques, caciques, priests and their families.
In 2007 the mummy of a baby was discovered in a cave near Gámeza, Boyacá, together with a small bowl, a pacifier and cotton cloths.
[2] Modern researchers who contributed to the knowledge of the Muisca mummies have been 19th century scholars Ezequiel Uricoechea and Liborio Zerda.
In the 20th and 21st century Eliécer Silva Celis and Abel Fernando Martínez Martín have been analysing various Muisca mummies.
[10] The Muisca did not construct stone architecture, as the Maya, Aztec and Inca did; their houses, temples and shrines were built with wood and clay.
[11] The oldest evidence of mummification in the Americas is known from the Chinchorro culture in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and has been dated at 7000 years BP.
[16] The Muisca started their mummification practices in the Late Herrera Period, approximately from the 5th century AD onwards.
[22] As the Muisca believed in an afterlife,[23] the mummies were buried surrounded by pots with food as beans, maize and chicha, mantles and golden figures for their stay in another world, similar to ours.
[24] In the temples and places reserved for the mummies, the bodies were put on a platform of reed, as an elevated bed, called barbacoas.
[21] According to Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who made the first contact with the Muisca, during the conquest, the guecha warriors carried mummies on their backs to serve as an example and to impress their enemies in their warfare.
[13][21][25][26][27] When his soldiers Miguel Sánchez and Juan Rodríguez Parra raided the Sun Temple in Sogamoso in September 1537, they found mummies decorated with golden crowns and other objects sitting on raised platforms.
[31] The zipa and zaque mummy sites, often in temples and caves, were decorated with golden stools and guarded by the priests.
[13] The mummy from Sativanorte, named SO10-IX and belonging to the collection of Silva Celis in the Archaeology Museum of Sogamoso, has been studied in detail by various researchers.
[33] Interviews with López Ávila revealed that the mummy had been found by children in the vicinity of Sativanorte, Sativasur and Socotá on the western bank of the Chicamocha River.
The upper limbs were flexed, the hands interlaced and tied with a cotton cord; they were placed on the right side of the head.
[37] Analysis of the mummy provided that it probably had been a shaman, based on the perforated ears, and that he suffered from illnesses in his limbs, cared for by the Muisca community.
[24] In 1885 Muisca scholar Liborio Zerda described a mummy of a young girl, found in a cave on the Toquilla paramo, at 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) altitude within the municipality of Aquitania.
[20] Some of the Muisca mummies found were so well conserved, that their facial expression did not look like the people died hundreds of years ago.
