First, the students uncovered just a skull, still sporting hair and wrapped in cotton.

Then they found the body, surrounded by corn, coca leaves and seeds.

Signs of a human sacrifice.

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The mummified remains, thought to be approximately 3,000 years old, were found in Lima, Peru by a team of students and archaeologists from San Marcos University.

The individual is thought to have been part of the Manchay culture, which developed in the valleys of Lima between 1500 and 1000BCE, archaeologist Miguel Aguilar said, and was associated with the construction of temples built in a U-shape that pointed toward the sunrise.

The person ‘had been left or offered [as a sacrifice] during the last phase of the construction of this temple’, said Aguilar.

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The Manchay culture is known for building a number of large U-shaped temples on the central coast of Peru between 2000 and 800BCE.

Unlike other early Andean cultures that are defined by the ceramics they produce, the Manchay culture is defined by their architecture. These temples consist of three mounds, a main pyramid and two arms, that encircle a large rectangular plaza.

This is not the first time remains of human sacrifices have been seen in Peru. Last year, archaeologists unearthed the bodies of eight children and 12 adults who may have been sacrificed around 800-1,200 years ago.

In 2019, the world’s largest child sacrifice mass grave was discovered in Huanchaco, a seaside town north of the capital Lima.

Experts believe these sacrifices were done out of desperation in response to a disastrous climatic event like the El Niño and to stop torrential rains or flooding.

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