The long, lonely dirt road that steers off the highway from Nasca to Chauchilla, heads straight into low hills, crossing a vacant, almost lunar landscape. It is difficult to imagine even an isolated homestead thriving amidst this inhospitable desolation.  At the road’s end, footpaths guide you to several open pits, shielded from the sun by raised poles and wood-slat canopies. Inside lie artifacts of the culture that flourished here from 200 B.C. to 800 A.D., including: ceramics, textiles and stone tools alongside mummified remains.

While the nearby, Nasca lines, have left the world guessing as to their meaning and purpose. Here there is no mystery regarding how this mysterious ancient culture cared for its dead.

Located about 3 kilometers (two miles) from the small town of Nasca, the Cementario de Chauchilla, or Chauchilla Cemetery, features the remains of this once thriving culture (bones, textiles, hair, and even some skin that was preserved by underground vaults constructed of mud bricks and buried for over millennia). The Nasca people wrapped their deceased in finely embroidered cotton clothes before coating them with a resin and placing them into tombs in crouched positions. Grave offerings were stored beside them, possibly in anticipation of their need in the next realm. The resin, textiles, and aridness of the climate, kept out insects, while also limiting bacteria, slowing the decay process.  All while the hot climate and arid soil created an environment suitable for natural mummification.

Today, bleached white skeletons, some still with dreadlocks, crouch upright on the floors of their ancient tombs, favoring visitors with creepy grins. The few sightseers stand by silently, mystified. The mummies stare back, appearing just as amazed at the passage of time that has brought them together with us.  Although the arid desert protected the remains from time and decay, it could not safeguard them from "huaqueros", or grave robbers. Over the years, poles were stuck into the ground to locate the tombs and mummies were ripped apart in the search for anything thought to be of value. Nothing exemplified this tragedy more than a simple gaze across the ground where, until 1997, in a scene more fitting for forensic anthropologists than tourists, broken pot shards and litter, human rib bones, shoulder blades and skull fragments lay scattered across the grayish-brown desert floor. Today, the burial sites have been reconstructed although many “scars” remain in the sand.