COMMANDER BABY GIRL'S LAGOON OF THE MUMMIES AND MYSTERIOUS CLOUD PEOPLE MAGIC TIME PORTAL

NOW AS I WAS SAYING......
BEFORE 2KEY OUR GUIDE INTERUPTED......
I'M DEEP IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE.......
IN SEARCH OF THE MYSTERIOUS CLOUD PEOPLE!

His world is filled with researchers and historians and
when they heard I was coming to Peru...well....they just
couldn't resist the adventure, so they decided to tag along!

Well...in my opinion.....at the beginning....
where we've been, what we've seen...who...who....

.....an ancient civilisation dating back more than 1200 years......
Who were they?

Now....The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean
people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present-day Peru.
They ruled the area from around 800 AD to 1475, when they were conquered
by the Incas.

The chronicler Pedro Cieza de Le�n offered some picturesque notes about the
Chachapoyas:

"They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that
I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that
because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the
Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.The
women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes
and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they
wear to be known everywhere."

The Chachapoya are known for building mountaintop citadels and leaving behind
well-preserved mummies. I know...... finally mummies!

The battle-hardened Warriors of the Clouds, were famed for their stiff
resistance to Inca attacks. Nevertheless, the Inca eventually overtook the
Chachapoya shortly before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Peru in the 16th
century.

The word Chachapoyas is thought to come from the
Quechua for "cloud people", and is the name by which
they were known to the Incas, because of the cloud
forests they inhabited in what is now northern Peru.

Well it's about time! Oh do stop complaining Baby Girl ! (I'm think I'm losing
control of the situation.......) Now as I was saying......

It was here that archeologists uncovered a 600-year-
old, large underground cemetery belonging to a
Peruvian warrior culture, thought to be the very first
discovery of its kind.

The most famous Chachapoyan moument is the great
fortress of Kuelap, often hailed as one of the most
magnificent ruins in the Americas. It is estimated to
contain 3 times more material than Egypt�s largest pyramid!

So far archeologists have found 40 mummies dating from over 1,200 years .
The bodies had been buried under a platform of 24 meters in diameter in the El
Tintero structure during a dig of the Kuelap Archaeological Complex Restoration
and Conservation project.

Walls near the mummies in the limestone cave were covered with paintings of
faces and warriorlike figures which may have been drawn to ward off intruders
and evil spirits.

Well it's certainly better than walking.....I think. At least my feet will get a rest!

Because mummies, both men and women of all ages, were found
both inside and outside the buildings, it has been suggested that
there seemed there was no time to bury them. The mummies may
have been victims of an epidemic or a violent invasion which ended
in a massacre and the burning of the stone fortress

In a place the locals call the cave Iyacyecuj, or Enchanted
Water in Quechua, because of its spiritual importance and
its underground rivers, another cache of mummies were
found in late 2006. A farmer discovered the burial cave 82
feet below the earth's surface!

To do that we must now fly to
"Laguna de las Momias" (Mummies' lagoon),
located in an inaccessible and uninhabited place of the
district of Leimebamba in the province of Chachapoyas.

It's real name is Laguna de los C�ndores and Nobody knows what the Lake of
the Condors meant. One theory is that the first people who discovered it,
stated that over the blue-green waters you could see Condors flying. Is it true?
That's for you to decide.

But.....there's a far more mystic and colorful meaning ...
Artie Van Guffo ....that's your department..Take it away!

Close your eyes...now imagine green mountains
shrouded in clouds reflecting their images on
quiet green blue waters.

Was this their Eden, the center of the
Chah�chapoyan world? Surely the beauty was
enough to drew them here to their final resting
place.

Or was it a sanctuary of the gods, so that mummification here brought them
closer to their maker. It might have been their place of origin, the paqarina,
where the first Chachapoya emerged into the world at the beginning of time.

Ok, I can understand why they would want to be here.....
there's no mistaking it's very remote and beautiful....
But why the name Laguna de las Momias?

Approximately 200 mummies were discovered in cave-like niches set in a cliff in
an area of Lagoon of the Mummies around 1996! The Chachapoyas mummies had
lain undisturbed above the Lake of the Condors for 500 years. Because of this
spectacular find it was given the name Laguna de las Momias .

Peruvian archaeologist Sonia Guillen was quoted as saying, "Two of the mummies
are more than a thousand years old!"

She is also quoted as saying, "Some of the mummies had become
skeletons, others were preserved in funerary bundles"

Each funeral deposit is constituted by a mummy
in seated position, wrapped in both flat and
decorated textiles.

The mausoleums of the Lagoon of the Mummies
occupy a natural cave and are very difficult to
access. They are sculpted in the wall of a craggy rock that emerges over the
lagoon and were still replete with funeral deposits.

To be exact, no one knows for sure, because a detailed
analysis has not been released of the mummification
methods they used. Oh Great! Keep your pants on Baby!

Some treatment had been done to embalm the skin, the internal organs had
been removed and the facial cavities had also been filled with cotton....

The mummies were placed in a flexed sitting position and bundled in cloth.
According to one account, a face was stitched onto the cloth over the head. Most
of the bundles were placed in a two-room two-level stone mausoleum built
against the back wall of the cliff overhang (entry was through the roofonly).
Elite burials appear to have involved coffins made from cane.

It seems the Chachapoya also ensured preservation (whether knowingly or not)
by choosing a dry, well-protected site covered by a ledge.

So from all you've said......
these discoveries are important and special because.....

Most of the mummies were Chachapoya people, but a few (perhaps 12 according
to early reports) may have been members of an elite Incan class. This would
enable scientists to make some comparisons between the two groups.

Despite the fact that grave robbers cut through some of the wrappings to
remove jewelry and other grave goods after the burial site was discovered, the
mummies seem to be remarkably well-preserved including their textiles,
musical instruments, special ornaments, etc.