Three Ancient Wari Queens Among 63 Bodies Discovered in Golden 'Temple of the Dead' in Peru

An intricately carved golden talisman depicting a bird and other relics including silver jewelry, bronze axes, gold tools and other rare artifacts fill a 1,200-year-old tomb that houses the remains of 63 individuals, including three queens, from an ancient people in Peru.

Long before the Inca built Machu Picchu, the Wari empire flourished, likely reaching a height of 40,000 at a time when Paris was only inhabited by 25,000. The discovery of what is said to be the first unlooted imperial tomb from the Wari civilization is as significant as the treasure within it: the Wari people built South America's earliest empire between the 8th and 9th centuries AD before their society crumbled. 

The find, which was uncovered in what is now modern day Peru, represents a rare window into a world less understood than the Inca who came later and were robustly documented by Spanish conquistadors.  

Milosz Giersz, an archaeologist from the University of Poland and leader of the team that uncovered the tomb, said that his team was excavating around an area that had been looted when they saw something that caught their attention.

"It was a tomb marker," Giersz told National Geographic. "And we knew then that we had [found] the main mausoleum."

The mausoleum, which was sealed behind some 30 tons of loose stone, was a time capsule from an ancient civilization: "inlaid gold and silver ear-ornaments, silver bowls, bronze ritual axes, a rare alabaster drinking cup, knives, coca leaf containers, brilliantly painted ceramics from many parts of the Andean world, and other precious objects," National Geographic reported, adding that the archaeologists who discovered it had never seen anything like it.

"We are talking about the first unearthed royal imperial tomb," Giersz, said about the find. Giersz discovered the tomb and led the excavation with a Polish-Peruvian team, co-directed by Roberto Pimentel Nita.

At the height of the Wari civilization the capital of Huari was home to 40,000 people, National Geographic reported. Yet until this recent discovery, every other example of a Wari tomb ever found has been ravaged by grave robbers - the beauty and sophistication of Wari artwork made their graves a prime target for the robbers, leaving archaeologists who later discovered the sites with few clues as to how the ancient people lived.

Giersz described the discovery as a 12-century old "temple of the dead" and suggested at least half a dozen of the 60 individuals buried with the three Wari queens were human sacrifices. The BBC reported that six of the bodies were found in strange positions, leading the experts to believe they were sacrificed. 

When an official announcement of the discovery was made Thursday during a press conference at the site, Krzysztof Makowski Hanula, an archaeologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima and the project's scientific adviser, said, according to National Geographic, that temple "is like a pantheon, like a mausoleum of all the Wari nobility in the region."

Forensic archaeologist Wieslaw Wieckowski told the BBC: "The fact that most of the skeletons were of women and the very rich grave goods, leads us to the interpretation that this was a tomb of the royal elite and that also changes our point of view on the position of the women in the Wari culture."