Chiribaya Museum

The CHIRIBAYA MUSEUM is located in the city of ILO, in Moquegua, at the extreme southern part of Peru. Within its walls, hundreds of mummies (mallquis) discovered, buried in its arid land, had finally found their resting place, far away from looters and unscrupulous individuals looking only to satisfy their greediness for gold and riches.

The land of Moquegua has an archeologist’s dream weather. It is arid, and not at all humid. The perfect conditions for the preservation of the mummies found in its valleys. They are the precious proof of the existence of a civilization that goes as far back as the year 900 BC to 1350 CE; the CHIRIBAYA CULTURE. Located near the OSMORE River in the ILO valley, the Chiribaya Culture flourished even before the Inca Culture, in an extended land that went as far into the Chilean territory and inland up to 30 kilometers, reaching the highlands of the mountains. The CHIRIBAYA is a culture unknown as of yet, even for the local Peruvians. However, it is being studied with so much attention, due to discoveries of mummies, which show a great similitude to the process of mummification and the rituals found at the buried sites, which is very similar to that of the Egyptians. It is remarkable since these cultures flourished in a different part of the world, more than 5,000 years before. Recent studies of the mummies found have shown the existence of a previous culture than that of the CHIRIBAYA, the Chinchorros, whose presence has been traced to be 7,000 years old, thousands of years older than the Egyptian Culture.