No one knows why in this village the dead buried in the ground turned into mummies, not decomposing as usual.
According to Atlas Obscura, a small town in San Bernardo , Colombia, located in the Andes, the dead here turn into mummies that modern science cannot explain.
The mummy is on display at the museum.
The mummies of the dead were first discovered in the 1950s, when the local cemetery was relocated. The corpses were dug up one by one, and the grave diggers were surprised by what they saw inside the coffin.
These are the bodies that have passed away a long time ago, but still have hair, teeth, and toenails and hands. The body dried up and the skin turned yellow-brown.
Some indigenous people believe that the traditional diet, consisting of two fruits, guatila and balu , built up chemicals inside the body and contributed to the formation of mummies when the people here died.
The mummy still has its outer skin intact.
But this explanation is not satisfactory because even the mummy’s costume is still relatively intact. Others said the arid climate and relative altitude were the reason why the body did not decompose.
Today, more and more South American tourists come to San Bernardo to visit the museum of natural mummies. Hundreds of mummies were moved to other cemeteries, only 14 of the most perfect mummies were displayed at the museum.
This is not the only place in the Latin American country where there have been recorded cases of natural mummification . In Guanajuato, Mexico, the amount of gas and chemicals in the ground makes the bodies buried here do not decompose.