Scientists have finally figured out how a female South American mummy kept in German collections died.
The scientists wrote about their findings in Plos One and wrote how they determined that she had suffered from a blunt force trauma to the head, a blow that would have killed her quickly, reports BBC News.
The front of her head was cracked and bone fragments were inside the brain cavity. It is possible she was a part of a ritual killing.
However, the woman, in her 20s, didn't have long to live anyway as she was suffering from Chagas diseas, a parasitic infection, that continues to be a problem in South America. Co-author Andreas Nerlich, of Munich University, said, "The parasite lives in mud-brick walls typical of those from lower social classes."
Chagas disease that causes the heart and intestinal walls to harden.
According to Discovery News, little was known about the body before Nerlich and team as any documentation has long since been destroyed. It is believed that the mummy, which was naturally mummified in the Atacama Desert, was brought to Germany by Princess Therese of Bavaria in the 1890s.
She originally had two mummies from the South American trip, but the other one was lost, while this one was taken to the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection.
Nerlich and other researchers used a stable isotope analysis to help to determine where the woman lived before dying. She was found to have had a diet that consisted primarily of fish, meaning she probably lived near the Northern Chilean or Peruvian coast.
Nerlich noted, "Present-day techniques offer such a wealth of information that we can reconstruct various aspects of past lives, diseases and death."