A 500-Year Old Girl’s Blood May Help Cure Diseases Today
When we think of a 500 year old fossil, we tend to think of bone remnants, scraps of clothing material, and a whole lot of dust. As archaeologists will no doubt testify, those things are all useful in their own right, but they’re not entirely surprising. Sometimes, though, the world sends you a curveball in the shape of a totally preserved 15-year old girl.
Scientists were extremely surprised to recently find the aforementioned girl near an Argentinian volcano, frozen and completely preserved. The girl’s body was incredibly well-kept with her hair, body, skin, and some blood all relatively intact. Apparently, the cold temperatures were responsible for this preservation, and it was commented that the girl looked to have only recently passed on.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: we’re not talking about a Han Solo carbonite-type freezing. This girl will unfortunately not be coming back to life and bringing an end to the Empire anytime soon. As learned later in the article though, she might still be able to do great things for mankind.
How did this girl die in the first place? History tells us that the Incans used to regularly offer girls in and around this age as human sacrifices to their gods. These sacrificial ceremonies were so common that they actually had their own name. Referred to as capacocha, these sacrifices frequently followed some kind of large event in the Incan culture, such as the death of a leader, a natural disaster, or a food shortage.
The children would often be taken to the tops of mountains, fed coca leaves, and given an intoxicating drink when they reached the burial site. After becoming intoxicated, the Inca priests would kill them by strangulation, a blow to the head, or sometimes and in this case, leaving them to freeze to death.
Although this poor girl, nicknamed “The Maiden,” has long been dead, her sacrifice might actually prove to have a much greater purpose than the Inca people intended at the time. Scientists are attempting to use her body for noble purposes in the pursuit of disease cures.
It was determined by examining the young girl’s blood and body that she was suffering from a tuberculosis-like disease. Incredibly, scientists believe that they’ll be able to use samples taken from her body to help discover cures to modern-day diseases.
Not only did we have no idea bodies could be preserved by cold temperatures as portrayed in science fiction films, but we had no clue that ancient remnants like this could be of such great use.
Freezing has grown more popular in recent times as people have had their loved ones posthumously frozen in the hopes of reviving them in the future with some advanced and currently undiscovered technology.
While that technology still remains to be proven effective, the fact that this girl’s frozen remains could help in the battle against disease is truly an amazing feat of nature and science!
For further details on this story, check the YouTube video below. It has captivated many with over 6 million views and 4,000 likes.
