Description of the attraction
The Archaeological and Anthropological Museum of San Miguel de Azapa is located 12 km from the "city of eternal spring", as the locals call the city of Arica in Chile. The museum was founded in 1967 and is managed by the Tarapaka University. The main feature of the museum is that absolutely all the exhibits on display are original. In front of the entrance to the main building of the museum, in a small round-shaped museum park with tall palms, you can see samples of thirteen petroglyphs - symbolic structures engraved on the rocks, many of which were made by our ancestors in the prehistoric Neolithic period. And also a bust of the German archaeologist Max Ule (1856-1944), a pioneer of anthropology in northern Chile. The museum presents an excellent collection of textiles, wicker and pottery, household items, tableware, weapons of the indigenous population of the pre-Hispanic period. Also on display are presses for the extraction of olive oil, made in the eighteenth century. In addition to archeology and anthropology, there are samples of the famous olives grown in the Asapa Valley. And also an exhibition of famous cork making, which attracts tourists visiting this fertile valley. Currently, in the first building of the museum, a new exhibition is presented - the Chinchorro mummies, which contain the ancient archaeological remains of this culture, the most important archaeological treasure in Chile. As an important rite of passage for the cult of death, members of this culture mummified their children, parents, partners, grandparents. Exhibits - the oldest mummies in the world, dating back more than 9000 years ago, are exhibited in special containers made of reinforced glass, where they are stored in special temperature, light and humidity conditions. The most famous exposition of the museum is the reconstruction of the general view of the tomb's seine: a woman, a man and two boys in the form of a partial mass grave of chinchorro-mummies, which were made between 6000 and 2000 BC.
