Workers in Peru’s capital city of Lima halted work on digging a new natural gas pipeline were forced to halt their progress last week when they suddenly encountered a dead body buried just 20 inches under the surface of the street, right in their path of the pipeline, the AP reports.
An employee of the gas utility says the age of the dead body makes this one more special than the other dead bodies laborers in the city sometimes come across while conducting their work. “We found remains and evidence that there could be a pre-Hispanic burial,” said Jose Aliaga, an archaeologist who’s on the payroll of gas company Calidda apparently because they find old dead bodies all the time. Another dead body expert, Professor Pieter Van Dalen, dean of the College of Archaeologists of Peru, said “it is very common to find archaeological remains on the Peruvian coast, including Lima, mainly funerary elements: tombs, burials, and, among these, mummified individuals.”