Name: Mummies Frozen in Time (Full Episode) | DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL | National Geographic
Uploaded: 2026-03-15T16:59:21.000Z
Duration: 44 min 25 s
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The Andes mountains, northwest Argentina.

National Geographic Explorer Johan Reinhardt and a team of climbers ascend a 22,000 foot volcano, Yuyako, in search of evidence of Inca child sacrifice.

We had mummies that were going to be unique in the world and that would give us information about the Inca culture that we could never get in any other way.

Workers digging peat in the Irish Midlands are startled to find a human torso.

Examiners rush to the scene and identify the body as a murder victim from 2,000 years ago.

I mean, we have to be mindful, you know, that there's a human tragedy and a reality behind all this.

An American scholar traveled to China's western hinterlands.

I came upon this room which was just full of mummies.

That's my brother there, or somebody like my brother from 3,000 years ago.

Three stories from across the ancient world.

Corpses naturally preserved in unique environments in near perfection.

Where they're found and how they died remains part of the mystery.

In a sense, each of these individuals, regardless what information they give us, from an investigative point of view, they're time capsules.

Expedition leader Johan Reinhardt, Earth's an Inca burial site.

Once we got under that initial frozen layer, then our hopes rose quickly because soon statues started to appear.

And once you start getting statues in a platform like that, you begin to have more hopes of being able to find a human sacrifice, a mummy.

But today, not one mummy, but three, all frozen in tombs that touch the sky.

A third appears to have simply fallen asleep.

These mummies pose uncomfortable questions for the living.

What happened on this mountaintop 500 years ago?

Can modern science shed light on a mysterious Inca ritual and reveal the story of these three children?

Today, the children of Llullah Yaco are here at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, Argentina.

Because of the children's delicate state, they are rarely moved or touched, let alone studied.

It's very important to keep them in the state of preservation that they were in when they were first discovered.

It's only in that way that we can get as much information as we can.

Forensic pathologist Angelique Cortals has been given unprecedented access to.

Cortals hopes these frozen corpses can tell us how they lived and died.

She has only a short time before the children must return to their temperature controlled capsules.

What's amazing about these bodies is that they're absolutely perfect.

Most incredibly, you can see their brain, which is unheard of for mummies.

Today he weighs a mere 22 and a half pounds, about half of what he would have weighed when alive.

There are so many mysteries about these children.

The boy is the only one out of the three who is tied up.

He may have been tied up either while still alive, but somehow drugged or right after death.

Was the boy alive by the time he made it to the top, or was he dead?

If cortals can answer that question, she may uncover the nature of these sacrifices.

Violent or merciful, These children, specially chosen for their purity, are believed to have marched almost 1,000 miles to their death.

Led on an epic journey that began in Cusco, the heart of the empire, ending at the peak of llullaillaco, the equivalent of walking from the Mexican border to Canada, when you put it into the perspective of the kind of terrain they had to get across.

And it's incredible accomplishment in and of itself.

Totally apart from getting to the summit of the mountain.

Scientists estimate the journey may have begun six months before they died.

Through the winds of the Alta Plano and terrain crawling with predators.

And across the driest desert on the planet, the Atacama.

Keeping these three children alive was the one goal in mind.

Five hundred years later, Angelique Cortals is investigating their deaths.

A stain around the boy's mouth catches the scientist's eye.

It could be the residue of chicha, an alcoholic drink made from maize.

If it is blood, then we know he's been violently killed.

But it really looks like congealed bloods right now.

If he was drugged, he may have been mercifully unaware of the sacrifice taking place.

He's also actually fairly peaceful if you.

But of course, the stain area here is going to really determine whether he died of a violent death or not.

We're kind of hoping that he died peacefully.

I'm really hoping for chicha rather than blood.

With time already running short, they must say goodbye to the young boy.

And invite the girl they call the maiden, or Don Sella out of her frozen home.

She looks like she's just sleeping and she's gonna wake up in the next minute.

And you just want to ask her question, and

it's just a feeling that she's really gonna come back and answer your question.

It's been so several years since Cortal last saw her.

And I can see already that the Don Seisha has grown a little bit more saggy than she used to be.

She is aging a little less gracefully than the other mummies, but

probably because she's also an older patient.

The doncella's hair was elaborately braided just before she died, Perhaps as part of the sacrificial ceremony.

Let me see if there's any hair that's cortal selects a hair sample.

This is very unusual for a 15 year old to have gray or white hair.

I mean, some young people do have white hair at a very early age, but

Information obtained from hair samples reveals what these children ate and how they lived in the months prior to death.

Okay, so now we are moving on very quickly because we only have 15 minutes to finish the entire Don Seisha.

A small amount of time to get eyebrow hair, skin color testing, and deep tissue analysis.

I'm feeling that people around me are feeling nervous.