The Cost of Blue Stone

A body at the edge of the mine

In the Atacama Desert, death often comes gently. The air is so dry that flesh can persist for centuries, sometimes longer. But the man buried near a turquoise mine outside what is now El Salvador, Chile, did not die gently at all.

A CT scan of the mummified miner revealed traumatic injuries to his back, ribs, collarbones, shoulder blades and lower limb bones. (Image credit: Francisco Garrido and Catalina Morales)

His body, excavated in the 1970s and revisited decades later, tells a violent story. New CT scans and X rays show¹ that he likely died when rock thundered down inside a mine shaft around 1,100 years ago. The injuries are not subtle. They are catastrophic.

This was not ritual violence or warfare. This was work.