The Detmold child  Known as the Detmold child, this 8-to-10-month-old baby died in Peru around 4480

The Detmold child  Known as the Detmold child, this 8-to-10-month-old baby died in Peru around 4480 BC – more than 3000 years before the birth of Tutankhamun. According to a recent scan (PDF) using X-ray computed tomography, the child was born with a malformed heart.  “The heart defect has caused a flooding of the lungs and has most probably led, in combination with the pulmonary infection, to the death of the young child,” according to Wilfried Rosendahl, curator of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, home to many of the mummies in the exhibition. The baby also suffered from pneumonia and turricephaly, a disease that elongates the skull.  The CT scan also revealed a small, flat, rectangular object nestled beneath the fabric around the child’s neck, assumed to be a kind of pendant, “perhaps an amulet made of bone,“ says Rosendahl.  (Image: J. Ihle/Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold, Germany) -- source link

More pics about