You’re looking at a recreation of a funerary site from ancient Ecuador, where these three levels of human remains were unearthed in 1980 as builders were getting ready to construct an airport at the capital city of Quito: a total of nine vertical burial tunnel-chambers were found. These bodies date from 680 CE, to a time before the Incan Empire. They were found all sitting in a crouched position, wearing fine textile clothing and gold jewelry, and amidst many pottery vessels which had held offerings for an afterlife.
And it’s the remains of the buried offerings where things get really interesting: scientists in the 21st century were able to scrape some of them and discovered the biological composition of the yeast used to ferment the corn drink called “chicha”. These historical biologists essentially revivified some strains of yeast that had been dormant for well over a millennium and found that they were from the genus “Candida” (yup, the kind with some species that cause modern skin and vaginal infections).
The Spanish conquerors of the region had claimed the indigenous peoples used animal bones, human saliva, and (eew) human feces in the process of brewing chicha, and these samples of Candida strains support this claim. This particular group (they belonged to the Quitu culture) also added flowers to their fermentation process, suggested by presence of another yeast strain called Rhodotorula mucilaginosa. It turns out that the alcohol level of chicha can only get to 3 or 4 percent before the Candida yeast dies. By adding certain flowers, like Datura, the flavor would have been changed, but also the drink might have had psychotropic effects.
Sources: Scientific American, “Raising the Dead: New Species of Life Resurrected from Ancient Tomb,” R Douglas Fields, Feb 19, 2012.
