By REUTERS
 
IMA, Peru, March 5 (Reuters) — Dozens of mummies more than 500 years old have been discovered on the path of a proposed highway on the outskirts of Lima, the Peruvian capital, archaeologists said Friday.

The archaeologists uncovered 26 burial bundles, each containing one or more adult and child mummies dating from 1472 to 1532. The following year, the Incas were defeated by Spanish conquistadors.

The area "is part of the largest Inca cemetery in Peru and the largest excavated cemetery in the Western Hemisphere, that of Puruchuco-Huaquerones," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist contracted by Lima's Town Hall to comb the area for artifacts before construction begins on the highway.

In the last several years, Mr. Cock's team has found thousands of mummies of men, women and children beneath the sprawling Puruchuco settlement, a few miles east of downtown Lima. "The important thing about this discovery is that it is intact," Mr. Cock said. "The area around the mummies shows evidence of rituals prior to the burials. There are the remains of corn, beans, coca leaves and pots."