These two men were probably murdered in cold blood about 1000 years ago.
A team of researchers examined three mummified bodies from Chile and Peru to find out how the two males died.
The result: one man was stabbed in the back and hit on the head – the other suffered severe neck trauma and is believed to have died as a result.
Radiocarbon dating indicates that the mummies are between 740 and 1120 years old, meaning they lived before the Spanish colonial era.
One of the male mummies probably comes from the Arica culture in what is now northern Chile.
The man was buried next to fishing tools, leading researchers to determine he likely came from a fishing community.
The other two mummies, one male and one female, probably lived in the Arequipa region of what is now southwestern Peru and were buried with materials made from cotton and hair from llamas or alpacas and viscachas.
But how did the researchers come to the cause of death of the mummies?
The team used computed tomography scans to create virtual 3D reconstructions of the bodies.
This revealed previously hidden details about her death.
While the woman died of natural causes, the two men died of extreme willful violence, according to the researchers.
The study shows how much knowledge mummified remains can reveal – more than just finding bones from a corpse.
“The types of trauma we found would not have been detectable if these human remains were mere skeletons,” says study co-author Andreas Nerlich, a professor in the Department of Pathology at Munich’s Bogenhausen Clinic in Germany.
In this case, researchers examined three mummies preserved in the very arid environments of South America and housed in museums in Germany and Switzerland.