The Qilakitsoq mummies

On 9 October 1972 two brothers, Hans and Jokum Grønvold, were out after ptarmigan on the Nuussuaq Peninsula and looked under an overhanging cliff. There were eight people under it, in two graves a metre apart, fully clothed, cushioned and covered with sealskins, flat stones and grass, and freeze-dried by the cold dry air moving under the rock. They died around 1475, give or take fifty years, and they are related to each other across both graves. The best preserved is a boy of about six months, catalogued as I/1, so small that he lost heat fast enough to be perfectly kept. The clothing alone rewrote what was known about Inuit tailoring. The brothers reported the find at once, though the proper excavation did not begin until 1978. Four of the mummies came home to Greenland in 1982 and are in the National Museum in Nuuk.