A pre-Incan funerary tower found in the Andes where bodies were placed on display rather than buried underground.
From Quechua 'chulpa,' an indigenous Andean language term for these distinctive stone structures. The word traveled into English through Spanish colonial accounts and archaeological literature, maintaining its original indigenous meaning.
Chulpas reveal how different cultures honor their dead—while Europeans hid bodies underground, Andean peoples displayed their ancestors in towers for centuries, creating natural mummies preserved by the dry mountain air.
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