The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is the driest place on Earth. It stretches from the foothills of the Andes, a hundred miles westward to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. There are few signs of life here, it hasn’t rained in parts for thousands of years but the very dryness of the Atacama has made it the perfect keeper of a unique treasure.

Buried in its sands are the intimate secrets of an ancient world, the legacy of a Stone Age people who believed they could conquer death. Ancient Egypt has long been considered to be the origin of the practice of mummification but these mummies found in spectacular graves are thousands of years older than those of the Egyptians.