A FAMILY of eight Inuits frozen in time for centuries are the best-preserved mummies ever found in North America.

The ancient farmers, including a six-month-old baby who experts believe was buried alive, lived in Greenland 500 years ago.

6 A six-month-old baby is one of eight mummies found frozen in permafrost in Greenland Credit: Alamy

Found by hunters at an abandoned Inuit encampment in 1972, the mummies still have their skin, fingernails and hair intact after thousands of years.

It's believed the mummification process was accidental, and resulted from the region's ice-cold climate.

The settlement of Qilakitsoq, on Greenland's west coast, is 280 miles north of the Arctic.

Archaeologists think the group died there sometime around 1475 AD.

6 The mummies still have their skin, fingernails and hair intact after thousands of years Credit: Rex Features

6 The perfectly-preserved corpse of a woman found at the site Credit: Rex Features

As well as the two children, six adult women were found. Many were heavily tattooed on their foreheads and chins.

The bodies were found in two graves a meter apart.

They were stacked on top of one another with layers of animal skin placed carefully in between.

The ink-redible ancient history of body art Scientists have discovered the world's oldest tattoos on the arm of a 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummy on display at the British Museum. The mummy, known as Gebelein Man A, pushes back evidence of figurative tattoos by 1,000 years. The oldest tattoos were once thought to belong to a South American Chinchorro mummy who had a moustache-like design inked on his face. It was initially thought he died in 4,000BC but in 2015 researchers found he is in fact younger than 5,200-year-old frozen mummy Ötzi the Iceman. Ötzi was found by walkers preserved in a glacier on the Italy-Austria border in 1991. Imaging using various wavelengths revealed a total of 61 tattoos: Geometric designs of dots, crosses and parallel lines. Ötzi would have done lots of walking im the Alps and it is thought the tattoos may have been a kind of acupuncture to ease joint pains. There is evidence of tattooing on mummies found in the Taklamakan Desert in China dating from 1,200 BC. Modern tattoos of the kind sported by David Beckham are thought to have developed in Polynesian cultures over centuries. The name comes from the phrase tatatau, meaning to hit or strike, which the British sailor James Cook heard when he reached Tahiti in 1769.

The mummification process meant many were still wrapped in the fur coats they wore to keep out the chill.

In total, 78 pieces of clothing made from seal, reindeer and other skins were discovered.

Perhaps the most shocking realisation was that the baby appeared to have been buried alive.

6 A woman and child still wrapped in the clothes they wore 500 years ago Credit: Alamy

6 Scientists believe the baby was buried alive Credit: Rex Features

6 Four of the bodies are on display at a museum in Greenland Credit: David Stanley

Inuit tradition at the time dictated that if a mother passed away, her children be buried with her.

The practice was carried out even if the children were alive to ensure they passed to the afterlife as a family.

Despite decades of study, researchers have not been able to determine how or why the family died.

Four of the Qilakitsoq mummies are on permanent display at the Greenland National Museum in Nuuk.

Ancient Egyptian mummy housed in British museum has world's oldest tattoos

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In other mummy news, Ancient Egyptian mummies removed from their coffins this week sparked "Curse of the Pharaohs" fears.

An ancient mass grave filled with the battered bodies of 26 adults and children may be evidence of the world's first war crime.

And, Neanderthals could have died out due to a common childhood illness.

How do you think the mummified family passed away? Let us know in the comments!

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