The Muisca inhabited the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the Colombian Andes before the arrival of the Spanish and were an advanced civilisation. They mummified the higher social class members of their society, mainly the zipas, zaques, caciques, priests and their families. The mummies would be placed in caves or in dedicated houses ("mausoleums") and were not buried.

Many mummies from the Chibcha-speaking indigenous groups have been found to date, mainly from the Muisca, Lache and Guane. In 1602 the early Spanish colonisers found 150 mummies in a cave near Suesca, that were organised in a scenic circular shape with the mummy of the cacique in the centre of the scene. The mummies were surrounded by cloths and pots. In 2007 the mummy of a baby was discovered in a cave near Gámeza, Boyacá, together with a small bowl, a pacifier and cotton cloths. The process of mummification continued into the colonial period. The youngest mummies have been dated to the second half of the 18th century.

The early Spanish chroniclers Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Pedro Simón, Pedro de Aguado, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés and others have provided the first historical data on the Muisca mummies. Modern researchers who contributed to the knowledge of the Muisca mummies have been 19th century scholars Ezequiel Uricoechea and Liborio Zerda. In the 20th and 21st century Eliécer Silva Celis and Abel Fernando Martínez Martín have been analysing various Muisca mummies.

In the centuries before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca in 1537, the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, high plateau of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes, was inhabited by the Muisca people. They were an advanced civilisation of mainly farmers and traders.

The Muisca did not construct stone architecture, as the Maya, Aztec and Inca did; their houses, temples and shrines were built with wood and clay. They were called "Salt People" because of their extraction of halite from various salt mines on the Altiplano, predominantly in Zipaquirá, Nemocón and Tausa.

Mummification was a common practice in South American cultures. The Nazca, Paracas and Chachapoya of Peru conducted mummifications. The oldest evidence of mummification in the Americas is known from the Chinchorro culture in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and has been dated at 7000 years BP. The practice was also performed by various pre-Columbian cultures in Colombia. Of the cultures to the southwest of the Altiplano, the Calima, Pijao and Quimbaya practiced mummification. On and close to the Altiplano the Muisca, Guane and Lache mummified their dead and north of the Altiplano the Chitarero and Zenú also executed the mummification process. The indigenous groups inhabiting the jungles of the Darién mummified their caciques.

The Muisca started their mummification practices in the Late Herrera Period, approximately from the 5th century AD onwards.

The use of substances to balm the body and the extraction of the organs has been described by franciscan Estebán de Asencio in 1550. The process took eight hours to dry the body with a dusty balm after the intestines were extracted. While the exact composition of the balm has not been determined, the moque was probably a type of resin, used in other rituals and practices around the mummification.