Ancient Mummies And Egypt Mummies

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Over the years, in the two remaining houses, more pottery was deliberately smashed, and antlers, pots and bone tools were buried. More animals were also sacrificed - a sheep and two dogs. After several more deconstruction and reconstruction episodes, the north house was finally abandoned in around 700 BC - but the middle structure continued in ritual use until around 400 BC, making it the longest used house known from British prehistory

The range of ritual activity in the complex is among the broadest known. It raises the question of whether the site was primarily a domestic/residential one or primarily a ritual and religious one. Who were the people that lived there? Were they ordinary Bronze Age tribes-people - or were they members of some ritual elite, potentially priests or shamans? And were the people who lived in the complex part of the same ethnic/ tribal group whose ancestors had been preserved and been venerated over the centuries? Or were they new arrivals or settlers, who had displaced the original 'mummy-venerating' population and had expropriated not only their land but their ancestors as well?

Only future archaeological investigations will stand a chance of answering these tantalising questions. But, for the time being, the discovery of Britain's first mummies should start to redefine key aspects of life and death in prehistoric Britain.

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Three days after their excavations began on March 3, the team found the cemetery. The bundles梒ocoons of one or more adult and child mummies wrapped together in layers of textiles梔ate back more than 500 years to the Inca Empire.

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Thoth, god of writing and counting and patron of scribes. Thoth was worshipped in the form of a baboon or an ibis. He is usually depicted during the weighing of the heart ceremony as poised to record the results before the assessor gods. During this ceremony Osiris, god of the dead, weighed the heart against the brain of the deceased to judge that persons knowledge and goodness.

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Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, looks on as the 3,300-year-old mummy of King Tutankhamun is prepared for CT scanning.


At the time of his death at around 18 years old in 1323 B.C., Pharaoh Tutankhamun was not one of Egypt's more notable rulers. But when Englishman Howard Carter unearthed the lavish treasures found with his mummy in 1922, "King Tut" became a familiar name around the world

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X-ray images of falcons show they were carefully preserved (Image: Natural History Museum)


A new collection of mummified creatures could help unravel some of the mysteries surrounding ancient Egyptian society.

The Egyptians mummified both humans and animals to preserve them for the afterlife. Mummified cats, birds, monkeys and even gazelles have in the past been found buried alongside their owners.

Researchers say the new collection - including mummified cats, birds, baboons and crocodiles gathered from a variety of other collections - adds weight to the idea that the humble house cat was first domesticated animal to provide a source of ritual offerings for the gods.

Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London, UK, compared numerous specimens and used X-rays to peer beneath the animals' bandages. They found fresh evidence that many were killed and mummified specifically to provide religious offerings.

Votive offerings
Mummified cats, for example, might have been offered to the feline-headed goddess, Bastet, who Egyptians believed protected the home.

Richard Sabin, curator of mammals at the museum, notes the collection includes both the African subspecies of wild cat Felis silvestris lybica and the smaller predecessor to the modern domestic cat. This may mean mummification might have played a role in the domestication of the cat.

"We're looking at a point in time that is very close to the origin of the domestic cat," Sabin told New Scientist "It adds to the body of evidence and to the theory that cats were being bred for the mummification process."

Sabin adds that many of the mummified cats in the collection have skeletal damage suggesting their necks were deliberately snapped. "The suggestion is that these animals were being selectively bred and killed," he says.

Preserved pets
But the new collection also illustrates the fondness with which Egyptians regarded some of their animals. Jo Cooper, curator of the bird collection at the museum, notes the preserved birds show different kinds of mummification. The falcons, for example, thought to have been kept as pets, are lavishly mummified with great care. Meanwhile ibises and hawks, which may have been offerings to the Moon god Thoth, are mummified in a more casual manner.

Animal statues and amulets also on display in the exhibition reinforce the importance of animals in the world of ancient Egypt.

"It's interesting to start getting a feel for how people interacted with animals and to see them as objects of symbolism," says Cooper. "We're getting insight into the Egyptians as curators and preparers of these votive offerings."

But Sabin also points out that the Egyptians' sheer enthusiasm for mummification can sometimes pose a problem. "It can be difficult to draw conclusions because they were mummifying anything they could get their hands on," he says.

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Researchers at the University of Bristol, England, performed chemical analysis on four Egyptian animal mummies dating from 818 B.C. to 343 B.C. Their findings suggest the mummies' embalmers performed their task with the same care applied to many human corpses. Above, a mummified cat (top) and ibis


The ancient Egyptians mummified more than just human corpses. Animals were viewed not only as pets, but as incarnations of gods. As such, the Egyptians buried millions of mummified cats, birds, and other creatures at temples honoring their deities.

Because of the sheer scale of animal mummy production, many archaeologists thought the vast majority were churned out in relatively slipshod fashion. But a new study suggests the mummification techniques ancient Egyptians used on animals were often as elaborate as those they employed on the best-preserved human corpses.

Researchers at the University of Bristol, England, conducted the study, which is described in tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature.


The team examined samples from four animal mummies梩wo hawks, a cat, and an ibis梔ating from 818 B.C. to 343 B.C. The mummies are housed in the collection of the Liverpool Museum in Liverpool, England.

The researchers analyzed samples of tissue and wrappings using a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry梞ethods so sensitive they can enable scientists to detect and identify different chemicals in fragments weighing as little as a tenth of a milligram (three and a half millionths of an ounce).

Chemicals detected in tissue samples from the animal mummies revealed the presence of various natural products found in human embalming materials used by the ancient Egyptians. These included animal fats, oils, beeswax, sugar gum, bitumen, and pine tree resins. The researchers found these products had also been applied to the bandages used to wrap up the mummies.

"Millions of animal mummies are known to exist, and there is some debate whether they were treated with the same sort of reverence and sophistication as human mummies," said Richard Evershed, the study's coauthor. "We found pretty much exactly the same materials were used on both."

Evershed concedes that many more animal mummies will need to undergo chemical analysis before any firm conclusions can be drawn. But he noted: "If you started to find the same range of different embalming agents on these mummies as you did on humans, then you'd say it looks like [the ancient Egyptians] were taking some care over this."

Preventing Decay

Organic material decays rapidly, especially in hot climes like that of Egypt, Evershed said. Therefore, it was important for embalmers to remove water along with a corpse's internal organs before mummification. (Water is essential for bacteria, which can quickly rot a corpse.)

To dry out a body, the ancient Egyptians rubbed salt into the corpse. Substances such as oils, beeswax, and pine tree resins梬hich repel water and microbes梬ere then applied.

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More than 7,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers used elaborate techniques to preserve their dead


Arica, Chile's northernmost port, thrives in defiance of the arid lands that surround it. The lifeline for the city and its more than 100,000 inhabitants is the San Juan River, a tiny line of fresh, sweet water that threads its way out of the Andean foothills and across some seventy-five miles of the world's driest desen to the Pacific Ocean.

A tall promontory, El Morro, looms above the southern edge of the city. Late in 1983, a ditch- digging machine was cutting a trench for a new waterline on El Morro's lower slopes when its blades began to churn up the legs and broken bodies of men, women, and children. The pipeline project had intruded into a pre-Columbian graveyard. Work stopped, an archeologist from Arica's University of Taracapa was called in, and a salvage operation was begun. In time, teams of archeologists and students uncovered the re mains of 96 individuals, a most valuable addition to the growing collection of more than 1,500 mummies at the university's Museum of Archeology, where I and other investigators have been studying them for years.

With ever improving techniques of analysis and dating, these mummies, along with smaller collections at other institutions in Chile, are providing unprecedented insights into the early history of human disease, nutrition, and culture, in cluding a practice of mummification more complex than the Egyptian process, even though it is two to three thousand years older. Our oldest specimens are, by far, the oldest-known mummies in the world.

Mummification can occur naturally, with the right environmental conditions, or art)ficially, when humans take steps to preserve a corpse. The conditions in northern Chile are excellent for natural mummification. Because the cold Humboldt current upwells off the coast, the warmer air collects little moisture from the Pactfic Ocean. Thus, from the coast to the foothills of the Andes, it almost never rains. Years pass without rain, and in those rare years when some rain does fall, it is not heavy enough to penetrate a foot or more of soil. The absence of moisturenot just for years or centuries but for millennia is the main reason for this unsurpassed collection of mummies.


Bodies discovered in an unmarked colonial graveyard about ten miles east of Arica at the Church of San Miguel illustrate the importance of aridity. The small church is next to an ancient Indian burial site where people have been interred mostly without anificial mummificationfor nearly 3,000 years. The corpses of the ancient Indians are dehydrated, but their bones are still firmly attached, their skin and hair still present. In contrast, the remains of the colonials, buried in front of the church, were mostly nothing but bones. We were puzzled by this difference until we discovered that attendants always sprinkled irrigation water around the church to keep down the dust. Moisture, penetrating the soil and the graves, had caused the corpses to deteriorate.

The burial practices of the ancient Indians probably helped preserve the corpses. Bodies were usually placed in shallow holes in seated, huddled positions, and then covered with cloth and reed mats. Under the strong sun, these grave sites were, in effect, solar ovens in which the corpse quickly dried out. In time, windblown sand drifted over the grave, fuHher preserving the cadaver. And finally, the large amountS of salts, including nitrates, in the soil acted as natural preservatives.

In 1919, Max Uhle, the first archeologist to study these mummies, assumed that the natural mummies he found were the oldest and most primitive, while the elaborately prepared anificial mummies were more recent. Without the benefits of modern dating methods, he estimated the primitive mummies were about 2,000 years old. Uhle named these people the Chinchorro, or gill netters, recognizing their maritime location and fishing prac~ tices. We still use Uhle's name for these early Americans, as well as his classifications for mummy types, but carbon 14 dating has revealed two surprises.

First, the oldest Chinchorro are four times older than Uhle's estimate. Our oldest mummy has been dated at 7,810 years B.P. (before the present), plus or minus 180 years. Hans Niemeyer, who has excavated Chinchorro sites in the Camarones Valley sixty-five miles south of Arica, has obtained carbon dates of 7,420 B.P. and 7,000 B.P. With a series of carbon 14 dates, using material from the mummies, we now estimate the Chinchorro culture extended roughly from 7,800 to 3,800 B.P. The Chinchorro were probably closely related to another preceramic culture of the area, the Quiani (3,400 to 3,200 B.P.), and to the Faldas de Morro, a group with the first ceramics and metals in the area (2,800 B.P.). In short, in one small area we have found human and cultural remains that span a 5,000-year period. And some preliminary genetic and anthropometric studies indicate that all these people were closely related.

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The second surprise from the dating was that the 7,800-year-old body, a man of about thirty- five years, was not a natural mummy but was instead an example of one of the most complex forms of mummification. This discovery raises all sorts of questions: Are there older mummies yet to be found? Where did the idea and the skills of mummification come from? How long have humans with complex cultures been in the Americas? These questions, and others, lead to interesting speculations; but since I am a paleopathologist, I spend my time studying the bodies and the artifacts found with them. The data they contain are fascinating enough for me.

The ninety-six bodies from El Morro, as indicated by carbon 14 dates, were interred over a period of more than 3,000 years. They represent all types of mummification, from simple air drying to the elaborate classic style. While there are many variations, all thirty-five classic mummies show the Chinchorro had techniques and a knowledge of anatomy that contradict any notion that they were primitive, even though they had neither metal nor ceramics.


The first step for a classic mummification involved a careful incision in the cadaver and the removal of the internal organs, which deteriorate quickly. The skin and hair were cut away from the corpse, and major muscles were removed. The brain was removed through an opening cut in the skull or by hooking it out through the foremen magnum (the opening at the base of the skull). All this was done without metal knives. The embalmers used sharpened stones and shells and the sharpened beaks of pelicans. We have found a number of these beaks in grave sites. After 5,000 years they are still sharp, strong, and effective tools.

The body was quickly dried by filling it with hot coals and ashes. The skin and hair probably were soaked in salt water. Then the mummy makers - who were most likely specialists in the tribe - took a number of steps to make the corpse rigid. They rubbed the elbow and knee joints with abrasive stones until the bones were flat and then bound them together with fiber ropes. Another fiber rope ran down the arms and across the chest at the level of the collarbones to prevent the chest cavity from flopping open. They drove a sharpened stick under the flesh along the spinal column and tied the vertebrae to this stake. Two other sticks were inserted from each ankle to the skull.

When the body was rigid and dry, the mummy makers wrapped reed matting along the legs and arms, and across the shoulders. They filled the body cavity with wool, feathers, grass, shells, and earth. After binding the halves of the skull together with fiber cord, they wedged it on the ends of wooden poles at the neck and over the rope- bound vertebrae. To give the mummy a lifelike shape, the Indians molded clay over the limbs. Since the kneecaps had been discarded, the skin at the knees was cut and sewed tight.

The mummy makers sculpted a face mask of clay, with holes for the eyes and mouth. They tied the corpse's hair in bunches and bound it to the mask with rope. They painted the mummy black during some periods, red during others.


There were many minor variations from this procedure. Children were often simply eviscerated through an incision in the abdomen and filled with ashes and hot coals. Poles were tied to the legs or slipped under the skin. In other cases, skin on children was cut in strips and wrapped around their bodies like a bandage. With some mummies, the skins of other animals - often pelicans or sea lions - were used to cover the bodies. In all cases, the idea was to make the body rigid and rebuild it to lifelike dimensions.

When the mummy was finished, it was not buried. Apparently as some form of ancestor worship, mummies were propped up in groups and continued to inhabit the community; perhaps in a spiritual sense they helped to bring good hunting and fishing to their descendants. In return, the living kept the dead in good condition, as indicated by the repairs on many mummies. Eventually, possibly when certain influential people died, the older mummies were buried in small groups. Since many burial groups contained adults and children, perhaps the deceased were interred as a family.

We also found many plant and animal remains at the grave sites. These materials, along with the mummies and even the campsite dirt stuffed into the mummies, have provided us with many clues about the daily lives of the Chinchorro. The early Indians were hunters and gatherers, living mainly on products from the sea. They used sophisticated gill nets to catch fish off the beaches (a method still used by some Indians in the area today). They hunted sea birds and marine mammals, particularly the sea lion, which they speared with a barbed harpoon.

The Chinchorro did not practice agriculture, with the possible exception of growing reeds for mats and fiber. They used the products of their environment pelican beaks and feathers, seashells, sea lion hides, and even whalebone for practically all their needs. We have found some use of feathers and llama wool, which would indicate the coastal Chinchorro traded with the inhabitants of the Andean highlands.

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The Chinchorro men suffered from one of the earliest known occupational diseases; one-quarter of them had a bony growth in the ear canal - probably the result of multiple ear infections - that would have led to deafness. Such growths are common in people who dive persistently for shellfish. Since none of the women had this lesion, they apparently did not go shell fishing. The women did, however, have "squatting facets" at the ankle-shinbone joint. These lesions occur when people work in a squatting position - in this case, probably opening shellfish. Nearly half the women had an arthritic degeneration of the neck vertebrae, probably from carrying heavy loads.

This division of labor, as well as the complex processes of mummification, means that individuals among the Chinchorro had specialized jobs and clear roles according to sex. This is unusual for such an early, small, and isolated group of humans. In later cultures, the practice of mummification degenerated, and judging from the hunting and fishing gear webing buried with both women and men, the roles of the sexes merged.

The origin of syphilis has fascinated medical investigators ever since a Barcelona physician, Rodrigo Ruiz de la Isla, reported a new disease brought back from America by some of Columbus's sailors. Throughout the Andean region, bone lesions that might be related to syphilis are found in human remains dating back at least 5,000 years. Bone lesions from a syphilis like disease appear in four of these early inhabitants of the north coast of Chile. We do not know if we are seeing evidence of the venereally transmitted disease syphilis or whether we are dealing with an early nonvenereal form such as yaws, or pinto. This will be difficult to answer until we find evidence of disease in the organs or skin.

Osteoporosis, a bone disease in which bone tissue becomes porous and fragile, is a widespread health problem for elderly women in industrialized nations. In virtually all individuals between the ages of forty and fifty, the skeletal mass begins to decline, but in women the rate is faster, possibly because of hormone deficiency. As such, osteoporosis is today's most common metabolic bone disease, but only in a small percentage of the population does it cause serious medical problems. Even so, in 1968 there were 700,000 fractures in women in the United States. Among the Chinchorro, 31 percent of the population had osteoporosis. All the sufferers were women, and two-thirds of them were under forty - a much younger involvement than in any other culture. The reasons for the prevalence of this bone disease are not yet known. The pattern of childbearing, the workload, and diet are probably all involved. Perhaps these severe cases can shed light on the problem in elderly women today.



Because of my interest in pathology, I usually focus on diseases and causes of death, but I do not want to give the impression that the Chinchorro were sickly. They appeared to eat a relatively high-protein diet and to lead active, healthy lives.

As one of my younger associates noted, holding up a skull of a middle-aged man, the mummy's teeth were in much better condition than his own. In later cultures, when irrigation agriculture came to the valley, Indians ate more carbohydrates and less protein. And the teeth of these later Indians have many more cavities. Unlike the Chinchorro, their successors knew the agony of a toothache.

For perhaps 15,000 years, if not longer, the western coast of South America for hundreds of miles north and south of Arica has been dominated by inhospitable desert. Only a few isolated groups of Indians, clustered around rare sources of fresh water, managed to eke out a living. In their narrow niche, these Indians lived differently and apart from the major groups and Indian civilizations of the Andean highlands and the continental interior. Some preliminary genetic surveys indicate these Indians were the direct descendants of earlier tribes that lived in the region for many thousands of years. Such continuity is without precedent anywhere else in the world.

And the arid conditions that so shaped their lives also preserved them in death. As our techniques of analysis improve, we will learn more about the daily lives and conditions of these obscure Indians than we know about any other group in prehistory. After nearly 8,000 years of silence, the Chinchorro are beginning to tell their story, and we have much to learn about them - and ourselves.

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The mummies of the Chinchorros have been found near the border of present-day Peru and Chile along the Pacific coast. The principal towns between which the mummies have been found are Ilo (Peru) to Arica, Iquique, and Antofagasta (all Chile). The mummies appear to have been made first in the area around Arica

The Chinchorros may well have been the first people in the world to practice mummification. They preserved their dead beginning about 5000 B.C., reaching a peak in 3000 B.C.--around the same time that the Egyptians began experimenting with mummification.

The methods used by the Chinchorros were quite different from those of the Egyptians. In fact, it appears as if they made three types of mummies, though not during the same time periods. Here are the two most common methods:

Black mummies: From about 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C., the Chinchorros literally took the dead person's body apart, treated it, and reassembled it. The head, arms and legs were removed; the skin was often removed, too. The body was heat-dried, and the flesh and tissue were completely stripped from the bone.

Special attention was given to the skull. It was cut in half, about eyeball level, and the brain was removed. The skull was then dried and packed with material and tied back together (along with the jawbone).

Then it was time to put the body was put back together. Morticians strengthened the limbs and spinal column by inserting sticks under the skin. They packed the body with various materials, including clay and feathers. Finally, they reattached the skull.

After reassembly, the body was then covered with a white ash paste, filling the nooks and crannies left by the reassembling process. The paste was also used to fill out the person's normal facial features. The person's skin (including facial skin with a wig attachment of short black human hair) was refitted on the body, sometimes in smaller pieces, sometimes in one almost-whole piece. Sometimes sea lion skin was used as well.

Then the skin (or, in the case of children, who were often missing their skin layer, the white ash layer) was painted with manganese--giving them a black color.

Many such mummies have been recovered. The face of one Chinchorro mummy had been painted many times, leading some archaeologists to suggest that the mummy had been displayed for a long time before it was finally buried.

Red Mummies: From about 2500 BC to 2000 BC, the Chinchorros made red mummies by a completely different method.  Rather than disassemble the body, they made many incisions in the trunk and shoulders to remove internal organs and dry the body cavity. The head was cut from the body so that the brain could be removed.

They packed the body with various materials to return it to somewhat more-normal dimensions, used sticks to strengthen it, and sewed up the incisions. The head was placed back on the body, this time with a wig made from tassels of human hair up to 60 cm long. A "hat" made out of clack clay held the wig in place.  Except for the wig and often the (black) face, everything was then painted with red ochre. Occasionally the skin would be replaced on the body, but this was not a common practice with red mummies.

According to Bernardo Arriaza, about 282 Chinchorro mummies have been discovered. Slightly over half of these mummies were made artificially by the methods described above. The rest were mummified accidentally in the dry coastal climate.

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In 1599, Capuchin monks made a shocking discovery while exhuming bodies from the catacombs of their monastery

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Discovered in 1950 north of Silkeborg, Denmark, the Tollund Man has become one of the world's most famous bog mummies. While only 30 to 40 years old at the time of his death, the Tollund Man has been dated back to the Iron Age (around 400 B.C.). Found wearing only a leather belt, a cap and a noose around his neck, the body was so well preserved that chin stubble is still visible. Many researchers theorize that he was sacrificed as part of a Druid ritual, then gently placed to rest in the bog. When visiting the Tollund Man, be sure to check out the Elling Girl, another bog mummy on display in the Silkeborg Museum.

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When you think of globetrotters, you may think of supermodels, business executives or even the famous basketball team

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Dozens of 500-year-old mummies have been unearthed in Peru's capital Lima.
Archaeologists found 26 tombs while they were digging at the site of a motorway extension, and think they come from the Inca civilisation.

They don't know how many bodies there are, as each tomb might hold more than one mummy. They also found pots, ears of corn, and cloth in the graves.

Because of that, archaeologists think the mummies, which date from 1472 to 1572, were cloth makers.

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The Guanajuato mummies were discovered in a cemetery of a city named Guanajuato northwest of Mexico City. They are accidental modern mummies and were literally "dug up" between the years 1896 and 1958 when a local law required relatives to pay a kind of grave tax. You could pay the tax once (170 pesos) and be done with it; this option may have appealed to wealthier individuals.  But you were also allowed to pay a yearly fee (20 pesos); this would have appealed to less wealthy families. However, if the relatives could not pay this yearly tax for three years, the body (which had, by the way, become accidentally mummified) was dug up from the cemetery and (if the fee still wasn't paid) placed on display in El museo de las momias. [Of course, what if the person's family had moved from town--or what if the person was the last person from their family? Well, it didn't matter; the law was the law!]



No one is certain how many mummified bodies were removed from the crypts, but 111 mummies are presently on display in Guanajuato's mummy museum. Possibly, many other natural mummies are lying in the cemetery...but no one will ever find out, since the law has been changed



The Guanajuato mummies are some of the strangest ones ever placed on display.  Some are clothed, some aren't. A few are wearing only their socks and/or shoes. Some are old, others are only infants. One tiny baby mummy is labeled, "La momia me peque del mundo"--the smallest mummy in the world. The baby and the mother (they died during a caesarean section) are in the museum, but they will not be found together

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A mummified Guanche, agreed to be an adult male


Mummies also date from the Inca period, when the habit of offering human sacrifices on mountain tops also produced 'Ice Mummies' through the natural process of freeze-drying. In recent times over 100 such mummies have been found high in the Andes, surrounded by gold and silver figurines and offerings designed to accompany them to the gods.

The Inca also used artificial techniques to preserve their dead, with mummified royalty regarded as very much alive and fed, clothed, paraded at important events and consulted in times of trouble. Although the mummies of the Inca kings were 'so intact that they lacked neither hair nor eyebrows and were in clothes just as they had worn when alive', the Spanish conquerors of 1532 could not accept the way in which the dead were treated as living beings and to preserve their mortal souls they destroyed as many mummies as they could find - once stripped of their gold adornments.

Rather closer to home the Spanish also destroyed much of the culture of the Guanches, native inhabitants of the Canary Islands and descendants of the Berbers from nearby North Africa. The cave-dwelling, goat-herding Guanches mummified their dead and although the Spanish again destroyed all the mummies they could find, the few which remain display highly sophisticated techniques of preservation using locally available materials. Recent examination has also suggested a link with the mummification practices of ancient Egypt, an important connection since the Guanches were still mummifying their dead when the Spanish arrived in the 15th century AD.

Yet the majority of European and North American mummies were created by completely natural means, such as the 'Iceman' whose frozen body was recently discovered high in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border where he had died some 5000 years ago. A further 8 frozen bodies of women and children in seal-skin clothing were found at Qilakitsoq in Greenland, although these 'Greenland Mummies' are only 500 years old. Closest to home are the 'Bog Mummies' of north-western Europe, discovered in peat bogs where the acidic environment has preserved their soft tissue and produced a dark brown leather-like appearance. Dating largely from the Iron Age (c.400 BC - AD 400), many of these Celtic bodies show evidence of fractured skulls, garrotting and slit throats, their violent deaths suggesting that they were victims of ritual sacrifice.

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:dia: klik sini http://www.bauerfilms.com/museum.htm

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Two of the oldest mummies found in Peru - so well preserved that one had an eye and internal organs intact - have gone on display after their discovery by building workers two weeks ago.

Officials from the National Institute of Culture said the mummies - a young boy and a man in his mid-30s - were at least 700 years old.

They came from a culture that predated the Incas, who dominated a vast swathe of South America from Colombia to Chile until they were toppled by Spanish invaders in the 1530s.

An archaeologist at the National Culture Institute, Lucy Linares, said: "Two mummies have been found - a boy of about five and a farmer, about 35 years old, dating from between 1100 and 1300, the Chiribaya culture. What is striking is the level of conservation [of the mummies]."

The man had one eye open and "you can see his eyeball. It's perfectly preserved."

When the workers moved the body, they accidentally made a hole in his side, displaying his intestines, she added. Fat adhering to the skin was also extremely well preserved.

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High Sacrifice

He has delicate fingers and hugs his knees, one foot over the other, as if to keep warm. His hair is plaited in more than 200 braids, and miniature idols and keepsakes accompany him in his frozen tomb. Dead for 500 years, this Inca sacrificial mummy found on Chile's El Plomo Peak has opened the door to further inquiry into the strange and mysterious ritual life of the Inca. There may be hundreds of Inca children, sacrificed in Inca times nearly 500 years ago, entombed in graves of ice atop the western hemisphere's highest peaks. To date, over 115 sacred Inca ceremonial sites have been excavated at an elevation over 15,000 feet on some 30 Andean peaks. These high mountain sanctuaries dot the Andes from central Chile to southern Peru. All of the sites are located in the region of the two southernmost Inca quarters, or "suyus," but only a few of these remote and icy summits have yielded finds of much archeological value. The discovery by Johan Reinhard of "Juanita," an Inca ice maiden found atop Mount Ampato in 1995, is the most recent -- and some say the most revealing -- addition to scientists' understanding of Inca life and culture.

Mountain Worship

The Incas worshipped the high peaks that pierce the South American skies. These rugged summits represented a means of approaching the Sun God, Inti, the center of their religion, and many sacrifices were made atop these cold and unpredictable pinnacles. Mountain deities were seen as lords of the forces of nature who presided over crops and livestock. In essence they were the protectors of the Inca people, the keepers of life who reached up toward the skies where the sacred condor soared.

Many theories exist about why the Incas performed ritual ceremonies, which sometimes included human sacrifices, at elevations approaching 23,000 feet. Most scholars agree that the purpose of the sacrifice, known as "capacocha," was to appease the mountain gods and to assure rain, abundant crops, protection, and order for the Inca people. Sacrifices often coincided with remarkable occasions: earthquakes, eclipses, droughts. On these occasions the Incas were required to offer valuables from the highest regions they could reach -- the ice-clad summits of Andean peaks. Truly auspicious events, such as the death of an emperor, prompted human sacrifices, perhaps to provide an escort for the emperor on his journey to the Other World.


The fact that many high elevation sacrificial sites are located near trans-mountain roads suggests that sacrifices were also made in conjunction with the expansion of the Inca civilization itself. The extensive roads in the southernmost regions were integral to the expansion of the empire southward. Especially important were the trans-mountain, or east-west, roads, which linked north-south running ranges and valleys over high-mountain passes. Near such routes, the Incas chose high peaks, climbed them, built their platforms, and made sacrifices, sometimes human, to assure safe continued passage and to bless the roads. The mummy of a young boy on Mount Aconcagua, discovered in 1985, could be one such sacrifice. His tomb is near one of the most important trans-mountain paths which today is virtually the same route as the major international highway linking Argentina and Chile

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The first mummies to be discovered in Britain have been found in the Outer Hebrides.
Researchers believe islanders on South Uist started mummifying their dead at the same time as the ancient Egyptians.
The discovery is revealed in a BBC documentary to be screened on Tuesday at 2100 GMT.
Film-makers from the Meet The Ancestors programme followed archaeologists from the University of Sheffield working at Cladh Hallan on South Uist.

Carbon dating

The ancient remains found beneath the floor of a Bronze Age roundhouse are believed to have been a girl aged three, a teenage girl, and a middle-aged man and woman.
Analysis showed the 3,000-year-old-bodies had been preserved using naturally occurring acids and peat bogs.
This is believed to be the first evidence of mummification ever discovered in the UK.
Proof they were mummified comes from the fact that the bodies were gutted and carbon dating has shown them to have died up to 600 years before burial.

Mike Parker-Pearson, an expert in ancient burial practices, said the find challenged the belief that mummification had been practised only in Egypt and South America during this time.

He said: "We are talking about artificial preservation of the soft tissue after death. It is something that is deliberate.