First Mummies May Have Been Inspired by Field of Corpses 78
sciencehabit writes with a story about a field strewn with corpses in shallow graves. From the article: "Trekking through Chile's Atacama Desert 7000 years ago, hunter-gatherers known as the Chinchorro walked in the land of the dead. Thousands of shallowly buried human bodies littered the earth, their leathery corpses pockmarking the desolate surroundings. According to new research, the scene inspired the Chinchorro to begin mummifying their dead, a practice they adopted roughly 3000 years before the Egyptians embraced it."
Re:Confused (Score:5, Informative)
I can only answer one of those questions, but as far as how it supported a human population, the Atacama desert [wikipedia.org] is an odd place: almost all of it is extremely dry and uninhabitable, but there are several oases that host some of the earliest sites of advanced civilization in the Americas.
Re:Confused (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I had to read it twice:
- From 10,000 to 7000 BCE the area was dry
- Then it became wetter so it was able to support a larger & more culturally-diverse culture
- This culture saw a bunch of dried corpses laying-around from the previous 3000 years, so they decided to start mummifying people themselves.
Re:Cemetery of Eden (Score:4, Informative)
Once the water is gone from a corpse, there really isn't much ecosystem left to go around for bacteria (or any other underground organisms that normally feed on dead human flesh).
Re:ok sure but.. (Score:4, Informative)
>>>mummies used as literal firewood and train boiler fuel,
An urban legend started by Mark Twain.
I went there (Score:5, Informative)
They really are everywhere, particularly the Ica/Nazca region. There are well-known fields like Chauchilla [wikipedia.org], where there's a few very well-preserved mummies sitting in a whole field of miscellaneous bones and fabrics mixed in with the rocks. (Side note: They're all sitting out in the open, with only a simple roof covering them, and even that was only added recently after a few drops of rain fell one year. The Atacama is dry.)
And then there are minor burial areas scattered all over the place. Our guide pointed out a few caves by the side of the road in passing, some of which had been partially bulldozed when they built the road. You could see human bone fragments mixed in with the roadside rubble.