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First Mummies May Have Been Inspired by Field of Corpses
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."
Out of all the years I've been watching /., I don't think I've ever seen a more bad-ass story title.
It was space aliens. Ancient civilizations were all developed by space aliens who came to Earth for some unknown reason, and decided to teach us everything.
where are these 1,000s of naturally occuring mummies now? if they really had enough dead to "pock mark the landscape" like they say then there must be a lot of at least partially intact left?
I found the story a bit confusing. If the climate was so dry that corpses didn't decompose, how was it wet enough to support a human population? Why weren't the corpses buried or burned in the first place? Were they burying the corpses in shallow graves and having them re-emerge for some reason?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
"hundreds, if not thousands, of dead bodies that never decay."
Maybe they'd be preserved in the tundra, or maybe if they were encased in mud or clay, but in a shallow desert grave I don't think they're immune from the larger ecosystem.
If you build it, they will come.
Stop it, you!
I only liked their early stuff.
"First Mummies may have been inspired by bad night's sleep"
"First Mummies may have been inspired by bird song heard by someone"
"First Mummies may have been inspired by Shakespeare's MacBeth"
Isn't there a journalistic law that covers this sort of thing, when the answer is ' but probably not'?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
"Field of Corpses" sounds more like a deathrock or gothic rock band.
being ground up for food and packaged by Soylent Corporation.
....inspired people to realize that desert sand doesn't really work that well for swimming practice.
....inspired one common Internet-phenomenon when one of them had scrawled the word "First!" on a nearby rock.
....inspired the invention of the term "dry humour."
They really are everywhere, particularly the Ica/Nazca region. There are well-known fields like Chauchilla, 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.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You pedantic self-satisfied arrogant twit.
...to build a bunch of astronomical observatories, for astronomers who clearly never watched any horror films.
Ancient burial grounds FTW.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Egyptian Mummies cited Anubis as their inspiration while calling Chileans "plebs" long before the Romans invented the related social class.
Badly.
When the climate turned dry again and food supplies dwindled, Marquet says, the population dropped. The complex Chinchorro embalming practices also petered out around that time.
I found the story a bit confusing. If the climate was so dry that corpses didn't decompose, how was it wet enough to support a human population? Why weren't the corpses buried or burned in the first place? Were they burying the corpses in shallow graves and having them re-emerge for some reason?
Digging had not been invented because the shovel had not been invented - although that's a bit of a chicken and the egg story. :)
Why not burn the bodies? It's a desert. Not much wood around. So, the state of their technology only allowed shallow burials.
Finally, the mummification started at the start of the wet period. But that was likely a transition. So, when it slowly started to get wet, that civilization was at was commonly known as "Peak Body". Maybe it lead to mummification to avoid the rotting that all those bodies started to do?
Mummies are the zombies of the 1950's
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
What is the distance between the South American continent and the Afican continent,(at closest point) if Sea Level is 500 feet lower, and 10,000 years ago?
I'm thinking Continental Drift(an inch a year adds up), an Ice Age(caused sea level to be about 500 lower), and Reed Bundled boats(someone that didn't have a GPS then).
Everyone knows that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.
The most likely explanation is that Jesus brought over the technology while out touring on his Velociraptor or Dragon.