Saving Chilean mummies from climate change

At least two thousand years before the ancient Egyptians began mummifying their pharaohs, a hunter-gatherer people called the Chinchorro living along the coast of modern-day Chile and Peru developed elaborate methods to mummify not just elites but all types of community members -- men, women, children, and even unborn fetuses. Radiocarbon dating as far back as 5050 BC makes them the world's oldest human-made mummies.

But after staying remarkably well preserved for millennia, during the past decade many of the Chinchorro mummies have begun to rapidly degrade. To discover the cause, and a way to stop the deterioration, Chilean preservationists turned to a Harvard scientist with a record of solving mysteries around threatened cultural heritage artifacts.

Nearly 120 Chinchorro mummies are housed in the collection of the University of Tarapacá's archeological museum in Arica, Chile. That's where scientists noticed that the mummies were starting to visibly degrade at an alarming rate. In some cases, specimens were literally turning into a black ooze.

"In the last ten years, the process has accelerated," said Marcela Sepulveda, professor of archaeology in the anthropology department and Archeometric Analysis and Research Laboratories at the University of Tarapacá who specializes in materials characterization, during a recent visit to Cambridge. "It is very important to get more information about what's causing this and to get the university and national government to do what's necessary to preserve the Chinchorro mummies for the future."

What was eating the mummies? To help solve that riddle Sepulveda called on experts in Europe and North America, including Ralph Mitchell, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Biology, Emeritus at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Mitchell has used his knowledge of environmental microbiology to pinpoint the causes of decay in everything from historic manuscripts to the walls of King Tutankhamen's tomb to the Apollo space suits.

"We knew the mummies were degrading but nobody understood why," Mitchell said. "This kind of degradation has never been studied before. We wanted to answer two questions: what was causing it and what could we do to prevent further degradation?"

Preparing the mummies "was a complicated process that took time -- and amazing knowledge," Sepulveda said. The Chinchorro would first extract the brains and organs, then reconstruct the body with fiber, fill the skull cavity with straw or ash, and use reeds to sew it back together, connecting jaw to cranium. A stick kept the spine straight and tethered to the skull. The embalmer restored the skin in place -- sometimes patching the corpse together using the skin of sea lions or other animals. Finally, the mummy was covered with a paste, the color of which archeologists assign to different epochs in the more than 3,000 years of Chinchorro mummy-making -- black made from manganese was used in the oldest ones, red made from ocher in later examples, and brown mud had been applied to the most recent finds.

The first thing that Mitchell and his team needed was physical evidence, something Sepulveda supplied in the form of samples -- both degrading skin and undamaged skin -- taken from mummies in the museum's collection. The task of receiving the unusual shipment fell to Alice DeAraujo, a research fellow in Mitchell's lab who also played a lead role in analyzing the samples as part of her thesis for a master's degree in biology at Harvard Extension School.

It became apparent to DeAraujo and Mitchell that the degradation was microbial. Now they needed to determine if there was a microbiome on the mummy skin that was responsible.

"The key word that we use a lot in microbiology is opportunism," Mitchell said. "With many diseases we encounter, the microbe is in our body to begin with, but when the environment changes it becomes an opportunist."

Mitchell had a series of questions: "Is the skin microbiome from these mummies different from normal human skin? Is there a different population of microbes? Does it behave differently? The whole microbiology of these things is unknown."

The pair isolated microbes present in the samples of both the degrading skin and uncompromised skin. But since there was only a limited amount of mummy skin, they needed a surrogate for the next step: culturing the organisms in the lab and testing them to see what happened when the samples were exposed to different humidity levels. Using pig skin acquired from colleagues at Harvard Medical School, DeAraujo began a series of tests. After determining that the pig skin samples began to degrade after 21 days at high humidity, she repeated the results using mummy skin, confirming that elevated moisture in the air triggers damage to the skin. This finding was consistent with something that Sepulveda reported: humidity levels in Arica where the archeological museum is located have been on the rise.

DeAraujo's analysis suggested that the ideal humidity range for mummies kept in the museum was between 40 percent and 60 percent. Any higher and degradation could occur; any lower and equally damaging acidification was likely. Further testing is needed to assess the impact of temperature and light.

The results will help museum staff fine-tune temperature, humidity, and light levels to preserve the mummies in their extensive collection, Mitchell said. But he is keen to solve an even larger challenge.

According to Sepulveda and others there are large numbers -- perhaps hundreds -- of Chinchorro mummies buried just beneath the sandy surface in the valleys throughout the region. They are often uncovered during new construction and public works projects. Rising humidity levels may make the unrecovered mummies susceptible to damage as well. While the degradation process is relatively controlled at the museum, it is worse in sites exposed to the natural environment.

"What about all of the artifacts out in the field?" Mitchell asks. "How do you preserve them outside the museum? Is there a scientific answer to protect these important historic objects from the devastating effects of climate change?"

The solution to the challenge of preserving the 7,000-year-old Chinchorro mummies, Mitchell believes, may draw from 21st-century science. "You have these bodies out there and you're asking the question: How do I stop them from decomposing? It's almost a forensic problem."

Others who contributed to the research include Vivien Standen, Bernardo Arriaza, and Mariela Santos of the University of Tarapacá, and Philippe Walter from the Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale in Paris.

The work was supported by Harvard SEAS, Consejo Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica in Chile and the Universidad de Tarapacá.
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Reference:

Science Daily. 2015. “Saving Chilean mummies from climate change”. Science Daily. Posted: March 9, 2015. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150309093212.htm

Earthquakes, tsunamis and a naked tribe. It’s Chile – and not just the Galápagos – that inspired Darwin

“‘The climate is certainly wretched: the summer solstice was now passed, yet every day snow fell on the hills, and in the valleys there was rain, accompanied by sleet. From the damp and boisterous state of the atmosphere, not cheered by a gleam of sunshine, one fancied the climate even worse than it really was.”

Charles Darwin, writing in December 1832 on his arrival in Tierra del Fuego aboard the Beagle during his five-year around-the-world trip, makes clear that he was not immediately taken with this, the southernmost region on Earth. Not surprising, since this South American archipelago situated at the foot of Argentina and Chile, has been inviting lurid descriptions ever since Europeans first came upon it in 1520. Richard Walter, a chaplain on a military excursion in 1740, was similarly struck by the area around Cape Horn. “Nothing can be imagined more savage and gloomy than the whole aspect of this coast.” When Darwin returned to the same area two years later in 1834, having diverted to the Falkland Islands andArgentina as part of Captain Robert Fitzroy’s principal task to map the coasts of southern South America, nothing much had changed. “We anchored in the fine bay of Port Famine. It was now the beginning of winter, and I never saw a more cheerless prospect; the dusky woods, piebald with snow, could be only seen indistinctly through a drizzling hazy atmosphere.” Names like Port Famine, Desolation Island and Desolation Bay speak of a hostile and barren region, and for years many explorers and expeditions met their end here.

For Darwin, invited aboard the Beagle as a companion for Fitzroy, the voyage would prove “the most important in my life and has determined my whole career”. But much of the analysis and reporting of Darwin’s voyage is consumed by his time in the Galápagos Islands, a critical period that would do much to informOn The Origin of Species, published in 1859, and the urtext of evolutionary biology. Much less attention has been devoted to the time (about a third of the total spent on the voyage) in Tierra del Fuego and other parts of Chile. But that may be about to change.

Among those in the vanguard of asserting the importance of Chile in Darwin’s thinking is Alvaro Fischer, director of the Foundation for Science and Evolution in Santiago. For Fischer, it has become something of a mission to restate the significance of Darwin’s time in Chile. “Since Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, and apparently – and I stress ‘apparently’ – there is no direct link between what he did and recorded while in Chile with the theory he later developed, that part of his trip has been greatly ignored.

“Most people believe that it was his visit to the Galápagos Islands, from 15 September through 30 October 1835, which triggered his ideas on evolution, as a result of the varieties of finches he saw on the different islands of the archipelago. But even that is not the correct story, since it was only much later, already back in England, when he related the finches with evolution in the way we now understand it.” What was on offer to Darwin in Chile was one of the most remarkable landscapes in the world. From the Chilean sub-Antarctic to Patagonia; from the virtually untouched island of Chiloé up to the arid north; and from the foothills of the Andes to peaks of the longest mountain range in the world, Chile offered an extraordinary range of habitats, climates, species and geology.

Fischer is in no doubt that the elemental Chilean landscape must have informed Darwin’s later thinking. “His stay in Chile was very important because it gave him first-hand experience of geological events – a massive earthquake and tsunami, a volcanic eruption, glaciers breaking down as they got to the sea, and seabed fossils on mountaintops – which had a strongly impact on him emotionally, probably reinforcing his hunch that together with geological variation, a similar evolutionary process should be taking place at the species level. Also, he encountered the Fuegians in Chile, directly influencing the way he would, later on, explain humans within the evolutionary context he developed.” If relatively little is known of Darwin’s time in Chile, even less is known about his extraordinary contact with the remarkable Fuegians, a tribe of canoe people who are thought to have lived in Tierra del Fuego for more than 7,000 years. Though that hardly stood them in good stead – barely 100 years of contact with westerners quickly put an end to their incredible story. About a third of their number were wiped out when four Argentinian naval vessels arrived in Tierra del Fuego in 1882 and left behind a measles virus for which they had no immunity.

Darwin recorded his first sight of the Fuegians (they were, more correctly, members of the Yaghan tribe, one of four tribes in Tierra del Fuego) on 17 December, 1832. “In the afternoon we anchored in the Bay of Good Success. While entering we were saluted in a manner becoming the inhabitants of this savage land. A group of Fuegians were perched on a wild point overhanging the sea; and as we passed by, they sprang up and sent forth a loud and sonorous shout. It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I had ever beheld.”

The Yaghan were a nomadic tribe, living mostly on canoes and moving across the bays and channels of Tierra del Fuego depending on weather, tides and, most importantly, food. Theirs was an almost exclusively sea-based diet of sea lions and shellfish. And for 7,000 years it served the southernmost inhabitants of the Earth well. Despite the savage cold and prodigious rain, the Yaghan sported no clothes and when on land only bunkered down in flimsy wigwams. Darwin’s incredulity at the way they lived is clear from his writing, which peaks with wonder at what he sees – not least their seemingly extraordinary ability to survive in one of the harshest climates. “These Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbour not far distant a woman, who was suckling a recently born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked child.” There has been much speculation about how they survived the extreme temperatures, though Tierra del Fuego offers a clue, so named because early explorers noted the fires that burned constantly along the shores of the archipelago. Darwin also noted that the Yaghan adopted a squat position when stationary, to reduce exposure to wind and rain.

Professor Patience Schell, chair of Hispanic studies at the University of Aberdeen, believes that it wasn’t until later in life that Darwin’s time in Chile, and contact with the canoe tribe, came into focus. “When Darwin was an old man, he looked back on his time aboard the Beagle, and reflected that the forests of Tierra del Fuego and meeting the ‘naked savages’ of Tierra del Fuego were unforgettable experiences. The landscape of glaciers, fjords and forests in Tierra del Fuego certainly awed him, and made him feel small against the power of nature, but his encounters with the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego were also extremely important.

“He had already become acquainted with three indigenous people from the region, who were aboard the Beagle returning home. The contrast between the indigenous people on the Beagle, who had been Europeanised in their customs, and the local indigenous people, whose subsistence depended on hunting and gathering in the cold waters and woods of the region, demonstrated to him how adaptable human beings were.”

Though it was not till later that his observations from Tierra del Fuego played out in his later work, his early deliberations on the Yaghan suggest that even then he was ruminating on the survival of the fittest, as is clear when he wrote in December 1832. “Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals. “Their country is a broken mass of wild rock, lofty hills, and useless forests. Nature, by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his country.”

For Fischer, this contact with early humans in Tierra del Fuego was of lasting import: “The experience of living among the Fuegians was a long lasting one for Darwin, which allowed him, 35 years later, to describe emotions as a human universal, thus laying the foundation for modern evolutionary psychology, developed at the end of the 19th century. Meeting the Fuegians became, eventually, scientifically relevant.”

But for Schell, too, Darwin’s time in Chile remains mysteriously under-reported. For her, the geological significance of the events he recorded were fundamental to his theories of how the Earth evolved. Schell points out that because the theory of natural selection accounts for biological diversity, and Darwin’s most important experiences in Chile were geological, his time in Chile is often overlooked. “The 1835 earthquake and finding the fossilised shells and forests in the high Andes were dramatic evidence of how the Earth had changed (and continued to change) over innumerable years, providing the timeframe for evolution. In these moments, while still in Chile, Darwin realised he was seeing vital clues to the history of the world and evidence of the Earth’s vast age, which was the debate in geology at the time. The Galápagos finches were one example of evolution in process, but he did not actually realise the importance of these birds until he was back in the UK. The Chilean experiences were a catalyst for his thinking.”

But it is not just Darwin’s time in Tierra del Fuego that is drawing renewed interest to the Chilean sub-Antarctic. Since 2006, when Unesco identified part of the Cape Horn as a biosphere reserve, the region’s scientific importance has steadily increased. And on Sunday Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, will visit Cape Horn and open a research centre dedicated to highlighting and researching the diversity of mosses and lichens that so struck Darwin in Cape Horn. Ricardo Rozzi, a Chilean ecologist and co-founder of the Omora Ethnobotanical Park, where many of these lichen and fungi can be seen, describes them as the “miniature forests of Cape Horn”. Visitors are encouraged to sweep through the park with a hand lens to better study and understand the role played by these tiny organisms.

Rozzi was also the driving force behind the creation of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve and makes an impressive case for saying that this area is among the unique regions on Earth. There is no equivalent land mass between these southerly latitudes anywhere else in the southern hemisphere, nor any equivalent in the north.

“Here is the limit of the forests in the world. The southernmost forested point of New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere at a latitude of close to 47 degrees south. Below that, the only forests in the southern hemisphere are in southwestern South America in the Magellanic sub-Antarctic eco-region, which reaches a latitude of almost 56 degrees south, which consequently has no geographical replica in the world.”

And yet, this region attracts relatively little scientific scrutiny or money when compared to the research on land and species in Europe or North America. An analysis of scientific research across different latitudes in both north and southern hemispheres shows a tiny percentage of work that focuses on this southernmost part of the Earth. That is one of the major reasons for the establishment of the new Cape Horn Biocultural Centre in Puerto Williams (the tiny capital of the Chilean Antarctic province). This centre, to be opened by Bachelet, will dedicate itself to investigating, conserving and managing the unique fauna for the benefit of future generations.

Bachelet’s visit and Rozzi’s determined campaign to recognise the value of the area is starting to bear fruit. A recent expedition organised by Red Alta Dirección of Santiago’s Universidad del Desarrollo attracted leading scientists from the US and the UK. At the core of that trip was highlighting the scientific importance of Cape Horn, and drawing attention to the legacy left by Darwin’s visits.

As Rozzi says: “After the second world war, In the Galápagos there has been a rich scientific narrative built on Darwin’s work in the archipelago, developed by individual scientists and the Charles Darwin Research Station there. In contrast, Cape Horn has remained comparatively understudied until the end of the 20th century. But we want to collaborate with the Galápagos Charles Darwin station and expand on Darwin’s legacy in Cape Horn by establishing the Cape Horn Biocultural Centre.” That work starts today.
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Mulholland, John. 2015. “Earthquakes, tsunamis and a naked tribe. It’s Chile – and not just the Galápagos – that inspired Darwin”. The Guardian. Posted: January 11, 2015. Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/11/chile-biocultural-centre-charles-darwin-scientific-research

Chilean Mummies Reveal Signs of Arsenic Poisoning

People of numerous pre-Columbian civilizations in northern Chile, including the Incas and the Chinchorro culture, suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning due to their consumption of contaminated water, new research suggests.

Previous analyses showed high concentrations of arsenic in the hair samples of mummies from both highland and coastal cultures in the region. However, researchers weren't able to determine whether the people had ingested arsenic or if the toxic element in the soil had diffused into the mummies' hair after they were buried.

In the new study, scientists used a range of high-tech methods to analyze hair samples from a 1,000- to 1,500-year-old mummy from the Tarapacá Valley in Chile's Atacama Desert. They determined the high concentration of arsenic in the mummy's hair came from drinking arsenic-laced water and, possibly, eating plants irrigated with the toxic water.

"In Chile, you have these sediments that are rich in arsenic because of copper-mining activities in the highlands," which expose arsenic and other pollutants, said lead study author Ioanna Kakoulli, an archaeological scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "When it rains, the arsenic can leach out into the rivers."

Analyzing hair

In fields ranging from forensics to archaeology, hair is widely used to gain insight into the lives of modern and past peoples. Unlike other biological samples, such as bone and skin tissue that change over time, hair remains stable after it forms (keratinizes). This feature, along with hair's steady growth rate, means that it can provide a chronological record of the substances that previously circulated in the blood.

In the past, scientists have analyzed the hair samples of the mummies from the pre-Columbian populations that lived in Chile's Atacama Desert between A.D.
500 and 1450. The remains showed patterns of chronic poisoning, which some researchers have suspected was due to these populations' consumption of water contaminated with arsenic. But the methods didn't allow them to determine how the arsenic got into the mummies' hair.

"They didn't map where the arsenic is precipitated on the hair — they just took it and dissolved it," Kakoulli told Live Science. With this technique, you cannot tell if the arsenic wound up in the hair externally, or if it was ingested and traveled through the bloodstream first, she said.

To learn more about the possible arsenic poisoning of the ancient people from northern Chile, Kakoulli and her colleagues looked at a naturally preserved mummythat was buried in the TR40-A cemetery in the Tarapacá Valley of the Atacama Desert. Using portable techniques that were noninvasive and nondestructive, they imaged and analyzed the mummy's skin, clothes and hair, as well as the soil encrusting the mummy.

As expected, the team detected arsenic in the mummy's hair and in the soil. They also discovered skin conditions indicative of arsenic poisoning. Though these findings were suggestive of arsenic ingestion, they weren't definitive, so the researchers collected hair samples to analyze further in the lab.

Finding the source

Kakoulli and her colleagues imaged the hair samples with a very-high-resolution scanning electron microscope. They also subjected the samples to various tests with the synchrotron light source — a large particle accelerator that analyzes materials with intense, focused X-ray beams — at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, allowing them to map the distribution of the elements and minerals in the hair.

Their tests revealed a uniform, radial distribution of arsenic in the hair. If the hair had been contaminated from arsenic in the soil, the toxic element would have only coated the surface, Kakoulli said. Comparisons of the arsenic in the soil and hair also showed the soil contained much lower concentrations of the element.

Furthermore, the dominant form of arsenic in the hair was a type called arsenic III, while the inorganic arsenic in surface water and groundwateris mostly arsenic V. Studies have suggested that the body "biotransforms" ingested arsenic into arsenic III.

"The results are consistent with modern epidemiological studies of arsenic poisoning by ingestion," Kakoulli said, adding that the technological approach used in the study could prove useful to forensic investigations and toxicity assessments in archaeology.

The team is now using the same approach to see if the ancient people of the Tarapacá Valley used certain hallucinogens, as some individuals were buried with exotic Amazonian seeds and various hallucinogenic paraphernalia. If the people buried with the items didn't use the hallucinogens, it would suggest they were shaman or doctors who used the hallucinogenic plants to aid other people, the researchers said.

"It then becomes a question about the level of interaction they had with the people of the Amazon, because the seeds aren't from Chile," Kakoulli said. "They would've had to have known the properties of the seeds and where to get them."
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References:

Castro, Joseph. 2014. “Chilean Mummies Reveal Signs of Arsenic Poisoning”. Live Science. Posted: April 15, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/44838-chilean-mummies-show-arsenic-poisoning.html

Inca children were drugged with coca and alcohol before sacrifice

Scientists from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen have examined the bodies of three 500-year-old Inca children along with scientists from Bradford University in England. This has given new, detailed knowledge about the old Ince ritual 'capacocha' which also involved sacrificing humans. The results were published recently in the journal PNAS.

One of the examined mummies is the 13-year-old girl, 'The Llullaillaco Maiden', named after the 6,379 meters tall volcanic mountain, Llullaillaco, where she was found frozen close to the mountain's top. The two other bodies are a boy and a girl around 4 or 5 years old found in separate graves near The Maiden. The mummified bodies are all remarkably well-preserved and have been frozen for nearly 500 years near the top of the mountain, which is found on the border between Chile and Argentina.

"Now we know more precisely what happened in an Inca sacrifice, for example to what extent coca and alcohol were used as part of the Inca ritual in the months and weeks preceding a sacrifice. It is very satisfactory that we with our scientific methods can help uncover the unique circumstances regarding a number of very central aspects of ancient Inca culture," says Professor Niels Lynnerup from The Department of Forensic Medicine, who, along with PhD student Chiara Villa, has analysed a number of CT scans of the mummies.

New light on Inca child sacrifice

What we have known so far about the religious capacocha ritual from the Inca Empire, was derived from written sources from the Spanish colonial power in South America. The new analyses of the frozen bodies give new knowledge about the practice of the rituals, for example the child sacrifices.

The scientists' analyses show that the three mummified children had all ingested both coca and alcohol prior to their death. The girl, 'The Maiden', was even found with chewed coca leaves in her mouth, and the analyses show that her consumption of coca increased sharply twelve months before her death, and then peaked six months later. The analyses also show that her alcohol consumption peaked during the last few weeks before her death.

"We made CT analyses and have produced three-dimensional visualisations of the mummified girl's organs and the contents of her mouth cavity. From that we could establish her age relatively precisely just as the coca leaf stuck between her teeth and in her cheek also could be identified. Finally, because of the amazing preservation we could also determine the contents of the intestines, and thereby establish a reasonable time of her final meal," explains Niels Lynnerup.

The other examinations show a significant consumption of cocaine from coca leaves and alcohol in the time leading to the sacrifice. Compared to analyses of her hair this creates a good picture of her life in the two years before her death.

"We can see that the ritual sacrifice has been prepared for a long time and that sustained consumption of drugs apparently was a part of the preparations prior to the sacrifice itself," says Niels Lynnerup.

Ritual use of cocaine and alcohol

Dr. Andrew Wilson is an associate professor at the Department for Forensic and Archaeological Sciences at University of Bradford. He compares in value the new research results with the historic accounts from the Spanish colonial time.

The scientists can with some certainty say that 'The Maiden' was selected as sacrifice twelve months before her death. Also, she was most likely implicated in a number of rituals involving use of coca and alcohol, and both drugs were given to her under supervision for some time.

There was apparently no indication of physical violence against the children, but coca and alcohol have most likely precipitated their death, which was inevitable in the altitudes where they were found.

The circumstances during her final few weeks with 'The Maiden' showing consistently increased levels of coca and alcohol consumption compared the younger children show that there must have been a need to sedate her in the last weeks of her life.

This conclusion is verified by the position in which 'The Maiden' was found. Hun was found sitting cross-legged with her head sloping forward and her arms resting loosely on her lap. Her head piece was intact and the objects surrounding her were undisturbed. This leads the scientists to believe that she was placed in the tomb, heavily influenced by drugs.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2013. “Inca children were drugged with coca and alcohol before sacrifice”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 6, 2013. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/uoc-icw080513.php

Oldest mine in Americas found in Chile

Archaeologists have discovered an iron oxide mine from 12,000 years ago in northern Chile, making it the oldest mine yet discovered in all the Americas, the El Mercurio daily says.

The iron oxide mined by the Huentelauquen Indians was used as a pigment in dying cloth and in religious rituals, revealing an unexpected sophistication in what was previously considered a primitive group of people, University of Chile researcher Diego Salazar said on Sunday.

"The fact they developed a mine shows the importance religion had in their lives, because iron oxide was not used as food, was not bought or sold," he told the daily.
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The ancient mine was discovered near the town of Taltal, in the Antofagasta region, 1,100km north of Santiago, in October 2008, but its antiquity was not determined until tests were conducted this year in US and Polish laboratories.

Named "San Ramon 15", the mine was exploited heavily between around 10,000 BC and 2,000 BC. It yielded over the millennia a total of 2,000 tonnes of pigment extracted from 700 cubic metres of rock.

Researchers also found a treasure trove of stone and conch mining tools in the area.

"We've found more than 1,000 hammers ... but considering the amount of material we have yet to sift through, the real number could rise to several thousands," said archaeologist Hernan Salinas.

Before this find, the oldest mine in the Americas was 2,500 years old and located in the United States. The world's most ancient mine is in South Africa and is about 40,000 years old.
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References:

AFP. 2010. "Oldest mine in Americas found in Chile". Sydney Morning Herald. Posted: December 6, 2010. Available online: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/oldest-mine-in-americas-found-in-chile-20101206-18lt7.html

Forensics Helps ID Victims of Murderous Dictator Pinochet

A new analysis of skeletons in a cemetery in Chile is helping medical examiners and others identify those who were killed or "disappeared" during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990).

The results also may prove useful in identifying victims of the Chile earthquake, the researchers say.

While complete and well-preserved skeletons are relatively easy to identify, remains are often fragmented for natural or other reasons, making them tricky to ID.

The Pinochet deaths were part of a regime mandate "to cleanse the country of socialist ideologies while raising new economic and social programs," the researchers write in a forthcoming issue of the journal Forensic Science International.

When he realized people were onto him, that he was burying people in mass graves, [Pinochet] would go back with excavators and take the remains and dump them into the Pacific Ocean, study researcher Ann Ross, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at NC State, told LiveScience. "Those were one of the major things that hindered investigations."

That meant hundreds of bodies were left unidentified.

Whether or not the work will be useful in IDing victims from the earthquake in Chile will depend on how complete those remains are, since the equation would only be needed for fragmentary remains, Ross said.

For the past decade, forensic researchers like Ross have been developing identification criteria, such as height, build and other physical characteristics that can vary significantly from population to population and are important when attempting to identify human remains.

In the new study, Ross and Maria Jose Manneschi of the University of Chile, Santiago, evaluated remains of 139 females and 137 males from a 20th-century Chilean cemetery (Cementerio General at the University of Chile)to find these population-specific skeletal features. Then they developed stature criteria to translate lengths of long bones, such as the femur or the arm's tibia, into an individual's height.

Past methods for determining height are based primarily on Europeans and these overestimate stature for Chileans, the researchers found.

To figure out sex, the researchers measured the diameter of the head of the upper arm bone (humerus), femur head diameter and the circumference of the femur, resulting in accuracies of 87 percent, 86percent and 82 percent, respectively. This measure would only be needed if the pelvis were not available, as would be the case for fragmented remains from the Pinochet regime or even a natural disaster that buries and scatters remains.

Ross said she is very excited that the Human Rights Program, Medical Legal Service, Chile (Chilean government) is using the results to identify Pinochet's victims.
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References:

Bryner, Jeanna. 2010. "Forensics Helps ID Victims of Murderous Dictator Pinochet". Live Science. Posted: September 14, 2010. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/culture/identification-chile-earthquake-victims-biological-profiling-100914.html