How science is giving voice to mummies such as Otzi the Iceman

Researchers recently managed to recreate the voice of 5,300-year-old Ötzi the iceman by recreating his vocal tract. The technology is promising and could be used to digitally produce the voices of other mummified remains. But how does it work and what else could it be used for?

When you make a vowel sound (aah, ee, oh, ooh and so on), three parts of your anatomy play important roles: your lungs, your larynx and the tube made from your throat and mouth. Your lungs provide the airflow that powers the sound. If the flow becomes too weak it will turn into a whisper instead.

Your larynx, or voice box, sits about midway between your lungs and your lips, just behind your Adam's apple. The part you can feel from the outside is the cartilage protecting and supporting the vocal folds (or vocal cords) inside. These are a pair of soft, lip-like structures that run from your Adam's apple to the back of your windpipe.

You can bring these folds firmly together across your windpipe to close it off completely – you do this when you cough or choke. You can also bring them across so they just touch, and if you do that and then breathe out they vibrate in much the same way your lips do if you blow a raspberry. These vibrating vocal folds are the source of sound for a vowel. If you say aah while you press your fingers gently either side of your Adam's apple you can feel the vibrations in your larynx.

Everyone's voice has a natural pitch based on the size of their larynx and in particular the length and thickness of their vocal folds. Your natural pitch is what comes out when your throat muscles are fairly relaxed and you don't try to speak too loudly. Women have shorter, thinner vocal folds than men and so they have generally a higher natural pitch.

If your windpipe ended just above the larynx then you would just be able to produce buzzing sounds. The lowest frequency in the buzzing sound is part of your natural pitch, but there is also energy at many higher frequencies included in that sound. It's the airway that shapes the buzz sound into a particular vowel.

We can think of this airway as a tube. You can change the length of that tube by protruding your lips, as you do when you say ooh, or by moving your tongue. When you say aah, your tongue rolls back out of your mouth and into your throat so the lower half of the tube is narrow and the upper half is wide, for example.

Every tube has a series of resonance frequencies that relates to its length and its cross-sectional area. These are the frequencies of sound that pass along the tube most easily and with least energy loss, so if we have a buzz sound generated at the larynx end of the tube, the sound at the lips' end will be the original buzz, but with the resonance frequencies of the tube sounding much louder than any other frequencies in the buzz.

When you listen to a vowel sound it's these resonance frequencies you are using to decide which vowel you are hearing. Changing the position of your tongue and lips changes the length and cross-section of the tube, which changes the resonances and ultimately the vowel you hear. Ötzi and his peers To know how Ötzi the Iceman sounded we need to know how long and how thick his vocal folds were – that tells us about the natural pitch of his voice. We also need to know how long his airway was and about the cross-sectional area to work out the resonance frequencies. His tongue and lips will have been preserved in one particular position which will only give us information about a single vowel sound. So if we are to work out how he sounded for other vowels we also need to know a bit about the size of his tongue and where it joined to his windpipe. Knowing this allows us to work out the other possible tube-shapes he could make and calculate their related resonances.

But how can you actually work all this out? It's pretty simple, all you really need is a CT scan, which uses X-rays to create detailed images of the inside of the body. This allows us to measure all these anatomical dimensions. We can then use that information to make a computer model to synthesise what his voice might have sounded like.

The first use of X-rays to explore mummified remains is thought to have been by Walter Konig in 1896, very soon after X-rays were first discovered. CT scans have been conducted on mummies for more than 40 years, with the popularity of the technique increasing rapidly over the last decade or so. However, the study of Ötzi the Iceman seems to be the first time the CT data has been used to synthesise a voice.

In a study of 137 mummies published in the Lancet in 2013, CT scans were used to show that, contrary to much current thinking, disease of the arteries was common in many pre-industrial populations. For speech, the CT scanning technique could similarly provide us with valuable information about the dimensions of the vocal system for any mummified body. And with enough different sets of scans we might be able to track trends in voice over time, such as changes in the typical natural frequency due to nutrition and body size.

One of the big open questions about speech is exactly when the ability to communicate in this way evolved, and there is quite a controversy about whether Neanderthals, for example, could speak. Sadly the CT scanning techniques can't help us with this as they rely on the preservation of soft tissue. The earliest hominid remains are fossilised which means only the bone structure has survived. The absence of lung, larynx, airway or tongue information in these fossils makes our ability to predict their capacity for speech very much less certain. At about 5,300-years-old Ötzi is the earliest European mummy in existence, but deliberately mummified bodies as old as 7,000 years have been found in South America. Spirit Cave Man, found in North America in 1940, has been dated at 9,000-years-old, so if CT scans were made, even older voices than Ötzi's could perhaps be heard one day.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “How science is giving voice to mummies such as Otzi the Iceman”. Phys.org. Posted: October 3, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-science-voice-mummies-otzi-iceman.html

Bronze Age Britons Mummified Their Dead, Analysis Reveals

The rainy climate of the British Isles might not seem like the best place to preserve human bodies through time, but a new scientific analysis of ancient bones reveals that Bronze Age Britain was a mummy hotspot.

Specifically, archaeologists found that human remains had been preserved in various ways during the Bronze Age, a period lasting from about 2200 B.C. to 750 B.C.

At first glance, the analyzed skeletal remains might not look like mummies, the researchers said. That's because the region's wet climate has long since disintegrated the fleshy tissue, including the skin and organs, from the human bones found buried in the ground. But archaeologists, who have uncovered a number of Bronze Age skeletons over the years, now can analyze the bones to determine whether they were once mummified, the researchers said in a study. 

"The results demonstrate that Bronze Age populations throughout Britain practiced mummification on a proportion of their dead, although the criteria for selection are not yet certain," the researchers wrote.

When people die, their gut bacteria — which usually aid in digestion — turn against them.

"After you die and your cells start to break down, the kind of internal gates that keep your bacteria within their locales break down as well," said study lead researcher Thomas Booth, a postdoctoral student of Earth sciences at the Natural History Museum in London. Booth completed the research when he was a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Sheffield in England.

"Your bacteria — they have no loyalty," Booth told Live Science. "They start to attack your soft tissues in the first few hours after death."

These gut bacteria can eventually get into the bones, leaving behind microscopic tunnels as they devour proteins in a dead person's skeleton, research suggests.

Archaeologists have seen evidence of this bacterial tunneling — called bacterial bioerosion — in multitudes of bones. But if the body has been mummified, or purposely preserved with natural and man-made techniques, the bones tend to have few or no microscopic tunnels, Booth said.

When he and his colleagues looked at skeletons from the Bronze Age in Britain, "they were showing only a little bit of bacterial attack, or none at all," Booth said. "And, therefore, the best explanation for Bronze Age remains is that they had been mummified, but the preserved soft tissue subsequently degraded away because of the climate."

Bronze Age bodies

The researchers did a microscopic analysis on the bones of 301 people, retrieved from 25 European archaeological sites. In most cases, they looked at the femur, a long bone in the leg, Booth said.

Of these, 34 individuals were from the Bronze Age. More than half of the samples showed evidence that the person had been buried immediately, but 16 had "excellent bone preservation," compared with mummies from Ireland and Yemen, indicating that these Bronze Age people were mummified after death, the researchers wrote. 

The finding gives researchers a glimpse of howBronze Age people treated the dead, and "opens up how we approach the Bronze Age in Europe," Booth said. It's likely the Bronze Age Britons used a variety of ways to mummify the dead, including temporarily placing them in bogs, smoking them over a fire or removing their organs after death, he said.

The study is the first time researchers have used this type of analysis to identify specific funerary treatments in archaeological bones, he said. It also reminds other scientists that "even if you don't have preserved soft tissue at a site, it doesn't mean that people weren't mummifying at the site," Booth said.

The study was published online today (Sept. 30) in the journal Antiquity.
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Reference:

Geggel, Laura. 2016. “Bronze Age Britons Mummified Their Dead, Analysis Reveals”. Live Science. Posted: September 30, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/52349-bronze-age-britain-mummies.html

Unusual use of blue pigment found in ancient mummy portraits

Mostly untouched for 100 years, 15 Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits and panel paintings were literally dusted off by scientists and art conservators from Northwestern University and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology as they set out to investigate the materials the painters used nearly 2,000 years ago.

What the researchers discovered surprised them, because it was hidden from the naked eye: the ancient artists used the pigment Egyptian blue as material for underdrawings and for modulating color -- a finding never before documented. Because blue has to be manufactured, it typically is reserved for very prominent uses, not hidden under other colors.

"This defies our expectations for how Egyptian blue would be used," said Marc Walton, research associate professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern and an expert on the color blue. "The discovery changes our understanding of how this particular pigment was used by artists in the second century A.D. I suspect we will start to find unusual uses of this colorant in a lot of different works of art, such as wall paintings and sculpture."

The best Roman-era painters tried to emulate Greek painters, who were considered the masters of the art form. Before the Greek period, Egyptian blue was used everywhere throughout the Mediterranean -- in frescoes, on temples, to depict the night sky, as decoration. But when the Greeks came along, their palette relied almost exclusively on yellow, white, black and red.

"When you look at the Tebtunis portraits we studied, that's all you see, those four colors," Walton said. "But when we started doing our analysis, all of a sudden we started to see strange occurrences of this blue pigment, which luminesces. We concluded that although the painters were trying hard not to show they were using this color, they were definitely using blue."

The study was published this month by Applied Physics A, a journal focused on materials science and processing. The research collaboration is part of the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS), for which Walton is a senior scientist.

"Our findings confirm the distinction between the visual and physical natures of artifacts -- expect the unexpected when you begin to analyze an artwork," said Jane L. Williams, a conservator at the Hearst Museum and a co-author, along with Walton, of the study. "We see how these artists manipulated a small palette of pigments, including this unusual use of Egyptian blue, to create a much broader spectrum of hues."

The researchers studied 11 mummy portraits and four panel painting fragments. The 15 paintings were excavated between December 1899 and April 1900 at the site of Tebtunis (now Umm el-Breigat) in the Fayum region of Egypt. They now are housed in the collections of the Hearst Museum at the University of California, Berkeley.

The fragile mummy portraits are extremely lifelike paintings of specific deceased individuals. Each portrait would be incorporated into the mummy wrappings and placed directly over the person's face, Williams explained.

While working on the conservation treatment of these paintings, Williams had many unanswered questions about their materials and techniques, but without a conservation science division at the Hearst Museum, she had limited means to investigate. Working with NU-ACCESS made a comprehensive technical survey of the paintings possible, Williams said.

Walton and his Northwestern team brought expertise in scientific analysis of cultural heritage materials and some of the latest technology for the non-destructive analysis of artworks to the Hearst Museum. The study quickly revealed some surprises.

The researchers uncovered the unexpected uses of Egyptian blue -- the first man-made pigment, inspired by lapis lazuli, the true blue -- using a routine battery of different analytical techniques, such as X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction. Six of the 15 paintings have the unusual use of blue, the researchers found.

The skilled painters employed blue for underdrawings, to modulate clothes, the shading on clothing and in other not necessarily intuitive uses of Egyptian blue, a pigment used for millennia before these paintings were made.

"We are speculating that the blue has a shiny quality to it, that it glistens a little when the light hits the pigment in certain ways," Walton said. "The artists could be exploiting these other properties of the blue color that might not necessarily be intuitive to us at first glance."

Research on these paintings, which is ongoing, will contribute to the international collaborative study project Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis and Research (APPEAR), initiated by the J. Paul Getty Museum. APPEAR aims to create an international digital database to compile historic, technical and scientific information on Roman Egyptian portraits.

"Our collaboration with NU-ACCESS makes it possible for the Hearst Museum to contribute to this project at the level of much larger museums, like the Getty or the British Museum, that have conservation science divisions," Williams said.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2015. “Unusual use of blue pigment found in ancient mummy portraits”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 26, 2015. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/nu-uuo082615.php

Ancient 'mummy' unearthed from 'lost medieval civilisation' near Arctic, claim scientists

New find at Zeleny Yar necropolis, which shows links to Persia, to be examined within weeks. 

The expected but as yet unopened human remains are wrapped in birch bark and it is likely that this 'cocoon' contains copper which - combined with the permafrost - produced an accidental mummification.

Archeologists working at the site, near Salekhard, say they suspect the remains are of a child or teenager from the 12th or 13th centuries AD.

The new find matches others discovered at Zeleny Yar, belonging to a mystery medieval civilization with links to Persia despite its position on the edge of the Siberian Arctic. If confirmed, it will be the first mummy from the civilisation found at this intriguing site since 2002. 

Fellow of the Research Center for the Study of Arctic, Alexander Gusev, said: 'We decided, after consulting with colleagues, to take the find as a whole piece, that is without opening it in the field, taking for further research in the city.'

Checks with a metal detector show there is indeed metal beneath the birch bark. 'The birch bark 'cocoon' is of 1.30 metres in length and about 30 cm at the widest part. 

'It follows the contours of the human body. If there is really a mummy, the head and skull are likely to be in good condition. We think it is a child, maybe a teenager. The find is now in Salekhard, in the Shemanovsky Museum, in special freezer. We plan to return to Salekhard on 15 July and immediately start the opening of the 'cocoon'.

Anthropologist  Evgeniya Syatova will be among those examining the discovery which, hope experts, will throw light on this tribe and its origins. She is leading archeologist at the Scientific and Production Center for the Protection and Use of Historical and Cultural Monuments, Sverdlovsk region.

'The mummification was natural,' said Mr Gusev. 'It was combination of factors: the bodies were overlain with copper sheets, parts of copper kettles and together with the permafrost, this it gave the preserving effect.'

Local Vesti.Yamal TV came to the site as the find was made. Their images show it being removed from the ground. 

Previously, archeologists found 34 shallow graves at the medieval site, including 11 bodies with shattered or missing skulls, and smashed skeletons.  Five mummies were found to be shrouded in copper, while also elaborately covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Among the graves found so far is just one female, a child, her face masked by copper plates. There are no adult women.  

Nearby were found three copper masked infant mummies - all males. They were bound in four or five copper hoops, several centimetres wide.

Similarly, a red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating. In his resting place, was an iron hatchet, furs, and a head buckle made of bronze depicting a bear.

The feet of the deceased are all pointing towards the Gorny Poluy River, a fact which is seen as having religious significance. The burial rituals are unknown to experts.

Artifacts included bronze bowls originating in Persia, some 3,700 miles to the south-west, dating from the tenth or eleventh centuries. One of the burials dates to 1282, according to a study of tree rings, while others are believed to be older. 

The researchers found by one of the adult mummies an iron combat knife, silver medallion and a bronze bird figurine. These are understood to date from the seventh to the ninth centuries. 

Unlike other burial sites in Siberia, for example in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains, or those of the Egyptian pharaohs, the purpose did not seem to be to mummify the remains, hence the claim that their preservation until modern times was an accident.

The soil in this spot is sandy and not permanently frozen. A combination of the use of copper, which prevented oxidation, and a sinking of the temperature in the 14th century, is behind the good condition of the remains today. 

Natalia Fyodorova, of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said previously: 'Nowhere in the world are there so many mummified remains found outside the permafrost or the marshes. 

'It is a unique archaeological site. We are pioneers in everything from taking away the object of sandy soil (which has not been done previously) and ending with the possibility of further research.'

In 2002, archeologists were forced to halt work at the site due to objections by locals on the Yamal peninsula, a land of reindeer and energy riches known to locals as 'the end of the earth'.

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Reference:

Liesowska, Anna. 2015. “Ancient 'mummy' unearthed from 'lost medieval civilisation' near Arctic, claim scientists”. Siberian Times. Posted: July 3, 2015. Available online: http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0290-ancient-mummy-unearthed-from-lost-medieval-civilisation-near-arctic-claim-scientists/

8 Million Dog Mummies Found in 'God of Death' Mass Grave

In ancient Egypt, so many people worshiped Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death, that the catacombs next to his sacred temple once held nearly 8 million mummified puppies and grown dogs, a new study finds.

The catacomb ceiling also contains the fossil of an ancient sea monster, a marine vertebrate that's more than 48 million years old, but it's unclear whether the Egyptians noticed the existence of the fossil when they built the tomb for the canine mummies, the researchers said.

Many of the mummies have since disintegrated or been disrupted by grave robbers and industrialists, who likely used the mummies for fertilizer. Even so, archaeologists have found enough evidence to suggest that the Anubis animal cult was a large part of the ancient Egyptian economy.

Ancient Egyptians built the temple and catacomb in honor of Anubis in Saqqara, a burial ground in the country's ancient capital of Memphis. Archaeologists have also found catacombs with the mummified remains of such other animals as the ibis (long-legged birds), hawk, baboon and bull, suggesting the ancient Egyptians also worshipped other animal gods.

"When you go to Saqqara now, you see an area of attractive desert with the pyramids sticking up and one or two of the prominent monuments" associated with animal cults, said the study's lead researcher, Paul Nicholson, a professor of archaeology at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.

But during the Late Period (747 to 332 B.C.), if one were to visit Saqqara, they would have seen temples, merchants selling statues of bronze deities, priests conducting ceremonies, people offering to interpret dreams and tour guides jostling for business, Nicholson said. Not far off, animal breeders likely raised dogs and other creatures that would later be mummified in honor of the gods.

"It would have been a busy place," Nicholson told Live Science. "A permanent community of people living there supported by the animal cults."

'Monstrous deities'

People have known about Egypt's penchant for mummifying animals for more than a thousand years. In about A.D. 130, the Roman poet Juvenal wrote, "Who has not heard, Volusius, of the monstrous deities those crazy Egyptians worship? One lot adores crocodiles, another worships the snake-gorged ibis … you’ll find whole cities devoted to cats, or to river-fish or dogs."

In 1897, French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan published a paper on the necropolis at Memphis, but spent little time detailing the canine catacombs. Other researchers have taken cursory looks at the dog catacombs, but the new study is the first to analyze it in depth, the researchers said.

In fact, de Morgan drew a map showing two dog catacombs, but drifting sand and an earthquake in 1992 have made the smaller of the two inaccessible. So Nicholson and his colleagues spent countless hours examining the larger catacomb, studying its rock walls and mummified contents.

"It's a very long series of dark tunnels," Nicholson said. "There is no natural light once you've gone into the forepart of the catacomb, and beyond that everything has to be lit with flashlights. It's really quite a spectacular thing."

The catacombs were likely built in the fourth century B.C., and were made out of stone from the Lower Eocene (about 56 million to 48 million years ago). So, it was a nice surprise when researchers discovered a fossil in the catacomb's ceiling. The fossil belonged to a long-extinct marine vertebrate, likely a relative of modern-day manatees and dugongs, Nicholson said.

"The ancient [Egyptian] quarry men may have been aware of it, or they may have gone straight through it, it's hard to know," said Nicholson, who is still researching the fossil with several of his colleagues.

The researchers explored every possible nook of the catacomb, which measures 568 feet (173 meters) down the center passageway, with a maximum width of 459 feet (140 m) from the branch corridors. In addition to canine mummies, they found the mummies of jackals, foxes, falcons, cats and mongoose, although about 92 percent of the remains belonged to dogs, they found. 

It's unclear why these other animals were buried in the dog catacomb, "but it is likely that all 'doglike' creatures were interchangeable, and that mythological reasons probably underlie the choice of cats and raptors," the researchers wrote in the study, published in the June issue of thejournal Antiquity.

Pilgrims visiting Saqqara likely viewed the display of the mummies as expressions of gratitude that the gods would appreciate, Nicholson said. Many of the dogs were only hours or days old when they were mummified. Some older dogs had more elaborate burials, and may have lived at the temple, but the younger pups were likely "bred — farmed if you will — for the cult," Nicholson said.

It's likely that these young pups were separated from their mothers and died from dehydration or starvation. "They probably weren't killed by physical action; we don't have evidence of broken necks that you get with cat burials," Nicholson said.

Animal cults remained popular from about 747 B.C. to 30 B.C., but they declined during the Roman occupation. The cults likely gained support because they were uniquely Egyptian, and may have been a symbol of national identity when the country was invaded by the people of other nations, such as the Libyans and Persians, the researchers wrote in the study.

"They set up a pilgrimage temple for almost any deity you can fancy," said Aidan Dodson, a senior research fellow in archaeology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who wasn't involved with the study.

He agreed that the temples and catacombs likely spurred trade and commerce.

"There's probably a vast amount of trade coming in, not only for producing the animal mummies, but people wanting food, lodging and drinks," Dodson said. "It's probably an ancestor of a mass tourism industry."
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Reference:

Geggel, Laura. 2015. “8 Million Dog Mummies Found in 'God of Death' Mass Grave”. Live Science. Posted: June 18, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51232-millions-of-dog-mummies-found.html

Tombs Filled with Dozens of Mummies Discovered in Peru

Dozens of tombs filled with up to 40 mummies each have been discovered around a 1,200-year-old ceremonial site in Peru's Cotahuasi Valley.

So far, the archaeologists have excavated seven tombs containing at least 171 mummies from the site, now called Tenahaha.

The tombs are located on small hills surrounding the site. "The dead, likely numbering in the low thousands, towered over the living," wrote archaeologist Justin Jennings, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a chapter of the newly published book "Tenahaha and the Wari State: A View of the Middle Horizon from the Cotahuasi Valley" (University of Alabama Press, 2015).

Before rigor mortis set in, the mummies had their knees put up to the level of their shoulders and their arms folded along their chest, the researchers found. The corpses were then bound with rope and wrapped in layers of textiles. The mummies range in age from neonate fetuses to older adults, with some of the youngest mummies (such as infants) being buried in jars. While alive the people appear to have lived in villages close to Tenahaha.

Bits and pieces of mummies

The mummified remains were in poor shape due to damage from water and rodents. Additionally, the researchers found some of the mummies were intentionally broken apart, their bones scattered and moved between the tombs. In one tomb the scientists found almost 400 isolated human remains, including teeth, hands and feet.

"Though many individuals were broken apart, others were left intact," Jennings wrote in the book. "People were moved around the tombs, but they sometimes remained bunched together, and even earth or rocks were used to separate some groups and individuals." Some grave goods were smashed apart, while others were left intact, he said.

Understanding the selective destruction of the mummies and artifacts is a challenge. "In the Andes, death is a process, it's not as if you bury someone and you're done," Jennings told Live Science in an interview.  For instance, the breakup and movement of the mummies may have helped affirm a sense of equality and community. "The breakup of the body, so anathema to many later groups in the Andes, would have been a powerful symbol of communitas (a community of equals)," wrote Jennings in the book. However, while this idea helps explain why some mummies were broken up, it doesn't explain why other mummies were left intact, Jennings added.

A changing land

Radiocarbon dates and pottery analysis indicate the site was in use between about A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000, with the Inca rebuilding part of the site at a later date.

Tenahaha, with its storerooms and open-air enclosures for feasting and tombs for burying the dead, may have helped villages in the Cotahuasi Valley deal peacefully with the challenges Peru was facing. Archaeological research indicates that the villages in the valley were largely autonomous, each likely having their own leaders.

Research also shows that between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000 Peru was undergoing tumultuous change, with populations increasing, agriculture expanding and class differences growing, Jennings said. At sites on the coast of Peru,archaeologists have found evidence for violence, with many people suffering cranial trauma (blows to the head), Jennings said. In some areas of Peru, scientists have found pottery containing drawings of fanged teeth and human trophy skulls (skulls that could have been taken in battle) the researchers note.

At Tenahaha, however, there is little evidence for violence against humans, and pottery at the site is decorated with what looks like depictions of people smiling, or "happy faces," as archaeologists referred to them.

Tenahaha may have served as a "neutral ground" where people could meet, bury their dead and feast. As such, the site may have helped alleviate the tensions caused by the changing world where these people lived, Jennings said.

"It's a period of great change and one of the ways which humans around the world deal with that is through violence," Jennings said in the interview. "What we are suggesting is that Tenahaha was placed in part to deal with those changes, to find a way outside of violence, to deal with periods of radical cultural change."

Excavations at the site were carried out between 2004 and 2007 and involved a team of more than 30 people from Peru, Canada, Sweden and the United States.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Tombs Filled with Dozens of Mummies Discovered in Peru”. Live Science. Posted: April 8, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/50415-dozens-of-mummies-discovered-in-peru.html

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.
_________________
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

Researchers use isotopic analysis to explore ancient Peruvian life

Mummies excavated nearly a century ago are yielding new information about past lifeways through work conducted in Arizona State University's Archaeological Chemistry Laboratory.

Using new techniques in bioarchaeology and biogeochemistry, a team of bioarchaeologists and archaeologists have been able to study the diets of 14 individuals dating back almost 2,000 years.

The findings were recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The mummies were unearthed from one of the most famous sites in Peru: the Paracas Necropolis of Wari Kayan, two densely populated collections of burials off the southern coast. The region has a rich archaeological history that includes intricate textiles and enormous geoglyphs, yet it has been relatively overlooked for bioarchaeological research.

With support from the National Science Foundation, ASU associate professor Kelly Knudson and her colleagues are attempting to rectify that.

In addition to Knudson, the team was made up by Ann H. Peters of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Elsa Tomasto Cagigao of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

The researchers used hair samples - between two and 10 sequential samples for each mummy, in addition to two hair artifacts - to investigate the diets of Paracas' ancient people. They focused on carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of keratin to determine what these individuals ate in the final stages of their lives.

Diet not only provides insight into health, but can also indicate where people lived and traveled, as well as offer clues about their daily lives by pointing to whether their foods were sourced from farming, fishing, hunting or gathering.

During the last months of their lives, the Paracas individuals appear to have eaten primarily marine products and C4 and C3 plants, such as maize and beans. Also, they were either geographically stable or, if they traveled between the inland highlands and coastal regions, continued to consume marine products.

"What is exciting to me about this research is that we are using new scientific techniques to learn more about mummies that were excavated almost 100 years ago. It is a great application of new science to older museum collections," says Knudson, who is in ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Knudson, who is affiliated with the school's Center for Bioarchaeological Research, explained why it is so important to learn about the lived experiences of people who existed long ago.

"By using small samples of hair from these mummies, we can learn what they ate in the months and weeks before they died, which is a very intimate look at the past," Knudson said.

When first discovered in 1927 by Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello, each mummy was bound in a seated position, found with burial items like baskets or weapons, and wrapped in a cone-shaped bundle of textiles, including finely embroidered garments.

Since the sampled individuals were mostly male, Knudson and her colleagues suggest that future research may involve more females and youths. The researchers also plan to further examine artifacts and mortuary evidence to build context for their isotopic data.
_________________
Reference:

EurekAlert. 2015. “Researchers use isotopic analysis to explore ancient Peruvian life”. EurekAlert. Posted: February 13, 2015. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/asu-rui021315.php

ARCHAEOLOGY Mummy Poo Solves 700-Year-Old Murder Mystery

Analysis of fecal matter from the natural mummy of Cangrande della Scala, a medieval warlord and the patron of the poet Dante Alighieri, has established the Italian nobleman was poisoned with a deadly heart-stopping plant known as Digitalis or foxglove.

The most powerful man in the history of Verona, to whom Dante dedicated part of the “Divine Comedy,” Cangrande della Scala (1291-1329) died at the age of 38 on 22 July 1329.

“He became sick with vomit and diarrhoea just a few days after winning control over the city of Treviso,” Gino Fornaciari, professor of history of medicine and paleopathology at the University of Pisa, told Discovery News.

The Treviso victory was the last act in Cangrande’s long struggle to control the entire region of Veneto in northern Italy.

According to contemporary accounts, he had contracted the disease a few days before by “drinking from a polluted spring.”

Rumors of poisoning immediately started to spread. In 2004, 675 years after Cangrande’s death, Fornaciari’s team exhumed the nobleman’s body from a richly decorated marble tomb in the church of Santa Maria Antica in Verona.

“The natural mummy, still wearing its precious clothes, appeared in good state of preservation,” Fornaciari and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Lying on the back with the arms folded across the chest, the 5-foot, 7-inch mummy was initially studied using digital X-ray and CT scans.

These showed regurgitated food in the throat, signs of arthritis in the elbows and hips, evidence of tuberculosis and possible cirrhosis.

The abdominal CT scans also showed the presence of feces in the rectum, allowing Fornaciari and colleagues to extract a sample.

Analyses of the feces showed the presence of pollen grains of chamomile, black mulberry and, “totally unexpected, of foxglove (Digitalis sp. perhaps purpurea),” the researchers said.

Toxicological analyses confirmed concentrations of digoxin and digitoxin, two Digitalis glycosides, both in the liver and in the faeces.

“Although it is not possible to rule out totally an accidental intoxication, the most likely hypothesis is that of a deliberate administration of a lethal amount of Digitalis,” Fornaciari and colleagues concluded.

Indeed, the gastrointestinal symptoms showed by Cangrande in the last hours of his life and described by historical sources are compatible with the early phase of Digitalis intoxication.

According to the researchers, the foxglove poison may have been masked in a decoction containing chamomile, largely used as a sedative and antispasmodic drug, and black mulberry, used as astringent, which was prepared for some indisposition of Cangrande.

Following Cangrande’s death, one of his physicians was hanged by his successor and nephew Mastino II.

“This adds more weight to the possibility that foul play was at least suspected, although who was ultimately behind the killing is likely to remain a mystery,” Fornaciari said.

Cangrande certainly had enemies. Among the principal suspects are the neighboring states, the Republic of Venice or Ducate of Milan, worried about the growing power of Cangrande.

But the murderer could have also been someone closer to Cangrande.

“It could have well been Mastino II himself,” Fornaciari said.
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Lorenzi, Rossella. 2015. “ARCHAEOLOGY Mummy Poo Solves 700-Year-Old Murder Mystery”. Discovery News. Posted: January 10, 2015. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/mummy-poo-solves-700-year-old-murder-mystery-150110.htm

Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children

Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh? Close to the royal tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have identified the burial place of several children as well as other family members of two pharaohs.

Basel Egyptologists of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project have been working on tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings close to the city of Luxor for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there.

The Egyptologists assumed that it was a non-royal tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty. They first cleared the six meter deep shaft which gives access to five subterranean chambers and then recovered the countless remains and fragments of funerary equipment.

Mummified royal children

The scientists discovered mummified remains of at least 50 people in the center chamber and in three side chambers. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists were able to identify and name over 30 people during this year's field season. Titles such as "Prince" and "Princess" distinguish the buried as members of the families of the two pharaohs Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III who are also buried in the Valley of Kings. Both pharaohs belonged to the 18th dynasty (New Kingdom) and ruled in the 14th century BC.

The analysis of the hieratic inscriptions (related to hieroglyphics) revealed that tomb KV 40 contains the mummified remains of at least 8 hitherto unknown royal daughters, four princes and several foreign ladies. Most of them were adults, however, mummified children were also found: "We discovered a remarkable number of carefully mummified new-borns and infants that would have normally been buried much simpler", describes Egyptologist Prof. Susanne Bickel the findings. "We believe that the family members of the royal court were buried in this tomb for a period of several decades."

The identification of people buried in the proximity of the royal tombs gives the team of researchers important insight into who had the privilege to spend eternal life close to the pharaoh. "Roughly two thirds of the tombs in the Kings' Valley are non-royal. Because the tombs do not have inscriptions and have been heavily plundered we so far have only been able to speculate on who lies buried in them", explains Susanne Bickel in regard to the importance of the findings for the field of Egyptology.

Remains of later burials

Even though the tomb was looted several times in Antiquity as well as at the end of the 19th century, the researchers found countless fragments of funerary equipment, such as fragments of coffins and textiles. "The remains and the walls have been heavily affected by a fire that was most likely ignited by the torches of the tomb raiders", suspects Susanne Bickel. The fragments of various wooden and cartonnage coffins indicate that tomb KV 40 was used a second time as a burial ground: long after the abandonment of the valley as royal necropolis, members of priestly families of the 9th century BC were interred here.

Anthropological analyses as well as further examination on the burial goods will deliver important insight into the composition of the pharaonic court of the 18th dynasty as well as the conditions of life and the burial customs of its members.
________________
References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 28, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uob-bei042814.php

Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children

Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh? Close to the royal tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have identified the burial place of several children as well as other family members of two pharaohs.

Basel Egyptologists of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project have been working on tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings close to the city of Luxor for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there.

The Egyptologists assumed that it was a non-royal tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty. They first cleared the six meter deep shaft which gives access to five subterranean chambers and then recovered the countless remains and fragments of funerary equipment.

Mummified royal children

The scientists discovered mummified remains of at least 50 people in the center chamber and in three side chambers. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists were able to identify and name over 30 people during this year's field season. Titles such as "Prince" and "Princess" distinguish the buried as members of the families of the two pharaohs Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III who are also buried in the Valley of Kings. Both pharaohs belonged to the 18th dynasty (New Kingdom) and ruled in the 14th century BC.

The analysis of the hieratic inscriptions (related to hieroglyphics) revealed that tomb KV 40 contains the mummified remains of at least 8 hitherto unknown royal daughters, four princes and several foreign ladies. Most of them were adults, however, mummified children were also found: "We discovered a remarkable number of carefully mummified new-borns and infants that would have normally been buried much simpler", describes Egyptologist Prof. Susanne Bickel the findings. "We believe that the family members of the royal court were buried in this tomb for a period of several decades."

The identification of people buried in the proximity of the royal tombs gives the team of researchers important insight into who had the privilege to spend eternal life close to the pharaoh. "Roughly two thirds of the tombs in the Kings' Valley are non-royal. Because the tombs do not have inscriptions and have been heavily plundered we so far have only been able to speculate on who lies buried in them", explains Susanne Bickel in regard to the importance of the findings for the field of Egyptology.

Remains of later burials

Even though the tomb was looted several times in Antiquity as well as at the end of the 19th century, the researchers found countless fragments of funerary equipment, such as fragments of coffins and textiles. "The remains and the walls have been heavily affected by a fire that was most likely ignited by the torches of the tomb raiders", suspects Susanne Bickel. The fragments of various wooden and cartonnage coffins indicate that tomb KV 40 was used a second time as a burial ground: long after the abandonment of the valley as royal necropolis, members of priestly families of the 9th century BC were interred here.

Anthropological analyses as well as further examination on the burial goods will deliver important insight into the composition of the pharaonic court of the 18th dynasty as well as the conditions of life and the burial customs of its members.
________________
References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 28, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uob-bei042814.php

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."
________________
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

Christian Ink: Mummy's 1,300-Year-Old Thigh Tattoo Revealed

A Christian tattoo has been discovered high on the inner thigh of a mummified Sudanese woman. New images released by the British Museum show the ancient ink, which dates back to 1,300 years ago.

The well-preserved corpse was discovered during a recent archaeological excavation in northern Sudan along the banks of the Nile River. CT scans allowed researchers to peek under the woman's skin and look at her bones, while infrared imaging showed her faint thigh tattoo more clearly.

Researchers at the British Museum have interpreted the tattoo as a monogram for the archangel Michael, stacking the ancient Greek letters spelling Michael (M-I-X-A-H-A), The Telegraph reported. Archaeologists have previously found the symbol emblazoned on church mosaics and artifacts, but never before on human flesh.

Curator Daniel Antoine told the paper that the ancient body art is the first evidence of a tattoo from this period, calling it a "very rare find."

Antoine doesn't know for sure what purpose the tattoo would have served, but speculated it might have been intended to protect the woman, The Telegraph reported.

The mummy is set to go on display at the British Museum in London in May as part of an exhibition called "Ancient Lives: New Discoveries."

The mummy is hardly the first, or even the oldest, to bear tattoos. It was common to get inked in many cultures around the world; mummies found in places like Peru, Egypt and the Philippines attest to a long and diverse history of body art.

At 5,300 years old, Ötzi the Iceman is Europe's oldest mummy and he may also hold the distinction of having the world's oldest surviving tattoos. The mummy was found frozen in the Alps in 1991 and he has several tattoos, mostly in the form of small lines and crosses, etched in soot around his joints. The markings are suspected to have been less decorative than therapeutic, since Ötzi is thought to have suffered from joint pain before he died.

Another notable frozen mummy discovered in the 1990s had tattoos, too. The 2,500-year-old body of a woman in her late 20s was found in 1993 in the permafrost of the Ukok Plateau in southwestern Siberia. She was tattooed with intricate animal motifs, abstract shapes and mythological creatures such as a deer with a griffon's head, according to The Siberian Times. Other mummies of the Siberian Pazyryk culture are inked with similar designs and animals like tigers, leopards and elk.
________________
References:

Gannon, Megan. 2014. “Christian Ink: Mummy's 1,300-Year-Old Thigh Tattoo Revealed”. Live Science. Posted: March 26, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/44403-christian-mummy-thigh-tattoo.html

Mummy Mystery: Multiple Tombs Hidden in Egypt's Valley of Kings

Multiple tombs lay hidden in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where royalty were buried more than 3,000 years ago, awaiting discovery, say researchers working on the most extensive exploration of the area in nearly a century.

The hidden treasure may include several small tombs, with the possibility of a big-time tomb holding a royal individual, the archaeologists say.

Egyptian archaeologists excavated the valley, where royalty were buried during the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.), between 2007 and 2010 and worked with the Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research to conduct ground- penetrating radar studies.

The team has already made a number of discoveries in the valley, including a flood control system that the ancient Egyptians created but, mysteriously, failed to maintain. The system was falling apart by the time of King Tutankhamun, which damaged many tombs but appears to have helped protect the famous boy-king's treasures from robbers by sealing his tomb.

The team collected a huge amount of data that will take a long time to analyze properly, wrote Afifi Ghonim, who was the field director of the project, in an email to LiveScience. "The corpus was so extensive it will take years, maybe decades, to fully study and report on," wrote Ghonim, an archaeologist with the Ministry of State for Antiquities in Egypt who is now chief inspector of Giza.

The project is part of "the most extensive exploration in the Valley of the Kings since Howard Carter's time," he said, referring to the Egyptologist whose team discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922.

The search for undiscovered tombs

"The consensus is that there are probably several smaller tombs like the recently found KV 63 and 64 yet to be found. But there is still the possibility of finding a royal tomb," wrote Ghonim in the email. "The queens of the late Eighteenth Dynasty are missing, as are some pharaohs of the New Kingdom, such as Ramesses VIII."

That sentiment was echoed by the famous, and at times controversial, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass at a lecture in Toronto this past summer. Hawass was the leader of the Valley of the Kings team.

"The tomb of Thutmose II, not found yet, the tomb of Ramesses VIII is not found yet, all the queens of dynasty 18 [1550-1292 B.C.] were buried in the valley and their tombs not found yet," said Hawass, former minister for antiquities, during the lecture. "This could be another era for archaeology," he added in an interview.

Ghonim said that it is hard to say how many tombs remain undiscovered but it is "more than just a couple."

Locating tombs in the Valley of the Kings is difficult to do even with ground-penetrating radar, a non-destructive technique in which scientists bounce high-frequency radio waves off the ground and measure the reflected signals to find buried structures.

Radar instruments and related computing power have vastly improved in the last couple of decades, scientists say. Even so, it "is difficult to avoid false positives in a place like the Valley of the Kings. There (are) many faults and natural features that can look like walls and tombs. Our work did help refine the technology for use here and it does have a place."

In one instance, radar work carried out by a previous team suggested that tombs dating from the Amarna period (the period within the New Kingdom in which Tutankhamun lived) could be found in a certain area of the main valley. The team excavated the spot but didn't find any tombs.

When the undiscovered tombs — those that do exist — are unearthed, they may not hold their original occupants. For instance, KV 64, a small tomb discovered in 2011by a University of Basel team, was found to hold a female singer named Nehmes Bastet who lived around 2,800 years ago. She apparently re-used a tomb that was created for an earlier, unknown, occupant.

Still, Ghonim said they could indeed find a tomb whose original occupants are  buried within. "It is not impossible however for one or more to be intact," he said. And if they do find such pharaohs, they may also find their brains, as work by Hawass and Dr. Sahar Saleem of Cairo Universitysuggests the Egyptians didn't remove the brains of their dead pharaohs in the mummification process.

An ancient flood control system

While the prospect of new tombs is tantalizing, they are but one of many things the researchers looked for in the valley. Last spring, the researchers gave a taste of what was to come at the Current Research in Egyptology conference at the University of Cambridge.

We "made a number of finds, which we believe will change our understanding of how the ancient Egyptians managed and utilized the site," Ghonim wrote in the email.

The researchers discovered, for instance, the ancient Egyptians created a flood control system in the valley that, for a time, prevented the tombs from being damaged by water and debris.

They detected a deep channel that would have run through the valley about 32 feet (10 meters) below the modern-day surface. As part of their anti-flood measures the Egyptians would have emptied this channel of debris and built side channels that diverted water into it, allowing water and debris to pass through the valley without causing damage.

Strangely enough, the ancient Egyptians "for some reason after building it, they let it fall into disrepair rather quickly. By (the) time Tutankhamun was buried, flooding events had become a problem again," Ghonim said.

"That was bad for most tombs, but good for Tutankhamun since, at least according to one theory, flooding events effectively sealed the tomb and made it inaccessible to later tomb robbers."

Today flood control is still a problem in the Valley of the Kings, and scientists are looking at ways to protect the tombs.

 "There have been many studies recommending what to do, but the need to keep the valley open and the costs involved remain a problem. There's also the need to develop a consensus on such an important thing," Ghonim said.

More discoveries and challenges

Many more finds will be detailed in scientific publications in the future, including the excavation of huts used by the workers who built the tombs and the documentation of graffiti left throughout the valley's history.

One important challenge that Egyptian antiquities in general face is the need to bring tourists back to Egypt. In June, at a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, Hawass explained such tourist money not only helps Egypt's economy but also provides much needed funds for excavation and conservation.

The flow of tourists has been disrupted at times since the 2011 revolution as the political turmoil has kept many foreign visitors away. The lecture by Hawass was given a few weeks before the ouster of  Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
__________________________
References:

Jarus, Owen. 2014. “Mummy Mystery: Multiple Tombs Hidden in Egypt's Valley of Kings”. Live Science. Posted: December 4, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/41675-tombs-hidden-in-valley-of-kings.html

Mummy Teeth Tell of Ancient Egypt's Drought

The link between drought and the rise and fall of Egypt's ancient cultures, including the pyramid builders, has long fascinated scientists and historians. Now, they're looking into an unexpected source to find connections: mummy teeth.

A chemical analysis of teeth enamel from Egyptian mummies reveals the Nile Valley grew increasingly arid from 5,500 to 1,500 B.C., the period including the growth and flourishing of ancient Egyptian civilization.

"Egyptian civilization was remarkable in its long-term stability despite a strong environmental pressure — increasing aridity — that most likely put constraints on the development of resources linked to agriculture and cattle breeding," said senior study author Christophe Lecuyer, a geochemist at the University of Lyon in France.

Many studies have linked dramatic droughts to crises near the end of the Old Kingdom (the Age of the Pyramids) in the third millennium B.C. But Lecuyer and his colleagues also found a jump in aridity before the downfall of Egypt in the 6th century B.C. during the Late Period, when it was conquered by Alexander the Great.

However, the new study can't resolve the occasional drops in annual Nile River floods or short-term droughts that often caused widespread famine and upsets in Egyptian history.

"Our database cannot identify short-term events, only long-term trends, and there is [only] one obvious major event of increasing aridity that took place before the Late Period," Lecuyer said.

The climate data comes from the teeth of Egyptian mummies from various dynasties at the Musée des Confluences de Lyon in France. Led by graduate student Alexandra Touzeau,the researchers drilled small amounts of enamel off some of the teeth and tested it for oxygen and strontium isotopes.

The mummy's teeth record the ratio of two oxygen isotopes (oxygen atoms with different numbers of neutrons) in their diet and their drinking water, which in this case is Nile River water, Lecuyer said. Shifts in the ratio of the isotopes indicate changing precipitation patterns in the region.

The isotopes can also indicate what people were eating, and the research team plans to publish additional studies of Egyptian diets through time, Lecuyer said. "The general drying trend had no negative impact on the Egyptian civilization in terms of cereal production or population," he said. "One of the studies we plan to publish soon reveals there was no diet change over this long period of about four millennia."

The Nile Valley wasn't the only part of North Africa to experience drying after 5,500 B.C. The Sahara Desert was once covered in lakes and grasslands, but switched to a drier regime between about 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, studies have shown.

The mummy teeth findings were published June 2 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
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References:

Oskin, Becky. 2013. “Mummy Teeth Tell of Ancient Egypt's Drought”. Live Science. Posted: July 16, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/38153-egyptian-mummy-teeth-nile-climate.html

Laois ‘bog body’ said to be world’s oldest

4,000-year-old remains were discovered on Bord na Móna land in Co Laois in 2011

The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.

The 4,000-year-old remains, which predate the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun by nearly 700 years, are those of a young adult male.

He is believed to have met a violent death in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

The body was unearthed in the Cúl na Móna bog in Cashel in 2011 by a Bord na Móna worker operating a milling machine.

Initially, experts thought it dated from the Iron Age period (500BC-400AD), placing it on a par with similar finds in other Irish bogs.

However, radiocarbon tests on the body; the peat on which the body was lying; and a wooden stake found with the body, date the body to the early Bronze Age, around 2,000BC.

The discovery promises to open a new chapter in the archaeological record of Bronze Age burial in Ireland.

Eamonn Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, said previously the earliest bog body discovered in Ireland dated to around 1,300BC but “Cashel man” substantially predates this period, making one of the most significant finds in recent times.

He said the remains are those of a young adult male which were placed in a crouched position and covered by peat, probably on the surface of the bog.

The man’s arm was broken by a blow and there were deep cuts to his back which appear to have been inflicted by a blade, which indicate a violent death, Mr Kelly said.

Unfortunately, the areas that would typically be targeted in a violent assault, namely the head, neck and chest, were damaged by the milling machine when the body was discovered, making it impossible to determine the exact cause of death.

Nonetheless, Mr Kelly believes the wounds on the body, combined with the fact that it was marked by wooden stakes and placed in proximity to an inauguration site, point to the individual being the victim of a ritual sacrifice.

“It seems to be same type of ritual that we’ve observed in later Iron Age finds. What’s surprising here is that it’s so much earlier.”

Because of the lack of calluses on the hands and the well-groomed fingernails observed in other finds, though not this one as the hands were not recoverable, Mr Kelly suggests the victims were most likely “high-born”.

“We believe that the victims of these ritual killings are kings that have failed in their kingship and have been sacrificed as a consequence.”

The museum is awaiting further test results on samples taken from the man’s bowel which should reveal the contents of the meal he was likely to have consumed before he died.

The chemical composition of bogs can preserve human bodies for thousands of years.

Archaelogists have discovered more than 100 ancient bodies in Irish bogs but few as well-preserved as “Cashel man”.
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References:

Burke-Kennedy, Eoin. 2013. "Laois ‘bog body’ said to be world’s oldest".Irish Times. Posted: August 2, 2013. Available online: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/laois-bog-body-said-to-be-world-s-oldest-1.1483171

Siberian Mummy Has Detailed Tattoos

High in the Altai mountains of Siberia, not far from the border between Russia and Mongolia, researchers have found the mummified body of a young woman covered with tattoos that archeologists say look remarkably modern.

The woman, probably about 25 years old, was buried some 2,500 years ago and found in 1993. She most likely belonged to the Pazyryk tribe, nomads who inhabited the area for centuries. Kept cold in the permafrost, she was, say the scientists, well enough preserved that one can see intricate tattoos of animals and what appear to be deities.

“Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated and the most beautiful,” said Natalia Polosmak, the lead researcher, in an interview with The Siberian Times. “It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art. Incredible.”

The young woman has come to be known as the Ukok princess. She was buried on a remote plateau with six horses, possibly her spiritual escorts to the next world, and two men, possibly warriors. The men had tattoos, as well. Polosmak said there are older examples of tattooing — Oetzi, the famous “iceman” from 3,300 B.C. in the Italian Alps, had some short, parallel lines on his legs and lower back — but there’s been no body decoration as elaborate as what the Ukok princess had.

On her left shoulder, said Polosmak, the young woman had a depiction of a fabulous mythic animal — a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers. On her wrist was a deer with elaborate antlers. The same deer/griffon also appeared on the body of the man found closest to the princess, covering most of the right side of his body.

The Ukok woman has been kept frozen since she was discovered. A case is now being prepared so that she can be preserved while on public display.

The tattoos were probably made of dyes made from burned plants, rich in potassium. The skin was apparently pierced with a needle or another sharp object, and rubbed with a mixture of soot and fat.

Even though the Ukok princess lived some 500 years before Jesus, Polosmak said some things have not changed.

“I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made,” she said. “It is still about a craving to make yourself as beautiful as possible.”
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References:

Potter, Ned. 2012. "Siberian Mummy Has Detailed Tattoos". ABC News. Posted: August 16, 2012. Available online: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/08/siberian-mummy-has-tattoos/

Ancient Incan Mummy Had Lung Infection, According to Novel Proteomics Analysis

A 500-year-old frozen Incan mummy suffered from a bacterial lung infection at the time of its death, as revealed by a novel proteomics method that shows evidence of an active pathogenic infection in an ancient sample for the first time.

Detecting diseases in ancient remains is often fraught with difficulty, especially because of contamination. Techniques based on microbe DNA can easily be confused by environmental contamination, and they can only confirm that the pathogen was present, not that the person was infected, but the researchers behind the study, led by Angelique Corthals of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, found a way around this problem. They used proteomics, focusing on protein rather than DNA remains, to profile immune system response from degraded samples taken from 500 year-old mummies.

The team swabbed the lips of two Andean Inca mummies, buried at 22,000-feet elevation and originally discovered in 1999, and compared the proteins they found to large databases of the human genome. They found that the protein profile from the mummy of a 15-year old girl, called "The Maiden," was similar to that of chronic respiratory infection patients, and the analysis of the DNA showed the presence of probably pathogenic bacteria in the genus Mycobacterium, responsible for upper respiratory tract infections and tuberculosis. In addition, X-rays of the lungs of the Maiden showed signs of lung infection at the time of death. Proteomics, DNA, and x-rays from another mummy found together with the Maiden did not show signs of respiratory infection.

"Pathogen detection in ancient tissues isn't new, but until now it's been impossible to say whether the infectious agent was latent or active," says Corthals. "Our technique opens a new door to solving some of history's biggest mysteries, such as the reasons why the flu of 1918 was so devastating. It will also enhance our understanding of our future's greatest threats, such as the emergence of new infectious agents or re-emergence of known infectious diseases."

"Our study is the first of its kind since rather than looking for the pathogen, which is notoriously difficult to do in historical samples, we are looking at the immune system protein profile of the "patient," which more accurately tells us that there was indeed an infection at the time of death." or "Our study opens the door to solving many historical and current biomedical and forensic mysteries, from understanding why the plague of 1918 was so lethal, to finding out which pathogen is responsible for death in cases of multiple infections."
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References:

Science Daily. 2012. "Ancient Incan Mummy Had Lung Infection, According to Novel Proteomics Analysis". Science Daily. Posted: July 25, 2012. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200302.htm

A Mummy Switcheroo

Min, the ancient Egyptian god of phallus and fertility, might have brought some worldy advantages to his male worshippers, but offered little protection when it came to spiritual life.

Researchers at the Mummy Project-Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, Italy, established that one of Min's priests at Akhmim, Ankhpakhered, was not resting peacefully in his finely painted sarcophagus.

"We discovered that the sarcophagus does not contain the mummy of the priest, but the remains of another man dating between 400 and 100 BC," Egyptologist Sabina Malgora said.

According to the researchers, the finding could point to a theft more than 2000 years ago. The relatives of the mysterious man may have stolen the beautiful sarcophagus, which dates to a period between the 22nd 23rd Dynasty (about 945-715 BC), to assure their loved one a proper burial and afterlife.

"It's just an hypothesis. However, this was a rather common practice, especially during periods of economical and political crisis, when the necropolis were left without much surveillance," Malgora, co-director of the Mummy Project with Luca Bernardo, director of Maternal and Child Unit Operations at the Fatebenefratelli hospital, told Discovery News.

Indeed, by the end of the 20th Dynasty, tomb robbery was such a serious problem at Thebes (the modern Luxor) that royal mummies and their relatives were secretly moved to a secure hidden tomb in Deir el-Bahri, now known as Theban Tomb (TT) 320.

Discovered near the end of the 19th century, the Deir el-Bahri cache revealed an extraordinary array of mummified remains belonging to more than 50 kings, queens and nobility.

Kept at the Archaeological Museum in Asti, where it arrived in 1903 from a private collection, the sarcophagus boasted a mysterious history -- it is not known how it arrived to Italy -- and a puzzling mummy.

"It had a simple bendage with no amulets at all. We know that a high priest would have been buried differently," Malgora said.

Finally, CTscan images revealed that inside the wrappings rested a skeleton placed on a reed support. This suggests that the body was recovered some time after the death, placed on a kind of stretcher and then wrapped.

While the fate of Ankhpakhered's mummy remains unknown, Malgora and colleagues have managed to shed new light on the man that for more than two millennia usurped the priest's coffin.

He did not use drugs, did not suffer from any particular disease, and did not die from any violent or traumatic event.

Some 2950 images from the CT scan made it possible to reconstruct a 3D life size image of his skull. Carried by Jonathan Elias, director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, the subsequent face reconstruction revealed a man with a prominent nose, a slightly asymmetric eye and eyebrow and a slightly hollow left cheek, caused by the lack of some teeth.

"He had nothing to do with a high priest. He was a hard worker. His knees show signs of wear and tear, as if he was carrying weight or stones," Malgora said.
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References:

Lorenzi, Rossella. 2012. "A Mummy Switcheroo". Discovery News. Posted: May 15, 2012. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/ankhpakhered-tomb-120515.html

Mummy Has Oldest Case of Prostate Cancer in Ancient Egypt

Some 2250 years ago in Egypt, a man known today only as M1 struggled with a long, painful, progressive illness. A dull pain throbbed in his lower back, then spread to other parts of his body, making most movements a misery. When M1 finally succumbed to the mysterious ailment between the ages of 51 and 60, his family paid for him to be mummified so that he could be reborn and relish the pleasures of the afterworld.

Now an international research team has diagnosed what ailed M1: the oldest known case of prostate cancer in ancient Egypt and the second oldest case in the world. (The earliest diagnosis of prostate cancer came from the 2700-year-old skeleton of a Scythian king in Russia.) Moreover, the new study now in press in the International Journal of Paleopathology, suggests that earlier investigators may have underestimated the prevalence of cancer in ancient populations because high-resolution computerized tomography (CT) scanners capable of finding tumors measuring just 1 to 2 millimeters in diameter only became available in 2005. "I think earlier researchers probably missed a lot without this technology," says team leader Carlos Prates, a radiologist in private practice at Imagens Médicas Integradas in Lisbon.

Prostate cancer begins in the walnut-sized prostate gland, an integral part of the male reproductive system. The gland produces a milky fluid that is part of semen and it sits underneath a man's bladder. In aggressive cases of the disease, prostate cancer cells can metastasize, or spread, entering the bloodstream and invading the bones. After performing high-resolution scans on three Egyptian mummies in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Lisbon, Prates and colleagues detected many small, round, dense tumors in M1's pelvis and lumbar spine, as well as in his upper arm and leg bones. These are the areas most commonly affected by metastatic prostate cancer. "We could not find any evidence to challenge this diagnosis," Prates says.

"I would agree that it's a case of metastatic prostate cancer," says Andreas Nerlich, a pathologist at the Academic Hospital Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, who was not involved in the research project. "This is a very well-done study."

Researchers have long struggled to detect evidence of cancer in the skeletons and mummified flesh of the ancient dead. But recorded cases of cancer in ancient populations are rare. Indeed, one study published in 1998 in the Journal of Paleopathology calculated that just 176 cases of skeletal malignancies had been reported among tens of thousands of ancient humans examined. The low number of cases prompted a theory that cancer only began flourishing in the modern industrial age, when carcinogens became more widespread in food and in the environment and when people began living longer, giving tumors more time to grow and proliferate.

But ancient populations, says Albert Zink, a biological anthropologist at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, were no strangers to carcinogens. Soot from wood-burning chimneys and fireplaces, for example, contains substances known to cause cancer in humans. And the bitumen that ancient boat builders heated to seal and waterproof ships has been linked to lung cancer as well as tumors in the respiratory and digestive tracts. "I think cancer was quite prevalent in the past," Zink says, "more prevalent than we have been able to see."

But that situation may be changing, Prates says, as physical anthropologists gain access to the new generation of high-resolution CT scanners. The equipment that Prates and his colleagues used to study M1, for example, has a pixel resolution of 0.33 millimeters, allowing radiologists to visualize even fleck-sized lesions.

For scientists studying the origins of cancer and the complex interplay of environment, diet, and genes on the prevalence of the disease, such improved detection could shed new light on a disease that has plagued humanity for many thousands of years, if not longer. "And for sure there's always the hope that reaching a better understanding of the roots of cancer will help contribute in some way to a cure," Zink concludes.
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References:

Pringle, Heather. 2011. "Mummy Has Oldest Case of Prostate Cancer in Ancient Egypt". Science. Posted: October 26, 2011. Available online: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/10/mummy-has-oldest-case-of-prostat.html