Posted on 11/24/2005 1:20:57 PM PST by blam
Chile mummies possibly done in by arsenic
Thursday, November 24, 2005; Posted: 10:58 a.m. EST (15:58 GMT)
SAN MIGUEL DE AZAPA, Chile (Reuters) -- Living in the harsh desert of northern Chile's Pacific coast more than 7,000 years ago, the Chinchorro fishing tribe mysteriously began mummifying dead babies -- removing internal organs, cleaning bones, stuffing and sewing up the skin, putting wigs and clay masks on them.
The Chinchorro mummies are the oldest known artificially preserved dead, dating thousands of years before Egyptian mummies, and the life quest of the archeologists who study them is to discover why this early society developed such a complex death ritual.
Archeologist Bernardo Arriaza, who studies the Chinchorro at the University of Tarapaca in Chile's northernmost city Arica, launched a daring new theory this year.
"I was reading a Chilean newspaper that talked about pollution and it had a map of arsenic and lead pollution, and it said arsenic caused abortions. I jumped in my seat and said, 'That's it,"' Arriaza said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
GGG Ping.
chile mummies? i thought that was a brand of burrito.
Is that you 'mum"...???
There are several lost civilizations in the very early South and Central Americas whose extinctions have no explanation.
In fact, for an informative yet a romantic story about a quest to find a lost South American (tribal) society, read "Green Mansions" by W.H. Hudson. It is a beautifully written adventure. Hudson, of British heritage, was born in Argentina in the mid 1800's and was a naturalist.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
Gods, Graves, Glyphs PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
The extinctions are usually from the same general reasons that most ancient larger cultures vanished. The earliest Asians civilizatons, Indus Valley, for example, started dying out because of catastrophic draughts, floods, then famines.
When the Vedic peoples (earliest Persians and Medes) conquered the Indus Valley civilizations, they had the job 3/4 done for them already with the damage done by droughts, floods and famines.
The Vedic peoples also had horses and bronze armor/weapons. That made the conquest faster.
The Incans and Mayans died out from combinations of war, over-population, droughts, floods and famines too. No mystery any more, thanks to modern measuring tools.
The speed at which they collapsed remains an unanswered question. But, that isn't "mysterious," except to the hosts of NATURE and other HISTORY CHANNEL shows. There are several theories as to why that happened.
In fact, for an informative yet a romantic story about a quest to find a lost South American (tribal) society, read "Green Mansions" by W.H. Hudson. It is a beautifully written adventure. Hudson, of British heritage, was born in Argentina in the mid 1800's and was a naturalist.
I read it once when I was 19 or so and it WAS romantic, informative and well-written.
I re-read it as an older woman and it was DUMB, trite and unbelievable but STILL informative.....and well-written.
LOL. That's happened to me a number of times too.
Absolutely, but I think smallpox also thinned the population considerably.
*In fact, for an informative yet a romantic story about a quest to find a lost South American (tribal) society, read "Green Mansions" by W.H. Hudson. It is a beautifully written adventure. Hudson, of British heritage, was born in Argentina in the mid 1800's and was a naturalist.*
I read it once when I was 19 or so and it WAS romantic, informative and well-written.
I re-read it as an older woman and it was DUMB, trite and unbelievable but STILL informative.....and well-written.
Starfish, I will forgive you : } on this Thanksgiving Day for your severe and unjust literary criticism "dumb, trite and unbelievable". You need to look for the underlying premise of Hudson's novel. The "fantasy" aspect is a literary device.
Yes. The outsiders came to dying empires. Their outsider diseases did the rest.
ANY outsider, European, African or Asian, would have done the same thing. The South, Central and North American Indians were dead meat from the get-go.
Nothing was going to save them from the consequences (no immunity) of their 12,000-year isolation from Asia's, Africa's and Europe's diseases.
Very sad history. They didn't become very good slaves, but turned into drunks and beggars.
Those who did manage to adapt are still, south of the border, for the most part, their nations' poorest of the poor. Nobody's fault; everybody's fault.
Choke, I mean, it's George Bush's and Halliburton's fault.
See post #9.
I DO apologize for my severity.
I can still remember the hero kissing the BONES of his dead beloved. But I will TRY not to think in ANY other terms besides "underlying premises" and fantasy as a literary device.
I promise. :o)
When I watch older movies that I once loved....same thing--DUMB, trite and unbelievable.
"Love Story"??? Barf-o-rama.
Sigh. I can't believe the stuff I once looooovvvved.
Life is MUCH more fun now.
It always was barf-o-rama for me.
Love means never having to work with a good screen play.
There are some great romantic stories, and movies, that never get tired even as I get older...Dr. Zhivago, Wuthering Heights, Last of the Mohicans...
Just saw the new Pride and Prejudice yesterday. Very well done. I think I will enjoy revisiting that one.
Excuse me? The Incas had a flourishing civilization until the Spanish arrived.
"Starfish, I will forgive you : } on this Thanksgiving Day for your severe and unjust literary criticism "dumb, trite and unbelievable". You need to look for the underlying premise of Hudson's novel. The "fantasy" aspect is a literary device."
See post #9.
*I never saw the movie "Love Story."
I DO apologize for my severity.
I can still remember the hero kissing the BONES of his dead beloved.
*The husband of my deceased friend, whose Wake was earlier this week, kissed her forehead as she lay a corpse in her open casket.
But I will TRY not to think in ANY other terms besides "underlying premises" and fantasy as a literary device.
I promise. :o)
*No need to promise anything, and CERTAINLY you shouldn't restrict the terms in which you think. I understand your point of view. For your sake, I am sorry you missed the deeper philosophical theme expressed in author Hudson's novel Green Mansions. Hudson wrote a utopian novel titled The Crystal Age in which his philosophical theme is easier to perceive. Hudson was not a member of the urbane liberal literati. He was a naturalist and explorer with a keen sense of the predominancy of nature and its laws. For a comparison, many children and young people read an abridged edition of the novel Moby Dick and enjoyed it as a whaling adventure. However, for many mature readers, there is no written work in American literature that compares to the multi-leveled profound substances in the monumental novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. IMO. Moby Dick transcends Whaling Lore. Green Mansions is a treatise on nature wrapped in a romantic adventure and tragedy. Hudson's subtle treatise on nature and civilizaton is the real essence of his novel.
Cultures and civilizations dissapeared from coastal Peru and Chile periodically as El Nino changed its path and the coastal areas dried up totally and the fish disappeared.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.