Posted on 02/02/2005 10:45:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv
John Adolfi, of Syracuse, N.Y., said he wants the mummy so it can undergo DNA testing, X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging... Adolfi hypothesizes that modern science would prove that Pedro was an adult at the time of his death perhaps one of the "little people" spoken of in Arapaho and Shoshone tales. But George Gill, an anthropology professor at the University of Wyoming, has a different theory. After reviewing X-rays taken of the mummy in the 1950s, Gill concluded that it was an infant with anencephaly, a birth defect in which only the brain stem develops.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
RE:Elephant Man/Proteus Syndrome?"his head was so large that the hat he wore measured 3ft in circumference" Has anyone noticed how big Ted Kennedy's head is?How about John Kerry, abnormally large jaw w/profound elongation of skull/facial bones?Coincidence?
Unfair comparison. The Elephant Man had a LOT more physical appeal.
Good bibliography, thanks.
When I worked on the White Mountain Reservation back in the early '90's, a new housing development was being put in about halfway up the mountain. One day I asked an elderly Apache if he was going to put in for one of the new units up there. He thought for a while and then shook his head. You could tell he was struggling for the right English words because Apache was his first language. Finally he said, "There's little guys up there." Then he changed the subject. That was my introduction to the "myth" of the little guys which, as it turns out, most tribes have some variant of. (The housing development was mostly destroyed by a forest fire a few years later.)
He was found sitting cross-legged on a ledge in a small cave in a granite mountain. His hands were folded in his lap, in the timeless attitude of a Buddha. He appeared to be middle-aged. His skin was brown and wrinkled, his nose flat, the forehead low, the mouth broad and thin-lipped. And he was 14 inches tall.
The mummy was discovered in 1932 by gold prospectors blasting the walls of a gulch in the Pedro Mountains, 60 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming. After studying it, puzzled scientists ventured the theory that it was a mummified pygmy and possibly the progenitor of the American Indian. When it died, it was given a ceremonial burial.
Following Goodman's death in 1950 the mummy passed into the hands of one Leonard Waller and dissapeared, but interest in it continued nationwide. In 1979 pictures of Shapiro's X-rays were given to Dr. George Gill, professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming. The withered little body, he concluded, was that of an infant or a fetus, possibly of an unknown tribe of prehistoric Indians. He believed that the infant had been afflicted with anencephaly, a congenital abnormality that would account for the adult proportions of its skeleton. Discoveries of mummified remains are not uncommon in Wyoming, which has an arid climate. As Dr. Gill pointed out, the Indians may have found other mummies of similarly diseased infants and quite naturally assumed that they were the remains of small adults. This in turn would tend to support the legend of a "little people."
But Pedro, as the mummy is known, remains a scienfitic curiosity. "All we have are tantalizing bits of information," Dr. Gill remarked. He and other anthropologists still hope to locate the missing mummy for further examination. (The Casper Star-Tribune, July 22 and July 24, 1979; The Casper Tribune Herald, October 22, 1932; C.J. Cazeau and Stuart D. Scott, Exploring the Unknown, p. 222)
Thanks, VR!
same thing with the mandan tribe (the ones who save the lewis and clark expedition) they are still fighting to survive today.
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