Free Republic

Researchers in Chile, led by Pablo Marqueta, an ecologist with Universidad Católica de Chile have arrived at a new theory to explain why a culture that existed around seven thousand years ago suddenly began to mummify their dead. The Chinchorro The researchers have been examining the Chinchorro, hunter-gatherers that lived in the desert region of what is now northern Chile and southern Peru, from about 10,000 to 4,000 years ago. The mummies first date to 5050 BCE and continue to be made until about 1800 BCE. The Chinchorro people lived by a combination of fishing, hunting and gathering: the word...

4,500-year-old mummies discovered in Chile Saturday, 28 June , 2008, 10:55 Santiago: Eight perfectly preserved mummies, believed to be some 4,500 year old, were found by workers engaged in a restoration project in Chile's far north, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Saturday quoting media report. "These mummies date back to between 2,000 BC and 5,000 BC." archaeologist Calogero Santoro told the daily El Mercurio. The mummies are remains of individuals belonging to the Chinchorro culture, which was one of the first to practice mummification and the perfect condition in which the mummies were found is indicative of their advanced...

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...