The "Llullaillaco Maiden" — a teenage girl whose mummified body was found atop a frigid volcano in Argentina — was sacrificed centuries ago by the Inca. Now, a new analysis of plant remains in her burial is helping archaeologists pinpoint the historical events that led to her death over half a millennium ago.

In 1999, archaeologists discovered the remains of three mummified Inca children — one teenage girl, and a boy and girl each around 7 years old — just below the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina near its border with Chile. Analysis of the mummies over the past two decades has shown that the children were fattened up with gourmet food and plied with alcohol and coca (a plant from which cocaine is derived) before they were led to a subterranean shrine on the freezing, windy summit and left for dead in a ritual called capacocha.

Even though these mummies, dubbed the "Children of Llullaillaco," are incredibly well preserved, the exact date they were sacrificed has remained unclear. A radiocarbon analysis conducted in 2007 on hair samples from the mummies placed their deaths sometime between 1430 and 1520. To narrow down this date and link it to known political and climatic events, an international team of researchers radiocarbon-dated the botanical remains found in the burial. They published their results June 5 in the journal Archaeometry.

"We aimed to determine the precise date of the event within the broader timeline of the Inca Empire's development and expansion," study lead author Dominika Sieczkowska-Jacyna, an archaeologist at the Silesian University of Technology in Poland, told Live Science in an email. "Answering this question allows us to better understand Inca political strategies and the role that capacocha ceremonies played in imperial governance."

The Llullaillaco Maiden, also known as La Doncella, is the name given to the mummy of the teenage girl. Due to the many funeral offerings she had been given, archaeologists think she may have been the main sacrifice and was accompanied in death by the two younger children as attendants. Included in the Llullaillaco Maiden's offerings were corn (Zea mays), cassava (Manihot esculenta) and coca leaves (Erythroxylum coca), whose seeds were carbon-dated to reveal a more precise chronology than the mummies themselves.

The archaeologists found that the botanical remains narrowed down the children's possible date of death to between 1462 and 1507, with the most likely date falling around 1499, during the reign of Huayna Capac, one of the last Inca emperors.

"Our results suggest that political motivations were likely behind this particular capacocha, and the dating evidence helped us narrow the chronological framework of the offering," Sieczkowska-Jacyna said.

The Inca Empire reached its greatest extent under Huayna Capac, who ruled from 1493 to about 1525, when he died of smallpox introduced by the Spanish. From the empire's capital at Cuzco in southern Peru, the emperor's father, Tupac Inca, had expanded Inca territory south into Chile, while Huayna Capac extended the empire north into present-day Ecuador and Colombia. In 1499, the area around Llullaillaco would have been incorporated into the Inca Empire fairly recently.

"Considering this context, it is plausible that the sacrifice at Llullaillaco may have been enacted as part of such a state-sanctioned campaign [of sacrifices], serving to ritually anchor the Inca presence in the region or to commemorate a significant political event," the researchers wrote in the study. That is, the sacrifice of the three Children of Llullaillaco was likely part of Huayna Capac's effort to maintain cultural cohesion in the vast, diverse Inca Empire.

Colonial-era chronicles do mention that Huayna Capac journeyed to the southern part of his empire, including the northwest region of what is now Argentina, and that he made rich offerings to the gods in the form of child sacrifices, the researchers wrote.

"Although we cannot yet confidently attribute the event to a specific emperor with 100% confidence, our working hypothesis is that this capacocha was connected to an imperial journey into the southern regions of the empire and may have been associated with the establishment of alliances with local groups in the Titicaca Basin," Sieczkowska-Jacyna said.

The Inca practice of child sacrifice in the early 16th century may have reaffirmed imperial authority or sought to maintain cosmic balance during a period of perceived instability just before the arrival of Europeans, according to the researchers.

Similar analyses should be conducted on other child sacrifices, the researchers noted in the study, to learn more about the broader patterns of ritual sacrifice and political power across the Inca Empire.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:25 p.m. EDT on June 15 to include comments from the study's first author.

See how much you know about mummies with our mummy quiz.

Using ancient-DNA analysis, researchers have identified the presence of Streptococcus pyogenes, or group A strep, in a 700-year-old mummy from Bolivia, confirming that strep infections were present in the Americas prior to European exploration. The strain of strep discovered in the mummy is similar to modern ones that can cause strep throat and scarlet fever.

This is the first time group A strep has been identified in archaeological remains, the researchers said.

"We weren't looking for this pathogen specifically," Frank Maixner, director of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Italy and co-author of a study published April 13 in the journal Nature Communications, said in a statement. "When conducting genetic analysis of mummies, we approach the work with an open mind, analyzing not only human genetic material but also the DNA of the numerous microorganisms present in human remains."

Maixner and colleagues had been studying naturally mummified remains found in "chullpas," a type of ancient funeral tower, across the Andean Plateau in Bolivia. These people were buried in the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1450), after the collapse of a pre-Inca civilization known as Tiwanaku but before the rise of the Inca Empire.

When analyzing one particular mummy ‪—‬ a young adult male with a modified skull who lived sometime between 1283 and 1383 ‪—‬ the researchers found DNA from several different bacteria, including S. pyogenes and Clostridium botulinum, which can cause botulism.

"The detection of Streptococcus pyogenes was particularly significant," the researchers wrote in the study. "Despite its presence in modern outbreaks, this pathogen has not yet been detected in ancient times."

Group A strep is found globally today and is responsible for a spectrum of diseases, from mild conditions like strep throat to life-threatening infections like necrotizing fasciitis. The bacterium also causes scarlet fever, an illness that was historically one of the leading causes of childhood mortality prior to the development of antibiotics in the 1940s.

Despite the worldwide ubiquity of strep for centuries, information about the evolution of the bacterium has come only from modern strains, leaving unanswered questions about whether it was present in the Americas prior to European colonization.

In the new study, however, the researchers were able to isolate a near-complete genome of S. pyogenes from one tooth of the Bolivian mummy. At 700 years old, the genome is the earliest confirmed occurrence of this bacterium in the Americas, the researchers wrote.

DNA analysis also revealed that the ancient Bolivian strep strain diverged from all other S. pyogenes lineages around 10,000 years ago. This time frame may have coincided with humans' first foray into the Andes, as they encountered previously unknown animals that may have carried the pathogen, the researchers noted in the study.

It's not yet clear, though, which diseases caused by group A strep were present in pre-Hispanic Bolivia. The genome that the researchers identified is most similar to modern strains that are "throat specialists," or the strains that cause strep throat and scarlet fever rather than skin conditions like impetigo and "flesh-eating disease." These strains of strep also increase in prevalence in cooler months, which align with the climate of the Bolivian highlands, which were cold and dry.

The young adult whose skeleton was positive for strep DNA lived in a society with increasing population density and high rates of migration, and the researchers found from his bones that his nutritional status was likely below average. All of this evidence "could impact immune function and susceptibility to such ancient infections or potential outbreaks in the past," they wrote, but they can't confirm exactly how the man died.

Evidence from the new Bolivian strain of strep is consistent with an American origin for the pathogen, the researchers wrote. But because this is the first time group A strep has been identified in ancient remains, the researchers noted that additional work is sorely needed, including a broader dataset of ancient and modern S. pyogenes genomes from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Amassing that information could help experts unravel the evolutionary history of strep and the impact it had on the lives and deaths of ancient people.

First Americans quiz: How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas?

Around 2,500 years ago in Siberia, a young woman experienced a serious head injury, underwent surgery to reconstruct her jaw, and received a primitive prosthetic during the procedure, CT scans of the woman's mummified remains reveal.

"It is possible that we have discovered evidence of such a surgical procedure for the first time," Dr. Andrey Letyagin, a radiologist at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in a translated statement, since "we had not previously encountered [it] in the scientific literature."

Using CT scans to nondestructively study a permafrost-preserved mummy allowed the researchers to not only "diagnose the injury but also reconstruct the results of a complex surgical intervention performed in ancient times," Vladimir Kanygin, head of the Laboratory of Nuclear and Innovative Medicine at Novosibirsk State University in Russia, said in the statement, "transforming a single find into detailed evidence of the Pazyryk culture's high level of medical knowledge."

The Pazyryk culture, a nomadic Iron Age group related to the Scythians, flourished on the Ukok Plateau in the Altai Republic in southern Siberia. Pazyryk graves are well known for their outstanding preservation of organic remains in the permafrost, including the "Princess of Ukok," whose fantastical animal tattoos were perfectly preserved for more than 2,000 years.

In 1994, archaeologists with the Russian Academy of Sciences excavated a small cemetery consisting of five low mounds on the Ukok Plateau. One mound held the undisturbed burial of a woman who was around 25 to 30 years old when she died. She was lying on a wooden cot and was wearing a wig. But because her burial lacked significant artifacts and only a part of her head was mummified, her burial was not fully investigated at the time.

"This mummified patch of skin on the buried woman's skull made anthropological research impossible, but we wanted to learn as much as possible about her," Natalia Polosmak, an archaeologist at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement. "The opportunity to study it on a CT scanner was a fortunate opportunity, which I took advantage of."

The CT scans of the woman's skull revealed a head injury had destroyed her right temporomandibular joint (TMJ). The injury would have prevented the woman from speaking and eating normally. Given that the Pazyryk people routinely rode horses, the woman may have sustained the injury as she fell off while galloping, according to the statement.

Discovery of a "primitive prosthetic" device

Although the woman's injury was not unusual, the unique treatment for the damage to her bones and ligaments surprised the researchers. They found thin canals drilled into the two bones that made up the woman's right TMJ, as well as horsehair or animal tendon in the canals holding the joint together.

"This primitive prosthetic held the articular surfaces together and allowed the patient to move her jaw," Letyagin said. "The joint functioned, but she still couldn't chew food on the injured side, likely due to severe pain."

Several aspects of the woman's skull revealed that she lived for several months — or even years — following the surgery. New bone tissue had grown around the canals in her right TMJ, and the teeth in the left side of her jaw were worn and chipped, suggesting she compensated for the right-sided injury by chewing exclusively on her left.

The Pazyryk people knew how to perform basic skull surgery in the days before anesthesia; evidence of trepanation in the form of holes in the skull has been found in several mummies. They also had a deep understanding of human anatomy and dissection, according to the statement, which was necessary for their tradition of mummifying bodies. But the woman's TMJ surgery is a rare example of their skills.

Although this woman was buried in a simple manner, without significant artifacts, the successful operation on her jaw "indicates that her life was valued," Polosmak said. "This new study provides further important confirmation that the Pazyryk people were able to perform complex surgical procedures to save the lives of their fellow tribesmen."

The famous Inca "ice mummies" have been holding secrets since their discovery decades ago, and CT scans are now revealing what these children's last moments were like, a new study finds.

The researchers examined the remains of four Inca children who were killed about 500 years ago and left on remote peaks in the Andes as "messengers to the gods," the researchers wrote in the study. However, the new CT scans revealed that at least one of these children had been killed elsewhere and then relocated to a mountain peak, according to the study, which was published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The research also showed that some of the children selected for this ritual "capacocha" sacrifice had injuries and diseases when they were killed, contrary to some early Spanish accounts that the victims were always in perfect health.

"Our findings show that chroniclers' accounts should be treated with caution," Dagmara Socha, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland and the lead author of the study, told Live Science. "Although historical sources describe the children as physically perfect and without flaws, modern scientific analyses reveal a very different reality."

The four mummies are those of an 8-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl, a 14-year-old girl, and the famed "Lady of Ampato" — also known as the "Ice Maiden" and "Momia Juanita" — who was also sacrificed when she was about 14 years old. Her mummified body was found in a shrine near the summit of Peru's volcanic Mount Ampato in 1995.

The researchers determined that the 10-year-old girl found near the same summit had been sacrificed elsewhere. The scans revealed that the organs in her abdomen and chest cavities had been removed and replaced with stones and textiles before the body was wrapped and placed in a sitting position, with the knees drawn up to the chin, on a plateau near the top of the mountain.

Although the ice mummies were preserved by the extremely dry air at the altitudes where they were found — about 19,000 feet (5,800 meters) above sea level — the 10-year-old girl's missing organs are the first evidence that any of the bodies had been deliberately prepared for mummification, possibly to remedy what were seen as the victims' physical deficiencies, the researchers wrote.

Ice mummies

The medical scans of the four mummies — three from Mount Ampato and another from a shrine near the summit of the Sara Sara volcano, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) roughly west — showed some of the young sacrificial victims had suffered from several ailments.

Scans of the 8-year-old girl's mummy found on Mount Ampato revealed an enlarged esophagus that may have been a symptom of Chagas disease (a parasitic infection common in the region) and scars in her lungs that may have been caused by tuberculosis.

These health conditions were likely common in the Inca population at the time, so it's no surprise that the mummies weren't "perfect" as the European accounts had claimed. "This may reflect the general living conditions within the Inca Empire, but it may also indicate that European chroniclers did not fully understand what the Incas themselves considered ideal," Socha said.

Divine messengers

According to some early Spanish writers in Peru, the capacocha sacrifices were among the most important rituals in the Inca world. In these sacrifices, children or young teens — both boys and girls — would be ritually killed, and their bodies would be naturally mummified near the tops of high mountains so they would act as "messengers to the gods."

The methods of killing differed; some victims were strangled, while others were smothered. Socha said it seemed that each of the four sacrificial victims in the study had been killed by a severe blow to the head, possibly from a wooden club.

Early Spanish accounts indicated that the young victims of the capacocha rituals acted as "messengers" for a long time after they had been ritually killed. For example, a report by the conquistador Pedro Pizarro (a young cousin of Francisco Pizarro) stated that living people visited ice mummies to seek approvals for marriages.

"The evidence suggests that these children … continued to function as mediators between the living community and the divine Apus [Andean deities] long after their deaths," Socha said.

The 1,100-year-old mummified remains of a man reveal he likely died in an ancient turquoise mining accident in Chile. Extensive evidence of blunt-force trauma discovered on the man's skeleton suggests he died because of a rockfall or mine collapse, according to a new study.

The naturally mummified body, along with grave goods that included a bow and arrow and a snuff kit for hallucinogenic drugs, was originally excavated in the 1970s from an area just outside a pre-Hispanic turquoise mine in the northern Chilean city of El Salvador in the middle of the Atacama Desert. A visible fracture in the mummy's left lower leg bone suggested the man might have been involved in an accident, but a full analysis of the body was not completed until 2023.

In a study published Dec. 15 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Catalina Morales and Francisco Garrido, archaeologists at the National Museum of Natural History in Santiago, Chile, used CT scans and X-ray imaging to reveal intricate details of the extensive trauma that probably resulted in the man's death.

"It is likely that a miner would have entered the mine and used stone hammers to extract turquoise from the surrounding rock," Morales and Garrido told Live Science in an email. "In the event of a rockfall, there was no form of protection."

In the researchers' analysis of the mummy, they discovered that the man was between 25 and 40 years old when he died. They carbon-dated the mummy to between A.D. 894 and 1016, placing him at the beginning of the Late Intermediate Period in the central Andes, between the Wari Empire (and its eventual collapse) and the rise of the Inca Empire.

Multiple unhealed fractures were evident on the man's upper spine. He also had rib, shoulder blade and collarbone fractures, which suggest "a blunt force impact over a wide area" of his upper back, revealing his "upper left thorax bore the brunt of the impact," Morales and Garrido wrote in the study. The impact displaced several of his vertebrae and collapsed his rib cage.

Additionally, the researchers identified a fracture in a vertebra near the base of his spine, likely the result of the initial upper-back injury. The upper- and lower-spine injuries are both "typically associated with severe spinal cord damage and high mortality," the researchers wrote.

But there were no injuries found to the man's skull, neck or arms, which indicates that the impact occurred when the man was in a head-down body position. He may have been actively mining or perhaps attempting to protect his head with his arms when he was struck by a heavy object falling from above. This type of injury is seen in the bodies of people involved in earthquakes and in occupational accidents in forestry, construction and mining, the researchers wrote.

Turquoise mining was practiced for two millennia in the Atacama Desert, according to the researchers. Miners used specific equipment — including stone hammers, wooden and stone shovels, and baskets — to extract the semiprecious stone and bring it back to the mining camp, where the turquoise was turned into beads. Many of these beads were then traded or exchanged along the extensive pre-Hispanic Inca road system.

Most ancient turquoise mines were open-air and shallow, so miners did not wear protective equipment. But the mine at El Salvador, the researchers said, was one of the few that included subterranean galleries.

"Considering the archaeological context, this individual likely died while extracting turquoise, when a rock fell on his back from the ceiling of the mine," the researchers wrote in the study, but "further research is needed to better understand the living conditions of ancient miners."

Gold and gems quiz: What do you know about sparkly treasures made by nature?

Kids as young as 18 months old were given facial tattoos in the Nile Valley region 1,400 years ago, archaeologists discovered while studying mummified bodies in Sudan. What's more, the practice coincided with the introduction of Christianity to the region known as Nubia.

"If the tattoos were a symbol of the wearer's Christian faith, then it might have been important for parents to create permanent ways to mark their children as Christian," study lead author Anne Austin, an archaeologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, told Live Science.

Austin and colleagues examined 1,048 mummified human remains from three archaeological sites in modern Sudan and documented evidence of tattoos in 27 people of all ages and sexes. They published their findings Dec. 15 in the journal PNAS.

Tattooing is a long-standing human practice. Some of the oldest archaeological evidence of tattoos can be found on Ötzi the "Iceman," whose well-preserved 5,300-year-old body discovered in the Alps was decorated with 61 of them. Other early tattoos have been found on Egyptian mummies from 5,000 years ago, Siberian mummies from 2,300 years ago, and Peruvian mummies from 1,200 years ago. All of these examples were tattoos on adults, though; tattooed children are discovered much less commonly.

In the new study, the researchers identified extensive examples of tattooing at the Christian-era site of Kulubnarti in northern Sudan. Two cemeteries at the site were in use between A.D. 650 and 1000. Using microscopy with infrared lighting, which can penetrate skin to reveal tattoos barely visible to the naked eye, the researchers identified 17 people with definite tattoos and six people with possible faded tattoos.

While investigating exactly where on the body the people buried at Kulubnarti sported tattoos, the researchers noticed an unusual pattern: Two people had back tattoos, but the rest had designs on their foreheads, temples, cheeks or eyebrows. Facial tattoos are already relatively uncommon in the archaeological record, but the researchers found an even rarer practice: the tattooing of children.

Most of the Kulubnarti people with tattoos were children under age 11, the researchers wrote in the study, while the youngest person with definite tattoos was 18 months old. A 3-year-old girl was even found to have had one tattoo positioned directly over another tattoo, suggesting that young children were repeatedly tattooed.

The tattoos consisted of clustered dots and dashes. The most frequent design was four dots tattooed in a diamond pattern on the person's forehead, which could represent a Christian cross, according to Austin. "It's entirely plausible that tattooing was part of a form of baptism if it was used as a sign of Christianity at Kulubnarti," she said.

But the researchers are also investigating another theory for the widespread tattooing of children found in the cemetery.

"If parents tattooed their children in order to protect them or for medical reasons, then maybe the high rate of tattooing in young children shows us that people at Kulubnarti were facing unusually high amounts of health issues," Austin said.

Forehead tattoos may represent parents' attempts to protect their kids from headaches or high fevers, both of which are commonly experienced in bouts of malaria, a disease with a long history in the Nile Valley, according to the study.

The team also found that the Nubians likely used knives, not needles, to make the tattoos, based on the shape of the tattoo markings.

Even if the tattoos were simply decorative, Austin said, we should not be quick to judge past people for the practice.

"The form of tattooing at Kulubnarti — which could have been done fairly quickly — doesn't seem any more extreme than piercing a toddler's ears or circumcising newborn babies," she said.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

Centuries-old mummies from the Andes of Colombia have been digitally unmasked and virtually reconstructed, revealing how they may have looked during their lifetimes.

These individuals, who lived sometime between the 13th and 18th centuries, were buried with death masks covering their faces and jaws. They're the only Colombian examples of a cultural practice otherwise common for communities in other parts of pre-Columbian South America. However, as their graves were looted, little was known about these four individuals and their archaeological context.

Now, researchers have digitally "unmasked" their skulls to reconstruct their faces, which they presented for the first time Aug. 14 during the 11th World Congress on Mummy Studies in Peru.

These reconstructions highlight "the fascinating cultural practices" of the Indigenous peoples who lived in South America, Jessica Liu, the project manager for Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K, said in a statement about the project.

The mummies are of a 6- to 7-year-old child, a female in her 60s and two young adult males, all with stylized masks made of resin, clay, wax and maize attached to their faces. All the masks are damaged, with missing noses and chunks along the base, but some ornamental beads outlining the eyes remain. The individuals were from pre-Hispanic populations in the Eastern Cordillera, a region in the Colombian Andes, with radiocarbon dating indicating they lived between 1216 and 1797.

CT scans were performed on the masked skulls. CT scans use X-rays to generate virtual 3D images by taking lots of images of 2D slices of a sample and putting them together. Because of this, the team could "effectively unmask the skull digitally" by removing the layers containing the mask, Liu told Live Science.

Next, the researchers used specialized software and a haptic touch stylus pen to superimpose muscles, soft tissue and fat onto the digitally unmasked skulls. Liu said this is like virtual sculpting, where you use the scaffolding of the skull to get the tissue to perfectly fit the individual.

The team used average facial tissue depth data from modern-day adult male Colombians to add the soft tissue to the two young adult male skulls. The team did not use such data to add soft tissue onto the other two skulls as no contemporary tissue data currently exists for Colombian children and females. However, they still reconstructed these faces, adding the muscles and tweaking them to fit each particular skull, and bulking out the child's face with some fat. The nose size and shape was determined by measuring the bony tissues of the skull and then selecting the best-fitting nose out of an array of options.

The team gave the individuals the skin, eye and hair color typical of individuals from the region, and gave them a neutral facial expression. Next came the hard part, Liu said, because they then had to add the facial "texture": wrinkles, eyelashes, freckles and pores. This is a long process of making constant changes until they find the best fit.

"Texture is always the biggest challenge, just because we simply don't know how they would present themselves, whether or not they have any facial scarring or tattoos, or if that actually is the skin tone," Liu said. "What we present in terms of texture is an average representation, based on what we know of these individuals."

This is an important point, Liu said, because they are creating faces based on group averages, "but nobody is ever an average." This means that these freshly unmasked faces are not accurate portraits of these individuals; they show "what they could have looked like rather than 'this is what they looked like'," she said.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

On Sept. 19, 1991, hikers were crossing a pass over the Ötztal valley in the Alps when they stumbled upon a human body that was partly exposed in the ice. The hikers alerted the authorities, who spent several days extracting the mummified corpse from the melting ice. When archaeologists finally got a look at it, they realized the mummy was not a missing 20th-century hiker but rather millennia-old human remains. The body of the middle-aged man who died around 3300 B.C. would become known as Ötzi or the Iceman who revealed what everyday life was like during the Copper Age.

Think you know a lot about Ötzi's Copper Age life and manner of death? Start the quiz below to find out if your knowledge of this famous mummy is solid or on thin ice.

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The world's oldest known human mummies were created by smoke-drying corpses 10,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and China, long before mummification became commonplace in Chile and Egypt, new research shows.

A study of dozens of ancient graves found in China, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia revealed that many skeletons that were found in a tight fetal position were treated by an extended period of smoke-drying over fire before being buried. The research was published Monday (Sept. 15) in the journal PNAS.

"Smoking likely carried spiritual, religious, or cultural meanings that went far beyond simply slowing decay," Hsiao-chun Hung, a senior research fellow at the Australian National University and lead author of the study, told Live Science in an email.

The researchers had been puzzled by the high number of burials in China and Southeast Asia from 4,000 to 12,000 years ago in which the skeletons were "hyperflexed," or contorted into unnatural tightly crouched positions. A similar skeleton found in Portugal in 2022 was interpreted as evidence of mummification because it was hyperflexed — likely bound up so the arms and legs could be moved beyond their natural limits as the body decomposed.

But in many of the ancient Southeast Asian burials, the researchers found, there was evidence of burning on the skeletons and not in the graves, which suggested some sort of ritual treatment of the body that included fire and smoke.

The researchers used X-ray diffraction, a nondestructive technique that allows scientists to investigate the internal microstructure of a material, and infrared spectroscopy to assess whether the bones had been exposed to heat. Many of the skeletons revealed evidence of low-intensity heating and discoloration from soot, rather than evidence of direct combustion such as a cremation. This suggests that a specialized mortuary practice involving the smoking of a corpse was likely practiced widely in pre-farming communities across southern China and Southeast Asia, the researchers wrote.

Related: 'Overkill' injuries on Bronze Age skeletons reveal fierce feuding in ancient China

Smoke-dried mummies are still being made today in parts of Southeast Asia, according to the researchers. They traveled to Papua, a province of Indonesia, in 2019 and observed the Dani and Pumo people creating mummies of their deceased ancestors by tightly binding the corpses, setting them over a fire, and smoking them until they turned entirely black. Drawing on these examples, the researchers concluded that ancient individuals were tightly bound after death and smoked for long periods over low-temperature fires.

Although the deceased individuals the researchers investigated in their study are only bones — with no skin, soft tissue or hair preserved — they consider the remains to be mummies because they were deliberately mummified through smoke-drying.

"The key difference from the mummies we typically imagine is that these ancient smoked bodies were not sealed in containers after the process, and therefore, their preservation generally lasted only a few decades to a few hundred years," Hung said. In the hot and humid climate of Southeast Asia, smoking was likely the most effective way of preserving the bodies, she said.

But how these ancient hunter-gatherers discovered that smoking a human body could preserve it "remains a fascinating and thought-provoking mystery," Hung said, and "we cannot say with certainty whether smoking the body was first conceived as a way to preserve it." It's possible that ancient people discovered smoking accidentally, as a by-product of some kind of ritual practice, or that they discovered smoking animal meat first and then applied it to dead humans.

"What is clear is that the practice prolonged the visible presence of the deceased, allowing ancestors to remain among the living in a tangible way, a poignant reflection of enduring human love, memory, and devotion," Hung said.

Two-layer model of migration

The mummies may also support a "two-layer" model of early migration into Southeast Asia. This model rests on the idea that ancient hunter-gatherers came as a wave of migrating people as early as 65,000 years ago and were distinct from the later Neolithic farmers and their burial traditions who did not arrive until 4,000 years ago. The ancient hunter-gatherers who used the smoked burial practices may have given rise to modern-day human populations in Southeast Asia, such as the Dani and Pumo people who still practice this form of funeral ritual.

Ivy Hui-Yuan Yeh, a biological anthropologist at Nanyang Technological University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email the new findings support the two-layer model and "are consistent with the patterns of early human migration, distribution, and interaction in Asia."

If hyperflexed burials identified throughout Southeast Asia can be interpreted as smoked mummies, this suggests that "smoked mummification might have originated earlier, and been more widespread, than is currently identified in the archaeological record," the authors wrote in the study.

In fact, the process of smoke-drying a dead body may go back as far as the early expansion of Homo sapiens from Africa into Southeast Asia, and potentially as far back as 42,000 years ago, showcasing a "deep and enduring biological and cultural continuity," the researchers concluded.

Stone Age quiz: What do you know about the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic?

An unusual mummified head discovered in Bolivia more than a century ago isn't what it seems, a new study finds.

Originally thought to be the remains of an Inca man, the mummified head is actually from someone from a different culture who had incisions cut into their skull, possibly as part of a ritual, the research reveals.

The new analysis is an attempt to place the individual in their archaeological context and to "give them back their local history," according to the researchers.

"These remains are not just bones in an anthropological collection," museologist and art historian Claire Brizon of the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History in Lausanne, Switzerland, told Live Science. "They are the remains of individuals in their own right."

Brizon is the senior author of the new study, published Aug. 27 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, that analyzed the mummified head. It consists of its mummified skin, face, cranium, jaw and part of the neck. Remarkably, the top of the head is roughly conical and bears a prominent lesion from an attempted trepanation — the process of drilling or cutting a hole through the bone of the cranium.

But there are no signs that the trepanation was done in response to trauma, which suggests it might have had a ritual or social purpose, the researchers wrote in the study.

Related: The Incas mastered the grisly practice of drilling holes in people's skulls

Collected in Bolivia

The new analysis determined that the head was from an adult man who died at least 350 years ago and that he had undergone "cranial deformation" as a child — a relatively common practice in pre-Colombian South America that was achieved by tightly binding an infant's head for many years.

In addition, the trepanation attempt on the top-right side of his skull was not completed, for some reason; deep incisions were made in the outer layers of the bone, but it had not perforated the inner layers, the researchers wrote.

The study also includes research into how the mummified head was obtained by the museum and where it came from. The researchers found that the skull was donated to the museum in Lausanne in 1876 by a Swiss collector, who had obtained it in Bolivia.

A note attached to the head said it was from an Inca person. However, the researchers found that the type of cranial deformation indicated it was from one of the Aymara, an Indigenous group living in the Bolivian Highlands.

The note also said the head was recovered in a particular area of Bolivia, which is now known to be where the Aymara live. According to the new study, it was probably taken from a "chullpa" — a stone burial tower that was once common in that region — and it had likely been naturally mummified by the cold and dry climate there.

Preserving human remains

In keeping with their mission, the researchers were careful to use only noninvasive methods of analysis — as opposed to radiocarbon dating, for example, which often requires cutting, scraping or drilling a small hole in an object to obtain enough material for a sample.

Because the dead man could give no consent, it was important to use analytical methods in line with what he might have wanted, study lead author Claudine Abegg, an anthropologist at the University of Geneva, told Live Science.

In addition, destructive testing such as isotopic or DNA analysis might be able to give more precise results than the methods used in the study, "but that decision should rest with communities connected to him," she said.

For now, the mummified head is still in the museum collection, although it is not on public display. Brizon said the museum had not yet received any requests for its repatriation but was open to inquiries.

Julia Gresky, a paleopathologist at the German Archaeological Institute who was not involved in the latest study but has researched trepanations and cranial deformations, told Live Science that she had never before seen a head that had undergone both cranial deformation and an attempted trepanation.

In this case, there was no obvious trauma that might have been the reason for the trepanation attempt — although brain disorders wouldn't leave any evidence on the skull — so it might have been performed for ritual or social purposes, she said.

But she had no explanation for why the trepanation was not completed. "Maybe the person said, 'I'm sorry, but I don't want any more,'" Gresky said.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 10:57 a.m. ET on Sept. 17 to note that the mummified head was donated to the museum in Lausanne in 1876, not 1914 as was previously stated.

Fantastical animal imagery on the forearms of a 2,300-year-old mummified woman is revealing new information about the art of tattooing in ancient Siberia.

Thanks to cutting-edge photography, archaeologists have discovered that a virtuoso artist used a previously unknown tattoo tool to "hand-poke" the designs in multiple stages.

The new findings are detailed in a study published Thursday (July 31) in the journal Antiquity.

The Pazyryk ice mummies are well known for their preserved body decorations that depict animal fight scenes and mythical creatures, including an animal resembling a griffin. The nomadic Pazyryk culture, which was part of the ancient Scythian world, flourished in the Iron Age (sixth to second centuries B.C.). The Pazyryk buried their dead in huge mounds called kurgans, which were cut into the Siberian permafrost. This burial style, along with early embalming techniques, preserved the bodies of several nobles.

But when the first Pazyryk mummies were found in the 1940s, archaeologists did not notice some of the more subtle tattoos. Infrared imaging in the early 2000s led to the discovery of previously unseen tattoos on four Pazyryk mummies.

Now, near-infrared digital photography with submillimeter resolution has allowed archaeologists to look more closely than ever at the tattoos on one mummy, a 50-year-old woman who had tattoos on both hands and forearms.

Related: Stunning reconstruction reveals warrior and his weapons from 4,000-year-old burial in Siberia

The new photographs show that the ancient woman's tattoos were made with lines of uniform thickness. Some lines were created using a multipoint tool, while others were made with a finer, single-point tool, the researchers noted in the study. Visible overlapping of lines revealed where the tattooist stopped working and picked up again.

"Many cultures around the world traditionally used bundles of plant thorns and spines to tattoo," study co-author Aaron Deter-Wolf, an archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and ancient-tattooing expert, told Live Science in an email. "We envision the multi-point tool as being a tightly clustered bundle of tines, probably bound together with thread or sinew."

But no solid evidence of tattooing implements has been found yet, probably because the tools were made of a biodegradable material, Deter-Wolf said.

Stylistically, the woman's right forearm tattoo — an animal fighting scene — had much greater detail than her other tattoos, suggesting they were made by a more experienced and skillful tattooist. It also likely took two or more sessions, as well as different tool arrangements, to complete the tattoo, the researchers wrote.

Little is known about Pazyryk tattooists, so it is unclear if the woman's forearm tattoos were made by multiple artists with different levels of expertise or by one artist over time. "Whether tattooing was done in a permanent workshop, on the move, or perhaps even as part of seasonal burial rites is unfortunately a question we can't answer yet," Deter-Wolf said.

"I've been a fan of this research team's work for a very long time," Matt Lodder, an art historian and tattoo expert at the University of Essex in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "Ultimately, these methods render tattoos indexes of individual lives as well as cultural belief systems," Lodder said, "and allow us to think about ancient tattoos as specific moments of creative practice."

The Pazyryk mummies may not have given up all of their secrets yet. Surprisingly, many of the tattoos were cut through during the embalming process, which could mean the Pazyryk did not believe the tattoos' social or spiritual meaning transferred to the afterlife, the researchers wrote.

On the other hand, "it's possible that cutting through the tattoos during embalming held some ritual significance," Deter-Wolf said. In the case of this mummy, her forearm tattoos had been cut, but her hand tattoos had not. "This is something we may be able to better investigate in the future using high-resolution imagery of other preserved tattoos from the region," he said.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

A pair of 14,000-year-old "puppies" found melting out of the permafrost in Siberia have undergone genetic testing, proving they were actually wolf cub sisters and not domesticated dogs as was previously assumed.

"Whilst many will be disappointed that these animals are almost certainly wolves and not early domesticated dogs, they have helped us get closer to understanding the environment at the time, how these animals lived, and how remarkably similar wolves from more than 14,000 years ago are to modern day wolves," Anne Kathrine Runge, an archaeologist at the University of York in the U.K., said in a statement.

Runge led an international team of researchers in analyzing the bones and DNA of the puppies. Their study, published Thursday (June 12) in the journal Quaternary Research, revealed that the mummified "puppies" were wolf littermates that died somewhere between 14,100 and 15,000 years ago.

The remarkably preserved and mummified animal carcasses were found in 2011 and 2015 near the rural settlement of Tumat in far northern Siberia. Along with the two canines, scientists discovered woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) bones that appeared to have been cut and burned by humans. This archaeological evidence suggested that the canines could have been very early domesticated dogs that were seeking food from humans — such as a piece of woolly rhino meat that was discovered in the belly of one of the animals.

Dogs and wolves are closely related, but they diverged genetically between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. Humans then domesticated wild dogs around 15,000 years ago. But the title of the world's oldest domesticated dog has never been clearly claimed. One possibility is the Bonn-Oberkassel dog, found in Germany in a human burial dated to 14,200 years ago.

Because they were older than this, the ice age Tumat canines were previously assumed to be among the oldest domesticated dogs in the world. But DNA testing in 2019 showed that they likely belonged to a now-extinct wolf population unrelated to today's dogs.

Related: Frozen in time: 10 prehistoric animals found trapped in ice

In the new study, Runge and colleagues built on the 2019 study by analyzing genetic data from the animals' gut contents and investigated chemical "fingerprints" in their bones, teeth and tissue to learn more about the famous cubs.

The cubs — genetically determined to be sisters — were only a couple of months old when they died, but both were eating solid food, including meat from a woolly rhino (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and a small bird called a wagtail — but not from a mammoth, which may have indicated that ice age humans had fed them leftover scraps. Additionally, both were still being nursed by their mother, the researchers discovered.

"It was incredible to find two sisters from this era so well preserved, but even more incredible that we can now tell so much of their story, down to the last meal they ate," Runge said in the statement.

But there's no indication that the Tumat pups got this food directly from humans or even from scavenging humans' mammoth butchering sites, according to the researchers. The sisters "inhabited a diverse landscape that was also occupied by humans," they wrote, but "this study found no evidence that can conclusively link them to human activities."

How the cubs died remains a mystery, as well. Given the cubs' lack of injuries, they may have been resting in an underground den when it collapsed, trapping them inside, the researchers wrote in the study.

"Today, litters are often larger than two, and it is possible that the Tumat Puppies had siblings that escaped their fate," study co-author Nathan Wales, an ancient-DNA specialist at the University of York, said in the statement. "There may also be more cubs hidden in the permafrost."

Additional research on the Tumat cubs may yet produce more information about ancient wolves and their evolutionary line, Wales noted in the statement.

Last ice age quiz: How much do you know about Earth's frosty past?

An 800-year-old mummy donated to a museum in Italy a century ago has revealed new clues about ancient face tattoos. But the mummy's origin remains shrouded in mystery.

Some time prior to 1930, the mummy of an adult female was donated to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAET) at the University of Turin, with no records of its archaeological context. The mummy recently caught the attention of a team of researchers due to the surprising presence of tattoos on her face.

In a study published in the May-June issue of the Journal of Cultural Heritage, the international team of researchers detailed their analysis of the mummy and her tattoos, noting that they were extremely unusual both in their location and in the composition of the ink used to make them.

The mummy has straight black hair cropped short and is tightly flexed into a seated position, typical of mummy burials in the Andes. Researchers carbon-dated textile fragments stuck to the body and determined the woman died between A.D. 1215 and 1382.

"On the basis of current evidence — particularly preservation, body placement, associated materials and documents — a South American origin is strongly supported," study lead author Gianluigi Mangiapane, an anthropologist at the University of Turin, told Live Science in an email.

Related: Lasers reveal hidden patterns in tattoos of 1,200-year-old Peru mummies

But while looking closely at the mummy using infrared reflectography, a technique often used to "see through" paint layers of artwork to find older brush strokes, the research team noted a series of unusual tattoos: three lines on the mummy's right cheek, one line on the left cheek and an S-shape on the right wrist.

"Skin marks on the face are rare among the groups of the ancient Andean region and even rarer on the cheeks," the researchers wrote in the study, and the S-shaped tattoo "is so far unique for the Andean region."

To identify the ink used to make the tattoos, the researchers used a suite of non-destructive techniques. Although they expected to find evidence of charcoal in the ink, they instead discovered that the unusual ink was made with magnetite, an iron oxide mineral, with traces of the mineral augite. In South America, augite and magnetite can be found together in southern Peru, suggesting a potential homeland for the mummified woman.

"There are a small number of ethnographic accounts from the Americas that describe the use of mineral or earth pigments such as hematite or magnetite for tattooing, and the new study fits quite nicely with those," Aaron Deter-Wolf, an archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology who was not involved in the study, told Live Science by email.

But Deter-Wolf, who is an expert in ancient tattooing, is not convinced that the mystery mummy hails from the Andes.

"Stylistically, these particular face markings have far more in common with historic Arctic or Amazonian traditions than with Andean practices," Deter-Wolf said. "It would be fascinating to see what oxygen isotopes or other studies might be able to tell us about the origins of this individual."

At this stage, though, isotope analyses have not been carried out. "Since these types of analyses are invasive, we have currently decided to limit such procedures in order to preserve the integrity of the remains," Mangiapane said.

But the MAET that houses the mummy is interested in further investigation, Mangiapane said, and this may include future cultural comparisons to better understand the nature of the mysterious mummy's facial tattoos.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

The "Eye of Horus," a depiction of a single stylized eye looking straight ahead, is found throughout ancient Egypt. The symbol is frequently seen in ancient burials — especially on a type of amulet known as the wedjat (or udjat). Sometimes, the Eye of Horus is also featured on coffins and inside tomb chapels.

But what is the Eye of Horus and what did it mean to the ancient Egyptians?

According to Egyptian mythology, Horus was the son of Osiris, the god of the underworld. Horus fought his uncle Seth to see who would be ruler of Egypt. During the fight, Seth mutilated the left eye of Horus. But Horus ultimately won the fight, became ruler of Egypt and, eventually, regained his left eye. It was restored "by the ibis-headed Thoth, the god of wisdom," Emily Teeter, a research associate at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, told Live Science in an email.

Depictions of this left eye became the powerful Eye of Horus symbol.

"The wedjat is one of the most iconic amulets from ancient Egypt," Kei Yamamoto, an Egyptologist at the University of Toronto, told Live Science in an email. "The wedjat amulet is associated with healing and protection. That is probably why this type of amulet is found in many burials, often included in the mummy wrappings."

Related: How many ancient Egyptian pyramids are there?

The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted more than 3,000 years, and practices surrounding the Eye of Horus changed over time.

"In later periods, a large wedjat made of wax was placed over the left abdomen, where the embalmer made the incision during the mummification process, in order to invoke healing and protection of the vulnerable area," Yamamoto said. This was done during the first millennium B.C.

The eye was such an "instantly recognisable" sign of protection and health that it "became a metaphor for pragmatic 'wholeness' and well-being," Penny Wilson, an associate professor of archaeology at Durham University in the U.K., told Live Science in an email.

The Eye of Horus' associations with well-being "could be applied to a range of other concepts about the Nile waters, Egypt as a whole, healing and whole-food offerings," Wilson said.

The Eye of Horus was also associated with the waxing and waning of the moon, which may have helped increase its appeal, said Gyula Priskin, an ancient historian at the University of Szeged in Hungary. The story of the left eye of Horus being mutilated and restored was compared to how the moon waxes and wanes, especially during the second and first millenniums B.C.

"Although the Eye of Horus was a complex symbol with many connotations and appearing in many roles, its association with the moon very probably contributed to its popularity," Priskin told Live Science in an email.

When did the Eye of Horus first appear?

Wedjat amulets first appeared around 2200 B.C. and the Eye of Horus was also drawn on coffins and tomb chapels around that time, Yamamoto said. "In those cases, scholars believe that the eyes not only provided magical protection for the deceased but also allowed them to look out toward the world of the living."

It's not clear why the Eye of Horus emerged around the time of the sixth dynasty. Yamamoto noted that at that time, ancient Egyptians started writing a series of religious texts on the walls of pyramids. This suggests that ancient Egyptians were starting to "canonize" their religious beliefs, Yamamoto said. This may have "led to the development and spread of new religious motifs" such as the Eye of Horus.

Wilson noted that the Eye could be related to religious cosmetics. "We know from early times galena and malachite were powerful protective eye cosmetics applied to the eyes, so the wedjat-eye may be a way of visualising the protected eye," Wilson said.

Whatever the reason was for its creation, the Eye of Horus became a symbol associated with ancient Egypt. According to Wilson, it's "very versatile. Very Egyptian style. Very powerful."

Editor's note: This story was first published on April 13, 2025.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 13 ancient mummies with gold tongues and nails in a cemetery at the site of Oxyrhynchus.

The team made the finds when they dug down to the bottom of a burial shaft, revealing a hall with three chambers that held dozens of mummies. The human remains date to the Ptolemaic period (circa 304 to 30 B.C.), a time when a dynasty descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals ruled Egypt, according to two statements released by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Archaeologists had previously unearthed 16 gold tongues at Oxyrhynchus. The ancient Egyptians put gold tongues in mummies with the intention of helping the deceased speak in the afterlife, and because they believed that gold was "the flesh of the gods," Esther Pons Mellado and Maite Mascort, co-directors of the Spanish-Egyptian archaeological mission at Oxyrhynchus, told Live Science earlier this year. The same team made the new finds.

"The number of gold tongues here is high, which is interesting," Salima Ikram, an Egyptology professor at the American University in Cairo who was not involved with the latest excavation, told Live Science in an email. "Possibly the bodies belong to higher elites that were associated with the temple and animal cults that proliferated in the area," Ikram said, noting it's possible that gold tongues "might have been the vogue for the embalming house in the area."

Related: Gold tongues found in 2,000-year-old mummies in Egypt

During the latest dig, the archaeologists also found 29 amulets with the mummies. Some amulets are in the shape of scarab beetles, as the ancient Egyptians associated scarabs with the movement of the sun across the sky. Other amulets are in the shape of Egyptian deities, including Horus, Thoth and Isis. Some of them have forms that combine multiple deities together.

The excavation also revealed wall paintings, including one that depicts a tomb owner named "Wen-Nefer," who is shown being accompanied by several Egyptian deities. Another painting on the ceiling depicts the sky goddess Nut surrounded by the stars. There is also a painting of a boat that has multiple deities depicted on it.

"As for the paintings, the quality is really excellent and the freshness of colors is simply amazing," Francesco Tiradritti, an Egyptologist at D'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy who was not involved in the dig, told Live Science in an email.

Live Science contacted the researchers who are excavating at Oxyrhynchus but has not heard back at time of publication.

Ancient Egypt is famous for its pyramids, mummies and hieroglyphs. At times throughout its thousands of years of history, ancient Egypt was an empire that controlled vast areas of northeast Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, while at other times it was under the control of foreign powers.

The Giza pyramids, the Valley of the Kings and Karnak Temple are some of Egypt's most famous archaeological sites. Its history includes a variety of famous pharaohs, such as Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII. Many famous foreigners, including Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and — according to the Gospel of Matthew — even Jesus, visited Egypt.

Today, Egyptologists and other scientists engage in excavations and studies and often make new discoveries. Museums around the world have ancient Egyptian artifacts, and exhibitions on the country's history are very popular.

But how much do you really know about ancient Egypt? Take our quiz and find out. If you need a hint, click the yellow button!

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A mysterious white substance smeared on the heads and necks of 3,600-year-old mummies in China is the world's oldest cheese.

Researchers initially discovered the enigmatic material smudged on several of the mummies buried at the Xiaohe Cemetery in northwestern China's Tarim Basin about two decades ago. Now, DNA tests have revealed that the mystery goo was kefir cheese, a probiotic soft cheese, and that it was produced using cow and goat cheeses thousands of years ago, according to a study published Wednesday (Sept. 25) in the journal Cell.

The cheese contained several bacterial and fungal species, including Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens and Pichia kudriavzevii, both of which are found in modern-day kefir grains. These grains are "symbiotic cultures" that consist of a mix of bacteria and yeast, which ferment milk into cheese, similar to a "sourdough starter," according to a statement.

"This is the oldest known cheese sample ever discovered in the world," study senior author Qiaomei Fu, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said in the statement. "Food items like cheese are extremely difficult to preserve over thousands of years, making this a rare and valuable opportunity.

Related: Lavish 2,200-year-old tomb unearthed in China may be that of ancient king

Fu added that "studying the ancient cheese in great detail can help us better understand our ancestors' diet and culture."

The researchers also determined that the L. kefiranofaciens grains were closely related to similar ones originating from Tibet. By sequencing the bacterial genes, researchers could "track how probiotic bacteria evolved over the past 3,600 years," according to the statement.

"Our observation suggests kefir culture has been maintained in Northwestern China's Xinjiang region since the Bronze Age," Fu said. "[We can] observe how a bacterium evolved over the past 3,000 years. Moreover, by examining dairy products, we've gained a clearer picture of ancient human life and their interactions with the world."

However, it remains unknown why these individuals were covered with cheese in the first place.  

The ancient Egyptians were no strangers to illness, with research showing that they were affected by a host of infectious diseases, including smallpox, tuberculosis and leprosy.

For instance, Ramesses V, the fourth pharaoh of Egypt's 20th dynasty, contracted smallpox, which is evidenced by telltale smallpox scars pockmarking his mummified body. 

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared smallpox eradicated worldwide in 1980, is it possible that, thousands of years later, newly unearthed mummies could unleash smallpox or any other illnesses from their bodies? 

Piers Mitchell, director of the University of Cambridge's Ancient Parasites Laboratory and a senior research associate in its Department of Archaeology, said it's extremely unlikely. 

"Most species of parasites are dead within a year or two" without a living host to latch onto, Mitchell told Live Science. "If you wait more than 10 years, everything is dead." 

Related: 7 famous mummies and secrets they've revealed about the ancient world

For example, poxviruses like smallpox can only reproduce within the cells of a living host, according to the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The bacteria that causes tuberculosis and leprosy also require living hosts to survive, according to the NIH. 

However, smallpox is spread by touch from person-to-person contact, whereas tuberculosis and leprosy usually travel through droplets from the nose and mouth, typically passing via a sneeze or a cough, according to the NIH. 

In the case of leprosy, it takes extended exposure with someone who is ill for it to spread. This is because the two species of bacteria that cause the disease, known as Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis, replicate slowly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Another factor that decreases the likelihood of someone contracting an illness from a mummy is the degradation of DNA over time. 

"With analysis, you can find that all the bits of DNA of these parasites are rather short," Mitchell said. "Instead of being nice, long, healthy DNA chains, they are only about 50 to 100 base pairs. It's like everything has been chopped up, and that's because [the DNA] is degrading and breaking down. There's no way for anything to be viable once the DNA has fallen apart — nothing is waking up."

However, some parasitic intestinal worms, which are distributed through feces, live longer than other organisms, and not all need a living host to survive. 

Still, they aren't a big worry either.

"Those can be a lot tougher and can last a number of months, or sometimes a few years, but none of them are going to last thousands of years," Mitchell said. "The vast majority of parasites die when the host dies because they have no way of surviving."

And even on the off chance that one of these ancient organisms were still alive and kicking, the masks, gloves and other protective gear researchers wear to prevent them contaminating the mummies would also prevent them from contracting or spreading pathogens.

Archaeologists have unearthed more than 30 ancient Egyptian tombs that cover an entire hill in Aswan, an ancient city on the Nile. The burials date to the Greco-Roman period and reveal clues about those who once lived in this vibrant trading port.

The finds include the mummies of what are likely families buried together; coffins; cartonnage, or a paper-mache material created from recycled papyri or fabric; amphorae, or clay vessels, decorated with vine-leaf designs; and artifacts such as offering tables.

"It was a rich place, an important place," said Patrizia Piacentini, an Egyptologist and archaeologist at the University of Milan who leads a joint Egyptian-Italian mission at the site. "All the people who intended to make trade between Northern Africa and subtropical Africa, this was the place [for them] and it was a place for all the history of ancient Egypt," she said.

Archaeologists learned about the burial site in 2015, following a slew of illegal excavations. The government asked local archaeologists to survey the area, and soon thereafter excavators discovered tombs dating to the late Greek and Roman periods (roughly 332 B.C. to A.D. 395).     

The former Egyptian minister of antiquities, Khaled el-Enany, then reached out to Piacentini, who began surveying the site with a large team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists in 2019. The researchers found terraces of ancient tombs stratified into multiple levels on the hill near the modern Mausoleum of Aga Khan III.

Related: See gorgeous ancient Egyptian 'mummy portraits' from nearly 2 millennia ago

During the excavation, the archaeologists found ancient oil lamps that were possibly left behind by mourners.

"We can imagine how spectacular it was when, for example, during the [mourners'] feast, all these tombs were illuminated," Piacentini told Live Science. "I think that was something absolutely spectacular." These tomb structures were built into the rock at a vertical height of at least 10 levels and were unlike any other tombs found in Egypt from the period, which were usually about two to three levels high, she said.

The tombs were used for around 900 years between the sixth century B.C. and the second or third century A.D., Piacentini said. This period covers a wide spread of history, including Persian rule (525 to 404 B.C.), the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty ushered in by Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy I Soter, and finally Roman rule, when Egypt became a province in the empire. The elites of the day occupied the tombs at the top of the hill, followed by the middle-class people in the lower strata, Piacentini said. 

Analyses revealed that 30% to 40% of the mummies in the newly discovered tombs belong to children as young as 2 years old and newborns, according to a translated statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

"We found many families, in fact, mother, father, and children," Piacentini said. "Probably there was some infection that killed the family or one died after another." 

The team also found two mummies that they initially thought belonged to a mother and son, but careful analyses later revealed that the duo were brothers buried together with their parents.

To find out more about how the individuals died, the team partnered with doctors at the University Hospital in Aswan to perform analyses such as X-rays, CT (computed tomography) scans and DNA analysis, which showed that anemia and infectious diseases were the most common causes of death at the time, even in the most affluent individuals, Piacentini said.

By looking at the mummies' backbones, the doctors confirmed that some had tuberculosis, which may have wiped out an entire family. The team is conducting biological analyses to understand more about the diseases that infected people at the time.

The discovery has been "exceptional" and "very promising with many, many new aspects we are trying to understand." Piacentini said. 

The team hopes to continue its mission to uncover the history of the diverse populations that occupied the city. They have now mapped out at least 300 tombs in the necropolis area covering about 215,000 square feet (20,000 square meters) and "there may be much more than that," Piacentini said.

Ancient Egyptians are perhaps best known for the way they treated the dead — from constructing colossal pyramids to filling subterranean tombs with lavish treasures and artifacts. The Egyptians also famously mummified many of the recently deceased to preserve their bodies.

But when did people in ancient Egypt start mummifying their dead?

"The origins of Egyptian mummification, for which there is clear scientific evidence, is [circa] 4,300 B.C.," Stephen Buckley, a researcher at the University of York in the U.K. who co-wrote two papers on the topic, told Live Science in an email. "We may find it goes back earlier still," Buckley said.

This evidence includes 6,300 year-old mummy wrappings that were found at an ancient Egyptian cemetery at the site of Mostagedda, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Cairo. The burials were excavated in the early 20th century, and the wrappings were brought to the U.K. and are now in the Bolton Museum as Buckley and colleagues noted in the PLOS One study in 2014.

In the study, the scientists tested the wrappings and found that they contain resins typically used in mummification. The tests indicate that these resins were made from a variety of ingredients such as plant oil, animal fats, wax and plant gum. Similar resins were also used in later time periods by the ancient Egyptians for mummification, the scientists noted.

To put the 4,300 B.C. date into context, this is about a millennium before the Egyptians developed hieroglyphs and about 1,500 years before they started building pyramids. It is also about a millennium before Egypt became unified under a single pharaoh.  

Natural mummification

While the oldest evidence for using artificial means to mummify bodies dates back around 4,300 B.C., Egyptians underwent natural mummification in even earlier times.

Natural mummification "is an accidental process caused by favourable burial conditions," such as being buried in hot, dry sand, Buckley said. "The Egyptians didn't start to naturally mummify their dead at any point in time in terms of a conscious act," Buckley said.

Salima Ikram, an Egyptology professor at the American University in Cairo, told Live Science in an email that the earliest examples of naturally mummified mummies date from 5000 B.C. if not earlier.

Even after artificial mummification was developed, many Egyptians were still naturally mummified because they were unable to afford artificial mummification and so were buried in the desert. The "majority of ancient Egyptians were simply put in a hole in the ground, with no preparation" and could accidently become naturally mummified, Buckley said.

Ikram that "we don't know what was in the minds of the ancient Egyptians. But, whomever was put into a sandy grave, far from water, and not enclosed with a reed mat/coffin or in a skin, would have been naturally mummified."

As Christianity spread in Egypt between the second and fifth centuries A.D., the use of artificial mummification declined, according to the Royal Ontario Museum. While ancient Egyptian religion emphasized the importance of preserving the body for the afterlife, Christianity did not, the museum noted.

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed the burials of at least 73 people dating to around 1,000 years ago, a few hundred years before the Inca took over parts of western South America. 

Each of the 73 individuals was bundled in fabric — some of it colorful — and rope. Some of the male and female bodies were buried wearing masks of carved wood and ceramic, which are known as "false heads," Krzysztof Makowski, head of archaeological research at the site and an archaeologist at ​​the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, said in a post on Archeowieści blog, which is managed by the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw. Colorful ceramics were also found in some of the graves. 

The burials, discovered near Lima at the archaeological site of Pachacámac, belong to the Wari culture. They were buried near the Wari's Painted Temple and date to between 800 and 1100, a time when the Wari Empire was expanding in the region, according to the post. 

The Wari are known for their well-preserved mummies, elaborate art, including intricately designed ceramics and fabrics. They also practiced human sacrifice and made use of hallucinogens during religious rituals. 

Related: Stunning images of the mysterious Nazca Lines in Peru

Newfound wooden staffs

Additionally, archaeologists found two wooden staffs near the cemetery in the remains of the nearby settlement. They were discovered in a deposit of "thorny oyster" (Spondylus princeps) shells that would have been imported from what is now Ecuador, which sits north of the Wari Empire, the blog post stated. 

The two staffs have carved iconography that suggests the people at Pachacámac had some level of contact with people in the Tiwanaku kingdom, located to the south of the Wari Empire in what is now part of Peru, Bolivia and Chile. 

Each of the staffs has a carving depicting a dignitary wearing headgear that looks similar to what people wore in the Tiwanaku kingdom, the post said. 

Excavations at Pachacámac and an analysis of remains are ongoing. In the Quechea language spoken by the Indigenous people of the Andes, the name Pachacámac means "one who gives life to the Earth." 

Archaeological research suggests that Pachacámac was a relatively modest settlement during the time of the Wari Empire but then it grew substantially during the time of the Inca, who flourished during the 15th century. The site became a major location of religious worship during the time of the Inca in the 15th century, the blog post said. 

Ancient Egyptians traded with people in what is today coastal Eritrea to bring baboons to their temples, according to a new study of baboon mummy DNA.

Ancient Egyptians were big fans of baboons, which they associated with the god Babi, a god of the underworld and the deity Thoth, who was sometimes depicted with the head of a baboon. They kept the monkeys in captivity, removing their sharp incisors so they were less dangerous, and often mummified them as offerings to the gods. But as far as anyone can tell, baboons have never naturally occurred in Egypt, said Gisela Kopp, a geneticist at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the leader of a new study on the baboon DNA.

"There were these stories that they got them from Punt, this fabled, mysterious land," Kopp told Live Science.

Though Punt was mentioned in ancient Egyptian documents, it was never identifiable on a map. In 2020, Nathaniel Dominy, a primatologist at Dartmouth College used molecules from ancient baboon mummy teeth to reveal the baboons' diets in early life; he found that they came from a region encompassing modern-day Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia. The baboons in that study dated back to Egypt's New Kingdom, between 1550 B.C. to 1070B.C. It was the first hard evidence for the location of Punt.

Now, Kopp and her colleagues (including Dominy) have narrowed that location down using DNA evidence. In a study published Sept. 28 in the journal eLife, they managed to extract DNA from a mummified baboon dating to between 800 B.C. and 540 B.C.

Related: Ancient Egyptian tomb was filled with magical spells to ward off snake bites

They then compared that DNA to the genetics of 14 baboons from the 19th and 20th centuries whose origins were known. DNA can give more specific geographic locations than the previous method of discerning diet, Kopp said. Many baboons were captive-bred in Egypt, and diet can't reveal anything about their ancestry. DNA, on the other hand, can.

The researchers attempted to extract DNA from 10 baboon mummies, but ancient DNA is fragile, so only one mummy sample was usable. Still, it told an interesting tale: The baboon was most closely related to populations from what is today coastal Eritrea.

"It's close to this ancient port of Adulis," Kopp said.

There are historical records from around 300 B.C. and later that mention Adulis as a place where Egyptian traders traveled — and as the center of trade in wild animals. The baboon DNA pushes back the first evidence of trade with Adulis at least a couple of centuries.

It also suggests that Adulis and Punt might have been basically the same place. The isotope study from 2020 showed that ancient Egyptians were trading with Punt for baboons as early as 1550 B.C. The new study, combined with historical records, suggests that more than 1,000 years later, they were still doing the same thing.

"Maybe the earlier Punt was in a similar location to where Adulis was [later] established," Kopp said.

Because the study is based on a single mummy, the research team would like to sample more baboons and get more information from more time periods, Kopp said. This is one of the first ancient DNA studies on a non-human primate, she added, and more work on other species could reveal more about other ancient Egyptian imports and their impact on wild populations.

The baboon is the only animal not native to Egypt that is linked with Egyptian deities, Kopp said, and it's a little odd that ancient Egyptians took such interest in baboons. They tend to steal crops and break into homes looking for food, making them difficult to live with, she said.

"The people who coexist with baboons don't really like them," Kopp told Live Science.

The hostile, snow-capped tops of volcanoes in the Andes are home to the world's highest-dwelling vertebrates, new research confirms. The finding that small mammals live 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) above sea level challenges assumptions about the limits of vertebrate life, researchers told Science magazine.

In the past, scientists repeatedly found mummified mice preserved in below-freezing temperatures high up on these peaks, but they didn't know if the small mammals lived on the volcano tops or just visited them.

"Mouse mummies have occasionally been discovered in association with Incan ceremonial structures and burial sites at or near summits of several high Andean volcanoes," researchers wrote in a new study, published Oct. 23 in the journal Current Biology. "It has even been hypothesized that the animals were used as part of sacrificial rituals."

But when the authors dated the mummified leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum), they found that even the most ancient ones were just a few centuries old — not old enough to have been transported there by the Incas. This raised the possibility the mice lived there and had been mummified naturally by the cold, dry conditions.

Related: Takins: Strange, mountain-dwelling mammals with mythical golden fleeces

In 2013, researchers climbing up Llullaillaco volcano on the border between Argentina and Chile spotted, for the first time, a live mouse scurrying across a snow field at a record-breaking altitude of 20,360 feet (6,205 m). The team returned in 2020 and trapped several more live mice, including on the volcano's summit at 22,100 feet (6,739 m) elevation, according to a study published at the time in PNAS. This was the highest a vertebrate had ever been found (birds soar higher but do not live at these elevations).

No plants can survive on the volcano's wind-whipped summit, and oxygen levels are 40% lower than those at sea level. But in the past three years, researchers have collected hundreds of additional mummified and live leaf-eared mice from Llullaillaco and other volcanoes taller than 19,700 feet (6,000 m) in the Puna de Atacama region.

"Such extreme elevations were previously assumed to be completely uninhabitable by mammals," researchers wrote in the new study.

To show that the mini-mice really did thrive this high up, the team compared the genomes of mice found above 19,700 feet to mice living lower down and found the high-dwelling rodents were more closely related to each other — but only slightly.

Even if the genetic difference was small, "it's really cool to see that they were closely related," Catherine Ivy, a postdoctoral researcher and comparative physiologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, who was not involved in the study, told Science. "It helps solidify that these mice were actually breeding and residing at these altitudes." 

Researchers also discovered rodent burrows above 19,700 feet. Together with the fact that specimens from the same peak were genetically similar and evenly split between males and females, the results confirm that "summit mice represent members of resident populations and were not simply transient sojourners," the study authors wrote. 

"I might add leaf-eared mice to my list of 'extremophiles' normally reserved for microorganisms," Grant McClelland, a comparative physiologist and professor of biology at McMaster University in Canada who was not involved in the study, told Science.

The mystery of the mummified mice may be resolved, but it remains unclear what leaf-eared mice eat and how they stay warm to survive their frigid habitat. Researchers hope to solve the puzzle by studying a colony of high-altitude mice they recently established in Chile.

You can read more about the high-living mice at Science. 

In the early first millennium, many mummies in Egypt were affixed with lifelike portraits showcasing the deceased's once-vivid eyes, styled hair and elaborate jewelry. Over the past few centuries, archaeologists have unearthed more than 1,000 of these mummy paintings, largely from the city of Fayum, earning them the name "Fayum portraits."

These well-preserved, mesmerizing portraits still captivate, prompting Allard Pierson, a museum in Amsterdam, to feature nearly 40 Fayum portraits in its exhibit "Face to Face: The People Behind Mummy Portraits," which opened Oct. 6 and runs through Feb. 25, 2024.

The portraits, created during Egypt's Roman period (30 B.C. to A.D. 395), often depict individuals with European heritage, who moved to the area following Alexander the Great's rule, the subsequent Ptolemaic dynasty (305 to 30 B.C.) led by one of his generals and the Roman period, when the empire made Egypt into a province. 

The portraits were often painted on wooden panels with the two upper corners cut off so they could be easily inserted into the mummy bandages, over the face of the mummified body, Ben van den Bercken, curator of the Collection Ancient Egypt and Sudan at Allard Pierson, told Live Science.

Below are 12 of the portraits, each revealing hints about the deceased and their culture.

1.  Portrait of Ammonius

In the restored "Portrait of 'Ammonius,'" painted on linen sometime between A.D. 225 and 250, a young man holds a chalice in one hand and a flower bouquet in the other. The artist gave Ammonius several distinctive features, including large lips, prominent ears, eye bags and strangely curved fingers, according to the book "Mummy Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum" (Oxford University Press, 1982).

2. Pearl earrings

This portrait, painted between A.D. 150 and 200 on wood, shows a young woman with brown doe eyes, a slender nose and thick eyebrows. Pearls, like the ones she wears, are one of the "most ubiquitous" types of earrings in the Fayum portraits, van den Bercken said. Jewelry and hairstyles can help researchers date the portraits, he noted. For instance, women's hairdos could "be very elaborate" and often reflected fashions and trends from Rome itself, "mainly [from] the empress," he said.

However, it's always a question how long it took the fashions of Rome to reach Egypt. In some cases, "something fashionable in Egypt might have already gone out of fashion in Rome itself," van den Bercken said.

3. Bearded man

In this portrait, painted on wood sometime between A.D. 175 and 225, we see a curly-haired, bearded man clad in white. The man's beard may mimic the facial hair of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (reign 161 to 180), who also sported a beard.

4. Elegant jewelry

This portrait, painted on wood sometime between A.D. 175 and 200, shows a dark-haired woman wearing a matching necklace and earrings. However, as in other Fayum portraits, it's unclear if it portrays the deceased when they were younger or around the time of death.

In some cases, the portraits were fairly accurate, according to a 2020 study in the journal PLOS One. A team took a CT (computed tomography) scan of a young boy's mummy from Roman Egypt, digitally reconstructed his face and then compared the reconstruction with his portrait. According to an analysis, the portrait made the child look younger than his 3 or 4 years but was otherwise spot-on.

5. Vivid eyes

This male portrait, painted circa A.D. 250 on limewood, was purchased in the early 1800s by Henry Salt, the British vice-consul in Egypt, making it one of the earliest Fayum portraits recovered in the modern age, according to "Mummy Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum."

The earliest record of a Fayum portrait being collected dates to 1615, when a group of the paintings was brought from Saqqara, Egypt, to Europe by the Roman nobleman Pietro della Valle.

6. Girl with gold wreath

In this portrait, painted on wood between A.D. 120 and 130, we see a young girl wearing a pearl necklace and a golden wreath in her hair. "This wreath is an indication that she 'overcame' death," van den Bercken said.

7. Man with gold wreath

Women weren't the only ones painted with gold wreaths. In this portrait, painted on wood sometime between A.D. 150 and 200, we see a bearded man sporting his own gold laurels.

8. Realistic portraiture

This portrait, painted circa A.D. 150, shows a man clothed in white and wearing a gold wreath. The Fayum portraits' compelling images inspired artists painting icons in the late Byzantine Empire, as well as artists in the late 19th and 20th centuries, according to Allard Pierson. Today, this style is seen as one of the earliest known examples of realistic painted portraiture.

9. Curly-haired man

This man's beard helped researchers date his portrait to the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Like others with portraits, the man painted here may have had European roots. Many Greeks and Romans lived in Egypt, first during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which started when one of Alexander the Great's generals took over the region, and later when Rome made Egypt into a province following the death of Cleopatra VII.

10. Eyes and eyelashes

This portrait, painted on wood between A.D. 300 and 400, shows a woman wearing pearl earrings. "A lot of detail has been put in the composition of eyes and eyelashes," van den Bercken said. A few clues hint that the deceased were upper-middle class or elite, including that many wore ornate jewelry in these portraits. In addition, individuals or their families had to pay an artist for the portrait. "They were not easy to make, not cheap to make resource-wise," van den Bercken said. "The people who ordered them must have had some financial means to do this."

11. Fancy necklace

This woman's portrait was painted sometime between A.D. 160 and 190. The majority of known Fayum portraits were found in the 1800s, but in 2022, archaeologists announced that they had discovered more at a cemetery in the ancient city of Philadelphia in Egypt.

12. Bright-eyed woman

This portrait, painted on wood between A.D. 170 and 200, was found in Egypt in the 1880s, according to "Mummy Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum." The woman wears pearl earrings, a necklace, a hot-pink tunic and black clavi, or vertical strips of ornamentation. Her curly hair is drawn into a bun.

In a now-viral story, "alien" bodies were unveiled before Mexico's congress Tuesday (Sept. 12). But is there any real science behind this bizarre event? 

Not by a long shot, according to scholars, who denounced the claim and affirmed that the bodies are not alien. 

Mexico's congress was holding a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), a term that is now used to describe UFOs. UAPs have also been the subject of congressional hearings in the United States over the past two years.

During the presentation, a team that included Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan and military medical doctor José de Jesús Zalce Benítez presented two bodies — which appear to be no more than 3.3 feet (1 meter) tall and appear skinny with grayish skin and large heads — in coffin-like boxes before Mexico's congress. They claimed that DNA tests reveal that the remains of these three-fingered beings are not human and that their abdomens hold eggs that may be used in reproduction. The duo also said the bodies came from Peru and that radiocarbon dating shows they date back 1,000 years, National Public Radio reported.

The same bodies made headlines in 2017 and 2018, Maussan told Live Science in an email. At the time, scholars denounced those bodies as consisting of manipulated human body parts. Maussan told Live Science that since that time, more tests have shown that the bodies are not human. He also stressed that he is not saying these bodies are necessarily alien — just that they are not human.

Related: Why are we seeing so many UFOs over America all of a sudden?

"We never said they are extraterrestrial," Maussan said, adding that they had found evidence for implants made of the elements osmium and cadmium inside the bodies, "a technology unknown 1,000 years ago." Live Science was unable to reach de Jesús Zalce Benítez at press time. 

Scientists blast claims

"Let me tell you that all this is complete nonsense," Rafael Bojalil-Parra, research reinforcement director at Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAD) in Mexico City, told Live Science in an email. "That our Congress gives a forum to this self-proclaimed UFOlogist is a reflection of the anti-scientific mood that prevails in our country today." 

There were reports in some media outlets that tests on the bodies were performed at UAD. But Bojalil-Parra said no DNA tests were performed at the university, and while a carbon-14 test was conducted in 2017, a commercial agreement prevents the university from disclosing the results.

Tellingly, if the bodies were aliens, then carbon-14 dating would be useless. "Radiocarbon dating is based on Carbon 14 atoms which are created when the sun's radiation strikes the Earth's upper atmosphere," David Anderson, an assistant professor of anthropology who has written about pseudoarchaeology extensively at Radford University in Virginia, told Live Science in an email. "To radiocarbon date extraterrestrial beings, we would have to know what the rate of production of 14-C was on their home planet, not ours."

Other scientists also denounced the claims. "It is sad to see the well debunked claims of Jaime Maussan returning to the internet," Andrew Nelson, chair of anthropology at Western University in Ontario, told Live Science in an email. The bodies "have been debunked on the basis of anatomy," with studies showing that some of the bodies "are human mummies that had been deliberately manipulated to appear alien," Nelson said. They show, for example, the feet of the "aliens" could have been created by mutilating the foot of a human mummy. 

"The feet would have suffered mutilations of digits I and V, in addition to the cutting of the skin and soft tissue of the foot behind the toes, producing a foot with extremely long toes," Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Cayetano Heredia University and the Museum of Natural History in Lima, wrote in a 2017 analysis. 

Nelson said that "while Maussan claims to have CT, C-14 and DNA evidence, he has not presented that evidence for peer review by the scientific community." Nelson added that if these remains are in fact 1,000 years old and from Peru, it raises questions as to whether they were looted and how they left the country.

Another scientist said that if the remains are human, those involved with the claims should face legal implications. They "should be arrested and tried for whatever laws might apply for exploiting or desecrating human remains," Ken Feder, an archaeology professor at Central Connecticut State University, told Live Science in an email.

The hearing in Mexico took place partly because there have been high profile hearings on UAPs in the United States congress noted Jeb Card, an assistant teaching professor of anthropology at Miami University in Ohio. While "no one has yet wheeled out alien bodies in the US Capitol," Card told Live Science in an email, there has been testimony before the U.S. Congress made by former military officials that the American government has biological remains of aliens.

The growing popularity of conspiracy theories helps to explain why stuff like this is occurring, Card said. "The simple reality is that it is now profitable — figuratively and literally — to push narratives that 'elites' are inflicting their will on the broader people through devious, conspiratorial, and at times supernatural means." 

Live Science contacted Peru's Ministry of Culture, which did not return requests for comment by the time of publication. 

Ancient Egyptians were masters at embalming and created elaborate concoctions to mummify the dead. Now, a new study reveals the lengths these innovators went to obtain exotic ingredients as part of this cultural practice — especially if the deceased were of high status.

This was the case for Senetnay, a noblewoman who worked as the wet nurse for the Pharaoh Amenhotep II during his infancy around 1450 B.C. Archaeologists discovered her burial in 1900 in the Valley of the Kings, a royal cemetery reserved for pharaohs and other elites. Alongside her mummy, researchers unearthed four lidded jars shaped like human heads that contained her organs, including her lungs and liver, according to a study published Thursday (Aug. 31) in the journal Scientific Reports.

While the organs have been lost to time, two of the jars are now part of the collection at the Museum August Kestner in Germany and were available for scientists to collect samples from by scraping residue off of the pottery. After conducting chemical analysis of the swabs, researchers uncovered a complex mix of ingredients that ancient Egyptians used to create the balms, some of which weren't native to the region. 

"Many of the ingredients they used were unusual for that area, since they weren't readily available in ancient Egypt," lead author Barbara Huber, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, told Live Science. "They most likely acquired these ingredients through trade networks."

Related: Elaborate underground embalming workshop discovered at Saqqara

The balm ingredients included things like beeswax, plant oils and animal fats — all common embalming substances. But the researchers also identified coumarin and benzoic acid in the samples swiped from both jars. Coumarin is a scent similar to vanilla that's found in cinnamons and pea plants, while benzoic acid is present in resins and gums from balsam-type plants, the researchers said in a statement.

In the jar used to store Senetnay's lungs, the scientists also found traces of two other exotic ingredients: larixol, a resin found in larch trees; and what they believe to be dammar, a fragrant gum from the wood of Pistacia trees. Their presence in the jars surprised the researchers because neither ingredient was growing in ancient Egypt at that time. Instead, larch trees were abundant in northern and central Europe and Pistacia trees were found across Southeast Asia, according to the study.

However, the exotic ingredients have a number of properties that would have made them attractive to ancient Egyptians. 

"Larch has loads of bioactive properties and is antibacterial and antimicrobial — plus it has a strong scent that can help mask decay and keep any insects away," Huber said. "It's also helpful to preserve the body in the afterlife where it can remain for an eternity. Ancient Egyptians believed that the soul could only come back if the body was intact."

The researchers noted that the ratios of the ingredients were different in both jars, but this could be the result of the "balms being unevenly mixed," Huber said.

With the list of ingredients in hand, the researchers reverse-engineered the balms. Their creation will be part of an upcoming exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark in October called "Egypt Obsessed with Life."

"Visitors can experience the ambient scent of mummification and time travel to the past to an ancient embalming workshop," Huber said.

When Ötzi the Iceman was ambushed and killed about 5,300 years ago in the Alps, he may have been balding and getting fat, a new study suggests. 

Ötzi has been famous ever since German tourists discovered his mummified body in 1991 in an Alpine pass in northern Italy. The latest study is one of many to investigate the prehistoric man, including the tools and weapons he carried, his clothes, his last meal, what the climate was like during his lifetime, and the route of his final journey before his high-altitude murder.

In the new study, researchers studied DNA preserved in Ötzi's left ilium — part of his pelvis, which also underwent a genetic analysis in 2012 — and determined that Ötzi, who died in his mid-40s, had a predisposition to male-pattern baldness, diabetes and obesity.

The findings also reveal that Ötzi largely descended from the latest wave of immigrants to Europe from Anatolia — modern Turkey — who brought early farming techniques to the continent about 8,000 years ago. 

The DNA analysis also indicates that Ötzi had darker skin than previously thought and would have had dark hair — before he started going bald, at least.

Related: Ötzi the Iceman had just sharpened his tools days before his murder

Iceman genome

The new study, published Wednesday (Aug. 16) in the journal Cell Genomics, is a revision of the 2012 study by a different group of scientists; genetic tests were complex and costly at that time, and the latest researchers have determined that the earlier samples were significantly contaminated with modern DNA.

The team sampled the same iliac bone, but they used updated genetic techniques to generate a more thorough sequence of Ötzi's genome. They then applied what has been learned about genetics over the past 10 years.

The results show that Ötzi probably looked different than many people thought.

"Ötzi might have had relatively dark skin and a risk of male-pattern baldness," study lead author Ke Wang, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science.

The findings are contrary to previous assumptions about Ötzi's appearance; he is often portrayed as looking like a light-skinned European with long fair hair. But "the new findings fit better with the actual appearance of the mummy," Wang said in an email.

Study co-author Albert Zink, a palaeoanthropologist and the director of Italy's Institute for Mummy Studies, noted some of the portrayals should be updated. "It's not urgent, because these are always just an interpretation," he told Live Science. "But in the future they should consider making his skin and hair darker."

Ötzi's genetics also reveal surprising details about his ancestry. Earlier research suggested he may have been related to modern Sardinians, but the new analysis shows he had an unusually high level of ancestry from early Anatolian farmers.

These results suggest that Ötzi came from an isolated Alpine population that seldom interbred with other hunter-gatherer groups, Zink said.

Ötzi reconsidered

The latest study is not the first to reassess who Ötzi was and how he died; an archaeological study last year determined that he probably died somewhere away from the gully where he was found and that his body had been carried there by the subsequent movements of the ice.

Lars Pilø, an archaeologist with the Secrets of the Ice project who led that research but was not involved in the latest study, told Live Science that the latest study resolved the lingering question about whether the skin of Ötzi's mummy was his natural hue. (It was.)

However, Pilø didn't completely agree about Ötzi's baldness. Although Ötzi may have been genetically predisposed to going bald, the hairlessness of his mummy was probably the result of the preservation process, he said.

"Ötzi the Iceman keeps having new surprises in store for us, which is remarkable as he must be the most investigated archaeological find ever," Pilø said.

Two ancient mummification workshops — one for humans and another for animals — have been discovered at Saqqara in Egypt. 

The workshops date back around 2,300 years and were in use between the late 30th dynasty and the early Ptolemaic period. During that time, Egypt lost its independence, first being conquered by the Persians and then by the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., one of his generals, Ptolemy I, took over Egypt, and his descendants ruled over the country for nearly three centuries. 

The human mummification workshop is made of mud brick and contains two beds that were used to embalm people, and the remains of tools and resin used in the embalming process were discovered inside, representatives from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities said in a statement.  

Meanwhile, the animal mummification workshop has a large number of pottery vessels and tools used for embalming. In Egypt, animals such as cats, dogs and birds associated with deities were routinely sacrificed and mummified for ancient Egyptian burials and rituals.

Some animal burials were found there, and the workshop may have been used to mummify animals associated with Bastet, an ancient Egyptian goddess who is depicted like a cat, according to the statement. 

Related: Mystery of 'impossible' ancient Egyptian statue may be solved

Near the workshops, archaeologists also uncovered two tombs that seem to have been constructed long before the workshops. One was built for a man who, according to the hieroglyph inscriptions, lived around 4,400 years ago and held many titles, including "director of the scribes," the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities said. The second tomb dates back around 3,400 years and was built for a priest. It's unclear what human remains, if any, were found in these two tombs. However, at least one sarcophagus was recovered. 

Also near the workshops, within a niche inside a wall, archaeologists found an approximately 3-foot-tall (1 meter) alabaster statue depicting a person, possibly someone in charge of overseeing burials in parts of the Saqqara region, according to the statement. 

Salima Ikram, an Egyptology professor at The American University in Cairo who was not involved with the excavation, said that the discovery is "a very exciting find" and noted that "it will help us to better understand the different steps of the mummification process, the materials and tools used, and maybe make comparisons between what was done to humans as opposed to animals." 

Few mummification workshops have been found in Egypt, Ikram said. Historical texts and archaeological finds suggest that there was "probably some degree of mass production" at the animal mummification workshops, whereas human mummification workshops likely worked at a slower pace, she said. Entire families appear to have worked as embalmers, and there were probably different prices for different levels of embalming. 

Zahi Hawass, a former minister of antiquities who was not involved with this work, agreed that it is a "very important discovery." He noted that in 2016, another human mummification workshop was found at Saqqara. That workshop, discovered by a team led by archaeologist Ramadan Badri Hussein, dates to the 26th dynasty (circa 688 B.C. to 525 B.C.). Hawass noted that the newly found human mummification workshop is larger than the one discovered in 2016. 

Archaeologists involved in the new discovery did not return requests for comment by the time of publication. 

A large percentage of mummified children from ancient Egypt show signs of blood disorders known as anemias, suggesting that these youngsters may have had a slew of related medical problems, including malnutrition and growth defects, a new study finds.

Using full body CT (computed tomography) scans, a non-destructive way to study objects, an international team of researchers examined the remains of 21 child mummies who had died between the ages of 1 and 14. The team assessed the mummies for anemia by looking for telltale signs of the disorder, such as abnormal growth in the mummies' skulls and arm and leg bones. 

Seven of the mummies, or 33% of those studied, showed signs of anemia in the form of thickened skull bones, the researchers found. Today, anemia is thought to affect 40% of children under the age of 5 years old globally, according to the World Health Organization.

This research on anemia in ancient Egypt "may shed light on ancient societies' health issues, dietary inadequacies, and social standards," Sahar Saleem, head and professor of radiology at Cairo University and a member of the Egyptian Mummy Project, told Live Science in an email. Saleem was not involved in the study.

Related: Little ancient Egyptian mummies hold surprises inside … and they aren't human

This study, published April 13 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, is possibly the first of its kind to analyze the presence of anemia in mummified children. It includes child mummies from various parts of Egypt dating as early as the Old Kingdom (third millennium B.C.) to the Roman Period (fourth century A.D.).

Indigo Reeve, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who was not involved in the study, defined anemia as "a lack of healthy red blood cells or hemoglobin." This condition can stem from a variety of causes, including dietary deficiencies, inherited disorders and infections, which can all lead to intestinal blood loss and poor absorption of nutrients, Reeve told Live Science in an email. Anemia typically causes fatigue and weakness, but it can also cause irregular heartbeat and can be life-threatening depending on the type and severity, she added. 

Childhood cases of anemia can cause the expansion of some bone marrow, which is found at the center of most bones, which can lead to odd and abnormal bone growth, such as the thickening of the cranial vault, the part of the skull that holds the brain, Reeve explained. Porous lesions can also appear on bones, especially on the skull, which can cause further medical problems.

The study uncovered some of these anemia-related issues in the mummified children. 

In one of the seven cases with thickened cranial vaults, a 1-year-old boy showed cranial signs of thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder that can cause mild to severe anemia due to reduced hemoglobin production; other symptoms of thalassemia can include inadequate and unusual bone growth and an increased risk of infections, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. The boy also had an enlarged tongue and a condition known as "rodent facies," which is an abnormal growth of the cheekbones and an elongated skull. This boy's severe anemia, compounded with other difficulties, likely caused his death, the researchers theorized.

It's unclear how these ancient children came to have anemias, but the disorder can be caused by malnutrition, iron deficiency in pregnant mothers, chronic gastrointestinal issues and bacterial, viral or parasitic infections, all of which are thought to have been prevalent in ancient Egypt, the researchers said. 

However, the study's small sample of 21 child mummies is not representative of an entire population or time period, the researchers noted. Further, the CT scans "produced blurry images due to low resolution that prevented interpretation" of additional signs of anemia, Saleem said.

"However," Saleem said, "we think that this work may pave the way for additional research on anemia and other ancient health issues in the future." 

A centuries-old mummified "mermaid" that scientists recently revealed to be a gruesome doll of animal parts is even weirder than previously thought, new findings show.

In 2022, researchers discovered the mermaid, which is around 12 inches (30.5 centimeters) long, lying inside a sealed wooden box within a Japanese temple, located in Okayama Prefecture. At the time, researchers thought it was made from the torso and head of a monkey sewed onto a decapitated fish's body. 

The haunting hybrid, which resembles a Ningyo from Japanese mythology — a fish-like creature with a human head that is fabled to help cure disease and increase longevity — had previously been displayed in a glass case at the temple for people to worship, before being stored away more than 40 years ago. A letter inside the mummy's box claims that the specimen was caught by a fisher sometime between 1736 and 1741, but it was likely created decades after that as a hoax to sell to affluent people wanting to improve their health or live longer lives. 

Researchers from the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts (KUSA) in Japan took possession of the mermaid in early February 2022 (with permission from the temple's priests) and began studying the eerie artifact using a range of techniques including X-ray and CT (computerized tomography) scanning, radiocarbon dating, electron microscopy and DNA analysis. 

Related: Haunting images of 'zombie' shark and other decaying aquarium animals revealed in eerie footage 

On Feb. 7, the team finally released its findings in a KUSA statement (translated from Japanese). And what they found out about the mermaid was even more bizarre than expected.

The results showed that the mermaid's torso did not belong to a monkey but instead was made predominantly from cloth, paper and cotton that was held together by metal pins running from the neck to lower back. It had also been painted with a paste made from a mix of sand and charcoal. 

However, the torso was covered in components stripped from other animals. Mammal hair and fish skin, likely from a pufferfish, covered parts of the arms, shoulders, neck and cheeks. The mermaid's jaw and teeth were also likely taken from a predatory fish, and its claws were made from keratin, meaning they likely came from a real but unidentifiable animal.

The lower half of the mermaid did come from a fish, likely a species of croaker — a ray-finned fish that makes a croaking sound with its swim bladder, which helps it control its buoyancy.

The researchers were not able to identify any complete DNA from the mermaid, but radiocarbon dating of the scales indicated they could date back as far as the early 1800s.

The new analysis suggests that the mermaid was most likely created to trick people into believing that Ningyos and their supposed healing abilities were real, researchers wrote. However, it also shows that the tricksters behind the creation also put much more effort into stitching together the counterfeit creature than expected.

There are 14 other "mermaids" that have been found in Japan, and the team now hopes to analyze others for comparison.

Archaeologists at Saqqara have finally identified the many embalming ingredients used to mummify the dead in ancient Egypt. They also deciphered how those different ingredients — many of which came from distant lands — were used.

In 2016, an international team of archaeologists discovered the underground embalming workshop near the pyramid of Unas, south of Cairo. The complex of rooms held approximately 100 ceramic vessels dating to the 26th dynasty of Egypt (664 to 525 B.C.). While many of the vessels had inscriptions identifying their contents, some of the embalming substances remained a mystery. 

Now, in a first-of-its-kind study published Feb. 1 in the journal Nature, researchers have used chemical analysis of the resins coating the vessels to identify the contents.

Upon closer examination, the researchers discovered that certain vessels were labeled with embalming instructions such as "to put on the head" or "bandage/embalm with it," while others included the names of the different substances found inside, according to a statement. 

But by analyzing the residues coating the pottery, they identified ingredients on 31 of the vessels coming from locations near and far. Those included resin from the elemi tree (Canarium luzonicum), which is native to the Philippines; resin from Pistacia, a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family that grow in parts of Africa and Eurasia; and beeswax.

Related: Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies, new exhibit reveals

The facility's layout revealed the meticulousness of the embalmers, with "one room being used to clean the bodies and the other for storage [and for the actual embalming]," study co-author Susanne Beck, a lecturer in the Department of Egyptology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said during a news conference (Jan. 31). 

When the researchers compared the different identified mixtures with the inscriptions on the labels, they found several inaccuracies. For one, the ancient Egyptian word "antiu," which translates to "myrrh" or "incense," was often mislabeled. In fact, none of the analyzed residues represented a single substance but rather a blend of multiple ingredients, according to the statement. 

"We were able to identify the true chemical makeup of each substance," study co-author Philipp Stockhammer, professor in the Department of Archaeogenetics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, said during the conference. "Often [embalming vessels become contaminated over time], but in this case they're not. A lot of the vessels in this case were in good condition."

However, not all of the contents found in the workshop were used to preserve the dead. Instead, they likely "helped remove unpleasant smells" and prepared the bodies for embalming by "reducing moisture on the skin," study lead author Maxime Rageot, an assistant lecturer in archaeological science at the University of Tübingen, said during the news conference.

"It's fascinating the chemical knowledge [the embalmers] had, since they knew bare skin would immediately be endangered by microbes," Stockhammer said. "They knew what substances were antifungal and could be applied to help stop the spread of bacteria on the skin."

Most surprising was that embalmers relied on elaborate trade networks that crisscrossed the globe to source ingredients not native to the region. 

"[We were] surprised to find tropical resins," Stockhammer said. "This shows that the industry of embalming was a driving trade and that ingredients were transported from large distances. What we're learning goes far beyond what we know about embalming."

The Teutonic Knights were one of the great chivalric orders that emerged from the Crusades, alongside the Hospitallers and Templars, but while those other knights made their names in the Holy Land, the Teutonic Knights fought their greatest battles in Europe.

In the latest issue of All About History, on sale now, you can find out how the Teutonic order grew its powerbase in Europe and why it was called to put down 'pagan' elements in Northern and Eastern Europe. Learn how their crusader training make them unstoppable at first, and who ultimately stood against them. And, what would have happened if Joan of Arc had failed in her mission to free Orlean from the British?

Read all this and the full story of the last crusaders, the Teutonic Knights, in issue 126.

Also in issue 126 of All About History: uncover the mystery behind the death of Britain's greatest showman, learn why Henry Christophe was the first and last king of Haiti and explore the life of celebrated American politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

Related: Read a free issues of All About History

In issue 126 you can also read about the great women of the Renaissance movement, learn about the origins of combat divers in WWII and explore the fascinating history of ballet dancing. It's all in All About History 126.

The last crusaders

The Order of the Teutonic Knights (known officially as The Order of the German House of St Mary in Jerusalem) is a charitable institution that remains active today. As indicated by its full name, it was primarily composed of German knights. The Order's origins are directly linked to the time of the Crusades to the Holy Land, when it was first established as a charitable order around 1190, during the time of the Third Crusade (1188–92). 

However, it should be made clear that its members were not 'crusaders', but rather the members of a monastic corporation. They took lifelong vows of poverty and chastity, as opposed to the temporary vow made by those who journeyed on crusade. 

In any case, the knights and their activities in the Middle Ages were strongly linked to the development of the crusade phenomenon. The Teutonic Knights entered a world already dominated by two (perhaps) more well-known brotherhoods: the Knights Templar and the Knights of St John, also known as the Hospitallers. The Templars' history has since crossed into a quasi-mythical realm, primarily due to their disbandment in the early 14th century. By contrast, the Hospitallers still remain active. The white cross of the St John's Ambulance Cadets seen throughout the United Kingdom today is a reminder of the Order's history. By 1198, its prestige had increased to such an extent that the Order was militarized by Pope Innocent III. It took a monastic rule that combined the martial duties of the Templars (defending the holy places and protect pilgrims visiting them) in addition to the Hospitaller obligations of the Order of St John.

Read more in All About History 126.

Last king of Haiti

In November 1815, Londoners were treated to one of the grandest exhibitions of craftsmanship the city had seen for some time. 23 state carriages were put on public display in Charles Street, Marylebone. No one who saw them failed to be awed by their magnificence, from the gilt moldings of the bodywork topped with crowned phoenixes and the finely painted coats of arms on the panels, to the luscious velvet interiors fringed with gold drapery. The carriages, along with harnesses, crimson saddles and silver-clawed tiger skin saddlecloths, had cost the coachmakers Crowther and Tapp an estimated £12,000 to make. 

"It is to be lamented that more time is not allowed the public," wrote "The Morning Chronicle", "to witness one of the grandest specimens of art and elegance ever combined in one piece of work of the kind that has been sent from this country." The same week the newspaper had cooed over a set of satin gowns "finished by one of our fashionable dress-makers" along with pieces from the Prince Regent's own jeweler, cut-glass chandeliers, damask cloths and marble busts. The purchaser was Henry Christophe, who had crowned himself King Henry I of Haiti only four years earlier, the ruler of a free Black kingdom in a Caribbean dominated by colonial slavery. 

Learn more about Henry Christophe in All About History 126.  

Life of Harvey Milk

San Francisco has long held a reputation as the 'Gay Capital of the World', with more of its citizens identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans than anywhere else in the United States. Every year the city hosts a huge pride celebration, with over 200 contingents taking part in the 2022 parade. A figure key in San Francisco's LGBTQ+ past is a man called Harvey Milk – one of the first elected officials to be open about their homosexuality in the history of the United States. Milk's career saw him fight passionately for LGBTQ+ rights, memorably campaigning against John Briggs' Proposition 6 and introducing legislation that protected the rights of queer persons within San Francisco. However, on 27 November 1978 Milk was assassinated in a brutal killing that shocked and horrified the city that he loved so much.

Milk was born in the suburbs of New York on the 22 May 1930 to Jewish parents William Milk and Minerva Karns. The youngster struggled with his parents' Judaism and would eventually drift away from the religion, though Milk's biographer Lillian Faderman maintains that its cultural values remained important to him throughout his life. From a young age Milk was aware that he was homosexual. A keen lover of opera, it was in the standing room only section of the balcony at the Manhattan Opera House that Milk experienced his first sexual liaisons, according to his biographer Randy Shilts. However, Milk was conscious of the need to hide his homosexuality and any interests that he felt might label him as such. Therefore at school he hid his love of opera under his prowess as a sportsman.

Read more about Harvey Milk in All About History 125.

A new look at more than 1,000 "bog bodies" — human remains preserved in low-oxygen places with wet and spongy soils — reveals that the tradition of leaving bodies in European mires spans millennia, from the Stone Age to modern times, and that these individuals often met violent ends.

However, all of these bodies didn't end up buried in bogs for the same reason. Some are likely the remains of ritualistic sacrifices, like the exquisitely preserved 2,400-year-old Tollund Man in Denmark; some are probably burials of deviants or executed criminals; and others are likely the result of accidental deaths, such as drownings in these watery environments, according to the study, published Tuesday (Jan. 10) in the journal Antiquity. 

A few bog bodies, especially preserved mummies with skin and hair, get a lot of attention. But it would be a mistake to overlook human bones or partial human remains preserved in bogs, said study first author Roy van Beek, an archaeologist and associate professor in the Department of Soil Geography and Landscape and the Department of Cultural Geography at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands.

These bog skeletons are "actually pretty much the same as the well-preserved bog bodies that everyone knows, but they just have been preserved in a different way," in part because of the varying chemistry within bogs, van Beek told Live Science. "They provide very interesting evidence of pathology and death causes in some cases." 

It's not fully understood why bogs preserve human remains so well, but the low-oxygen environment and the antibiotic properties of sphagnan — a polymer (a substance made out of repeating units) produced by Sphagnum moss that can lower pH and prevent spoilage — appear to play a role. Preservation in bogs also depends on a number of factors, as bodies may fare better if they are immersed in water, experience cold ambient temperatures and escape insects and microorganisms, according to the study. 

Related: 5,000-year-old 'bog body' found in Denmark may be a human sacrifice victim

To investigate bog body and skeleton trends, van Beek and his colleagues created a database of 266 sites across Northern Europe, from Ireland to the Baltic states, dating from between 9000 B.C. and A.D. 1900. 

Often, bogs sites held just one deceased person, but some sites were used repeatedly over the years, with the number of preserved individuals ranging from two to about 100 per bog, the researchers said. In one big exception, the site of Alken Enge, in Denmark, is estimated to hold the remains of more than 380 people who had been killed in a violent conflict and left in open water during the early first century A.D. 

The places with the most human remains in bogs are Ireland, the U.K., northern Germany, Denmark, southern Norway and southern Sweden, the team found. However, different bog hotspots emerged over time. The practice began in southern Scandinavia about 5,000 years ago during the Neolithic and slowly spread across Northern Europe. The most recent bog bodies — from Ireland, the U.K. and Germany — reveal that this tradition continued through the Middle Ages and into modern times.

Of the 57 people whose cause of death could be determined, 45 experienced violent deaths, the researchers found. In rare cases, disease was likely the cause of death, and there were six suicide victims and four accidental deaths (such as drowning) from A.D. 1100 to 1900, the team found.

Human remains found in bogs are "far more numerous than previously assumed," the researchers wrote in the study, noting that bog mummies spiked from 1000 B.C. onward. 

In Europe, bogs play a unique role in preserving human remains and artifacts, which provide insight into ancient peoples' practices and beliefs. "It's something that you can hardly find anywhere else in European landscapes because the preservation is so extremely good," van Beek said.

Bogs are also home to a diverse range of plants and animals, and sequester carbon, which helps in the fight against climate change.

Yet the continent's bogs are now disappearing at a high rate due to drainage work and the removal of peat, which can be used for fuel, van Beek said.

Predicting the future is tricky, but based on our research, we've made some educated guesses as to the archaeological discoveries and stories we may see in 2023. There's a possibility that the mummy of Nefertiti will be discovered, as archaeologists are conducting DNA tests in an Egyptian tomb to see if one of the mummies is the remains of the ancient Egyptian queen. We also may learn more about an underground city that flourished in Turkey about 2,000 years ago. Here are our five archaeological predictions for 2023.

1. Nefertiti's mummy?

First found in modern times in 1817, the tomb "KV 21," as Egyptologists call it, is located in the Valley of the Kings and contains two female mummies, according to the Theban Mapping Project. At present, a team led by Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian minister of antiquities, is re-examining the tomb and its mummies by conducting DNA tests. Hawass told Live Science that the team is examining the possibility that one of the mummies is Nefertiti. While it's uncertain whether scientists will find the remains of the ancient Egyptian queen, there is a good chance we will hear more about this tomb and the mummies buried within it in 2023.

2. Underground city in Turkey

In 2022, archaeologists in Midyat, Turkey, discovered an underground city that dates back 2,000 years and may have been home to up to 70,000 people. The remains of a Christian church and Jewish synagogue have been found, and it's possible that people in the underground city were trying to hide from the Roman Empire, which ruled the area and at times persecuted Christians and Jews. 

One important detail is that only 5% of the city has been excavated so far. Research is ongoing, so it's possible that new discoveries will be made in this underground city in 2023.

3. Repatriated artifacts, possibly even the Elgin Marbles

Museums around the world are going through a reckoning; some institutions are accessing their collections and deciding whether certain artifacts should be returned to their culture or country of origin. For instance, intricate metal sculptures known as the Benin Bronzes were looted from the kingdom of Benin (present-day southwest Nigeria) when the British attacked in 1897. Many of those bronzes are now in museums around Europe, the United States and New Zealand, according to The Art Newspaper. However, Germany returned 21 of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in December 2022, The Guardian reported, and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. announced in December that it would return 116 of its Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, the BBC reported. In another case, the National Museum of Scotland plans to repatriate a looted totem pole to the Nisga'a Nation of British Columbia, Canada, The Art Newspaper reported.

In addition, there are talks underway for the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, to Greece. British law stipulates that the British Museum cannot transfer ownership of its artifacts, but a workaround could be to share the marbles with Greece while putting on a new show of Greek artifacts in the marbles' place.

4. Ukraine's heritage

The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has resulted in the theft, damage and destruction of numerous heritage structures and artifacts. As of Dec. 12, UNESCO has verified damage to 227 heritage sites, including museums, religious buildings and libraries. There has also been extensive looting. For instance, Russian authorities looted gold Scythian artifacts from a museum in Russian-occupied Melitopol. 

Over the past few months, Ukraine's military has been retaking territory and even liberated Kherson, a major city that had been occupied by Russia. As Ukraine retakes more territory, we will likely hear more about damaged, stolen and looted artifacts and archaeological sites. It's also possible that some of the artifacts stolen by Russian soldiers will appear for sale online.

5. New ancient finds along the U.K.'s new railway

For the past few years, archaeologists in the United Kingdom have found remarkable artifacts dating to Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England as they survey land ahead of construction of High Speed 2 (HS2), a high-speed railway line that will run from London to the West Midlands. This year alone, archaeologists have discovered several ancient sites, including the well-preserved remains of an Iron Age village that transformed into a bustling ancient Roman town in South Northamptonshire, England; a burial ground for rich pagans dating to around the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the fifth century A.D.; and an "exquisite" wooden figurine dating to early Roman Britain.

Phase one of the HS2 project is expected to open between 2029 and 2033, so there's still plenty of time to uncover ancient treasures.

Ancient Egypt has many secrets to tell, and in 2022, archaeologists made some fascinating findings, including the tomb of a previously unknown queen, a falcon shrine with a cryptic message and a massive tunnel beneath a temple. Here are some of the most amazing discoveries at ancient Egyptian archaeological sites this year.

1. Lifelike mummy portraits

While excavating a necropolis in the ancient Egyptian city of Philadelphia, archaeologists unearthed two complete mummy portraits, as well as multiple incomplete portraits of people buried in the cemetery. Researchers think the deceased were likely middle class or elite, since back then it would've been costly to commission custom paintings of their likenesses. Because of looting, it's also incredibly rare for archaeologists to find mummy portraits, with the last recorded examples discovered in the 1880s.

2. Temple dedicated to the deity Zeus-Kasios

Archaeologists at the Tell el-Farama site on the Sinai Peninsula uncovered the remains of a temple dedicated to Zeus-Kasios, a deity who was a cross between Zeus and the weather god Kasios. Researchers discovered the temple after noticing sections of two pink granite columns poking out of the ground, which they believe once supported the temple's front gate and likely collapsed in ancient times during a massive earthquake.

3. Mummies with gold tongues

During the Greco-Roman period, it wasn't uncommon for mummies to be buried with gold tongues. Ancient Egyptians believed that doing so would help transform the deceased into divine beings in the afterlife. A team of archaeologists found several examples of this special burial practice at a dig site in an ancient cemetery near Quesna, just north of Cairo. The burials also contained a multitude of grave goods, such as necklaces, pottery and gold scarabs (beetles).

4. Falcon shrine and a cryptic message about boiling heads

Archaeologists stumbled upon a real head-scratcher after discovering a 1,700-year-old shrine featuring 15 headless falcons on a pedestal and a stone monument depicting two unknown gods in Berenike, a port on the Red Sea. Found next to the pedestal was an iron harpoon, but what really dumbfounded researchers was the inscription in Greek they spotted in one of the shrine's back rooms, which read, "It is improper to boil a head in here."

5. Gold ring featuring the likeness of the "god of fun"

Here's further proof that even ancient Egyptians liked to have a good time. While exploring a burial site in Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna), a city south of Cairo, archaeologists found a treasure trove of gold artifacts, including a necklace and three rings. One piece of jewelry stood out for its engraving of Bes, also known as the "god of fun." Ancient images of the fun-loving deity can be found throughout Egypt. He is often depicted as a dwarf who not only enjoyed playing music and partying but also protected women during childbirth.

6. Protective childbirth tattoos

Before giving birth, some ancient Egyptian women would get tattoos as a form of protection during childbirth. Archaeologists discovered six examples of this practice while studying mummies buried at Deir el-Medina, an archaeological site located along the banks of the Nile River. Finding ancient tattoos is a rarity, since the skin would need to be preserved and archaeologists make it a practice to not unwrap mummies. However, in this case, portions of the bodies were exposed, including the lower back of a woman whose ancient ink included black lines and a depiction of Bes, a deity that protected women during childbirth.

7. Vast water tunnel

Archaeologists discovered a 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel beneath a temple in Taposiris Magna, an ancient city located west of Alexandria, Egypt. It's thought that, at one time, the massive tunnel was used to transport water to citizens and is an exact replica of the Eupalinos Tunnel on the Greek island of Samos, which is considered an engineering marvel. 

8. Birds in an Egyptian "masterpiece"

A painting containing birds both in flight and perched next to a marsh is so detailed that modern-day researchers used a copy of it to name the exact species painted on the 3,300-year-old artwork. Archaeologists found the "masterpiece" a century ago on the walls of a palace at the ancient Egyptian capital of Amarna, but it wasn't until recently that researchers identified the species depicted in the work, including a pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis), a red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) and a white wagtail (Motacilla alba).

9. New understanding of mummification

Archaeologists completely flipped the script on what's taught in school about mummification. Ancient Egyptians used the burial practice not to preserve the bodies of the deceased but as a way to guide them toward divinity. The new understanding, which archaeologists call "a complete 180," is the focus of an exhibition called "Golden Mummies of Egypt," which opens in early 2023 at the University of Manchester's Manchester Museum in England. 

10. Tomb of an unknown queen

On the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut's tomb, a group of archaeologists unearthed the tomb of a previously unknown royal: Queen Neith. The discovery was made at Saqqara, an archaeological site in Giza, and is the first recorded mention of her in the archaeological record. In addition to the tomb, researchers found numerous coffins and mummies, some of which belonged to King Tut's closest generals and advisers.

Archaeologists have discovered ancient mummies buried with stunning, lifelike portraits of the deceased. The mummies were interred in a cemetery at the ancient city of Philadelphia in Egypt, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Dec 1. 

The city of Philadelphia, located about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Cairo in the Fayoum area of Egypt, was founded during the Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.), when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of pharaohs descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals. Philadelphia — Greek for the city of brotherly love — continued to flourish even after the dynasty fell and the Romans took control of Egypt. 

During excavations at the ancient site's necropolis, archaeologists unearthed two complete mummy portraits, along with semi-complete and incomplete portraits, Basem Gehad, director of the ancient Philadelphia necropolis excavation mission, told Live Science in an email.  

Related: Why does the Rosetta Stone have 3 kinds of writing?

The "people who were buried in such a context in Philadelphia are for sure upper-middle class or elite so that they could offer to their relatives [such] expensive portraits that are identical to the person," Gehad said. The portraits were painted by artists who were likely from Alexandria, an Egyptian city on the Mediterranean coast, Gehad said. 

Mummy portraits

Archaeologists rarely find mummy portraits. Prior to the new discoveries, the last mummy portraits found in archaeological excavations were unearthed in the 1880s. Grave robbers looted ancient cemeteries, including Philadelphia's, for their mummy portraits during the 19th century. However, archaeologists did manage to analyze some of the Philadelphia graves. 

"The cemetery was looted in the 1880s for Roman mummy portraits, most of which were sold to the Viennese dealer and collector Theodor Graf," Susan Walker, an honorary curator of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, told Live Science in an email. "He catalogued and organised exhibitions of them world-wide, with the result that the portraits are now dispersed in museum and private collections, principally throughout America and Europe." 

Walker, who was not involved in the excavations, told Live Science that the new discoveries may shed more light on Egyptian mummy portraits, as the new finds were examined with modern scientific methods. "As a result of the new excavations, we shall certainly have a better understanding of the cemetery that the looted portraits came from," Walker said. 

In addition to the mummy portraits, archaeologists found the remains of a building where mummies were buried and a statue that depicts Isis-Aphrodite, an Egyptian-Greek goddess associated with love. They also unearthed the remains of papyri containing demotic (an Egyptian cursive script) and Greek writings. The papyri contain information on the social, economic and religious conditions of the people who lived in the area, the ministry said in a statement. 

Excavations at the cemetery and analysis of the finds are ongoing. 

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of several mummies with tongues made of gold in an ancient cemetery near Quesna, a city located about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Cairo, according to Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. 

Some of the mummies were buried in wooden coffins with grave goods that included necklaces, pottery, and gold artifacts in the shape of lotus flowers and beetles known as scarabs, the ministry reported in a statement posted to Facebook on Nov. 24. 

Mummies with gold tongues were popular during the Greco-Roman period, Salima Ikram, a distinguished professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, told Live Science in an email. The Greco-Roman period lasted from roughly 332 B.C., when Alexander the Great took over Egypt, to A.D. 395, when the Roman Empire split in two for the final time. The ministry statement noted that the mummies likely date to different times within the Greco-Roman period. 

Related: Who was the ancient Egyptian god of death?

The gold tongues are a "hallmark of the later Graeco-Roman period funerary preparations, when golden tongues, and sometimes even 'eyes,' were placed on embalmed bodies," said Ikram, who was not involved in the new discovery.

Divine transformation

Gold tongues and gold eyes are "manifestations of the transformation of the deceased into divine beings," Ikram said, noting that the ancient Egyptians believed that the flesh of the gods was made of gold. 

During the Greco-Roman period, ancient Egyptians also believed that gold tongues and gold eyes would "allow the deceased to speak, see, and taste in the afterlife," Ikram said. 

Mummies with gold tongues have been found elsewhere in Egypt, including at Taposiris Magna, an archaeological site on the Mediterranean coast, and Oxyrhynchus, an archaeological site  located about 108 miles (174 km) south of Cairo. "It is delightful to have more golden tongued mummies," Ikram said. 

Excavation and analysis of the remains at Quesna are ongoing. It is not yet clear how many mummies with gold tongues were found and whether the deceased's identities are known.

It's long been believed that ancient Egyptians used mummification as a way to preserve a body after death. However, an upcoming museum exhibition indicates that was never the case, and instead the elaborate burial technique was actually a way to guide the deceased toward divinity.

Researchers from the University of Manchester's Manchester Museum in England are highlighting the common misconception as part of preparations for an exhibition called "Golden Mummies of Egypt" that opens early next year. This new understanding about mummification's intended purpose essentially upends much of what is taught to students about mummies.

"It's a big 180," Campbell Price, the museum's curator of Egypt and Sudan, told Live Science.

So, how exactly did this misconception flourish for so long? Price said the Western-led idea began with Victorian researchers who wrongly determined that ancient Egyptians were preserving their dead in a similar fashion as one would preserve fish. Their reasoning? Both processes contained a similar ingredient: salt.

"The idea was that you preserve fish to eat at some future time," Price said. "So, they assumed that what was being done to the human body was the same as the treatment for fish."

Related: Hundreds of mummies and pyramid of an unknown queen unearthed near King Tut's tomb

However, the salty substance used by ancient Egyptians differed from salt used to preserve the catch of the day. Known as natron, this naturally occurring mineral (a blend of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride and sodium sulfate) was abundant around lake beds near the Nile and served as a key ingredient in mummification.

"We also know that natron was used in temple rituals [and applied to] the statues of gods," Price said. "It was used for cleansing."

Price said that another material commonly associated with mummies is incense, which also served as a gift to the gods.

"Look at frankincense and myrrh — they're in the Christian story of Jesus and were gifts from the three wise men," Price said. "In ancient Egyptian history, we've found that they were also appropriate gifts for a god."

He added, "Even the word for incense in ancient Egyptian was 'senetjer' and literally means 'to make divine.' When you're burning incense in a temple, that's appropriate because that's the house of a god and makes the space divine. But then when you're using incense resins on the body, you're making the body divine and into a godly being. You're not necessarily preserving it." 

Like Egyptians, Victorian Egyptologists also believed that the deceased would need their bodies in the afterlife, which added more credence to the misunderstanding of mummification.

"It didn't help that there was a biomedical obsession that was born from Victorian ideas about needing your body complete in the afterlife," Price said. "This included removing the internal organs. I think that actually has a somewhat deeper meaning…and is basically about turning the body into a divine statue because the dead person has been transformed."

Archaeologists often find mummies placed with a sarcophagus that shows the likeness of the deceased.

"In English, a mask is something that obscures your identification; a portrait reveals identity," Price said. "Those objects, panels and masks give an idealized image to the divine form."

As part of the exhibition, the museum will display a number of burial masks, panel portraits and sarcophagi associated with ancient Egyptian burials, offering further proof of the original intentions of mummification.

"Golden Mummies of Egypt" will be on display at the Manchester Museum beginning Feb. 18, 2023. The museum has also published a book with the same title written by Price to accompany the upcoming exhibition.

Archaeologists have unearthed the pyramid of a never-before known ancient Egyptian queen; a cache of coffins, mummies and artifacts; and  a series of interconnected tunnels.

For the past two years, archaeologists have been working at Saqqara, an archaeological site in Giza, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Cairo. Recently, they discovered a trove of coffins and mummies, which may belong to some of King Tut's closest generals and advisors during his reign (1333 B.C. until his death in 1323 B.C.).

Archaeologists also focused their attention on a nearby pyramid, which belonged to Teti, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.

"Teti was worshipped as a god in the New Kingdom period, and so people wanted to be buried near him," Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist who is working on the dig and who formerly served as Egypt's Minister of Antiquities, told Live Science in an email. "However, most burials known in Saqqara previously were either from the Old Kingdom or the Late Period. Now we have found 22 [interconnected] shafts, ranging from 30 to 60 feet [9 to 18 meters deep], all with New Kingdom burials." (Also known as the Egyptian Empire, the New Kingdom period lasted from the sixth century B.C. to the 11th century B.C.)

Related: What did ancient Egypt's pharaohs stash inside the pyramids?

Buried within these shafts, archaeologists found a "huge limestone sarcophagus" along with "300 beautiful coffins from the New Kingdom period," Hawass said.

"Burials from the New Kingdom were not known to be common in the area before, so this is entirely unique to the site," Hawass said. "The coffins have individual faces, each one unique, distinguishing between men and women, and are decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead [an ancient Egypt funerary text]. Each coffin also has the name of the deceased and often shows the Four Sons of Horus, who protected the organs of the deceased."

If discovering the coffins wasn't astonishing enough, when the researchers lifted the coffins' lids they were surprised to find the mummies in good condition, even after all these centuries. 

"This shows that mummification reached its peak in the New Kingdom," Hawass said. "Some coffins have two lids, and the most amazing coffin so far has a mask of a woman made completely of solid gold."

He added, "Inside the coffins and tomb shafts are also various artifacts, including games such as the ancient game of Senet, shabtis [small figurines], statues of the god Ptah-Sokar and even a metal axe found in the hand of an army soldier."

In addition, researchers found a pyramid commemorating a queen whose identity was previously unknown.

"We have since discovered that her name was Neith and she had never before been known from the historical record," Hawass said. "It is amazing to literally rewrite what we know of history, adding a new queen to our records."

A selection of the coffins and antiquities found at the excavation site will be on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which is slated to open next year.

Editor's note: Updated at 5:21 p.m. EST on Nov. 21 to change the headline, noting that the findings were at Saqqara, not near King Tut's tomb, as was previously stated. 

The mummy of a woman who may have been pregnant when she died has baffled archaeologists in search of clues about her true identity. Now, two facial approximations by forensic specialists are offering new insight into what this ancient Egyptian woman may have looked like, disclosing yet another secret that she held onto for centuries. 

Using CT scans and X-rays, forensic specialists worked on facial reconstructions of the mummy, resulting in two different interpretations of the woman's likeness. In both reconstructions, the dark-skinned young woman with brown eyes is seen looking straight ahead, providing a realistic image of her lost in thought. 

"Modern techniques enable us to perform a virtual autopsy of the mummy," Wojciech Ejsmond, co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project, told Live Science in an email. "We can look under the bandages and inside her body. For the first time her face will be [revealed] to the general public and everyone will be able to look at her face."

The Warsaw Mummy Project in Poland published the facial approximations in a Nov. 8 Facebook post.

Related: Signs of cancer found in mysterious 'pregnant' Egyptian mummy

"Whether an archaeological or a forensic facial reconstruction is being carried out, facial reconstruction shouldn't be considered an exact portrait of the individual," Chantal Milani, a forensic specialist who worked on the project, told Live Science in an email. "However, it's based on the principle that the skull, like most anatomical structures, has details, proportions and shapes that are individual to that person and will manifest themselves through the soft tissues, adding personal character to the final appearance."

She added, "The face that covers the bone structure follows different anatomic rules, thus standard procedures can be applied to reconstruct it, for example to establish the shape of the nose. The most important element is the reconstruction of the thickness of the soft tissues at numerous points on the surface of the facial bones. For this, we have statistical data for various populations across the globe."

Fellow forensic specialist and project member Hew Morrison agreed, adding, "In a historical context, the process helps to figuratively bring the deceased back to life," he told Live Science in an email, "thus, fostering respect and sensitivity for the deceased who are either the subject of research or are being exhibited in museums."

The facial reconstructions provide more insight into a woman whose identity continues to elude archaeologists, who at one time thought the mummy belonged to a male priest.

Last year, researchers from the Warsaw Mummy Project released a study about the mummy, dubbing her the "Mysterious Lady," since little was known about her. In the early 19th century, archeologists found her remains inside a sealed sarcophagus belonging to a male priest, which they donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826. After conducting a CT scan of the body nearly two centuries later, researchers realized that they were looking at perhaps the world's first known pregnant mummy, who appeared to be about 28 weeks pregnant and in her 20s when she died. They also concluded that she may have had cancer.

The controversial claim received pushback from members of the archaeological community, including some who said the "fetus" — which didn't have skeletal bones or a defined body shape — was actually warped embalming packs. But that didn't deter the researchers from wanting to learn more about the woman who was buried so long ago.

"For many people, ancient Egyptian mummies are museum curiosities," Ejsmond said. "We would like to rehumanize them and show them as once living, feeling and loving persons, whose deaths were tragedies."

The facial reconstructions, as well as a holographic depiction of the woman, are part of an exhibition being held at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland, and will be on display through March 5, 2023.

One hundred years ago, on Nov. 4, 1922, an archaeological team discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, revealing many "wonderful things" from ancient Egypt, including the boy king's mummy. 

These discoveries provided a wealth of information on Tutankhamun, who ascended the throne at about age 9 and died when he was about 19. However, exactly what the pharaoh looked like remains uncertain. Studies have examined his health, and there have been a number of attempts to virtually reconstruct his likeness. 

A 2010 study of Tutankhamun and other mummies published in JAMA found that Tutankhamun was about 5 feet, 6 inches (1.67 meters) tall when he died and suffered from a number of medical maladies, such as malaria and Köhler disease, which can cause the feet to swell and impair walking. He also experienced necrosis (the death of bodily tissue) from a broken bone in his left foot — something that may have contributed to his death. 

Related: King Tut's father revealed in stunning facial reconstruction

"Tutankhamun looked like a person who was suffering physically," Zahi Hawass, a former minister of Egyptian antiquities and co-author of the JAMA paper, told Live Science in an email. "He limped and used a stick to walk. He had malaria."

Despite these health problems, Tutankhamun was still active, Hawass said. "He liked to hunt wild animals and built a palace near the Sphinx for hunting," Hawass said. "Despite any physical issues, he was active enough to have an accident and injure his leg two days before he died." 

Hutan Ashrafian, clinical lecturer in surgery at Imperial College London, said Tutankhamun would have walked with a limp, had a slightly longer-than-normal skull, had somewhat enlarged breasts (from a condition called gynecomastia, caused by hormonal imbalances), had buckteeth and been relatively skinny. He was "relatively frail in physique," Ashrafian, who has studied Tutankhamun and his mummy, told Live Science in an interview. 

In 2012, Ashrafian published a paper in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior suggesting that Tutankhamun and his ancestors suffered from familial epilepsy, which may have caused him to have seizures. Ashrafian said some of Tutankhamun's health problems may be related to genetic problems from inbreeding, since Egyptian pharaohs in the 18th dynasty often married relatives.

Virtual reconstruction?

There have been a number of attempted "virtual" reconstructions of Tutankhamun over the years, but Hawass said he doesn't believe any of them are very accurate. Other scholars also expressed concerns about trying to do a "virtual" reconstruction of Tutankhamun. 

"A perfect reconstruction still has uncertainties," such as wrinkles, eye color, hair color, skin tone and small scars, Dr. Frank Rühli, dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Zurich, told Live Science in an email. Rühli has studied Egyptian mummies, including Tutankhamun's, and found that on average, mummy tissue shrinks by 53% from when the person was alive. Tut's mummy is also "significantly altered" from how he looked in life — for instance, in ancient times the mummy caught fire from the embalming oils on it — making it "notoriously difficult" to try to reconstruct what the pharaoh looked like, Rühli said.

Additionally, CT scans of Tutankhamun's mummy can only tell you so much, Dr. Irwin Braverman, professor emeritus of dermatology at Yale Medical School, told Live Science in an email. "CT studies cannot tell you what the soft tissues looked like in life. The mummy's tissues have been shrunken, distorted and desiccated," Braverman said. 

The most accurate depictions of Tutankhamun are likely those created by the ancient Egyptians in the pharaoh's lifetime, said Salima Ikram, a distinguished professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo. "I think that he looked as he was represented, except that he had more of an overbite," Ikram told Live Science in an email. The overbite appears on the medical scans of Tutankhamun and it seems to run in his family, Ikam noted. She said that the wear patterns on Tut's shoes and walking sticks suggest his limp was not very severe. 

According to Ashrafian, some of the smaller statues of Tutankhamun made in the pharaoh's time may be some of the best representations of what Tutankhamun looked like. "People don't always give enough credit to the ancient sources," Ashrafian said.

Thousands of years ago, a child in Peru was sacrificed as part of an ancient ritual, their head severed at the neck and made into a type of trophy. A new analysis of a single hair plucked from the mummy's skull reveals that the child consumed a psychoactive cactus prior to execution, as part of the ceremony.

The child's preserved head was one of 22 human remains associated with the ancient Nazca society examined in a new study; all of these individuals lived during the pre-Hispanic era (3500 B.C. to A.D. 476) and were buried near the southern coast of Peru, where they were excavated during the Nazca Project, a long-running archaeological program that began in 1982. While scientists are uncertain of the child victim's sex and age at death, they reported  that the child had ingested San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi), a prickly plant taken for its "strong hallucinogenic properties" and used by indigenous civilizations of the Americas in traditional medicines and during rituals.

"The trophy head is the first case of the consumption of San Pedro by an individual living on the southern Peruvian coast," study lead author Dagmara Socha, a doctoral candidate in the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland, told Live Science. "It's also the first evidence that some of the victims who were made into trophy heads were given stimulants before they died."

For the study, Socha and her team collected samples of individual hairs from four trophy heads, three of which belonged to adults, and from 18 mummies of both adults and children. Toxicological examinations revealed that many of the deceased had consumed some type of psychoactive or stimulant plant prior to their deaths.

Those ingested items included coca leaves, known as a source of the psychoactive substance cocaine, as well as San Pedro cactus, which contains mescaline, a psychedelic drug. The researchers also detected traces of Banisteriopsis caapi, the main compound in ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic beverage that contains harmine and harmaline (two compounds used in modern antidepressants). 

Related: 76 child sacrifice victims with their hearts ripped out found in Peru excavation

"It was quite interesting to see how many people had access to [these plants]," Socha said. "We also wanted to discover the route of the trade of some of these ancient plants. For instance, the coca leaves were not cultivated on Peru's southern coast, so they had to be brought there from either northern Peru or the Amazonian region."

The drug use dated from 100 B.C. to A.D. 450, the researchers found. "We can see this transition of the plants was beginning early and we can actually trace the trade network," Socha said. "Our research shows that these plants were extremely important to different cultures for medical or visionary effect. Especially since there's no [written record] from this time period, so what we know about Nazca and other nearby cultures is from archaeological investigations."

Sixteen years prior to this study, Rainer Bussmann, a professor in the Department of Ethnobiology at the Institute of Botany at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the head of botany at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany, published a study in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine examining medicinal plant usage by indigenous communities in northern Peru. Like Socha, he examined trade routes of different cultivated plants in this part of the world.

"There was always a little trade going on in this region, with plants being traded from the Amazon up and down the [Peruvian] coast," Bussmann, who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science. "These plants were traditionally used for ceremonial or medicinal purposes, and [were] sometimes combined. I've never seen any reports of recreational use. For these cultures, there was always a specific purpose."

But while evidence suggests that these plants were consumed as medicines and for ceremonies, scientists still have questions about how widespread consumption was within the Nazca culture, Socha said.

"We actually don't know how often these [plants] were being used," she said. "In the case of San Pedro, it's not well preserved in an archaeological context, and in the case of the coca leaves and Banisteriopsis caapi, they were never found to be growing in this region during that time period."

In addition to the human remains, Socha and her team also found a variety of grave goods at the burial sites, including textiles, ceramic pots, weaving tools and a chuspa — a type of bag used for carrying coca leaves.

The findings will be published in the December 2022 issue of the Journal of Archeological Science.

A "virtual autopsy" of the mummified remains of a toddler buried inside a family crypt in Austria reveals that the child died from a lack of sunlight, a new study finds.

Believed to be Reichard Wilhelm, the first-born son of a Count of Starhemberg, a prominent member of the Austrian aristocracy, the young boy lived during the Renaissance (between the 14th and 17th centuries) and died when he was just 10 to 18 months old. Yet despite his privileged upbringing, a team of scientists from Germany concluded that he experienced "extreme nutritional deficiency and a tragically early death from pneumonia," according to a statement.

Scientists made the discovery while performing a CT scan and radiocarbon dating of the mummy, which was found wrapped in a hooded silk coat, his left hand draped across his abdomen. The scans showed malformations on his ribs, classic signs of malnutrition, which "points to rickets," according to the study, published on Oct. 26 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. 

Related: 7 famous mummies and secret's they've revealed about the ancient world

Known as a rachitic rosary, those malformations occur when knobs of rib bone begin to resemble rosary beads due to a vitamin D deficiency. The boy's remaining soft tissues showed that he was also overweight when he died, eliminating the possibility that he was underfed.

"The combination of obesity along with a severe vitamin deficiency can only be explained by a generally 'good' nutritional status along with an almost complete lack of sunlight exposure," Andreas Nerlich, the study's lead author and a pathologist from the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, said in the statement. "We have to reconsider the living conditions of high aristocratic infants of previous populations."

Researchers found the child buried inside a wooden coffin that proved to be too small for him, based on a deformation of his skull. The crypt was reserved exclusively for descendants of the Counts of Starhemberg, specifically their first-born sons who would have been titleholders, as well as the men's wives.

Radiocarbon dating of a skin sample suggested he was buried between 1550 and 1635, however building records indicate that the crypt underwent a renovation around 1600, so he likely was buried after that date. He was the youngest person buried in the crypt, according to the statement.

Tutankhamun, often called King Tut today, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was buried in a lavish tomb filled with gold artifacts in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb was discovered in 1922 by an archaeological team led by British Egyptologist Howard Carter. While Carter gets much of the credit for discovering the tomb, most of the actual work was done by Egyptians.

King Tut is sometimes called the "boy king" because he ascended the throne at age 9 or 10, in the 14th century B.C. He died about a decade later. His treasure-filled tomb was discovered mostly intact, which is extraordinary given that most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been looted in ancient times.

The discovery of his tomb in 1922 attracted worldwide attention and turned King Tut into a household name. "It's difficult to imagine the past century without Tutankhamun and the discovery of that time-capsule tomb," Christina Riggs, a history professor at Durham University in England, wrote in her book "Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century" (PublicAffairs, 2022).

"There would have been no media frenzy of Tut-mania and mummy curses to kick-start the jazz age, and no surge of corresponding pride in the newly independent nation-state of Egypt [which had declared independence from Britain in 1922]," Riggs wrote.

Although Tutankhamun's tomb was lavish, historical and archaeological evidence indicates that the young pharaoh was sickly and spent his short rule undoing a religious revolution started by his father, Akhenaten.

Son of Akhenaten, a revolutionary

King Tut, called Tutankhaten at birth, was born in ancient Egypt around 1341 B.C. His father, Akhenaten, was a revolutionary pharaoh who tried to focus Egypt's polytheistic religion around the worship of the sun disk, the Aten. In his fervor, Akhenaten ordered the names and images of other Egyptian deities to be destroyed or defaced. He also built a new capital at what is now Tell el-Amarna. He was able to carry out these acts without a widespread violent rebellion, but Akhenaten was condemned after his death, Anna Stevens, an Egyptologist at Monash University in Australia, wrote in her book "Amarna: A Guide to the Ancient City of Akhetaten" (The American University in Cairo Press, 2021).

Tutankhaten's biological mother is unknown but likely was not Akhenaten's principal wife, Queen Nefertiti — although Egyptologists still debate this, Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at Long Island University, wrote in his book "Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World" (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Tutankhamun ascended the throne around 1332 B.C. Given his young age, the boy king would have relied heavily on advisers. At some point, he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun, removing the word "aten" — a reminder of his father's attempted religious revolution — and replacing it with "amun," Brier wrote. This name belonged to an important Egyptian god who some Egyptians regarded as the king of the gods. This change illustrates King Tut's move away from his father's religious changes, returning Egypt to its former polytheistic beliefs.

Tutankhamun condemned his father's actions in a stela found at Karnak, near modern-day Luxor, which stated that Akhenaten's religious revolution had caused the gods to ignore Egypt. Part of the stela reads, "the temples and the cities of the gods and the goddesses, starting from Elephantine [as far] as the Delta marshes … were fallen into decay and their shrines were fallen into ruin, having become mere mounds overgrown with grass. … The gods were ignoring this land." (Excerpt taken from "The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People" (Thames & Hudson, 2012)). This act may have helped him cement his power.

Who was King Tut's wife?

Tutankhamun married his half sister Queen Ankhesenamun, and the couple's twin daughters were stillborn; their fetuses were buried in jars in the pharaoh's tomb. The couple left no heir to the throne. The tomb of Queen Ankhesenamun has not yet been found.

Surviving letters indicate that after Tut's death, Ankhesenamun tried to remain on the throne, even going so far as to write to Suppiluliuma I, the Hittite king in Anatolia, to send one of his sons to marry her. Suppiluliuma I found this difficult to believe but eventually sent one of his sons, who died during the journey. Ankhesenamun was eventually forced to marry the official Ay, who became pharaoh.

What did King Tut look like?

A 2010 study of King Tut's remains published in the journal JAMA found that he was 5 feet, 6 inches (1.67 meters) tall and had a variety of medical conditions and illnesses, including malaria and Kohler disease, a rare bone disorder of the foot. Archaeologists also found a number of canes in Tutankhamun's tomb, which suggests the pharaoh had difficulty walking at times.

Despite these maladies, he may have worn armor — although whether he went into battle himself is unclear. A 2018 analysis of leather armor found in Tutankhamun's tomb revealed that the armor had been worn.

"Tutankhamun looked like a person who was suffering physically," Zahi Hawass, a former minister of Egyptian antiquities and co-author of the JAMA paper, previously told Live Science in an email. "He limped and used a stick to walk. He had malaria."

Hutan Ashrafian, a clinical lecturer in surgery at Imperial College London, said Tutankhamun would have walked with a limp, had a slightly longer-than-normal skull, had somewhat enlarged breasts (from a condition called gynecomastia, caused by hormonal imbalances), had buckteeth and been relatively skinny. He was "relatively frail in physique," Ashrafian, who has studied Tutankhamun and his mummy, previously told Live Science.

How old was King Tut when he died?

The boy king died around 1323 B.C. at about age 18. His death was likely unexpected, and his tomb appears to have been hastily finished. In 2011, Ralph Mitchell, who was then a professor of applied biology at Harvard University, helped analyze brown spots in the tomb. Those spots turned out to be the remains of microbes that had once grown on the walls, possibly as a result of paint that was still wet when the pharaoh was interred. "We're guessing that the painted wall was not dry when the tomb was sealed," Mitchell said in a statement.

How did King Tut die?

How King Tut died is a matter of debate among scholars. Egyptologists have put forward numerous hypotheses over the years. In the JAMA article, a research team suggested that a combination of malaria and necrosis (tissue death) from a broken bone in his left foot may have caused his death.

Despite Tutankhamun's health issues, historical and archaeological remains suggest that he tried to keep active, and the broken bone may have come from an accident while hunting. "He liked to hunt wild animals and built a palace near the Sphinx for hunting," Hawass said. "Despite any physical issues, he was active enough to have an accident and injure his leg two days before he died."

Where is King Tut's tomb?

King Tut was buried in an extravagant tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near modern-day Luxor. This valley held the tombs of many pharaohs who lived during the New Kingdom period (circa 1550 to 1070 B.C.) of Egypt's history. During that time, Egypt stopped building pyramids for pharaohs and instead interred them in this valley. Security concerns relating to tomb robbery may have been one reason pharaohs were buried in the valley.

What's inside Tutankhamun's tomb?

Carter's team discovered the tomb's entranceway on Nov. 4, 1922, and entered the tomb on Nov. 26.

"As one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another," Carter wrote in his diary of the dig.

Carter and his team found that the tomb contained a wealth of untouched treasures. "Our sensations and astonishment are difficult to describe as the better light revealed to us the marvelous collection of treasures: two strange ebony-black effigies of a King, gold sandalled, bearing staff and mace, loomed out from the cloak of darkness; gilded couches in strange forms, lion-headed, Hathor-headed, and beast infernal …" Carter wrote in his diary, which is available online at the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. Among the many other treasures was a dagger whose iron came from a meteor and a golden throne that has two lions projecting outward as if protecting the throne.

Among the finds was the mummy of Tutankhamun himself. In a 2013 study published in the journal Études et Travaux, Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, suggested that returning Egypt to its traditional polytheistic beliefs was so important to Tutankhamun and his advisers that he requested to be mummified in an unusual way to emphasize his strong association with Osiris, the god of the underworld.

Ikram wrote that Tutankhamun's skin was soaked in oil after his death, which turned his skin black. His heart was also removed, even though the Egyptians did not normally remove the heart. Additionally, his penis was mummified at a 90-degree angle, which was also unusual. In legend, Osiris had black skin, strong regenerative powers and a heart that had been hacked to pieces by his brother Seth.

However, the large amount of flammable oil caused Tutankhamun's mummy to catch fire shortly after his burial.

While King Tutankhamun's riches are incredible, the tomb was unusually small for a pharaoh's burial, with a total volume of 9,782 cubic feet (277 cubic meters), the Theban Mapping Project website notes. Tut's tomb is divided among the passage corridor, the burial chamber, the antechamber, and two rooms now called the "annex" and the "treasury." In comparison, the tomb of Seti I (reign circa 1294 to 1279 B.C) has a volume of 67,110 cubic feet (1,900 cubic m), according to the mapping project.

The tomb may be small because the pharaoh died young and unexpectedly, leaving no time to carve out a larger tomb. It's possible that the tomb was not originally intended for a pharaoh at all, Richard Wilkinson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Arizona, wrote in a paper published in the book "The Oxford Handbook of the Valley of the Kings" (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"The tomb of Tutankhamun is not of royal design, and it may have been hastily taken over for his burial when the young king died and [the] tomb that was being prepared for him was not yet complete," Wilkinson wrote. Despite the name "Valley of the Kings," people who were not pharaohs were also buried there.

In 2015, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, an independent scholar, published a paper in the periodical Amarna Royal Tombs Project suggesting that Nefertiti was also buried in King Tut's tomb and that her burial remains hidden behind a wall. However, ground-penetrating radar surveys have failed to find solid evidence of a hidden burial.

King Tutankhamun's mask

The most iconic treasure in King Tut's burial chamber is his death mask, made of gold along with inlaid stones and glass. The "mummy mask of Tutankhamun is made of two sheets of solid gold inlaid with glass, faience [glazed ceramic], and semiprecious stones" and weighs 22.5 pounds (10.2 kilograms), Susan Allen, a senior research scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wrote in her book "Tutankhamun's Tomb: The Thrill of Discovery" (Met Publications, 2006).

Resins and oils were poured over this mask, along with the rest of the mummy, Allen noted. As the resins and oils cooled, they darkened and hardened.

What is the curse of King Tut's tomb?

Within months of the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, the man who financed its excavation — George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon in England — became ill and died. It didn't take long for people to question whether a "mummy's curse" had doomed the earl. Newspapers perpetuated the myth that the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb awakened a curse that killed those who helped find it.

"Pharaoh's 3,000 year-old Curse is Seen in Illness of Carnarvons" read the headline on the front page of the March 21, 1923, edition of "The Courier Journal," a newspaper published in Louisville, Kentucky.

The mummy's curse was refuted in a 2002 study in The BMJ, which examined the records of 25 people who went into the tomb shortly after its discovery. People who entered the tomb lived, on average, to age 70 and lived an average of 20 years after being inside the tomb. Those numbers were not unusual given the average life span at the time and the age of those who entered the tomb, the researchers noted.

King Tutankhamun's legacy

The discovery of Tutankhamun's intact tomb and the media sensation around it have made King Tut more prominent in death than he was in life. This "long-lost king, buried before he was out of his teens, found more fame and influence in the twentieth century than he had ever known in his own life-time," Riggs wrote.

That worldwide fame continues today, and his tomb, known as KV 62, is a major tourist attraction. But tourist entry is strictly managed, as changes in humidity, brought about by people passing through the tomb, can damage the tomb and its wall paintings. To help mitigate the risks, the Getty Conservation Institute conducted conservation work on the tomb between 2009 and 2019. During this time, the conservation team installed a new ventilation system in the tomb and conducted a detailed check of the wall paintings.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western powers shipped Egyptian archaeological treasures home to their own museums and private collections. As a result, Egyptian authorities enacted laws to ensure that Tutankhamun and his treasures would remain in Egypt, Richard Parkinson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Oxford, wrote in a chapter published in the book "Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive" (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2022).

Additional resources

The Griffith Institute maintains a detailed archive of material from the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb, much of which can be accessed on the institute's website. Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has images from the tomb and information on how to visit. The ministry also has a virtual tour of the Tutankhamun artifacts on display in the Egyptian Museum.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on April 1, 2016, and was updated on April 10, 2024.

Ancient Egypt quiz: Test your smarts about pyramids, hieroglyphs and King Tut

In All About History issue 122, on sale now, uncover the real story behind Ancient Egypt's legendary boy king, Tutankhamun. As the world marks the 100th anniversary of his tomb being discovered by Howard Carter and his team in 1922, All About History looks into the life of the young pharaoh.

Learn how he came to inherit the throne of Egypt and the turmoil of the kingdom he inherited from his 'heretic' father. How did the boy king rule and who was really in charge of the affairs of state?

You can find the answers to these questions and many more in the latest issue of All About History.

Also in All About History 122, dig into the popularity of mummy curse myths, learn about the activism of Sojourner Truth, find out what history inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and delve into the art and culture of the Kingdom of Benin.

Related: Read a free issues of All About History

Plus, Philippa Langley discusses the hunt for Richard III's remains to mark ten years since her headline-grabbing discovery, and All About History reveals the Shanghai gang lord who struck fear into the hearts of all who crossed his path. It's all in All About History 122.

Tutankhamun: Life of the boy king

Tutankhamun – originally called Tutankhaten – was born around 1329 BCE. This was a time of great upheaval in Egypt, when the prince’s father, King Akhenaten, had reformed the country’s millennia-old traditions. With Queen Nefertiti, he had turned his back on the gods in favor of an obscure deity the Aten, or sun disc. As Akhenaten’s reign progressed, the god Amun, king of the gods, was targeted for attacks. The king’s followers smashed Amun’s statues across Egypt and scratched away his name from monuments. Amun represented all that was hidden, so Akhenaten perhaps regarded him as the antithesis of the Aten’s all-encompassing, life-giving light. 

But as the years passed, other gods were attacked too. To symbolize Egypt’s new beginning, Akhenaten moved the royal court to a newly built city in the desert, which he called Akhetaten – the Horizon of the Aten – today called Amarna. For years, people hauled blocks of stone from nearby quarries to build its temples, and worked in the intense heat making mud bricks for elite villas and palaces. The homes of the poor grew around these villas, and as the city developed, its workers died in large numbers; malnourished, overworked, and often young, they were buried on the outskirts of the city and forgotten. They paid the price for Akhenaten’s dreams.

With this dramatic shift in religious devotion, Egypt’s art style changed too. Directed by the king, the Amarna artists produced statues and carvings quite unlike any that came before or after him. Despite wearing the traditional regalia of a pharaoh, Akhenaten was carved with a round belly and spindly legs and arms – far from the youthful, muscular and fit bodies that pharaohs typically chose for their official art. Temples changed too. Gone were their dark and mysterious sanctuaries, where the gods’ statues stood in shrines, awaiting gifts and praise from priests. Temples to the Aten were open to the sky, embracing the sun’s rays, which reached down to touch hundreds of offering tables laden with food and drink. This was the new Egypt in which Tutankhamun grew up.

Read more in All About History 122.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth (1797 – 1883) was born enslaved in the Hudson River Valley in New York. She was named Isabella Baumfree, daughter of Elizabeth and James Baumfree, in the Low Dutch community that populated the region. It is little known that Isabella was actually a native Dutch speaker who knew no English until the age of nine. After being forced to learn English, she nonetheless continued to speak the language with a marked Dutch accent for the rest of her life. Isabella had heard that her mother had had 13 children, but she hardly knew any of them, as most of her siblings had either been sold away before she was born or in her infancy before she could remember. Her family, particularly her mother, lived in great terror of this constant separation and loss. 

When Isabella was aged nine, her master died and her family was separated once more. Her ill and aging mother and father were granted freedom following a lifetime of work. Meanwhile Isabella was sold at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100. By the age of 13 she had been sold and moved around a total of three times and had had four owners. These were hard years for Isabella. The first of these owners, Neely, beat her cruelly with rods and she was often punished for not understanding instructions and commands in English. 

Learn more about the life of Sojourner Truth in All About History 122.  

History behind Middle-earth

“I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world" — J.R.R. Tolkien

The world of Middle-earth is the fictional setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s celebrated works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but within its fiction are many elements of older, historic works. Tolkien was famously a passionate linguist, inventing a number of languages as he built his fantasy world, but he was also a medievalist and a lover of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Nordic mythology, all of which fed into his new creation. Just as the languages of Europe fed into Middle-earth, so too did the myths and history of Europe, from the ancient past, even up to his own time, as we’ll explore in this feature. Tolkien soaked it all up and fed it back into his writing. Even the name, as Tolkien pointed out himself, was a modernization of an Old English word, ‘middel-erd’, “an old word for the inhabited world of men, the oikouménē.”

Read more about Tolkien's inspirations for Middle-earth in All About History 122.

Around 1,000 years ago, two men in South America were likely murdered in cold blood — one getting stabbed in the back and the other experiencing severe neck trauma, according to a new analysis of their mummified remains. 

Behaving more like detectives than academics, a research team scanned three mummified bodies from Chile and Peru in South America to look for clues on how the individuals died. One male victim was hit on the head and stabbed in the back, while another male was likely killed after receiving "massive trauma" to the neck, which included dislocation, the researchers revealed.

The study adds to evidence of violence in prehistoric human societies and highlights how mummified remains can hold secrets that are lost when only bones are preserved. Both the stabbing and the cervical rotational trauma of the dislocated neck would have escaped detection in skeletons, the authors wrote in the study. 

"The types of trauma we found would not have been detectable if these human remains had been mere skeletons," study co-author Andreas Nerlich, a professor in the department of pathology at Munich Clinic Bogenhausen in Germany, said in a statement. 

Related: Farming brought burst of extreme violence to Atacama Desert, ancient mummies reveal

Human bodies can be naturally mummified in dry, cold or other extreme environments, as these environments interfere with the process of decay that normally destroys soft tissues and organs. In this case, researchers studied mummies that were preserved in the very dry environments of South America and being held by museums in Germany and Switzerland. 

Radiocarbon dating revealed that the mummies were between 740 and 1,120 years old, meaning they predated the colonial Spanish period. One male mummy likely came from the Arica culture in what is now northern Chile. He was buried alongside fishing tools, so the researchers determined he likely came from a fishing community. The two other mummies, a male and female, likely came from the Arequipa region in what is now southwestern Peru and were buried wearing materials made out of cotton and hair from llamas or alpacas, as well as viscachas, which are rodents in the chinchilla family. 

The researchers used computed tomography (CT) scans to create virtual 3D reconstructions of the bodies, which revealed previously hidden details about their deaths. While the female died of natural causes, both of the male mummies died from extreme intentional violence, according to the research.

Other mummified remains may also have histories waiting to be revealed through modern scanning and reconstruction techniques. "There are dozens of South American mummies which might profit from a similar investigation as done here," Nerlich said. 

The study was published online Sept. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. 

Originally published on Live Science.

A mysterious mummy of an ancient Egypt woman, who may have been pregnant when she died, likely also had cancer, according to researchers. Deformities in the mummy's skull suggest a sizable tumor behind the left eye, but further tests are required to confirm that the tumor was cancerous.  

The unusual mummy, who has been dubbed the "Mysterious Lady," likely came from the ancient Egyptian city Thebes (modern-day Luxor). It dates to around the first century B.C. but was found sealed in the sarcophagus of a male priest. After recently opening the sarcophagus for the first time, researchers with the Warsaw Mummy Project in Poland, were surprised to find the remains of an unknown female inside. They soon began analyzing the body for clues as to why she had been sealed in someone else's coffin.  

In April 2021, researchers from the project released a study claiming that CT scans of the Mysterious Lady had revealed the remains of a fetus inside her womb, making her the world's first known pregnant mummy. The team estimated that the woman had died at around the 28th week of pregnancy. In January 2022, a follow-up paper from the Polish team described how the fetus had pickled like an egg inside the mummy. However, some experts have questioned whether the mummy was even pregnant at all and have suggested that the fossilized fetus may actually be a warped embalming pack, which was placed in the body to replace removed organs during the mummification process.     

Related: Mummy of famous Egyptian pharaoh digitally unwrapped for first time in 3,000 years

Now, the same research team has announced that the Mysterious Lady likely had nasopharynx cancer, which affects the mouth, nasal cavity and trachea, according to a blog post by researchers with the Warsaw Mummy Project. The new claims are based on deformities found in the mummy's skull, but the findings have not yet been peer reviewed or confirmed by chemical tests.

The researchers first became aware of the potential cancer after a recent 3D reconstruction of the Mysterious Lady's skull, which revealed a 0.27-inch (7 millimeters) hole behind the left eye socket. This unusual gap suggests that a tumor or lesion had grown there and forced the surrounding bone away from the rest of the socket, Marzena Ożarek-Szilke, an archaeologist and anthropologist at the Medical University of Warsaw and co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project, told Live Science in an email. 

Alternatively, the hole may have been left by a cyst or caused by cribra orbitalia, a condition caused by anemia, or a lack of iron (which is common in pregnant people), which canchange the surface of the eye sockets, Ożarek-Szilke said. However, additional small deformities to bones in the nasal cavity, jaw and sinuses make cancer the most likely cause, she added.     

Normally, it would be impossible to tell exactly what caused such deformities from a skull this old. But because the Mysterious Lady was so well preserved, traces of soft tissue still cling to her bones. This tissue will allow the researchers to carry out histopathological tests, similar to those used to test for cancer today, to determine if the Mysterious Lady had cancer. Similar studies have revealed evidence of other types of cancer in mummies, Ożarek-Szilke said. The team expects to have a definitive result by the end of the year.

If these abnormalities were, in fact, caused by cancer, the disease may have been what killed the Mysterious Lady. "Cancer could have been the direct cause of her death," but it is hard to say for certain, Ożarek-Szilke said. It is also possible that the pregnancy played a role in her death, she added. 

The researchers are excited about the potential discovery because it is rare to find how mummified people died. "When examining human remains, we always wonder what was the cause of the death of the examined deceased," Ożarek-Szilke said. "We don't often manage to find the answer to this question."

However, there is still a lot more to learn about the Mysterious Lady, such as why she was found in the wrong coffin and who she was. "We have revealed another piece of the puzzle from her life," Ożarek-Szilke said. "But we are still missing a few pieces."

Originally published on Live Science.

Humans have long envisioned the continuation of life past death. Ancient Egyptians, for example, are famous for their elaborate funerary rituals and beliefs about the afterlife. But the practice of deliberately preserving bodies extends possibly 3,500 years earlier than the mummies of ancient Egypt. And mummies buried with riches and personal objects are found all over the world. 

In some cases, these mummies provide detailed glimpses into the beliefs and practices of ancient cultures. Mummies, and the objects entombed with them, reveal what people found important, their spiritual symbols, and what they believed happened after death. Autopsies conducted by modern-day scientists can reveal what these ancient people ate, what diseases they suffered from, and ultimately what killed them. 

From King Tut to Lady Dai, these seven famous mummies carried their secrets to the tomb — and back out again. 

Ötzi the Iceman

When the mummy now known as Ötzi the Iceman was discovered in the Alps in 1991, Austrian authorities initially thought the body belonged to a modern mountaineer because it was so well preserved. But after the iceman was hastily chipped from the alpine glacier, they realized he was from the Copper Age. 

Ötzi was discovered in a mountain pass 10,530 feet (3,210 meters) above sea level, far above western Austria's nearby Ötztal Valley. He lived 5,300 years ago, at a time when Europe was first developing complex social hierarchies. His death was violent: Ötzi died after being shot with an arrow and sustained a head injury in his last moments, according to research conducted in 2013.

The man's mummy has revealed an enormous amount about life in Copper Age Europe. His genes show that he was a native of Central Europe, and his stomach contents show that he ate ibex meat. He was in his mid-40s, with arthritis, narrowing arteries and intestinal parasites, but he likely used acupuncture and medicinal herbs to treat his pain. We even know that he sharpened his scraping and boring tools days before his murder, although it's anyone's guess if he was anticipating a fight or simply preparing his tools for routine work. 

Tollund Man

Tollund Man, a bog body found in Denmark in 1940, may be evidence of human sacrifice. The exquisitely preserved mummy belongs to a man who lived during the Iron Age, between about 405 B.C. and 380 B.C. On his last day, he ate a meal of barley porridge and fish and was then hanged until he suffocated. Researchers suspect his death was part of a ritual sacrifice because Tollund Man was then laid to rest in a fetal position, with his eyes and mouth carefully closed, according to Museum Silkeborg in Denmark. (Most people in this time period were cremated, so the fact he was buried in a bog lends credence to the "human sacrifice" theory.) 

According to Museum Silkeborg, where the mummy is now on display, Tollund Man was between 30 and 40 years old when he died and stood at least 5 feet 4 inches (163 centimeters) tall (perhaps a bit taller, presuming his body shrank in the bog after death). He was wearing a sheepskin cap and leather belt and still had the rope used to hang him knotted around his neck. 

King Tutankhamun

Perhaps no mummy is more famous than that of the boy king, King Tut. The young pharaoh died more than 3,000 years ago at the age of 19. The opening of his tomb in 1922 was an international sensation because, unlike many royal tombs, it had not been looted. The teenage pharaoh's mummy was still nestled inside three coffins, including one made of solid gold.

Tut's glittering grave goods captured a snapshot of ancient Egyptian history, and his mummy also shed light on practices and cultural changes around the time he died in about 1324 B.C. DNA from the body helped narrow down the search for Tut's parents, unraveling the mystery regarding the king's royal ties. Using DNA analysis, scientists identified two mummies thought to be Tut's father, Akhenaten, and his mother, whose name is unknown. Tut’s mummy also revealed that the pharaoh had malaria and a rare bone disorder of the foot that may have made it difficult to get around. Either malaria or another infection likely killed him.

Tut's penis was mummified in an erect position — a symbol that repudiated religious reforms made by his father, some archaeologists have argued. Akhenaten had attempted to focus religious worship on the sun disc, Aten, but Tutankhamun's erect penis harkened to Osiris, the god of fertility, resurrection and the afterlife. In myth, Osiris is dismembered by his brother, but his wife Isis gathers the pieces of the body, including the penis, and conceives their son Horus. Tut's mummification may have linked him closely with Osiris to cement the failure of his father's religious reforms.  

Xin Zhui

Mummies are typically leathery and desiccated. But not Xin Zhui, also known as "Lady Dai." This well-off lady who lived during the Han dynasty in China was discovered in 1971 in an elaborate tomb sealed with clay. The conditions of her entombment created a nearly oxygen-free environment, and Xin Zhui's coffin was also filled with embalming fluid to help preserve the body, so, her corpse was in a state of pristine preservation. Her limbs were still flexible, her skin was soft, and she still sported a full head of hair. 

The mummy, which dates back to 168 B.C., is now held by the Hunan Museum in China, along with hundreds of items that were buried with her body. These include sumptuous lacquered dinnerware sets, musical instruments and exquisitely painted silks. From records in the tomb, archaeologists know that Xin Zhui was the wife of the Marquis of Dai, Li Cang. The marquis was buried nearby, and a neighboring tomb held the body of a 30-something man who is thought to have been the couple's son or the marquis' brother.

Scientists were able to conduct a full autopsy on Xin Zhui's mummy, according to Archaeology magazine. This examination revealed that she died at about the age of 50 from a heart attack.  

The Chinchorro mummies

The Chinchorro mummies, found in modern-day Chile, are among the oldest known human-made mummies in the world, dating back 7,000 years — 2,000 years earlier than the oldest Egyptian mummies. 

According to Archaeology magazine, these mummies were as carefully prepared as any royal in ancient Egypt. Their organs were removed and their muscles stripped from the bones. The bodies were then reassembled with reeds, plant matter and clay to replace the removed innards. The skin was painted black or red. Elaborate human-hair wigs and sculpted clay masks were added to complete the postmortem treatment. 

The Chinchorro people who made these mummies lived in the Atacama Desert and left no written records, so the lovingly preserved dead offer a rare window into their beliefs and culture. Notably, according to Archaeology, the Chinchorro mummified everyone regardless of rank — even stillborn children.

"The Chinchorro seemed to honor all human beings whether they contributed to society or not, paying particular attention to those who never achieved their potential," anthropologists wrote in the magazine. "In the minds of the Chinchorro, life as a mummy may have been viewed as a second chance."

Ramses II

Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, ruled Egypt for 68 years. During his lifetime (approximately 1303 B.C. to  1213 B.C.), the pharaoh oversaw military campaigns to secure new territory and funded elaborate building projects along the Nile, including an enormous temple complex now known as Ramesseum. Many artifacts of Ramses' reign still survive, including an 83-ton granite statue of the king.

Ramses' mummy made it to the modern era too, though not without some postmortem drama. As Egypt's New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.) began to falter toward the 11th century B.C., priests  relocated royal mummies, nominally to protect them from looters. In actuality, the priests probably also wanted to pick apart these tombs for gold and raw materials, which were in short supply at the time, according to the American Research Center in Egypt. Ramses II ended up in a plain coffin in a secret cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahari, which was rediscovered in 1881, and a record of his journeys was written on his wrappings.

According to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, Ramses II stood over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall. He lived a long life, dying around the age of 90. Research from 2014 suggests the king had a bone condition called diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, which causes the ligaments near the spine to harden, reducing flexibility. The mummy is now at Egypt's National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.  

The Siberian Ice Maiden

The Siberian Ice Maiden was likely an important woman in her time. She was a member of the ancient Pazyryk culture and greater Scythian culture of Siberia and lived in the fifth century B.C. Her tomb was discovered in 1993 in Russia's Republic of Altai, and she was found buried in a grand larch coffin, with six sacrificial horses entombed near her.

The Siberian Ice Maiden, also known as the Ukok Princess, was probably about 25 years old when she died, according to a 1998 NOVA documentary on the discovery. She was embalmed with peat, her brain and eyes had been removed, and her eye sockets stuffed with animal fur. Her body was ornamented with a 3-foot-tall (0.9 m) felt headdress festooned with gold-plated carvings. She was dressed in a wool-and-camel-hair dress, dyed red, maroon and yellow. Perhaps the most incredible details are the maiden's tattoos, which include a deer's head, a spotted panther, and a leaping deer with a griffin's beak and antlers that branch into flowery forms. 

The mummy revealed surprising secrets about the Pazyryk people, who lived between the sixth and third centuries B.C. For example, her blouse was made of wild silk that may have come all the way from India, indicating long-distance trade routes in the region some 2,400 years ago. 

Originally published on Live Science.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser, constructed at Saqqara about 4,700 years ago,  was the first pyramid the Egyptians ever built.

The ancient Egyptian pharaoh that gave the pyramid its name, Djoser, sometimes spelled Zoser (though he was actually called Netjerykhet) ruled during Egypt's third dynasty. Scholars attribute the planning of the pyramid to Imhotep, a vizier who would later be deified for his accomplishments.

"Djoser is the name given to this king by New Kingdom visitors to the site over a thousand years later” wrote Egyptologist Mark Lehner in his book "The Complete Pyramids: Solving The Ancient Mysteries" (Thames & Hudson, 2008). 

The pyramid started off as a mastaba tomb — a flat-roofed structure with sloping sides — and, through a series of expansions, evolved into a 197-foot-high (60 meters) pyramid, with six layers, one built on top of the other. The pyramid was constructed using 11.6 million cubic feet (330,400 cubic meters) of stone and clay. The tunnels beneath the pyramid form a labyrinth about 3.5 miles (5.5 kilometers) long. The pyramid was covered with tura limestone, most of which is gone today.

Better protection?

In earlier times, pharaohs were buried in smaller mastaba tombs, which robbers could reach by digging in from the top, Reg Clark, an Egyptologist, wrote in his book "Securing Eternity: Ancient Egyptian Tomb Protection from Prehistory to the Pyramids" (American University in Cairo Press, 2019). The Step Pyramid of Djoser, Clark wrote, would have made it almost impossible for a robber to reach the burial chamber by digging in from the top. Protection from grave robbers may be a reason why the ancient Egyptians built the step pyramid, Clark wrote. 

While the step pyramid may have offered enhanced protection, people eventually broke into it, and today most of the burial goods, including the mummy of Djoser, are long gone. 

Not every mummy has been looted from the tomb, however. Recent archaeological work revealed three mummies dating to the late period (ca. 712–332 B.C.) that were buried inside Djoser's burial chamber, according to a paper published in 2021 in the Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists. This means that by the late period people had not only broken into the king's burial chamber but were burying more mummies inside of it.

The Djoser complex

The pyramid is at the center of a complex 37 acres (15 hectares) in size. A recessed limestone wall surrounds the complex; fake doorways as well as the real colonnade entrances are embedded on the southeast side, wrote Lehner.

A temple lies on the north side of the pyramid along with a statue of the king. A small stone structure known as a "serdab" surrounds the statue, with the king's eyes peeking out through a hole in the serdab. To the south of the pyramid lies a great court, with an altar and stones identified as boundary markers, Lehner noted.

The builders placed a number of facade "dummy" buildings in the complex, including a series of chapels in the southeast as well as north and south pavilions on the east side of the pyramid. These structures would have served ritual purposes and, curiously, they appear to have been partly buried by their builders, wrote Lehner. In the southeast side of the complex, next to the dummy chapels, lies a court where the king could enact the Heb-Sed jubilee festival, presumably in the afterlife.

At the southern end of the complex lies the enigmatic "south tomb," with a chapel. It contains a series of tunnels that mimic those found beneath the pyramid itself. 

"One room [in the south tomb] had carved limestone panels set into the walls depicting the pharaoh running the heb-sed race," wrote Aidan Dodson and Salima Ikram in their book "The Tomb in Ancient Egypt" (Thames & Hudson 2008). The heb-sed festival celebrated kingship, and during the festival the king would run around an open area. The south tomb may not have held any burials and its purpose is not clear, wrote Dodson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Bristol, and Ikram, an Egyptology professor at the American University in Cairo. 

The complex is surrounded by a dry "moat" that is of varying depth and about 131 feet (40 m) wide, according to a study published in 2015 in the journal Archaeological Prospection. A survey of the moat revealed that it served as a "huge quarry for material used for construction of the Step Pyramid," the team wrote in their paper.

Who is buried in the Djoser pyramid?

Beneath the step pyramid winds a bewildering array of tunnels and chambers, the center of which is a 90-foot-deep (28 m) shaft that, at its bottom, contains the burial chamber of King Djoser. The mummy of King Djoser is gone, but conservation work in the burial chamber has revealed 32 fragments of the king's granite sarcophagus, Zahi Hawass, a former minister of antiquities in Egypt, wrote in his paper. From the remains, archaeologists estimate that the king's sarcophagus originally weighed 1.76 tons (1.6 metric tons). 

The builders initially planned to decorate the ceiling with limestone blocks engraved with five pointed stars, creating the illusion of a star-filled sky. Archaeologists found blocks from this planned ceiling during conservation work, according to Hawass, but for reasons unknown, the builders scrapped this decoration, leaving a ceiling of plain granite.

Tunnels and underground 'palace'

Two passages lead underground and branch off in three directions. They contain three magazine (storage) galleries, a special tunnel for offerings, and an uncompleted chamber that may have formed an underground "palace" of sorts, albeit one for the afterlife.

The underground "palace" has three false doors containing stele, or stone carvings, showing the king engaged in rituals. The chamber is decorated with blue faience tiles,  perhaps meant to imitate the reed matting found in the king's real-life palace in Memphis, Lehner noted in his paper. This subterranean chamber was hastily completed. 

A tunnel on the east side of the pyramid contains 40,000 stone vessels, many of them belonging to the king's ancestors. Archaeologists have found human remains and sarcophagi nearby, including the hip bone of a woman who was around 18 years old when she died, Lehner noted. Some of the female remains dated to generations before Djoser's time, leaving a question as to who they were, according to Lehner's paper.

Modern-day conservation

From 2006 to 2020, Egypt led a project to conserve the pyramid, with some help from  engineers from a British engineering company called Cintec. At one point during the conservation efforts, giant airbags were used to hold up the pyramid's roof while workers repaired the structure of the pyramid.

Some of the pyramid's blocks had become loose and were put back during conservation efforts. 

"The team was able to collect all blocks that were loose under the sand, treated them immediately, and chose the best of them to be placed back onto the pyramid after filling the gaps with mortar," Hawass wrote. "The mortar that was used has the same ratio of limestone to sand used by the ancient Egyptians."

Mark of respect

The construction of the step pyramid marked the beginning of an ambitious pyramid-building program that would culminate with the Great Pyramid at Giza. Imhotep, the man credited with designing the step pyramid, would eventually be regarded as a god of sorts.

Egyptologist Marc Van De Mieroop wrote in his book "A History of Ancient Egypt" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), that King Djoser (Netjerykhet) gave Imhotep a rare honor, allowing his name and titles to be carved on the base of one the king's statues. One of his titles calls him "chief of sculptors," a phrase fitting for someone who designed the first Egyptian pyramid.

Djoser would also continue to be revered and, centuries after he died, officials still wanted to be buried near his step pyramid. In 2022, archaeologists found the tomb of one such official, named "Mehtjetju," by the step pyramid. He lived about 4,300 years ago, centuries after Djoser's reign. 

One long-standing question is: Where is Imhotep buried? Given Imhotep's association with the step pyramid, Egyptologists suspect that he may be buried near his most well-known creation. One possibility is that Imhotep was buried beneath the step pyramid, an idea that future research at the pyramid will examine, Hawass wrote in his paper.

Additional resources

• You can learn more about how Egyptian pyramids were built in this Live Science article.
• The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has more information about the step pyramid and how to visit it on their website.
• The ministry has also helped create a virtual tour of the step pyramid which can be seen here.

Bibliography

Clark, Reg "Securing Eternity: Ancient Egyptian Tomb Protection from Prehistory to the Pyramids" American University in Cairo Press, 2019

Dodson, A & Ikram, S "The Tomb in Ancient Egypt" Thames & Hudson 2008

Hawass, Zahi "The Discovery of the Sarcophagus of Djoser and the restoration of the step pyramid" Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists, 2021

Lehner, Mark "The Complete Pyramids: Solving The Ancient Mysteries" Thames & Hudson, 2008

Van de Mieroop, Marc "A History of Ancient Egypt" Wiley-Blackwell, 2010

Welc et al "Western Section of the ‘Dry Moat' Channel Surrounding Step Pyramid Complex in Saqqara in the Light of Ground-penetrating Radar Prospection" Archaeological Prospection, 2015

Originally published on Live Science on Sept. 10, 2012 and updated on June 29, 2022.

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.

Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Mummy mania

Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that tasted awful.

Mumia, the product created from mummified bodies, was a medicinal substance consumed for centuries by rich and poor, available in apothecaries’ shops, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Egyptian tombs back to Europe.

By the 12th century apothecaries were using ground up mummies for their otherworldly medicinal properties. Mummies were a prescribed medicine for the next 500 years.

In a world without antibiotics, physicians prescribed ground up skulls, bones and flesh to treat illnesses from headaches to reducing swelling or curing the plague.

Not everyone was convinced. Guy de la Fontaine, a royal doctor, doubted mumia was a useful medicine and saw forged mummies made from dead peasants in Alexandria in 1564. He realised people could be conned. They were not always consuming genuine ancient mummies.

But the forgeries illustrate an important point: there was constant demand for dead flesh to be used in medicine and the supply of real Egyptian mummies could not meet this.

Apothecaries and herbalists were still dispensing mummy medicines into the 18th century.

Mummy’s medicine

Not all doctors thought dry, old mummies made the best medicine. Some doctors believed that fresh meat and blood had a vitality the long-dead lacked.

The claim that fresh was best convinced even the noblest of nobles. England’s King Charles II took medication made from human skulls after suffering a seizure, and, until 1909, physicians commonly used human skulls to treat neurological conditions.

For the royal and social elite, eating mummies seemed a royally appropriate medicine, as doctors claimed mumia was made from pharaohs. Royalty ate royalty.

Dinner, drinks, and a show

By the 19th century, people were no longer consuming mummies to cure illness but Victorians were hosting “unwrapping parties” where Egyptian corpses would be unwrapped for entertainment at private parties.

Napoleon’s first expedition into Egypt in 1798 piqued European curiosity and allowed 19th century travellers to Egypt to bring whole mummies back to Europe bought off the street in Egypt.

Victorians held private parties dedicated to unwrapping the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Early unwrapping events had at least a veneer of medical respectability. In 1834 the surgeon Thomas Pettigrew unwrapped a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. In his time, autopsies and operations took place in public and this unwrapping was just another public medical event.

Soon, even the pretence of medical research was lost. By now mummies were no longer medicinal but thrilling. A dinner host who could entertain an audience while unwrapping was rich enough to own an actual mummy.

The thrill of seeing dried flesh and bones appearing as bandages came off meant people flocked to these unwrappings, whether in a private home or the theatre of a learned society. Strong drink meant audiences were loud and appreciative.

The mummy’s curse

Mummy unwrapping parties ended as the 20th century began. The macabre thrills seemed in bad taste and the inevitable destruction of archaeological remains seemed regrettable.

Then the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb fuelled a craze that shaped art deco design in everything from the motifs of doors in the Chrysler Building to the shape of clocks designed by Cartier. The sudden death in 1923 of Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the Tutankhamen expedition, was from natural causes but soon attributed to a new superstition — "the mummy's curse."

Modern mummies

In 2016 Egyptologist John J. Johnston hosted the first public unwrapping of a mummy since 1908. Part art, part science, and part show, Johnston created a an immersive recreation of what it was like to be present at a Victorian unwrapping.

It was as tasteless as possible, with everything from the Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian playing on loud speaker to the plying of attendees with straight gin.

The mummy was only an actor wrapped in bandages but the event was a heady sensory mix. The fact it took place at St Bart’s Hospital in London was a modern reminder that mummies cross many realms of experience from the medical to the macabre.

Today, the black market of antiquity smuggling – including mummies – is worth about US$3 billion.

No serious archaeologist would unwrap a mummy and no physician suggest eating one. But the lure of the mummy remains strong. They are still for sale, still exploited, and still a commodity.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. You can see the original version here.