For millennia, mummies were nothing out of the ordinary--they simply were. They were a fact of life, a fact of death and an entryway into “the afterlife.”
What is a mummy?
A mummy is any being whose soft, fleshy tissues are somehow preserved after death. That’s it in a nutshell. But what is basically the prevention of a bacteriological process has become part of the mystery and mythology of almost every culture in the world today.
Many believe the first mummies were created in ancient Egypt. Untrue. Mother Nature came up with the concept first and the Egyptians just refined the process. Bodies can be “mummified” in many ways, including freezing, dehydration and embalming. Fossils,however, are not to be confused with mummies. In fossilization, all soft or fleshy tissues are destroyed, even though they may leave an impression behind in the matter surrounding the object.
What do you mean, Mother Nature made the first mummies?
One of the oldest mummies found to date is that of a baby woolly mammoth. Found in the 1970s, this baby woolly mammoth was entirely preserved in a block of ice, and scientists believe it died over 30,000 years ago. For a scientist, this is a rare find. Consider the possibilities. The mammoth’s DNA may be preserved – we could clone woolly mammoths! Or maybe we just want to know what their diet consisted of, more about the life of a woolly mammoth on a daily basis. That information is now available, too, based on things like filaments or objects entangled in the woolly mammoth’s fur, the contents of its stomach and even residue on the bottoms of its feet.
The “Ice Man” is thought to be the oldest human mummy. He was found frozen in the Alps. Scientists have dated his clothing and the objects found with him and determined he is approximately 5,300 years old.
Other instances of frozen mummies the more-recently discovered sacrificial ice mummies of the Incas being found high in the Andes of Peru and Chile.
Some of the most famous mummies are, of course, from Egypt; but, again, the original idea was not theirs.
“The Egyptians probably realized dehydration preserved the body by observing what happened to bodies buried in dry, hot sand,” commented Dr. Bob Brier, a professor of philosophy at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and author of Egyptian Mummies.
