National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead Page #4

---

in replica funerary jars,

created by local college students.

"It's been perfumed

and now it's going to be wrapped

and we place it inside the jar."

"A lot of people don't realize

that we did the project

not to get the mummy,

but to get knowledge.

And the project isn't over.

Our mummy, it seems,

is what we say, dead and well.

He's been at room temperature

now for about two years,

no signs of decay, it's stable.

So we think we did it right.

But he's still being used

in research projects around the world.

We get requests for tissue samples,

from people doing studies

on ancient Egyptian mummies.

This is the only mummy in the world

for which we know exactly

what was done to him.

It's the only, so to speak,

ancient Egyptian mummy that

we have a full medical record on.

So it's an important mummy."

If only in the annals of science,

Brier's mummy has achieved immortality-

a fate the Egyptians

would surely have approved.

The quest for eternal life

still goes on today-

just in a different form.

Cryonics involves freezing the body

in liquid nitrogen

immediately after death.

Practitioners have faith

that scientists of the future

will have the know-how to revive them.

The sad truth is the human body-

about two thirds water,

plus a few basic chemicals-

is simply not built to last.

Exposed in warm weather,

a corpse could be reduced to

a skeleton in a matter of weeks.

Underground, or underwater, the

process usually takes somewhat longer.

Bone may last from months

to millennia.

But when conditions are just right,

Nature makes mummies.

In northwest China, near the route

of the fabled Silk Road,

the searing sands have yielded

more than a hundred heat-

dried mummies.

Surprisingly, they have

the features of Caucasians,

and date back

two to four thousand years.

Many must have lived

in the region centuries

before the opening of

the Silk Road around 200 BC.

Scholars had long been puzzled

by ancient Chinese texts

describing figures of great height,

with red or yellow hair.

Cave paintings in the region lent

credence to the accounts,

but the discovery of the mummies adds

an important piece to the puzzle.

Their existence suggests

foreign traders settled in China

much earlier than previously believed.

The bogs of northern Europe

have long inspired legends-

among them the "boogie-man."

Two thousand years ago,

the Celts and their kin believed bogs

were an entrance to

the realm of the gods.

They tossed in tribute

of silver and gold-

and other strange sacrifices.

Bogs are filled with

a natural "embalming fluid",

acidic water low in oxygen

and rich with tannins,

the same chemicals

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes