National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead Page #5

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used to cure leather.

Over time, this brew converts

dead vegetation into peat,

long harvested as a heating fuel.

It also works wonders on bodies.

More than a thousand "bog mummies"

have come to light;

most are some 2,000 years old.

Often, their bones are dissolved,

while their skin is transformed

into a supple leather that retains

a breathtaking impression of life.

Many bog mummies bear signs

of a violent death-

slit throat, strangulation,

or hanging.

Many scholars believe they were

sacrificed to fertility gods

by early farming communities.

They were plunged into the bog,

so the wheat would rise again.

More than 2,500 years ago,

the Altai mountains of Siberia

were home to a nomadic people

called the Pazyryk.

They lived by the horse,

and moved great herds across the land

in search of pasture.

Horses were their measure

of wealth and status.

The Pazyryk buried their dead in

chambers dug deep into the icy earth.

In 1993, Russian archeologists

opened an undisturbed chamber.

First, they found the remains of

six horses killed by blows to the head.

Surely, they thought, this must be

the tomb of a powerful man.

The coffin itself was

completely sealed in ice.

To everyone's surprise,

it contained a young woman-

her features gone,

but her body intact.

Tattoos of mythical creatures

adorned her sturdy hands.

Was she a Priestess? Warrior? Healer?

Her identity eludes us,

but she provides a new image of women

in this ancient culture.

On the west coast of Greenland,

a rocky cove once harbored

an Eskimo village,

home to a people called the Inuit.

Some five hundred years ago,

misfortune struck here,

and eight bodies were laid

to rest in a dry, sheltering cave.

Cause of death remains a mystery.

But these freeze? dried mummies,

in superb fur clothing,

rank as one of the most spectacular

archeological finds

from the arctic region.

The frozen heights of the Andes

preserve a record of the past.

Five hundred years ago,

the Inca ruled these highlands,

and worshiped the mountains as gods.

Traces of their sacred sites are

scattered throughout the peaks.

For nearly two decades,

anthropologist Johan Reinhard

has sought out the high altitude

sites of the Inca.

But in September 1995,

he first climbed Mount Ampato in Peru

with a different goal in mind.

"Ampato's been a peak

that's always been a mystery.

It's always stood out there and people

haven't really climbed it very often

and haven't seen much

that's been on it."

"And the idea was just to get

some pictures of another volcano

that was erupting nearby,

never really thinking we'd find

anything on the summit.

Now the reason for that is is that

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