Geneticists from the National Museum of Natural History of Chile managed to decipher the DNA and scan some of the oldest mummies on our planet, which were made by the Chinchorro Indians.
According to Veronica Silva, an employee of the museum, the first mummy studied by scientists did not contain bones at all. It is likely that it was just a dummy, a doll that depicted the person who could not be turned into a mummy for some unknown reason. By studying all these bodies, scientists strive to understand who the Chinchorro Indians were, what lifestyle they led, what they ate, and whether they are the ancestors of modern Chileans.
According to scientists, the Chinchorro culture was formed about 10 thousand years ago in the territory of modern Chile and Peru. This people lived in small settlements, led a fairly simple lifestyle and ate seafood. This ancient people became the first among all South American Indian tribes who managed to master the technique of mummification. Researchers are now convinced that the Chinchorro gained knowledge of mummification through climate change that made the Atacama Desert more habitable about 7,000 years ago. It was then that the tradition of mummification appeared.
In the process of making the mummy, all internal organs, skin and brain were removed from the body of the deceased, after which the body itself was coated with clay, on which the previously removed skin was attached. Scientists at the moment cannot yet explain why the Indians needed to turn the deceased into mummies, since there were no funeral rites in their culture, and the cult of life after death did not exist.
After examining the structure of the mummy from the inside and the appearance of people whose remains have survived to this day, as well as analyzing the structure of DNA and making images of bones and skulls using a CT scanner, Veronica Silva, together with her colleagues, tried to open the veil of this mystery.
For research, 15 mummies of babies and children were taken from the museum's storerooms, each of which was virtually cut into thousands of layers during scanning, each of which was only one millimeter thick. According to scientists, all these layers will subsequently be connected using a computer.
The results of data on DNA analysis and reconstruction, which scientists expect to obtain in the very near future, will help to understand why the Chinchorro Indians turned their deceased relatives into mummies, and who are their modern "heirs".
