BS: Digging up Mummies on TV

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 04:14 PM

de peepl ave eard ure complaints. they is now gonna dig up daddies to even the score

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 04:25 PM

Clinton, different cultures have varied feelings about their ancestors being dug up and studied. You have to take this into account when doing "science," which is a largely Eurocentric field of study that is priviledged by the Euro cultures to do a lot of things that other cultures find pretty appalling.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 04:34 PM

Well, there are a lot of stupid 'traditions' applied to dead bodies, in my opinion... (grave yards... what a waste of space... embalming... what a WOMBAT...)

And well, if we can maybe learn something about our past, that helps us in our future, then dig 'em all up says I....

-I- think knowledge is more important than superstition....

The above is just raving opinion... I don't expect anyone to agree with me...

But I think there's a problem when ignorance is the end goal....

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Amergin
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 04:37 PM

Well...I'm positive that those people being dug up don't mind...

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 04:42 PM

Hehe...

There is that too eh Amergin!

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 06:46 PM

Well, the only skeletons I've ever excavated were on rescue digs, so if they hadn't been moved by us they would've been moved by a bulldozer. Some of those were Christian burials, and we were told they'd ultimately be reburied on consecrated ground. Probably they're still in boxes though, given the speed of post-excavation work... For burials (or remains) that pre-dated Christianity, there's not really much that could've be done to compensate, I suppose, unless the circumstances of any ritual surrounding their burial could be established. (Personally, I don't care what's done to me, and like Nathan says, the ones that are being dug up probably don't mind either.)

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 09:09 PM

I have worked in cemeteries, setting gravestones, and my brother has worked as a gravedigger AND a stone setter. Here's some of what we've learned.

1. Embalming keeps you looking nice only until you're buried. After that, Certain Changes take place and you lose your good looks. Eventually, you'll return to the soil from whence you sprang. (Don't ask me about what the embalming chemicals do to the soil. I haven't studied it, and I'm not at all sure that the nutrients your body returns offsets what the chemicals do.)

2. Bodies decay at a set rate, depending upon a lot of different things. Soil moisture (for buried bodies) is one variable among many. Acidopore, the waxy stuff that can cover bodies placed in certain soils, is a mess to deal with for a gravedigger. The younger the body, the less you're likely to find after earth burial -- often there are no traces of an infant.

3. If you dug up a body, the most you're likely to find is the skeleton and, perhaps, some remnants of clothing, jewelry, etc. Under most conditions, skin and organs don't survive very long in an average grave. (Hey, we're talking in terms of years here.)

4. Yes, if you keep air and water away from the body it will last longer. And yes, I'm aware that bodies have been exhumed that look like the day they were buried (Medgar Evers, for instance). These are the exceptions.

5. Earth burial and cremation are NOT the only options for disposal of the dead. The Jains, for instance, have an interesting method in their Towers of Silence, as do the Navajo (how do you dispose of a body when you're culturally forbidden to touch it?). More than a few American Indian nations placed their dead in a tree or on a raised platform. And there's always been burial at sea.

6. ALL of our customers must have been satisfied, since they've never complained about our work.

7. You might find it morbid; I find it fascinating.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 10:00 PM

Dig `em ALL up!

I'm running low on Soylent Green.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 10:01 PM

As for the mummies.... I'm running low on jerky too.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 10:26 PM

People have superstitions....the only question is whether we should be required to be tolerant and honor their superstitions, or should be allowed to pursue science when no direct ownership or ancestor of the body or grave contents can be determined.

Like many other questions of religion & ethics, it ain't gonna be answered easily. Since I am not going to BE buried, and will have no 'artifacts' associated with me, I tend towards science...but I do have 'just' enough sympathy for those who associate mummies/bodies/remains with their ancestors souls, that I can't easily answer the question.

I 'think' it is silly to NOT learn all we can from remnants of the past, and I wish we could get people to give up their idea that those remains 'want' to remain undisturbed...but emotional baggage gets tight holds on us, and I hate to see people unhappy. (I do note that in the past, many graves were robbed as soon as someone could get there, even though the robbers supposedly had the same beliefs as those whose graves they robbed....makes you think)

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 10:38 PM

...makes you think about the riches rotting in the ground with a corpse while people were starving above ground for want of the the price of a loaf of bread.

Not that I'm against riches being buried in the ground; they make for good treasure stories, exciting archaeology, and good documentaries on the Discovery and History Channels.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 10:43 PM

Clinton, if you don't believe in something, then it doesn't exist, can't possibly be true, right? You've missed a lot in this world if you haven't encountered the power that can remain with the body and personal artifacts. To say nothing of some of the ghosts who stay behind.

Several years ago as part of a freelance story I was photographing artifacts from a WPA-era dig at the museum in Canyon, Texas. The NAGPRA legislation had been around long enough that burial artifacts should have been removed from the collection and the storage drawers. I opened one drawer that contained various shells from the dig, and as I passed my hand over the various boxes, I felt a physical jolt, like an electrical shock, as I touched one folded envelope. I picked it up carefully and when unfolded it had a WPA address on the return address area, and in pencil was written "shell beads from around neck of ________ body." It was so unnerving to have experienced the shock BEFORE I knew what was there that I went and got the Kiowa museum aid I'd been working with and pointed them out. He was surprised that it was still in the collection and took it away to wherever he kept such stuff. I told this story to someone later who noted that "the beads were still working, weren't they?"

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: freda underhill
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 08:47 PM

King Tut's necklace shaped by fireball
June 26, 2006
LONDON: Scientists believe they have solved the mystery surrounding a piece of rare natural glass at the centre of an elaborate necklace found among the treasures of Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh. They think a fragile meteorite broke up as it entered the atmosphere, producing a fireball with temperatures over 1800C that turned the desert sand and rock into molten lava that became glass when it cooled. Experts have puzzled over the origin of the yellow-green glass -- carved into the shape of a scarab beetle -- since it was excavated in 1922 from the tomb of the teenage king, who died about 1323BC.

It is generally agreed the glass came from an area called the Great Sand Sea, but there has been uncertainty over how it was formed because there is no crater to back up the idea of a meteorite. Now it is thought the meteorite responsible was not intact but made up of loose rubble. "A fireball moving quicker than a hurricane force would have meant a blast of air so hot it could melt all the sand and sandstone on the ground," said Mark Boslough, an expert on impact physics based at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. He recreated the effect on his computer and found that an object 120m in diameter and travelling at 20km a second would produce enough heat to melt sand and create glass without leaving a crater as it broke up in the atmosphere.

"It would have become a molten lake of bubbling liquid sand, and as the sand cooled it would have formed glass, which ended up in King Tutankhamun's jewellery," said Dr Boslough. The necklace with the 2.5cm oval glass is housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The object was one of hundreds of items discovered by the British archaeologist Howard Carter in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. In his diary, he described the brightly coloured gem as "greenish yellow chalcedony". But in 1999, geologists tested the composition of the scarab and concluded it was not chalcedony but natural desert glass, which is found only in the Great Sand Sea 800km southwest of Cairo.

Many meteorite craters can be seen only from space, so satellite photography experts examined the area. Farouk El-Baz, from Boston University, said: "If this glass is of meteoric origin, there should be a crater of that age. "But we did not find a smoking gun for silica (glass) there," Dr El-Baz said.

The Sunday Times

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 09:53 PM

"And yes, I'm aware that bodies have been exhumed that look like the day they were buried (Medgar Evers, for instance). " Rapaire

Hey, Rap, could/would you recount that story? I've read that kind of thing before and never knew what accounts for it. I had not heard that about Evers.

I'd love to hear more.

Thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: SharonA
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 11:13 PM

Around here (Philadelphia PA area), they dig up the Mummers every New Year's Day.

Oh, wait, you said "Mummies"...

Oh well, in many cases they're dressed quite similarly...

But seriously, this is a fascinating thread. Thanks for the info, everyone!