BS: Digging up Mummies on TV

Subject: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Johnny in OKC
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 12:34 PM

Last night on PBS they were digging up Inca mummies.
The night before, they were digging up mummies in China.

Why is this okay?

I'm all for science, and I can see why they are getting
valuable anthropological info, but can't they get the
same information from pots and bricks?

"As you see by looking at this woman's pelvis ..."
I really don't think the woman intended to have her
pelvis examined on TV, if she could have imagined
such a thing.

"Those awful LOOTERS have been plundering this grave ..."
but aren't the scientists doing the same thing? At least
the looters only took the gold, not the bodies.

These mummies, weren't they actually people at one time?
Don't they deserve to be left in peace?

I'm gonna be cremated. It's all paid for.

Love, Johnny

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 12:43 PM

Johnny:

I reckon any person dumb enough to hang around a dead body for 2000 years deserves to be trifled with. What these mummies are is remains -- like rusty bumpers and broken oil-pans, you can't call cars. If my body got dead and wrapped up in a tomb like a mummy, I'd be out of the territory in a split New York minute.

And no, there is a hell of a lot of a difference between a scientist and a looter. A looter wants to know what a tomb can give him, so he can steal the wealth. A scientist wants to understand what the tomb has to say. This actually enhances the wealth. What value would the tomb of Tut ever have had to posterity, without a scientific analysis?

A

S

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 12:43 PM

I'm happy to be dug up when I'm dead and buried, especially if it's for archaeological reasons. I'm going to get buried in a filing cabinet just to confuse them.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 12:46 PM

It's not OK with me.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 12:59 PM

Frankly, when I'm done with my bod (if ever, 'cause considering my probable destination I'm not planning on making the trip) I would like all of the usable parts reused. Then they can do with it whatever they want -- maybe encase it in Lucite like one of those biology lab starfish and gaze at it lovingly and often, or stuff it, or burn it, or mummify it for future generations.

As the man said, "This is only the shell...the nut has gone elsewhere."

If that means diggin' me up to see what sort of culture I lived in, why should I care? And we've been doing that for years -- even to our 19th Century ancestors, even to our 20th Century ones.

Would I care if, for instance, my parents bodies were exhumed for archeological reasons? No, not really, as long as it would promote our knowledge of the world they lived in. It would be easier, though, to ask me and I'll tell them what I know and even show them photos. Moreover, I'm quite certain that neither of my parents would care.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 01:05 PM

Well you may rule out archeology as your personal career goal. Which is of course OK, there are plenty of openings in security and fast food.

The best all time Egyptian documentary I ever saw is now treated as if it never existed.

Along with Zawass we descended down 15 meters into the Sphinx. Then down a straight rectangular shaft another 10 meters beneath the Sphinx. A large room bereft of engravings revealed another square hole in the floor that was filled with water about 4 or 5 meters down.

It was said debris blocked that underwater passage.

There are a number of underground aquaducts around the Great Pyramid site that lead to the Great Pyramid.

Zawass must have been severly warned that pursuing this dig was contrary to the Egyptian Antiquities policy of proclaining the Great Pyramid as royal burial chamber for the Pharoh instead of a very clever public works project that supplied irrigation under power of a great hydraulic pump.

This program which I have on tape is one of the most interesting and now RARE example of how archeology runs into to religious/political roadblocks in our day.

IF you want you can build the same hydraulic pump today right from the Great pyramid design.

The only thing that is broken in the Great pyramid are the butterfly valves to make it work (and a few holes that have been blasted with TNT).

The Kings chamber to this day is embedded with ash made from high temoerature cumbustion which ran the whole mechanism.

If you want to google Pyramid hydraulic pump it is all there.

I have met acquaintances of a certain Mr. Kunkle who died many years ago. He was a very modest man who had a great idea. Not a good mix among those that make high powered careers that depend on adhearing to the policy.
Here is an equally modest website to explain more...
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/16/built.html

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: artbrooks
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 11:55 PM

Digging up mummies is bad enough, but I understand there are plans afoot to start digging up daddies!

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Amergin
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 01:23 AM

I wanna be stuffed....i can just see some archeologist in 2 thousand years trying to find the religious significance of this costume I was found all that material and layers of clothing....when in fact...I was just a being used as a coat rack...

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:15 AM

I think that it is OK. The work done now helps enlighten us a bit more on the history of these people and the type of research now includes DNA work as well as studying diseases of the period the particular body was preserved in.

Personally I find it fascinating but before I pop my clogs I think I will sign up an agent to look after me body for the future in the very unlikely event I get shown. Nice to be able to make a bit of dosh in the afterlife.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: ced2
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:55 AM

Not only do they dig up mummies here on British TV they then clean them up and get them to present shows, discussions etc etc, sometimes with a younger presenter for assistanc.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 05:44 AM

When I die, I'll be stuffed anyway....

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 07:22 AM

7 years ago the USA put a stop to digging up the remains of people that was discovered in Washington State. It was estimated the age of the remains was about 13,000 years old. The features were not native Indian, they were virtually Egyptian looking.

The Army Corps of Engineers were ordered to bulldoze the sites and destroyed the ability to continue the dig. The reason given was the goverment did not want to upset the indian population.

We stole $12 billion in the last 15 years from the Indians through the Bur. of Indian Affairs by siphoning off the mineral rights money etc... but we are sensititve to the memory of an unrelated 13,000 year old people ??

Again I believe this is an example of a policy decision for political reasons and nothing to do with either science or sensitivity to tribal concerns.

My wild guess is that it is better to not publisize that middle eastern people had a foothold in the new world long time ago.

I did consider pursuing archeology in my youth but settled instead for a hobby of collating anomolous findings.

For example: 6 years ago a professional archeologist lady egyptologist
was ousted from academic circles and funding for having her team reveal that certain Egyptian pharoh mummies contained all the metabolic residues of COCAINE. With the coca plant found only in now South America this suggests an active seafaring trade with the ancient Western world.

The gas spectography results of the mummies was not refuted but the career of the archeologist who found it was.

There is solid evidence of modern humans from 70,000 years ago.
Anomolies point to even older possibilities.

At any rate I find the subject fascinating as well as frustrating that so many people are closed to certain obvious truths such as the true purpose of the Great Pyramid at Cheops.

Of course some folks from Kansas or Tennesee believe that dinosaurs are only several thousand years back and evolution does not exist.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 09:53 AM

Hell's fire, Donuel, there was a letter to the editor in last Sunday's paper HERE that said that the world was created 6,000 years ago!

I'd heard about the cocaine residue in Egyptian mummies, and Kenniwick Man is still residing in the museum (as far as I know), still looking more Ainu or Caucasian than Amerindian.

A Roman coin was found here in Pocatello, Idaho, some three feet down, when a feller back around 1900 was setting fence posts. Two Roman gladii have been excavated in Arizona, along with a lead plate detailing a colony there.

A 13,000 year old body of a woman was found on Catalina Island.

Personally, I strongly suspect that there were trade relations (at least) between those who dwelt in the Cahokia Mounds area and the Anazasi of the Southwest.

No archealogy, no proof of connections that are suspected to have existed. There had to have been many routes from Eurasia to the Americas, not just the Bering land bridge. Take a peek at a globe, for instance, from the North Polar perspective. Note the short boat trips from, say, Norway, to Canada, via various islands. Then consider the same route if the seas are lower because of the water tied up in an Ice Age (same scenario as the Bering Strait, but on the other side of North America)....

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 10:15 AM

Ok then another enthusiast.

The Egyptians used long boats which had similarities to the Viking ships that did quite well on the ocean.

There are even hyroglyphs found in Australia.

What has not been reliably found are the rumored Egyptian caves in the Grand Canyon.

The most ancient civilization that the ancient Egyptians refered to as the Zep Tepi were as remote and unknown to them as they are to us.

A world wide catastrophe or pole shift must have seperated us from the means of knowing more about the advanced ancient cultures.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 11:52 AM

Donuel... yer reading too much Eric Von Danikin...

,-)

As far as the mummies thing goes... dig 'em all up... they're just dead bodies... It's not like they're actually good for anything else...

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 12:31 PM

Hmmm, and there's a secret library under the sphinx, aliens built Stonehenge, the circumference of the pyramids is equal to the sum of the squares of the original Knights Templars and there must have been an Atlantis cos the same type of rocks exist on both sides of the Atlantic...

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 01:24 PM

Because some things are fact, such as cocaine residue in Egyptian mummies, doesn't mean everything is fact, such as aliens building the Giza pyramids. I would be sorely disappointed if Kennewick Man, for instance, were reburied without further scientific examination (and yes, I know all about the restoration of bodies to the native peoples and all that).

We know so very little about our past! I, personally, think that my ancestors were pretty smart and savvy folks to survive as they did, not needing help from space aliens or Elvis or anyone. What I don't like is entrenched academics and others saying that because it doesn't agree with their current thinking it didn't or couldn't happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Amergin
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 01:26 PM

They found a 30,000 year old mummy in tennessee....it looked just like Elvis.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 02:30 PM

Sad that I had to add Hammond and gin to my ignore list.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 02:59 PM

"such as aliens building the Giza pyramids."

Seriously, the very idea is insulting to the intelligence of our ancestors...   The Egyptians build the pyramids all by themselves, using a hell of a lot of ingenuity, and toil!

And well, the people who say that the Incan and or Aztec pyramids are the same at the Egyptian pyramids are flat out wrong... they are only the same in that they are pyramid shaped.... After that the similarities end...

" Sad that I had to add Hammond and gin to my ignore list. "

Oh, don't do me any favours...

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: fretless
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:23 PM

Regarding Kennewick Man, the courts have sided with the scientists and the remains are to be made available for study. My understanding of the case is that this decision is final.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Peace
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:55 PM

When I die, I have left my body for 1) parts that are still good and might help someone 2) and the rest to a university hospital. Personal preference.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 05:08 PM

Hey Brucie... you know... one thing you can leave yer body for is as a crash test cadaver! LOL

How cool is that eh???

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Johnny in OKC
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 06:24 PM

It's fine if you want to donate your body to science. Your
wishes should be respected.

What about those who don't want to donate their bodies to science?

Love, Johnny in OKC

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: MarkS
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 06:41 PM

Since this is a music site----

Please don't bury me, in the cold cold ground
I'd rather that they cut me up and pass me all around,
Throw my brain in a hurricaine and the blind can have my eyes,
And the deaf can have both of my ears, if they don't mind the size!

John Pryne

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Mar 04 - 03:16 AM

If aliens didn't build the pyramids, how come those four just outside Cairo, when viewed from the air, are an exact replication of Orions Belt?

We're going to have one of our cats stuffed when she goes - curled up asleep so she looks just as she did in life - we'll move her about occasionally and see how long it takes for anyone to notice the difference.

Personally, I think there is a lot still to be learned about past civilisations, but I also think there is a lot to be learned about the so called 'civilisation' that we have now.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Mar 04 - 05:59 AM

"how come those four just outside Cairo... are an exact replication of Orions Belt?"

Even if they are, why does that have to mean Aliens? Do you think the Egyptians couldn't see the stars?

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Peace
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 02:14 AM

CH, neat idea. However, because the heart isn't pumping, it wouldn't duplicate blood flow patterns worth a darn. (I attend lots of MVCs (motor vehicle collisions), and the blood splatter often provides valuable info re injuries (mechanism of and potential nature of damage to patient).)

I also know you were kidding. Right? Right? And movin' along . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 10:39 AM

I want my body and all of my worldly goods put onto a longship, the whole thing set alight, and shoved off to sea. I want my wife standing on top of the pile, wailing and lamenting my loss. For some reason she doesn't agree with this.

Years back I visited the exhibit at Dickson Mounds State Park in Illinois, back when the excavated burial mound was still open for viewing (it's closed now). I have never seen any thing treated with such respect and, yes, reverence, as that. The visitors, even the babies, became hushed and still in the presence of this former inhabitants of the Illinios River Valley. There was no sign saying, "Quiet!" It was a spontaneous thing, something that you simply did without thinking.

Abuses have happened in the past. I suggest the Aleut Museum in Kodiak could serve as a model for the future.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 12:45 PM

Many American Indians are angry about Kennewick Man, because it is an example of powerfully-connected scientists doing an end-run around native wishes and NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. They argue persuasively that remains extant in the New World that are clearly pre-Columbian should be left to their discretion to handle (or not).

American Indians have reason to complain. The Kennewick Man represents another example of EuroAmerican hegemony--how today's scientists can reach back over time and claim a Caucasian-looking body who should by all rights and common sense fall within the domain of the native people who lived here at the time. The bigotry that dictated within historic times the "rescue" of whites who were living happily with Indians (Cynthia Ann Parker is a prime example down here in Texas) seems to inform this "rescue" that non-Indian scientists and federal agencies claim the right to perform. Indians can only have some say in Indian matters, and only if whites feel like letting them. For more information look into the Handbook of Federal Indian Law.

All of this said, there are many examples of Europeans arriving prior to Columbus and to add to the list of relics already enumerated, visit here for information about the Heavener Runes, now protected in a small state park in Oklahoma.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 03:11 PM

Thank you Sage.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 03:31 PM

I recommend reading David Hurst Thomas's "Skull Wars" for a solid history of American paleoarchealogy, why it is the way it is, and, most importantly, what it can be (see, for instance, the subchapter "Digging Afognak" on p. 260 in my paperback copy).

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Megan L
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 03:38 PM

wee just lost a wee baby on our island, she was waiting for a heart transplant everyone is now encouraged to carry a donor card in her memory. As for the rest, if they rendered me down i would probably keep a few lamps burning for a while(like a long while)

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 03:48 PM

A handsome young trumpeter lay dying
And as on the bar floor he lay
To floozies who 'round him came sighing
These last parting words he did say:
"Please take out my liver and kidneys,
My corneas, heart, marrow and spleen;
My gonads, my skin, and intestines,
And assemble a person again."

My driver's licenses says "Take what you need when I'm done with it." I really feel that way -- heck, I donate my blood now!

I can't take it with me, so I can leave bits and pieces of my body to help others.

If you ain't a blood donor AND an organ donor, why aintcha?

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Peace
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 03:53 PM

I am over 45 units of O neg. And once stored two for myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 04:39 PM

I was a donor until I moved to London - since then I've not had a decent enough run of health, or too close to pregnancy to donate. But I did get my gold pin - by dontating a whole body's worth over time.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 07:18 PM

I was a 7+ gallon donor when I lived in Indiana (call it 55+ units) of my A+ blood. Since moving to Idaho I'm starting over, since last Summer I've donated 3 units.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Peace
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 07:44 PM

A pos; they gotta love you.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 04 - 10:55 PM

When I left South Bend I asked them for my blood back. They laughed.

All I could think of was seven gallon jugs full of blood, just sitting there. Quite an amazing mental picture, really.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: dianavan
Date: 29 Mar 04 - 12:37 AM

Donuel

I have never believed that all N. American Natives arrived via a land bridge over the Berring. Its all theory until the next discovery.

My grandmother was Native from the Washington coast (Chinook). My grandfather was Dutch/Indonesian. This seemed an unlikely combination until my grandmother explained that the Chinook had been doing trade with Indonesia long before the white man arrived. She also told me that there had always been red-hair within the tribe. I have no reason to doubt her words.

I am quite sure that trade in the Pacific was extensive. China knew about otter pelts and used them for regalia. We have so many clues but so far, nobody knows for sure. I, for one, am very curious about this so-called Kennewick man and any others that are found.

d

d

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Mar 04 - 09:54 AM

Ivor T. Sanderson, in his book "A History of Whaling" (originally published as "Follow the Whale") (Barnes and Noble, 1993), makes a number of good points. One of them I've alluded to before in this thread, that "There is nothing inexplicable about these Norse voyages. The simply island-hopped straight ahead and seldom had to cross a hundred miles of open water, while the winds and tides helped them." (Notes to Map 2, pp. 86 & 87).

His Map 3 (pp. 104 and 105 discusses the possible routes the Japanese (and others) might have taken to reach the West Coast of the US.

Dammit, I'd like to KNOW! Humankind did not evolve in the Western Hemisphere, but arrived somehow, and I can't believe that they ALL crossed the Bering Land Bridge, and then spread out across N. and S. America AND built their civilizations as they did by utilizing only one point of entry!

This is a journey of the human spirit, something greater than any other migration people have ever before undertaken. The studies can be done with respect (and bloody well should be!) and, yes, reverence. But they should be done, not just to satisfy curiousity but to honor those who made the journey.

The time of Ales Hrdlicka is over (or should be), but the hurt still rankles. I understand that. But I still think that we can more honor our ancestors (and there's only one race on this planet) by understanding than by secrecy and silence.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: greg stephens
Date: 29 Mar 04 - 01:59 PM

If anybody claims in 13000 years time that they own the right to say what i want doing with my bones...they can sod off. how would they know?

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 06:13 AM

1 Modern humans evolved about 150,000 years ago and started moving out of africa about 100,000 years ago. There were modern people in Australia at least 60,000 years ago, western Europe 40,000, North America at least 13,000.
I've read about some genetic evidence that humans reached North America Earlier than this from Western Europe along the Ice edge making a living much as the Inuit do today. This is also suported by the similarity of Clovis points and tools of the
Sultrian

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 06:31 AM

Sorry folks accidental hit the wrong button.

1 Modern humans evolved about 150,000 years ago and started moving out of Africa about 100,000 years ago. There were modern people in Australia at least 60,000 years ago, western Europe 40,000, North America at least 13,000.
I've read about some genetic evidence that humans reached North America Earlier than this from Western Europe along the Ice edge making a living much as the Inuit do today. The similarity of Clovis points to tools of the Solutrean tradition of Western Europe also support this.

2 Pyramids and Orion evidence has recently come to light about the orientation of these Pyramids, also accurate dates based on there stellar alignment to North.
They were built not surprisingly one after another and the reason the last one is not on the same line is that the geological conditions are not suitable there and a different site had to be chosen.

3 Egyptians reached South America by boat and gave rise to the native Pyramid tradition. One slight problem with this hypothesis is that Egyptians stopped building Pyramids at least 2000 years before Native Americans started building theirs.

TTFN
PP

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 06:34 AM

Stilly River Sage(or anyone): I'm on the Old World side of the Atlantic, and not fully up on the nuances of American anthropology and politics. Why do some Native Americans find it threatening that someone might want to research whether early immigrants to America came from the east as well as the west? To me, this topic just seems very interesting, and not loaded with any modern ploitical implications. How is it perceived in America? Nothing so far in this threaade really explains this to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 09:46 AM

I think, Greg, it's because so often in the past the Indian (and yes, they call themselves that so I will too) bodies and graves were despoiled that they're more than a little annoyed. The Smithsonian Institution had (and still may have) hundreds of bodies, taken from despoiled graves, battlefields, and other places, collected during the 19th and 20th centuries in the name of science. Other places had smaller collections.

Granted, these collections helped and still help the science of anthrometrics and others, but mostly the bodies just lay there in drawers. So the Indians thought it high time that the bodies of their ancestors were returned to them for reburial.

Well, this is okay, except that some nations (such as the Navajo) didn't want the bodies back (goes against their traditional religious beliefs). Other Nations no longer exist at all.

The biggest problem doesn't seem to be that the bodies were studied, but that they were taken and never returned (until recently). The high-handed, uncaring, unfeeling tactics used caused great and deep resentment against the anthropologists which the current crop of anthros are reaping.

That's sort of it, in a nutshell and very simplified. Racism played a big part in it, as did the conqueror attitude of "to the victor" and a heavyhandedness beyond belief.

It can, and is, being handled differently today. But only ways and old ideas are hard to change, especially when they have been cemented by so many other, similar, things -- destruction of Indian languages, destruction of a way of life, forced education in the White Man's ways, even (during the 1950s) a misguided attempt to "integrate" the Indians into the White Man's cities and wipe out the reservations completely. Oh yeah, I'm convinced that these were all done with highest and purest of motives at the time, but they were wrong -- they tried to make indigenous people over into the image of the conquerors. That will breed resentment every time!

Check out, too, the case of the Indian Trust Funds. The Bureau of Indian Affairs seems to have "lost" an awful, awful lot of money that was due to the various Indian nations and individuals....

Please note that this is my view of things, and nowhere near complete. I'm just a librarian who works on the edge of the Shoshone-Bannock rez and who has worked on edges of other Nations, not a specialist in this field by any stretch. The nuances are great....

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 09:58 AM

Rapaire: thanks for that long and informative post. But it didnt seem to cover the point that I find most confusing: that this controversy doesn not just cover the scientific examinations of bodies, but is very specifically about a body which may have come from European rather than Asian roots. And I am wondering why it would be upsetting if ancestors of Americans had come from both directions, instead of only one?

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 11:27 AM

Greg, there is a presumption that this very early body is non-Indian, but that may not be the case. I find it very interesting, and wouldn't mind knowing, but that may not be possible, and I understand that also. I may not share the same views with the regional Indians regarding bodies and spirits and how they should be handled. Kennewick Man could be an Indian whose features just don't happen to be as Indian-like as we are accustomed to seeing--a DNA throwback to another time. But even if it is an early immigrant, the fellow was travelling in an Indian world, not a Eurocentric one. Indians are known to have been here, and to pronounce that they have no say in the disposition of this set of remains because it wasn't one of them is just one more sign of a Eurocentric attempt to put American Indians into harmless little boxes.

Rapaire was correct about the collection of human remains for museums. Mike, did you know that after the Modoc Wars ended at Tulelake, California, Captain Jack and several others were executed, and the milatary had specific orders to behead them and send their heads to Washington, D.C.? The families only in the past 10-15 years have been able to retreive those heads for proper burial. They were used as part of a Social Darwinist examination to prove the inferiority of American Indian's intelligence (a phrenology sort of focus, I believe).

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Digging up Mummies on TV
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Mar 04 - 03:56 PM

Yes, SRS, I did. And I find it to be, in a very understated way, reprehensible in the extreme (I'm understating it because my actual feelings call for a lot of profanity, discussion of folks' ancestors, hygenic habits, sexual and other proclivities, and so on). Did you know that Hadyn's skull was taken for the same sort of phrenological study -- only to prove why he was such a musical genius? Science and pseudoscience have a lot to answer for.

I would LOVE to see DNA and other studies done on early bodies AND on current, living ones. Perhaps we could learn more about people and their movements.

Personally, I don't care if it's found that I'm not "pure" Caucasian, because I doubt that I am -- far too many armies tramped around Europe for that to be the case and besides, I don't see that it matters a rodent's rectum.

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

Does it really matter??

Aren't people, people???

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!