Mummies: Egyptians Were Far from the First

Each morning, my daily routine consists of checking my e-mail, scanning facebook and browsing the Internet. Today, I came across an interesting heading discussing the ancient mummification of the Egyptians. Immediately my mind starting racing back to all the interesting facts that I had once learned about mummies. Truthfully though, I could not get past the thought of ancient beings pulling brains out through corpses noses and then wrapping the dead bodies in what looked like toilet paper. Since the Egyptians are so popular for their way of embalming, I decided to research other cultures that took similar approaches in preserving their dead.

According to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/peru/mummies/mworld2.html, "While the ancient Egyptians may be the best-known mummy makers, they were far from the first." In early South America, a tribe by the name of Chinchoros, lived along the north coast of Chile and had began embalming since 5,000 B.C. The ancient Egyptians did not practiced preservation until during the Old Kingdom, which was between about 2,750 - 2250 B.C. The Chinchoros would disassemble the bodies to treat the internal organs and then reassemble them. They would then add wood to support the spinal column, arms and legs while also stuffing the Internet cavity with feathers. Any sex or age group of Chinchoros would go through the mummification process.

This tradition lasted into the Incan civilization, but was practiced with different techniques. The dead were position in the fetal position and wrapped with leather or cloth which gave rise to the name of "mummy bundles". Also according to, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0410_020417_incamummies.html Thousands of Inca mummies have been found beneath the streets of Peru with there hair, skin and eyes intact. These bodies have been found and recovered in large bundles known as cocoons that consist of families wrapped together in large layers of raw cotton and textiles. These mummies were also buried with thousands of artifacts and personal valuables that defined their wealth in the Inca civilization. These artifacts have developed a hypothesis that states that the Inca were the largest empire that ever developed in the pre-Colombian Americas. These bundles have also brought upon the hypothesis that the size of the bundle related to the class associated with the family. The most prominent class found was the middle class which was identified by the medium to normal size bundle. The artifacts found from the Tupac Amaru site suggest that must of the middle class included textile makers. They specialized in red corn, black beans and gourds for drinking. Most of these bundles include an extended family and are usually buried outside of the main cemetery. In extreme cases when a child was sacrificed to the feed the gods, which was a great honor, happened on the side of mountain tops because the Incas had such a high respect for landscape. The mountain top represented a paradise in which the community could transition to a better life as simply as possible.