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 Travel & Outdoors | August 2007 
Researchers Try to Uncover Lives of Mexican Mummies
 Associated Press
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| | Researchers are using a variety of techniques to examine the mummies, including looking inside them with endoscopes, possibly taking CT scans and reviewing church records. |
Hartford, Connecticut - Scientists from two U.S. universities are examining a collection of more than 100 mummies accidentally preserved in the last 150 years to unlock secrets of everyday life in a small Mexican silver mining town.
The bodies, believed to be the largest mummy collection in the Western hemisphere, were apparently mummified by oppressive heat while stored in above-ground crypts in Guanajuato, Mexico. They were found between about 1865 and the mid-1950s and now are part of a museum there.
"I think it's a wonderful opportunity," said Jerry Melbye, a professor and forensic anthropologist at Texas State University in San Marcos. "It brings us a picture of what life was like in the past, and I find that very interesting."
Scientists from Texas State and Quinnipiac University in Connecticut are examining the mummies. Preliminary findings were scheduled to be announced Thursday morning in Hartford.
"We're kind of looking to see if they'll tell us the story of the life and times of Guanajuato and its past," said Ronald Beckett, a cardiopulmonary sciences professor at Quinnipiac University and former co-host of "The Mummy Road Show" on the National Geographic Channel.
Researchers are not sure how old the mummies were when they died, but they believe they were common folk who passed away between 1850 and the 1950s.
Among their findings:
• An infant and a fetus had both been cut open and closed with sutures, possibly indicating embalming or autopsies. No other mummies had signs of embalming.
• One woman who apparently had tuberculosis survived the initial phase of pneumonia, judging from pulmonary lesions.
• Another mummified woman had a placenta extruding from her. Researchers believe she died during child birth, but do not know what happened to the child.
• A man and a woman whom local townspeople believed were hanged showed no internal damage to their throats. Beckett said external markings on their throats may have been caused merely by the high-collared clothing they were buried in.
Researchers are using a variety of techniques to examine the mummies, including looking inside them with endoscopes, possibly taking CT scans and reviewing church records. They hope to find out their ages, gender, cause of death and other information.
They examined 22 mummies during a trip to Guanajuato in May and plan to return next year to look at the rest. Funding for the project is being provided by Quinnipiac, Guanajuato's government and the researchers themselves.
"The general picture that's coming out of this community is that these individuals were hard-working," Beckett said. "There was a lot of arthritis from wear and tear from hard work."
Researchers also found evidence of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, and the many mummified children were a reminder of the higher infant and child mortality rates of the 1800s and early 1900s.
Guanajuato was, and still is, a picturesque mountain city known for its silver mines.
Guanajuato Mayor Eduardo Romero Hicks invited the experts to town this year to find out as much as they can about the mummies so there can be information to accompany them at the museum.
According to local legend in Guanajuato, the bodies are so well preserved because the town's water is rich with minerals and sulfur. But the researchers believe the heat was the real cause.
The first mummy is believed to have been discovered in 1865, when it was removed from a cemetery crypt. The cemetery had a burial tax and if it was not paid, remains were taken out of the crypts to make way for others. That practice has reportedly ended, but Beckett said he and fellow Quinnipiac professor Gerald Conlogue saw an exhumation in 2001.
The cemetery stored the mummies in a nearby building, and locals quickly became interested, Hicks said. The building was opened to the public in the late 1800s as a museum, and today's collection is in a renovated structure on the same site called Museo de las Momias, or Museum of the Mummies.
"We want to find out as much as we can about them and tell it to the world," Hicks said. "They're not just a bunch of mummies lying around. If we have a body on display, I think he has a right to tell his story." |
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