Santiago: The world’s oldest mummies have just had an unusual check-up.
More than 7,000 years after they were embalmed by the Chinchorro people, an ancient civilisation in modern-day Chile and Peru, 15 mummies were taken to a Santiago clinic last week to undergo DNA analysis and computerised tomography scans.
The Chinchorro were a hunting and fishing people who lived from 10,000 to 3,400 BC on the Pacific coast of South America, at the edge of the Atacama desert. They were among the first people in the world to mummify their dead. Their mummies date back some 7,400 years — at least 2,000 years older than Egypt’s.
Now, researchers are hoping to use modern medical technology to reconstruct what they looked like in life, decode their genes and better understand the mysteries of this ancient civilisation.
The 15 Chinchorro mummies, mostly children and unborn babies, were put through a CT scanner at the Los Condes clinic in the Chilean capital. “We collected thousands of images with a precision of less than one millimeter,” said chief radiologist Marcelo Galvez.
“The next phase is to try to dissect these bodies virtually, without touching them, which will help us preserve them for another 500,000 years,” Marcelo Galvez added.
Using high-tech computer processing, researchers are busy reconstructing the mummies’ muscles and facial features.
