Today, mummies live in museums, movies and in our nightmares, but how did ancient animals
get mummified without help from humans!?
In the summer of 2015, a pair of mummified lions were found in the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic
in Northern Russia.
Though they don’t look it, these lions are 10,000 years old, they were naturally mummified
by ice!
These mummified cubs are gobsmacking.
Usually, time and nature leave only bone fragments, parts of skeletons (like skulls or teeth),
and MAYBE a carcass.
But these lions look as if they fell asleep just yesterday, but they didn’t.
These are long extinct.
Lions like these were found from Britain, across Eurasia all the way northwestern Canada
during the Pleistocene (plice-ta-scene) era — 1.6M to about 10,000 years ago!
The area where they were found has produced a beautifully horrible looking carcass of
an Oimyakon mammoth (Oy-my-akon), called Yuka, as well as bison, wooly rhinoceroses, and
horses, but the researchers from the Academy of Science of the Republic of Sakha are confident
these are the most well-preserved animals ever found.
Natural mummies are an accident of the environment of their death.
They're related to TP-wrapped customers or classic horror films, but for scientists,
mummification is the failure of bacteria to break down soft tissues after death.
See, normally, when something dies, the bacteria in, on, and around it immediately begin to
break it down.
Organs digest themselves in a process called autolysis, and eventually, bodies reach the
putrefaction phase, where bacteria anaerobically digest the tissue -- or use oxygen to break
it down.
A few months later the body is just a skeleton.
But, sometimes, when conditions are JUST RIGHT, these bacteria never get to do their jobs,
and the organism dies and simply dries out.
In cold, dry conditions the whole process slows, and the body can freeze before bacteria
are able to grow and eat away at the corpse.
For example, Özti the Iceman, the oldest, most well-preserved human ever found, was
discovered on the Italian Alps in 1991 after falling dead under a rocky outcropping.
He was quickly covered with snow, creating conditions for him to mummify.
The dry desert climate can cause mummification as well!
Prior to "inventing" mummies as we know them from museums today, early Egyptians would
bury their dead in small pits.
The high heat coupled with a lack of moisture caused dehydration and mummification to happen
naturally in a process called desiccation!
Once all the moisture was gone, the bacteria would halt their work.
Only later did Egyptians start developing a mummification process as they tried to build
tombs, and found the bodies would decay too quickly.
The hot, dry sand was part of the process!
The oldest artificially mummified bodies come from Chile!
They're 6500 years old and were placed in the Atacama Desert by the Chinchorro people
complete with wigs and mats for their eternal sleep.
Aside from hot and dry, or cold and dry, mummies can also naturally form in peat bogs.
A "peat bog" is a form of wetland that accumulates dead plant material called peat.
The soil in peat bogs is saturated, acidic, and low in nutrients; which creates a very
uninviting place for oxygen-based anaerobic digestion of biomatter.
Though bog mummies aren't as beautiful as those found frozen in glaciers or buried in
deserts; the tissues simply aren't as well preserved.
According to Archaeologist and Anthropologist Mark Spigelman the tissue of frozen Korean
mummies, is soft and pliable, while heat-dried Egyptian mummies feel more like paper.
Deserts produce the BEST mummies because they desiccate tissues so quickly!
If you pay attention, you'll realize mummies are found all the time!
Famous mummies have been found frozen in Greenland, Siberia, and Canada, Korea or dehydrated in
Egypt, Nevada or the Atacama!
Some mummies are so well preserved they look like they've only been dead a few days, like
the Qilakitsoq Inuit (Kila-kit-sock) mummies found in 1972.
Six women and two children died under an sheltered overhanging rock which freeze-dried their
remains, including their clothing and soft tissues.
The younger of the children was only a baby, and was so well preserved he looks like a
doll, but is (in fact) more than 500 years old.
Mummies can show us what humans or animals looked like, how they lived, what they ate,
how they walked, and on and on because it's the best resource we have for peering into
the past.
A natural mummy found in China's Taklamakan Desert (Takla-Mahkan) revealed 3000 years
ago, that people living in there were Indo-Europeans, settling even before the Han Chinese arrived!
This discovery completely changed the history of region.
In the end, the most common natural mummies come from hot and dry climes, as the freezing
or peat processes tend not to happen fast enough.
What will we'll learn from these 10,000 year old lions?
Ironically, time will tell.
But for now, that’s a wrap!
Get it??
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