Chilean team proposes theory on why early culture began to mummify their dead
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - 05:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org) -- Researchers in Chile, led by Pablo Marqueta, an ecologist with Universidad Católica de Chile have come up with a new theory to explain why a civilization that thrived some seven thousand years ago suddenly began to mummify their dead. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Marqueta and his team suggest that it was due to constant exposure to dead bodies as the group lived in an area that was so dry, bodies didn’t decompose.