Hollywood has instilled in some of us a monumental lack of understanding in the practice of archeology.The work tools are not so much the brimmed hats, whips and mischievous smiles, but rather palettes and brushes .Oh, and crucifixes.And holy water.Maybe some honeycombs for adults.And some discoveries do look like some horror movies from Hollywood.
1.Sacrifices Children in Frozen Mummies
We started well. Capacocha was a ritual of sacrifice of Inca children in which only the most beautiful children were chosen to walk to the top of an Andean mountain and freeze to death in order to please the gods.The ritual was often performed to commemorate important events, to defend against natural disasters, or because the emperor felt like it.Succumbing to sacrifice, it was believed that the child would be elevated to the category of deity and would attain immortality.And in a way it was true, as archaeologists are discovering these disturbingly well preserved "ice mummies" even today.
Probably the most notable of these sacrifices was discovered in 1999 in the Llullaillaco volcano of Argentina .When Johan Reinha rd and his team of tall archaeologists entered the stone burial chamber, stacked near the summit, found a scene literally frozen in time, with virgin ceremonial objects and three mummified children that were baptized as Llullaillaco Maiden, Llullaillaco Boy, and Lightning Girl.
Although it would be good to think that these children voluntarily sacrificed their lives for what was believed to be the common good, researchers have discovered a much more disturbing story.Children was an incredible whirlwind of lavish ceremonies, pilgrimages to the capital of Cuzco, extravagant food and certain soft drugs like corn beer and coca leaves, because it was easier to get a child to accept your destiny in a semi-conscious state .Especially when that destination is freezing to death on the top of a mountain.
2.A well full of hands
During the excavation of a palace of 3,600 years of antiquity in the once great city of Avaris, Egypt , a team of archaeologists unearthed four wells.they are often pits of untold things that would have been better to let it fade away n in history with their abominations untapped, but luckily for the purposes of this article, the researchers decided to continue digging.What did they find? Hands.Without bodies. Just a bunch of dismembered hands.
These old-handed recycling bins were found in the palace of King Khayan of the Hicsos , a town in West Asia that once ruled over a part of northern Egypt.While two of the wells were in an outer part of the palace, the other two found themselves in the throne room , indicating some importance ceremonial.Second Manfred Bietak, the leader of the excavations, most of the hands were quite large and some of them were very large.This also means that they were all taken from adult males.In addition, all hands were right handed.
Actually, these hands are the first physical evidence that archaeologists found about a practice and represented in ancient Egyptian art, in which soldiers amputated the right hands of their enemies and presented them to their leaders, who ceremoniously threw them into a well, after abruptly giving each soldier a large amount of gold in return.By taking the right hand, they believed to be symbolically stealing the source of his enemy's power .
3.Skeletons Puzzle
In archeology stumbling upon human remains constitutes a lucky day in the office So you can imagine the emotion when, at the beginning of 2000 , the researchers discovered not one, but two curiously well-preserved skeletons under the ruins of a settlement of 3,000 years old, of the Bronze Age in the Scottish Highlands.
The skeletons were soon identified as a man and a woman, however, after more than 10 years of his study, the professor of biomedical archeology at the University of Manchester, Terry Brown , finally realized something that had been bothering archaeologists for a long time: some pieces didn't seem to fit g> All right.Taking some DNA samples from various bones of the female skeleton, he discovered that they had not found two skeletons at all, but had found two nightmare Frankestein carefully armed from six different corpses.
Later studies showed that, before being mounted, the bodies were first submerged in a swamp (these have the incredible double capacity to mummify humans).Now, here it is where the thing reaches levels of horror movie: those who armed these skeletons knew that, while the swamps are great in preventing decay, they are not so much for the bones (the acidic environment can break the calcium).In order to get the right point, they had to drop the bodies in the blind, wait for them to simmer there for about an year, then catch them again, clean them and finish Before you put together your theoretical puzzle.
Why would anyone do all this macabre work? Researchers have no idea.Do you need a hug now?
Don't miss this article with the 10 most incredible archeological discoveries in history!
Image: La Mummy (1999 ), Axel Krause/Austrian Archaeological Institute, Johan Reinhard and University of Sheffield
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