Ice
mummies of the world part- II
ce mummies unlike Egyptian mummies were not artificially preserved; it was naturally conserved by freeze-drying method.
Ice mummies dates backs to Inca period where
people where sacrificed on the mountaintop and then
bodies where left to freeze. 100s of such mummies have been found in Andes Mountain with elaborate wealth of gold, silver and stone figurines.
Inca people also used artificial method to preserve the bodies but only of their kings and other important people. These mummies were taken out for procession, fed and consulted as a real person.
The mummies of the Inca kings were so life-like and intact that not a single hair is seemed to be missing from the
body, like eyebrows, even the clothes looked if worn yesterday. In 1532 the Spanish conquerors
destroyed it after ripping it off of gold adornments, as they did not like the mummies to be treated as a real person.
The Spanish also destroyed much of the culture of the Guanches, native inhabitants of the Canary Islands and descendants of the Berbers from nearby North Africa. The cave-dwelling, goat-herding Guanches mummified their dead by highly sophisticated techniques of preservation using locally available materials. Recent examination has also suggested a link with the mummification practices of ancient Egypt, an important connection since the Guanches were still mummifying their dead when the Spanish arrived in the 15th century AD. A frozen body of ‘Iceman’ was recently discovered high in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border where he had died some 5000
years ago. A further 8 frozen bodies of women and children in seal-skin clothing were found at Qilakitsoq in Greenland, although these ''Greenland Mummies'' are only 500 years old.
Dating largely from the Iron Age (c.400 BC - AD 400), many of these Celtic bodies show evidence of fractured skulls, garrotting and slit throats, their violent deaths suggesting that they were victims of ritual sacrifice.
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