Ice mummy Ötzi and the mystery of Buddhist monks

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the traditional sense, a mummy is a dead body that has been preserved from decay with the help of embalming.

The most famous mummies are ancient Egyptian, but the Aztecs, Guanches, Peruvians, Maya Indians, Tibetans and many others also used technologies to protect the bodies of the dead from decay. But not all mummies found on the planet are of man-made origin - sometimes they are imperishable for centuries and millennia by chance.

When can a remains spontaneously turn into a mummy?

The transformation of the body of the deceased into a mummy without human intervention is called natural mummification, and, as a rule, environmental conditions play a major role in this process. Rotting of the remains can be prevented by a combination of dryness and high air temperature, high salt content in the soil and air, severely limited access of oxygen to the body, frost and other factors. In addition, while following a certain lifestyle, including a special diet, some managed to achieve self-mummification - in particular, Buddhist monks sometimes resorted to this practice (but not always with a successful result). In the past, the remains that underwent natural mummification and self-mummification were sometimes declared a miracle, which, in turn, even gave rise to a cult of relics.

Ice people

The permafrost has preserved many objects that are significant for recreating the history of life on our planet - many well-preserved remains of prehistoric animals and plants were found here, as well as artifacts that helped to better understand how different peoples lived in ancient times. It is quite logical that in permafrost conditions, the bodies of people who died on glaciers, for example, climbers, whose remains were never found or evacuated, are sometimes mummified. Moreover, some mummies are stored in ice for hundreds, and sometimes thousands of years.

So, in 1999, in Canada, hunters, moving along a melting glacier in the provincial park Tatshenshini-Alsek, discovered the mummy of an 18-19-year-old man who, according to radiocarbon analysis, lived about 300-550 years ago. It is one of the oldest well-preserved human remains found on the North American mainland. A number of artifacts were found with the mummy, including squirrel fur clothing, a cloth hat, a spear and various tools. The name of the find was given by members of the Champaign and Eishikhik Indian communities, historically living in this area. They named the "ice man" Quadai Dan Sinchi, which literally translates as "A man was found a long time ago." It is noteworthy that relatives of the Canadian "ice man" still live among them today: a study of the DNA of volunteers from among these Indians revealed 17 people associated with him in a direct maternal line.

Another ice mummy in the scientific community made no less noise than the body of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in its time. We are talking about the remains that tourists accidentally stumbled upon in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps (from this toponym the mummy was named Ötzi). Radiocarbon dating has shown that it is about 5,300 years old, making it one of the oldest mummies ever found in Europe. Curiously, scientists who deciphered Etzi's genome found evidence that he suffered from lactose intolerance and Lyme disease, which until recently were considered diseases of modern civilization.

Swamp People

Peat is an effective natural substance that contributes to the conservation of any organic matter, including human remains. In peat bogs, moisture from organic matter evaporates extremely slowly, oxygen does not penetrate deeply into them, antiseptic and toxic substances in their layers impede decomposition processes, a deficiency of mineral nutrients impedes the activity of plants, in addition, peat itself has a low thermal conductivity - all this creates an excellent environment for natural mummification.

Human remains, partially or completely preserved in peat bogs, are called "bog people", and most of them were found in the Nordic countries. Marsh mummies differ from many other ancient remains in well-preserved internal organs (up to the contents of their stomachs) and skin integuments, which makes it possible to determine with high accuracy how long they lived and how many years they died, what they ate and what way of life they led. Some of them also retained their hair and even clothing, which helped to form a more complete picture of the historical costume and hairstyles of those years. Most of the found "bog people" lived about 2-2, 5 thousand years ago, but the oldest of these mummies dates back to the 8th millennium BC. This is the so-called woman from Kölbjerg, who was discovered in Denmark in 1941. It is believed that at the time of her death she was about 20-25 years old, and there is no evidence of a violent death of her remains, which may indicate that she drowned by accident.

Meanwhile, the Danish swamps still keep many secrets associated with mummies - the famous Egyptologist Remy Romani, who travels the world in search of stories related to the mysterious phenomenon of mummification, will try to uncover them.

"Salt people" and Tarim mummies

Salt is another powerful natural preservative. No wonder the embalming process often involved rubbing the remains with salt. Meanwhile, the salt mines themselves represent a favorable environment for natural mummification. In particular, in the Chehrabad mines in Iran in 1993, miners discovered the mummy of a man who lived about 1, 7 thousand years ago. Thanks to the preserved long hair and beard, scientists even managed to determine his blood type. Eleven years later, another miner found a new salt mummy, and a year later, the bodies of two more men were found here. In total, six "salt people" were discovered in the Chehrabad mines, who lived in different periods: from the Achaemenid (550-330 BC) to the Sassanid (224-651), and the salt carefully preserved not only the bodies themselves, including their skin and hair, but also the artifacts of skin and bone belonging to them.

The combination of the high salt content of the soil and the arid climate has contributed to the mummification of the remains of many people found in the Tarim Basin in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The oldest of these mummies, called Loulan Beauty, dates from around the 18th century BC. The first Tarim mummies were found at the beginning of the 20th century. The preservation of most of the finds turned out to be phenomenal: despite the ancient age, the hair and skin of the mummies, as well as clothes and various artifacts buried with them did not have time to decompose. It is curious that some mummies have features of the Caucasian race.

Self-mummification

After death, you can turn into a mummy without embalming not only with a successful combination of environmental conditions, but also by preparing your body for this in advance. At least, this is confirmed by the experience of some Buddhist monks who practiced samumification - their imperishable remains are still revered by some Buddhists as sacred. This practice was especially widespread in Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan, where it was called "sokushimbutsu" (the meaning of the hieroglyphs forming this term 即 身 仏: "quickly, urgently", "body, corpse" and "Buddha"). There is a version that the founder of the local Buddhist school Shingon-shu named Kukai brought it there from Tang China. Some monks resorted to sokushimbutsu until 1879, when the government declared the procedure to facilitate suicide and prohibited it. However, the sokushimbutsu practitioners themselves perceived it rather as a form of further enlightenment.

The process of self-mummification included several stages. For the first thousand days, the one who wanted to become a "living Buddha" was engaged in special exercises and lived on a diet of water, seeds, nuts, fruits and berries in order to get rid of fat. For the second thousand days he ate roots and pine bark, and by the end of this period he also began to drink urushi tea, made from the juice of the Chinese lacquer tree. Usually this juice was used to varnish dishes and repel parasites, but in this case, it was supposed to prevent the destruction of the body. At the next stage, the monk was walled up alive in a spacious stone grave, where a pipe was laid, which allowed him to breathe air. Every day he had to ring a special bell to inform that he was still alive. As soon as the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed. After another thousand days, it was opened to see if the mummification process went well. The few who succeeded in becoming a "living Buddha" - and the number of documented cases of successful self-mummification is less than 30 - were put on display in temples where they began to be worshiped, while the rest were left in burial, although their determination and endurance were also highly valued. In several temples in Yamagata Prefecture, the imperishable remains of monks who succeeded in sokushimbutsu can still be seen. Among the most famous among them is Dajuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai Shonin, who lived in the 17th-18th centuries and turned into a mummy at the age of 96 years.