Chono mummies of Patagonia

Chilean naval officer Enrique Simpson Baeza (1835-1901) conducted four expeditions, exploring the Patagonian coast, and its rivers in the 1870s. In those days, the sources of these rivers, and the geography of the inland region was unknown. Simpson had a great career, and eventually attained the rank of Admiral.

He recorded his expeditions in meticulous journals. In them, he mentions the Chono mummies.

Chonos

The Chono people were canoe people, they lived nomadic life, boating in their three-plank canoes (dalcas) in the Pacifc Ocean south of Chiloé Island, in the islands north of Taitao Peninsula.

They fished, collected shellfish, and hunted sea wolves, sea lions, gathered seaweed (kelp), and also bred long-haired dogs with which they wove crude blankets.

Their lifestyle was similar to the Fuegian canoe people, the Yagans and Alakaluf, but being closer to the Spanish colony in Chiloe, they were soon affected by European disease, raids, forced relocation (with the good intention of civilizing them, a labor conducted by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries). This led to the loss of their culture. They died out or were absorbed by the "Chilote" mestizo population in Chiloe by the mid 1700s.

Simpson wrote about them, the remains he saw of their huts and burials. During his third expedition (1871-72) he recorded the folloiwng (source):

"Their homes were caves, and sometimes circular huts whose pegs I have seen. Sometimes they buried their dead close to these homes; but usually they preferred to place them in caves, covering them with branches. In many of them, the naval pilot, in the past, found mummies placed in coffins of cypress bark, shaped like eggs, but they have all been removed or destroyed."

During his fourth expedidion (1872-73) he added more information (source):

"In this channel there is an inlet that I have named Mummies, because it has, in a cliff, about two meters above the water [6.1 ft.] some small caves where remains of the Chono Indians race have been found. Now only some bone fragments can be seen, because the skeletons have been extracted perfectly, years ago, by sealers and sold to museums."

Chono mummies were reported in Victorian magazines and one entry in F. Ratzel's The History of Mankind: The cultured races of America, published in 1897 mentions caves with mummies and stone tools had been found on the Guaitecas Islands.

Report on a Mummy

An article about a Patagonian Mummy. Source

The Smithsonian Institute's annual report of 1862-63 contained an article about a mummy (pictured above) found at "Refujio Bay", 44°S on the Coast of Chile, in a cave, one-hundred feet above the water level. There were many skeletons there with different degrees of preservation. It states that two skeletons were sent to the National Museum in Santiago, Chile, one to the Ratisbon Museum in Bavaria, and the fourth, to the Smithsonian. It was found in a sitting position, and, surprisingly it wasn't of average to small size as the usual Chono native. Instead it had "a height of something like five feet eight inches, thus almost justifying the somewhat poetical epithet of "gigantic", as applied to the Patagonians in general."

I can't help but recall the mummy discovered in 1877 by Francisco Moreno at Gualicho Cave, close to the modern town of El Calafate, and the Perito Moreno Glacier, on the shores of Lake Argentino. Also found in a sitting position.

There is a sketch of a Chono mummy, drawn by a German artist, Carl Alexander Simon (1805-1852), who visited Chile in 1850, and did many drawings in Chiloe in 1852 shortly before his death. On the Island of Quehi, he drew a mummy, painted in situ, in a cave. The mummy is gone, but a replica has been created. (Source).

The sketch can be seen at the Ancud Museum in Chiloe. It is a watercolor with pencil, on paper. The text is in sepia-colored ink reads "Momias Chiloe", some illegible text and numbers (the size of the body?), his name and date "A Simon Quehuy, 18 marz 1852". The image is shown below.

Quehi Mummy. A. Simon, 1852, Source

The amazing part is that the Chilean Patagonian coast is buffeted by rain most of the year, it is damp, cold and wet. How did they manage to mummify their dead?

Further north, in the Atacama Desert region of Chile, the Chinchorro culture, who were also a seafaring people, mummified their dead in the arid and extremely dry desert climate. These are the oldest deliberately mummified remains in the world, dating back to 9,000 years ago. Far older than any Egyptian mummy.

In a future post we will explore the Chinchorro people, the Chango people, who probably descend from them, and if there are links between the coastal people of the Americas with the first peopling wave into the continent.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Red headed Amerindians and the G haplogroup in America (an e-mail)

This morning I read an e-mail one of the readers of this Blog, which was very interesting indeed (Thank you for writing, Craig). My reply (edited) is below, I just wanted to share it with you because it has some good links which expand on previously published posts.

Red Headed Xiaohe mummy, China

The mail asked about photographs of the red-headed Amerindians who carried D4h3 hg. (my posts were here).

My reply

... Regarding red-haired natives, they do not abound, perhaps they were much more frequent in the past as their mummified remains attest.

If you are interested in what they looke like when photography was discovered, please check out the following sites on Alakaluf or Kaweskar, Yamana or Yaghans, Chumash, Pericue or Pericu:

http://www.limbos.org/sur/alak.htm and Kaweskar, Yamana, Chumash.

No photos exist of the Chilean Chono, who became extinct in the 1700s.

When you google red-haired native Americans you come across al sorts of weird stuff: UFOs, Atlanteans, white race supremacists, but if you remove the junk there are some nice gems to be found like the definitively red-haired Xiahoe Beauty mummy from China, pictured above, ca. 4,000 years old found in the Tarim Basin in Northwest China.

Then there are the Chinchorro people of Chile, not mentioned in my post, also boat-people like the Chumash, Kaweskar, Yamana, Chono and Peircue. Their mummies seem to be red headed. Like I mentioned in my post, these Chinchorro also used red pigment to stain their mummies and wrapped them in rushes (just like the Lovelock cave natives did).

We discussed the possible Transatlantic peopling route into America, and I commented that:

The transatlantic crossing from Africa is indeed a very feasible option (I have posted about Phoenicians, Greek and Carthagininans crossing the Ocean) and may have also been an Atlantic entry route for H. erectus into South America, so it is also possible.

I believe that mtDNA and Y chromosome analysis will reveal interesting and complex peopling patterns once the native people are sampled in depth and ancient remains are also sequenced. It willl yield some surprises. I am currenty wondering if some of the G and R Y-chromosome haplogroups found among natives is due to admixture with Europeans post-1492 discovery or... is archaic and entered America long before its discovery...

G haplogroup in America

This ends my reply to Craig, and yes, I found some G NRY hg. mentioned in a paper on the Kolla natives in Northern Argentina. The authors attribute it to admixture with Italian migrants post 1900s.

G haplogroup is definitively an Old World lineage and is found at low frequencies across a large part of Eurasia. It is also found among Spaniards (who colonized South America) and Italians (50% of Argentines have Italian ancestry), so a recent European admixture cannot be discarded.

Nevertheless, these Kolla carry a duplicate at STR DYS19, which is uncommon and found at very low frequencies in certain haplotypes within C and G Y chromosome haplogroups. C is interesting since it is a founding lineage in America but very rare and G is the European one mentioned above.

This makes me wonder.... Why do both these hgs. have the duplication and the others don't?
Could the Kolla have been wrongly typed as G and actually be C?
What are the odds of an Italian with the rare G DYS19 STR duplication reaching Northern Argentina and spreading his genes so widely that they later appear in a small sampling of Amerindian genes?
How could a genuine Native American haplotype shared with Europeans (i.e. R or G) be identified as autochthonous instead of being classified as European admixtuer(as currently is)?

I will look into this and post on it later.

Below is a map with G hg. distribution:

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

On Amerindian HLA, Phoenicians, Neanderthals and Paracas mummies

Continuing my quest into the possible early peopling of America by Neanderthals, I have come across an interesting paper by James Guthrie (2001) [1] on Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA).

In a previous post, I wrote the following:

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system
HLA are the loci of genes which encode for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in humans and as such have an important role in the immune system. Ten Neanderthal HLA class I alleles have been found among humans: A*02, A*26, A*66, B*51:01/08, B*07:02/03/06, C*16:02, C*07:02.
Of these, two are found among Native Americans: The paired alleles A*02 and C*07:02. While their average global frequency is approx. 2% , the highest global frequency occurs among the Yucpa of Venezuela (26.9%), followed by Navajo, US (13.1%) and Lisu, Yunan, China (10.4%).
The high frequency in America and China is consonant with the high proportion of Neanderthal admixture in those regions.

Guthrie's paper deals with Native American HLA and mentions one of those "Neanderthal HLA alleles", the A*02 (bold is mine):

Distributions of these ten HLAs in other parts of the world are not what would be expected from the premise that Americans stem mainly from Northeast Asians. Instead, the basic American populations seem most like those of western Asia and of Southeast Asia, paralleling the findings of Steele and Powell (1992) regarding Paleo-Indian skulls. Their multivariate analysis showed craniofacial features closer to those of southern Asians and Europeans than to those of northern Asians. The only HLA prominent in both America and northern Asia is A*2, which CS call ubiquitous and which is also strong throughout Europe, South China, and Japan... [1]

The A*2 prevalence in Europe and China is evidently due to their closeness to Neanderthals.

The resemblance of Amerindians to Western Asians is also supported by the genome sequenced from a 24 Kya H. sapiens (named MA-1) from Mal’ta in south-central Siberia:

• It suggests that between 14 to 38% of Native American autosomal ancestry originated through a gene flow from this population.
• MA-1 is closer to contemporary Native Americans than to Northeast Asians suggesting that those groups may have originated in secondary wave(s) of immigrants from East Asia [2], or that back-migrations from America dispersed other lineages in Central and Western Eurasia [3].
• Ma-1’s estimated shared drift statistic, (f3), places Amerindians closest to Northern Europeans and Northern - Central and Western Siberians, and furthest apart from Eastern Siberians and Asians. Possibly indicating a common Neanderthal background, which could explain the European signature found in pre-Hispanic Amerindians (i.e. Kennewick man).

The Phoenician connection

Guthrie's paper also deals with other HLAs, with interesting inferences:

The A*32 allele seems to indicate a Mediterranean or specifically Aegean impact in the Caribbean region (including on the Cherokee) as well as on Tupians of the lower Amazon (Oyampí and Parakana). It seems to connect this set and the Central Amerind composite with northern India, Sardinia, the Tuareg of Algeria, and with populations around the Adriatic Sea in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy. A*32 is absent from other South American samples except the Mapuche.
A*32 levels in the Mapuche, Oyampí, and the Central Amerind composite samples are among the top nine in the CS tabulation (7-9%), and the Tupian Oyampí near the mouth of the Amazon River have the second highest American frequency. If this is not an artifact of sampling [...]
Both A*32 and A*30 are found at significant levels in Greece, Sardinia, and in the Central Amerind composite. They also appear at anomalously high frequencies in Samoan outliers but are not documented elsewhere in Pacific islands. This may reflect limited exploration of the Pacific by Mediterraneans who otherwise left few traces except (controversial) petroglyphs. [1]

Curiously this may be an indication of Phoenician, Cretan, Mycenean or Carthaginian genes during their sea voyages beyond Gibraltar. (See my many posts on Phoenicians in America).

No Paracas HLA data

Online sources cite Guthrie as having proven that Paracas mummies HLA is European. This is false. Check his only comment on Paracas Mummies below:

European Genes from other Systems
There may be no clear marker for European ancestry among the “classical” genetic variants, although a high frequency of the Rhesus cde (r) allele might qualify. CS [Cavalli-Sforza] also considered immunoglobin f;b, adenylate kinase 1, and ABO type B, when found together, to indicate Caucasoid admixture in eastern North America (p. 337). Occurrences among indigenous Americans of cde or A or B of the ABO system were once attributed to recent admixture and databases were “corrected” accordingly. It is now understood that some of these unexpected alleles arrived in antiquity. Mummies from Paracas, Peru, possessed both A and B antigens (Allison et al. 1976, 1978). [1]

So he does not mention HLAs, only Blood groups and the fact that Paracas Mummies had A and B antigens. Which does not mean that they were Europeans.

Sources

[1] James L. Guthrie, (2001). Human Lymphocyte Antigens: Apparent Afro-Asiatic, Southern Asian, & European HLAs in Indigenous American Populations Pre-Columbiana, Volume 2, Number 2 & 3, December 2000 & June 2001 (online at New England Antiquities Research Association
[2] Raghavan M., Pontus Skoglund P., et al., (2013). Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans. Nature 505, 87–91 (02 Jan 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12736
[3] Dziebel, G., (2013). The Demographic Isolation of Amerindians and Back Migrations to the Old World in the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene: From the History of Ideas to Contemporary Scientific Realities. Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico 17 Oct. 2013

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

More on the Paracas mtDNA bunkum

Reading about the "amazing" discovery of the very odd DNA allegedly found in the Paracas (elongated) skulls people, I was prompted to write a mini post today.

A blogger posted: "he samples collected consisted of hair, tooth, skull and bone skin. Apparently, the process was documented via photos and video. The samples were given to the geneticist, who was not given any information about where they came from...".

The above was written to give the impression that the samples were sent to an unbiased geneticist who had no idea of where these samples came from and therefore analysed them impartially. Well, that is NOT THE CASE.

As you can see in a previous post on this subject, the samples were sent to the late Lloyd Pye, founder of the Starchild Project.

The "Project" is (please check their website out www.satrchildproject.com) focused on proving that the "Star Child" is a child from the stars. That is, it has alien (extraterrestrial) genes. Yes, it is really absurd. But let their website defend their case:

"This is not unheard of, nor impossible, but it is a significant indicator that something about the Starchild is not entirely human. It strongly suggests that some aspects of the Starchild's DNA might not be found on Earth at all! Again, this is not absolute proof. We need many additional readings through modern sequencing machines to confirm it. However, we take this initial partial result as a strong indication that the Starchild is not entirely human."

This is really amazingly, how can I write this nicely? Well, I can't, it is hogwash, hot air, not true, false, lies.

I do believe that in our amazing Universe there are countless intelligent species currently alive and kicking in their own stellar systems. What I do not belive is that they took some super duper space warp starship to come to Earth and impregnate the locals with their Star-genes to create Star-Children.

Google the late Lloyd Pye and find out that: "Lloyd Anthony Pye Jr. (September 7, 1946 – December 9, 2013) was an American author and paranormal researcher best known for his promotion of the Starchild skull. He claimed it was the relic of a human-alien hybrid, although DNA testing showed it to be from a human male. He also promoted the ideas that cryptozoological creatures such as Bigfoot were real and that aliens intervened to create life on Earth."

I am an open minded person, but such conjectures require proof, and sound proof, peer reviewed.

This is the guy they sent the Paracas samples to! An unbiased researcher? I don't think so.

Then he sent them to another unbiased "researcher", Melba Ketchum according to Doubtful News. However Breian Foerster, who is the "Assistant Director" of the "Paracas Museum" (I wonder what are his kudos for such a position), and author of several books on the Paracas skulls, tour guide to their burial places and firm supporter of the notion that they are "aliens"... has threatened legal action against Sharon Hill (of Doubtful News) and directly denied the involvement of Melba Ketchum in a wishy washy way: Now he says he is working with her on this project, but that she didn’t work on the samples in question. Maybe a colleague at her "institution"? What standards were used? How can we ascertain that rigurous rules were followed?

In my humble opinion all of this is show biz, not science. And anything coming from Ketchum's laboratory should be well scrutinized by many geneticists and validated (just see her Bigfoot DNA paper), because sciens is all about other people cross-checking and confirming your findings... I lived through the Cold Fusion Fiasco in 1989!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Elongated skulls in America...

On red or fair haired elongated skulled people in Peru. Artificial and naturally ocurring skull deformation...

WWe know that cranial deformation is widespread across the globe, [9] and that American natives did it at the time of Spanish discovery and conquest.

The map below from Juan R. Munizaga (1987) Deformación craneana intencional en América, clearly shows that it was widespread and very ancient practice: [8]

Munizaga, author of the map, points out in his work [8] a very unusual hypothesis that:

"in only two of the cases can we be reasonably be sure of an extra-American origin: a) The annular, oblique tabular and erect tabular types found among the people of the Northwest coast of North America [...] which entered our continent very few centuries ago [...] and b) the brifronto-vertico-occipital deformation. This type, is very rare and exclusively found in Southeastern USA [...] is depicted in ceramic figures of a Taoist monastery in China dating from the early Christian Era [...] accepting an extra-American origin, we propose a general hypothesis that this custom was introduced by travellers from the Far East..." [8].

Nevertheless, I want to point out a comment published in 1855 by Rivero regarding deformed crania as a mutation and not due to artificial causes: [1]

Oblong skulls were due to a mutation

"there is more: the same configuration is found among unborn children and we have become convinced of this truth after seeing the fetus found in the womb of a pregnant woman's mummy, which we found in a cave in Huichay, two leagues from Tarma and which is now in our collection. Professonr d'Outrepont, one of the leading celebrities in the science of obstertrics has assured us that this fetus is seven months old. It belongs, according to the very pronounced configuration of its skull, to the tribe of the Huancas. In plate VII of the Atlas is this interesting and decissive proof against those favoring mechanical action as the only and exclusive cause of the phrenologic shape of the peruvian race... [1]"

The image below depicts the fetus mentioned by Rivero above:

Plate VII. Rivero (1855). Seven month fetus with elongated skull. From [1]

Although one case is not enough to support a mutation that produces elongated skulls, and we could also assume that the fetus described by Rivero had suffered some intra-uterine disease that caused that oddly shaped skull.

Nordenskjöld reported that a baby was born in Bolivia with an unnaturally long head, but the midwife was not worried, they could shape it at will and make it rounder ("In Ascencion wurde ein Kind mit unnatürlich langem Kopfe geboren" = "In Ascencion a child was long with unnatural Head born".[5]

The above shows two things: (1) oblong skulls ocurr naturally and (2) Amerindians were good at re-shaping skulls.

Nevertheless, Rivero's opinon was repeated later by : " A. L. Kroeber (1944), reporting on pre-Inca crania from further north on the same coast, stated that the majority of undeformed Early Chimu skulls were long. Thus, these earliest pyramid builders of Peru were not identical with their historic successors, all of whom are round-headed... " [2]

Since I am not a specialist I can hardly judge how Kroeber detected that ancient Early Chimu skulls were "long". But if his research was sound, it could point out to some genetic trait.

If it has a genetic cause, perhaps DNA sequencing could shed some light on the matter (and I mean "real" sequencing, and not the kind I posted about yesterday).

The Paracas mummies had elongated skulls (in my opinion, artificially elongated skulls), and possessed oddly colored hair:

Light colored Amerindian hair

Mildred Trotter examined the hair from the Paracas Mummies, and described it as: "... the sample in each case was interspersed with very light yellow hairs which may be assumed to have been white. In general, the color was a rusty brown and gave the appearance of having faded..." [3]

She also noted that the hair of two of the mummies "was quite definitely wavy" and was straight in the others. Waviness is related to the hair's shape of its cross-section. Amerindian and Asian hair tends to have a circular cross-section (straight hair) while Caucasian hair is more oval (tending to be wavy). Trotter reported that "The cross-section form shows so much divergence between the different mummies that they cover all divisions of hair form" [3], that is Amerindian - Asian - European.

The area of the cross-section of Paracas mummies was 30% less than the average value for Amerindians. (European cross-section surface is smaller than Native American surface area): "The size of the hair was much smaller than has been found for other Indians..." [3]

Realizing that this may place the Paracas people outside of the Amerindians, she added that post-mortem dehydration could account for changes in cross-sectional shape as well as its surface area. The brown or reddish colored hair could also be the consequence of a dark black hair having faded over time. The fair hair was due to a darkening white hair.

Trotter's explanations are very reasonable and is the most likely cause for odd colored hair among the Paracas people.

However, reddish wavy hair is not unknown among the Mataco natives from Argentina's Chaco region (northeastern Argentina), see Pelleschi below: [7]

"The hair is straight, but in some -very few- individuals I have noticed it slightly wavy, almost curly, I can not say if due to art or nature [...] The hair is jet black among the adults, white among the elders [...] reddish often among the boys until the age of 10 or 12 years: a curious thing, which brings to my memory Salles theory, according to which primitive men must have had red hair. So here we would have a case of atavism..."[7]

We can forgive Pelleschi for his Victorian mentality (after all, he wrote that in 1897).

I am always interested in red-haired people outside of Europe because it may indicate a link to Neanderthal genes, and if in America, it may hint at an early migration of Neanderthals into America followed by admixture there with Homo sapiens, once they reached that continent.

A closing word on Deformed skulls

Cieza de León, a Spanish conquistador and chronicler noted that along the coast of Ecuador (in the 1540s), the newborn baby's head was pressed between two boards (tablas) so that by the time he reached the age of four or five his head was either long or broad. They did this because it made them healthier and better able to work. [4]

Curiously, another reason is given for the practice of cranial deformation: Dr. Alvarado cites Juan Manuel Balcazar and his book about "The History of Medicine in Bolvia" where he states that according to Pachacutec: "The Inca [emperor] Manco Kapac decreed that the head of newborn babies be tied so that they grow up with mental handicaps because indians with large round heads were very enterprising and specially very disobedient". He wanted them to have long sloping heads to make them obedient and submissive.[6]

Many Paracas skulls have holes neatly cut into them, these trepanations are be explained by Dr. Alvarado:

Skull deformation caused plenty of problems according to Dr. Alvarado. It led to intra-craneal hypertension which can be noted due to the presence of the so called digital impressions seen on some of the deformed skulls. This custom led to mental alterations, reduced IQ, epileptic fits, head aches, etc. And (this is very interesting) may have been the reason that some of the skulls were trepanated, that is, opened, as a kind of cure (perhaps to let the "demons" of illness out). Though some alien-mongers suggest hi-tech medicine was required for these skull opening operatins, they were done under primitive conditions with obsidian tools, and the surprising fact is that up to 60% of the patients survived the operation. [6]

Based on all of the above, it is quite weird to suggest that the Paracas people had a mtDNA unlike any other human one, displaying mutations not found in any animal (see yesterday's post please). The Paracas mummies were normal humans with artificially deformed skulls. The light color of their mummies hair may be due to some genetic trait or, simply the aging of ancient hair which bleached it. There was probably some genetic mutation that caused occasional oblong heads among Amerindians as reported by Rivero, Kroeber and Nordenskjöld, but its prevalence among the native Americans is unknown.

Sources

[1] Mariano Eduardo de Rivero, (1855) Antigüedades Peruanas. pp 32
[2] Thor Heyerdahl and Geoffrey Ashe, (1971). Isolationist Or Diffusionist?: The Bearded Gods Speak Pall Mall press.
[3] Mildred Trotter, (1943). Hair from Paracas Indian Mummies. Am. J. Phyg. Anthrop., n.s., 1 (1) : 69-76.
[4] Cieza de León, P., Ballesteros, M., [Ed.], (2000). La crónica del Perú (1553). Madrid:Dastin S. pp. 177
[5] Nordenskjöld, E., (1910). Indianer und Weisse in Nordostbolivien p. 153
[6] Dr. Ramiro Alvarado. Trepanaciones y Deformaciones Craneales en Tiwanaku, Sociedad Boliviana de Cirugía
[7] Pelleschi, Juan, (1897). Los Indios Matacos y su Lengua. Part I. Ch. II. pp 175

Further Reading

[8] Juan R. Munizaga (1987). Deformación craneana intencional en América. Revista Chilena de Antropología No 6. 1987, 113-147.

[9] Dingwall, Eric, (1931). Artificial Cranial Deformation London.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Red Haired Paleo Indian in the US

Red haired people are quite odd among the Native Americans, and after reading about the mummy from Lovelock Nevada, I decided to check online what else had been found. And I came across quite a bit of information, that I tied in with other things that I had read in the past. The outcome is a series of posts beginning with this one (it was too long to put in one post):

First we will go East, to the Eastern U.S. seaboard. Then we will go back to the West Coast and tie in Lovelock with other natives in that area. We will go down the Pacific coast to South America and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and try to see how all these places are linked by "red" hair and bones and common burial practices and a similar mtDNA.

An article from a 1815 Magazine

The article, is from Analetic Magazine, Philadelphia. Page 260 of the Vol 6. Series 33. And I have copied some key phrases (read the article following the previous link and go to page 260), which is inserted below:

 

The letter was written by a Mr. Samuel L. Mitchill in August 1815 describing a mummy he found in a cave in Kentucky, U.S. Which was the remains of a young man whose: "scalp, with small exceptions, is covered with sorrel or foxy hair.".

Now the word Sorrel is new for me, so I looked it up, and found out that it is used to describe the coat color of horses. It is usually used to refer to a copper-red shade of chestnut or, directly, chestnut. It is applied to any "reddish" horse coat. The word derives from the flowers of the sorrel herb (see photo below).

The body was wrapped in deer skins and a "cloth" of knotted twine not made on a loom. The innermost cover was also a cloth and had feathers. The body was in a squatting position with one arm forward.

The mummy in a foetal or squatting position is not uncommon among South American natives, and the "feathers" rung a bell in my mind, I had read about a mummy, with feathers, in a squatting position... in Patagonia, but that is part of my next post.

So we have a red-haired mummy in Kentucky. Buried in a cave wrapped in several liners, including feathers and squatting.

I have not found any references regarding where this mummy is stored. In which museum. Was it dated? analysed? returned for burial?

I am aware that a red haired native on the East coast will elicit comments about a European transatlantic crossing (Solutreans and Cro Magnons peopling America long before Asians entered America via Beringia. But the fact is that Asians did enter the New World, the point is that they were not the current people of Eastern Asia (no Han Chinese here), they were earlier people, maybe even Neanderthals.

Next post, the Mummy at Cueva del Gualicho, Patagonia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©