Mummy Pushes Back History

Almost 8,000 years ago, the occupant of Tomb 761 was a man of respect in the seaside settlement--perhaps because he excelled at hunting or fishing, scientists say. So when he died, he was made into a statue to be worshiped.

Today, archeologists have unearthed the fallen idol and restored some of his former status. They believe it to be mankind’s oldest known mummy.

Scientists say that the mummy, preserved by the bone-dry Atacama Desert and an elaborate deathbed treatment, is 7,810 years old--about 2,600 years older than his senior Egyptian counterpart, Seker-Em-Sa-F, a 6th Dynasty prince.

“Occupant-Tomb 761” and 95 other mummified men, women and children are being examined for clues about the origin of an Indian society that lived along a 300-mile Pacific coastal strip of what is now northern Chile and southern Peru.

Dr. Marvin J. Allison, 64, a U.S. pathologist heading the team of principally Chilean researchers, says that the age of this Chinchorro culture could help prove that advanced human society existed in the Americas far earlier than scientists generally believe.

The mummies were uncovered in November, 1983, during a water company excavation at the base of a 130-foot-high sandstone mound in this port city. Their ages were established last year by carbon dating.

Allison said the mummies range from 3,670 years upward, challenging the assumption that the Chinchorros came into existence during the 16th-Century Spanish conquest.

“I think we have found this society was a lot more complicated than originally believed,” he said. “Their system of burial obviously required a well-developed social structure.”

Until now, scientists thought that Asian people reached Alaska 30,000 years ago and migrated slowly down the west coast of the Americas.

But Allison contends that the Asian people could not have moved quickly enough to reach the Southern Hemisphere by the date of the earliest proven Chinchorro settlement here. “We really don’t know where they came from,” he said.