Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead

Here is an interesting piece on ancient Scotland where the deceased were preserved by burying in peat bogs allowing the body to ferment then remove the bodies and bury them in marked graves near the entrance inside of their homes.

LINK

The ancient Egyptians were not the only ones to mummify their dead, according to a study in this month's Antiquity Journal that claims prehistoric Scottish people created mummies too.

The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions.

Initial evidence for Scottish mummies was announced in 2005, when archaeologists unearthed three preserved bodies — an adult female, an adult male and an infant — buried underneath two Bronze Age roundhouses in South Uist, Hebrides, at a site called Cladh Hallan. The bodies date to between 1300 and 1500 B.C.

Interesting post, I enjoyed the article. Thanks for posting it JackKatMtn. It made me think of this book my mom loaned me once. I can't remember the title right now, I'll call and ask her later today and edit it in here in my reply.

Anyway, the jist of the book was during the end of Akhenaten's reign in Egypt, his daughter "Scota" managed to escape with several people, military men who where her bodyguards if I remember correctly, fled in their boats and eventually wound up in whats now Ireland.

The book also mentioned the findings of Egyptian style boats embeded in peat around 1938 or somewhere in the late 30s. And also of artifacts found in cairns that bore a strong resemblence to similar artifacts from Egypt, manely some kind of necklace with a man-made stone of some sort made (I think) from copper salts.

The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions.

The "experts" are always saying something like this. Its getting old listening to the orthadox veiws on human history. They don't like the idea of "what if?"


[edit on 23-9-2007 by sanctum]

bog mummies are quite common, it's a natural process. i find it more likely that the people were just buried under the house, perhaps as part of an ancestor worship belief system, than that they were interned specifically for mummification as is suggested.

bog mummies

what i mean is, the ground in which they were buried, under the houses, was boggy.


[edit on 23-9-2007 by pieman]

Took a while to find it, and if anyone is still itrested, the book I refered to is called: Kingdom of the Ark and I think the author's last name was Kennedy.