![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/mummy1.jpg\")
Although less famous than its counterpart in Egypt, the mummification
\n tradition of the Incas was equally effective, technologically advanced,
\n and central to the worldview of the culture that
\n produced it.<\/p>\n
Unlike Egypt, archeologists in Peru are constantly discovering mummies Which is not to say that all, or even most Peruvian mummies are found The Dowbrigade has mixed emotions on the subject of Peruvian mummies, At that time, twenty years ago, we were teaching English literature and linguistics at at the National University Actually, we were the only one living in Crazy Joe’s Hostel, Crazy Joe As we were recently separated from wife #1, the Peruvian Princess, we Crazy Joe’s collection was far and away the most extensive and intense During his peripatetic travels up and down isolated valleys in the high Upon investigation and several subsequent expeditions he discovered a Of course, the location and identity of this village was Joe’s most closely He had over 500 of these rugs, and the entire collection was easily worth several Anyway, there we were all alone in a hostel on the beach, teaching at So one day on the beach, we meet another weird Gringo scientist. he happened Jack the Archeologist and the Dowbrigade became fast friends, and colleagues Frankly, they just looked like rocks to us. But Jack was engaging and weird, Then, on one of his expeditions onto the flank of the Andes where he was Four mummified skeletons were found in normal Peruvian burial position; The following morning, after extended efforts and calls to a nearby village Didn’t Jack watch any Boris Karloff movies as a kid, we asked him later. What followed was a real-life horror story which rivals anything we have Misfortune, mysteriously moving objects, accidents, apparitions, damning Eventually Jack came around to the realization that the only way to put the evil Unfortunately, several of the workers at the Polytechnic lab, including Jesus, it gives us the creeps just remembering this story. We are Although less famous than its counterpart in Egypt, the mummification tradition of the Incas was equally effective, technologically advanced, and central to the worldview of the culture that produced it. Unlike Egypt, archeologists in Peru are constantly discovering mummies by … Continue reading
\n by the dozen.Today’s
\n New York Times<\/a> contains an
\n article<\/a> about a recent
\n find of 26 near the site of road construction outside of Lima. Recently
\n they have been turning up just below the summits of the very highest
\n of the
\n Andean
\n peaks,
\n sacrificed,
\n mummified
\n and perfectly
\n preserved in the sub-zero temperatures.<\/p>\n
\n at high altitude. Although the Incas were primarily a mountain culture,
\n they and older, costal cultures like the Paracas, Mochica and Chimu,
\n also practiced mummification, and the techniques worked so well for the
\n same reasons they did in Egypt – the lack of humidity or temperature
\n changes over time.<\/p>\n
\n as we at one point in our career actually had a run in with one, known
\n by the archeological sobriquet "Number 5".<\/p>\n
\n of Peru, in Trujillo, a nice colonial city on the Pacific coast 500 kilometers
\n north of Lima, and living in Crazy Joe’s hostal in the nearby resort
\n town\/surfers hangout\/fishing village of Huanchaco.<\/p>\n
\n having skedaddled back to Glendale, California where he needed to deal
\n with some murky legal shit which we always suspected involved Crazy
\n Joe in the role of defendant. On his way out of town he asked the Dowbrigade
\n to look after the shut-down hostal, water the plants, and tell people
\n to go away.<\/p>\n
\n accepted. It was actually a pretty nice place, not too big, with a beautiful
\n garden, and two doors from the ocean. The central feature was a sturdy
\n brick stockade, thick-walled and windowless, with massive oak doors reinforced
\n in metal and set behind a wrought-iron grill. Inside, Crazy Joe
\n kept his collection of Peruvian textiles (those familiar with the full
\n dossier of the Dowbrigade may remember that this is one of our deep
\n loves and areas or arcane expertise). <\/p>\n
\n we had ever seen outside of a museum. In addition to numerous superb
\n pieces of Paracas and Incan textiles unearthed by and bought from huaqueros,
\n informal
\n archeologists or grave robbers and cultural criminals, depending on ones
\n point of view, Joe’s collection had one thing that no one else had.<\/p>\n
\n andes, places you can only reach in 4-wheel drive vehicles followed by 1-3
\n days on horseback, buying one or two pieces of textile art off of poor Indian
\n farmers who may have had them in their families for generations, he discovered
\n that some of the best pieces appeared to be of recent vintage.<\/p>\n
\n tiny village high in the mountains where literally every family was involved
\n in textile production and many of the techniques and designs that had been
\n thought to be lost forever were alive and well. They were producing
\n textiles as fine and intense as the classic masterpieces adorning museums
\n in Europe and North America.<\/p>\n
\n guarded secret. Every six months or so, he would disappear for a week or
\n ten days and return with a dozen more of these gorgeous tapestries, each
\n about 3 feet by 6 feet. What colors! The designs and intensity of the
\n weave were stunning.<\/p>\n
\n million dollars. Joe told semi-believeable stories about selling individual
\n pieces to famous rock stars in LA for many thousands of dollars, and we were
\n fairly sure he was slowly transferring his stash from Peru to the states
\n without paying the appropriate taxes. This may have been the source of his legal
\n problems back in CA, but as the guy also has numerous weird sexual proclivities
\n (he wasn’t called Crazy Joe because he was zany), we were never sure.<\/p>\n
\n a national public university in a nearby city which was closed more often
\n than it was open, by strikes of one of the "three estates"; one or more out of
\n the faculty or the students or the maintenance and clerical workers were
\n usually
\n on strike. For months our only duty was to stop by union headquarters one
\n a day and sign the logbook. Checks showed up nice and regular, as though
\n nothing unusual was going on. Socialism – a worker’s paradise.<\/p>\n
\n to be an archeologist from New Jersey, or more accurately now from
\n the University of North Carolina, who was in Peru to finish his doctoral
\n research on lithics in some obscure northern culture we had never heard of
\n and which had disappeared over 2000 years earlier. Turns out lithics
\n is the study of stone tools, which is about the limit of technology among
\n this group,<\/p>\n
\n in fact. He had been given an office in our university, as the closest major
\n program of archeology to his actual excavations. This made him the only other American at the National University. He would hang out in the
\n field for two or three months at a time, digging stuff up, and then would
\n come back to Trujillo to label, catalog and pack all of the samples for shipment
\n back to the states. He told me he already had over 100,000 stone tools.<\/p>\n
\n and we began to regularly play chess, smoke doobies, exchange reading material and occasionally
\n girlfriends. Eventually we invited him to take a room at the hostel
\n for the brief periods when he was working out of his office at the university.<\/p>\n
\n digging, his crew discovered a series of mummies. They were primitive,
\n and consisted mostly of bare bones, but by their arrangement and condition
\n he could tell that efforts had been made to preserve them.<\/p>\n
\n knees to chest, arms crossed, in large ceramic urns buried in the earth. But
\n as they were preparing to leave the site the final time, one of the diggers
\n noticed signs that a large boulder in the middle of the burial pattern was
\n not there naturally. His interest piqued, Jack decided to wait one more
\n day for a cold cerveza at Crazy Joe’s Hostal and see what, if anything, was
\n under the boulder. He should have left well enough alone.<\/p>\n
\n for reinforcements, they finally got the boulder to roll. Sure enough,
\n underneath was a final skeleton. Number 5 was clearly different from the
\n others. For one, Jack could tell it was of a fairly old man, at least
\n in his 50s, at a time when most people died by 30. All of the other
\n skeletons appeared to be children or young adults. For another, the
\n bones, when laid out, indicated a man about six feet tall, which was gigantic
\n for that race at that time.<\/p>\n
\n It should have been obvious that somebody had wanted Number 5 to stay firmly
\n in place under that boulder, and that moving him was NOT a very good idea.
\n But Jack was pretty much a classic scientist, and did’t believe in ghosts.
\n Not at that point, at any rate.<\/p>\n
\n read by Poe or King, in content at least, and if we have refrained from
\n recounting it or writing it down before now it was out of fear of not being able to do justice to its
\n sheer horror and realness. How could we ever get our readers to realize that
\n this actually happened, and caused a number of very sane and rational doctors and scientists to seriously question their beliefs if not their sanity? But it
\n did.<\/p>\n
\n coincidences and even several deaths were to appear in the wake of the
\n remains of Number 5 over the following
\n few months. It
\n became clear that something very ugly and dangerous had been brought back
\n up to the light of day when they rolled that boulder. <\/p>\n
\n genie back in the bottle was to take what was left of Number 5 back to
\n the dig and re-insert him in the same
\n hole he came out of,
\n with some kind of local shaman throwing a few spells in there to make sure
\n he stayed where he belonged. Just as soon as Jack got him back from the
\n laboratory at the Polytechnic Institute in the capital, where he had taken
\n all five skeletons
\n for X-ray analysis by a group of forensic anthropologists, the only lab in
\n the country with the equipment to do the job.<\/p>\n
\n the lady doctor who actually examined Number 5, met untimely ends just
\n at that
\n time, and when Jack went back for the results and the skeletons,
\n guess what? No one seemed able to find Number 5. Gone, vanished, out and
\n about? Who knows?<\/p>\n
\n literally sitting here shivering and sweating as the memories come flooding
\n back. A good time for a stiff drink, and we hate alcohol. Perhaps someday we will be able to write down all the truly horrifying
\n details of this bad trip, but quite frankly 20 years is not enough
\n distance to feel completely at ease. After all, Number 5 might be
\n a regular reader of the Dowbrigade News.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"