Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Mummies Work

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

A mummy is a human being whose soft tissue has been preserved after death, and there are mummies around the world -- including natural mummies, as well as corpses that have been intentionally embalmed. Listen to this classic episode with Chuck and Josh to learn more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to who's in power and what gets done. My name is Bankhead, I'm calling you from Atlanta, Georgia. Listen to the middle with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, did you ever want to know how mummies work and how you mummify a person? Well you can learn if you listen to this one

from March 15th, hey! Look at that date, March 15th, 2011, how mummies work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, this Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're about to do this stuff you should know thing. Yeah. Did you like that? I did.

How you doing, man? Great. Now that I've switched out my foul smelling microphone cover. Yeah, this is actually take two. What is things, Nasty? I'm not getting near it, but I can be truly imagine. Yeah, something's feature factored on the mic cover, the peak clipper cover. Yeah.

Weird. You know, in real studios, they change these out every now and then. These things have been running for at least a year or like 50 cents. All right. What's your... Chuck, which we're sterling in true. Speaking of 50 cents, do you remember when we were talking about fossils? Oh, yeah.

And we said that every once in a while, something happens so that a fossil naturally occurs and that it's desiccated. The skin is dried out. Yeah. That's a mummy. Yeah. Who knew? I knew.

Yeah, me too. Actually, when we talked about that, I was like, we have to do how mummies work. Yeah. And here we are. I'm kind of surprised this one is slipped under the radar for so long. Yeah.

It's right up our alley. Yeah. I went and looked, I'm like, surely we do have it. And being fascinating. Fascinating. Grewsome. Yeah, it's like stuff you should do have it. And being fascinating. There it was. Grewsome. Yeah, it's like stuff you should know, died in the wool.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're about to hear why, theory listeners, because we're about to talk about all the things that happen to a corpse after death, which we've done before, but we need to go over again. Mummy's are cool though. They are very cool. So Chuck, let's say that you were stabbed in the stomach enough time so

that you could not move any longer. You couldn't walk back home. It was on the woods. And the one person you're with, the very person who stabbed you left you there to die. You bleed out, you're dead. Things start happening to your body, right? Yeah, pretty quickly. Up first is auto-lices. Yes, That is... That's kind of gruesome. That's when your organs that have digestive enzymes actually say, well, this is what we do. So, we're going to start digesting the organs. Right, and not like my stomach is eating itself, because I'm hungry, like my stomach is actually eating itself. It's rupturing and oozing and it's being reduced to nothing. While that's going on, and that actually, I think if I remember correctly, that kind of helps kick start the process of

Putrefaction, right? Yeah, auto-lice starts within a few hours. Right after you're dead. The body, the body knows. And if you want like a really big overview of this or an in-depth look at what happens to the body immediately after death, you should listen to our Rigor Mortis podcast if you haven't already. Oh yeah. Body farms. I talked about it in there too. So yes, putrefaction you're right is followed by or follows Autolysis.

And that is when bacteria does its little job and produces everything to a skeleton. And depending where you are, this can happen in a few months. Right, depending on where you are. Now, we as human beings are a subtropical species, right? Chuck, you know that. Sure. So we are designed, if you believe in that kind of thing,

to decompose most readily in a warm, humid climate. That's where the bacteria that breaks down our tissue lives or thrives. Moisture, warmth. If you have cold, dry, things change a little bit, like a refrigerator. Exactly, which is a good place to store body if you want to preserve it.

Or food if you want to eat it. That's a good point too. Or a body if you want to preserve it. Or food if you want to eat it. That's a good point too. Or a body if you want to eat it. For an in-depth look at that, you might want to listen to our cannibalism podcast though. That's right, right? But let's say you don't have a refrigerator, nature provides it for you on some occasions.

There's you'd see the ice man, right? Yeah, see the ice man? Yeah, that's the ice man. Yeah, 1991 and the Italian? Yeah, that's the ice man. Yeah, 1991 and the Italian Alps, this dude is very well preserved. Natural mummy. It's amazing. Died and basically got buried in ice and kind of stayed that way. Yeah, I think they have the impression that he fell into a crevasse. Yeah. Died, but it was during like a blizzard maybe, and he was covered with snow and ice that stuck

around for millennia. But he's so well preserved, you can see the tattoos on his skin still. Yeah, and we knew, hey, they tattooed people 5300 years ago. Exactly. A little window into what life was like for Iceman. Yeah, he was, he had, I think, a nice little set of arrows and his bow and sure, a copper age, European guy. I think he had a wallet-sized photo of you as well. Of me? Yeah. It's not possible.

He was from the future. That's what I think. You just blew my mind, Chuck. Good. So ice, as we talked about in fossils too, was a very good preserveant, but nothing does it, was a very good preservement. Sure. But, nothing does it, oh, Pete Boggs too, you remember I finally showed you

that picture of Tollin Man? Can't forget about Pete. Again, if you have not gone and looked up Tollin Man, it's awesome, like his whiskers are still there. No, no. And he lived a couple thousand years ago, right? What's his name? Did they name him?

Just Tollin Man. Tollin Man. Oh, didn't name him Pete. Terrible. No, no. So those two are pretty good. What's his name? Did they name him? Just a stolen man. A stolen man? Oh, he named him Petey. Terrible. So, those two are pretty good, but the natural money preserve is sand. Yeah, I had no idea. The reason why sand is such a great preserve is because it actually wicks away and absorbs

and just removes any type of humidity in the body, which allows the body to desiccate, which means that there is no place for bacteria to live, which means the tissue remains intact, and that's all a mummy is. It's a corpse with its tissue intact. Well, and this kind of kick started the whole mummification, artificial mummification craze in Egypt because at first they buried

bodies, they weren't in caskets, they were buried in the hot sand. Yeah. And that preserved the body for so long, they said, well, hey, if the body's preserved, then that means the spirits preserved. And all of a sudden we have new views on the afterlife and life. Right. So what they decided to do, and this was, so what I guess what you've just said though, is that mummification, the whole concept of mummies that we have that was so engrained in the Egyptian culture happened by accident, right? Yeah. So they started, they figured this out. So they start purposefully bearing people in the sand with the intent of them being mummified. Yes. But the problem is somewhere along the way,

they begin to have horrible thoughts of their dead relatives choked with sand. Right. So they started to say, maybe we should put some sort of barrier up in between the corpse and the sand. Yeah. And that led to caskets, right?

Yeah, it started with just like a wicker covering and then that eventually led to wooden boxes. But here's the rub. Yeah. Now the body is not preserved. Now the body rots, desiccates. Well, no, it doesn't desiccate. It's just a normal corpse now.

Yeah, it becomes skeleton. You've put a barrier between the body and the preservant in the form of a tomb. So what's an Egyptian to do then? Well, the Egyptians being the very pious culture that they were and the very intuitive and smart culture that they were. You should for that you should go read did the Greeks get all their ideas from the Africans? Good article. Did you write them? Yeah, did we do that podcast? Yeah, man, let's do that. Okay. They decided that they needed to rectify their religious beliefs with their problem, their need to preserve bodies, and what did they do? Well, they said maybe we can replicate this natural process that we've discovered through

man-made artificial means. And that's trial and error. Yeah, it's kind of like, it's called embalming, Josh. And they actually figured out Chuck that, one of the problems with the desiccation, the natural desiccation and the desert, was that the skin turned like this crisp brown. Right.

Like, over baked chicken. Yeah, that's exactly what like this crisp brown. Right. Like, you know, over baked chicken. Yeah, it's exactly what it looks like actually. Yeah. And with these embalming techniques that they eventually mastered, they could preserve a body better than it could be preserved naturally, which is man conquering nature. That's right. Conoring death even. Wow.

Come on. It's close. They didn right, conquering death even. Well, come on, it's a class. They didn't have huge success at first. They would embomb the bodies mainly to keep it away from the elements, wrap it and linen, soaked in resin, and they would create nice little shapely forms that look kind of like people. But that didn't really do a whole lot

because the bandages didn't really halt the composition. They basically figured out that it happens from the inside out. Right. It took them a few centuries, if not millennia. They're basically wrapping it up and it's just disintegrating within the bandages at first. Right, but those bandages are important because they stick around pretty much the whole time,

same with the resin, right? Yes. So those two very early, embalming techniques or mummification techniques stuck around. Yeah. But it was a big leap when they figured out, oh, wait a minute, this is going on inside. And so we need to start addressing that

by removing organs. Right, and it's about here, I think that we hit the middle kingdom and like the mummies that we think of were produced from the 18th to 20th dynasties of the middle kingdom. Yeah, that was one that, like, the heyday of mummification, right? Right, which was between 1570 and 1075 BC.

Yeah. The mummies that we think of, the ones that are still around, like, really well preserved today, they were preserved during this time, right? Right. So what do you do when you realize that everything bad is happening to a corpse from the inside out? How do you address that?

Should we just walk through the process? One by one. The gruesome process. Yeah. Okay. The first thing you do is you take it and it varies, you know, the different processes and within the processes they had things that they would say, sort of like religious rights that they would go through as well.

It's a very sacred process. But they would take the body generally to the Red Land. Desert region is not near a whole lot of people, so people aren't grossed out, but it is near the Nile River. They needed the Nile River to, well, we'll see that in a second. Step one. Step one. You need the Nile for step one. They think they did that in a second. Step one. Step one. You need the Nile for step one.

They think they didn't open tents, obviously, to get some good ventilation going. And the first place they took the body was to the Ibu, the place of purification. Yeah, that was basically the Nile, or the place near the Nile where they rinsed the body with, you watched the body off. Yeah. It's like a rebirth, they wash the body off. Yeah. It's like a rebirth, symbol of rebirth. Right. So the corpse was hastened, or some of the spirit

was hastened in the afterlife. And we should probably say here, so it doesn't get too confusing. There were three spirits that the Egyptians believed comprised of person, right? The Ka, the Ba, and the Aq. Aq, yeah, with the H. It's always tricky to pronounce that. Right, so I think with this purification process, the Ka, or the Ba, or the Aq,

were moved along to the next world. But the Ka, that was the one that was inextricably linked with the corpse, which became the whole reason for mummification, as long as the corpse was preserved, the Ka was preserved, and the afterlife could, you know, the person could live in the afterlife. But once the corpse died, the Ka died, and that second death was final,

which is why they wanted to preserve bodies in the first place. Right. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like the opposite of ashes to ashes and dust to dust. That's right. So after they've washed the body and sort of reborn it and the rivers of the Nile, they carry the body to the per nifer and that is the house of mummification. And this is kind of where, this is the basement of the Fisher House, basically.

Huh? And six feet under the fishers. Oh, yeah. This is in the basement. This is where Rico and the gang would get to work. Yeah. Um, they would lay it on a wooden table, the body. Uh, they removed the brain by hammering a chisel through the bone in the nose.

You know, I knew that already before this article. There's like a Christian Slater and like, he's in like one of the creep shows or amazing stories or tales from the crypt the movie. Uh-huh. Pump up the volume? It might have been that. But I think it was like a smaller vignette,

like a mini movie within the larger movie. It was called like a lot number nine or whatever. And gleaming the cube. I think it was, now that's called Brotherhood within the larger movie, it was called like a lot number nine or whatever. Gleaming the cube. Think it was, now that's called Brotherhood of the Tiger, now I think they change the name. Yeah. Anyway, there's a mummy who's hell bent on taking other people's brains using these hooks or whatever.

Well, and that's exactly what they do. They make a nose hole basically larger than the nostrils. They insert a big hook, iron hook, and start scooping it out. Eventually they go down to a spoon, and eventually they just rinse out the remaining bits of brain. And what's funny is, they discard the brain because they thought, I don't know why we have this stuff in our head, but we probably don't need it in the afterlife. Right. Which is kind of unusual for the Egyptians because they preserved organs.

But the brain, and what's funny though, I think what we just kind of meander passed that we should kind of meditate on for a second chuck is that they get to a point where they fill the head with water. I imagine close the nose and the mouth and shake the head around to slosh all the stuff out,

and then lean the head over and let all the last bits come out. Yeah, that's how I would do it. I wonder if they did shots of that stuff as like part of the ceremony. I would draw the line there. Well, they probably just thought, I don't know, they didn't even know what the brain was. Yeah, that's true. It's just waste. So, the brains out, Josh. Then they take a blade made from obsidian, sacred stone, cut a little incision on the left side and reach in and start pulling out the organs

that they can get to. And then preserving those, like you said. Except for the kidneys, because they didn't think they were important either. Which they were, you know, I mean, the kidneys are important, but it's not like brain important. Well, I mean, you need kidneys to live. I'm sure they preserve the appendix.

Technically, you need all of your... That's probably the most holy of the organs. So they actually, when they preserve these things, they would wrap them in resin strips of linen, right? Basically, they would mummify each organ. Yeah, and then they put them in, in canopic jars. Basically, it was like, here's your body,

and then also here's your organs. Don't forget those. Take these with you, yeah. They leave the heart though, because they thought the heart was, you know, linked to the soul and the spirit, and they're kind of on the money there, I think. So these organs take up space in our chest

and abdominal cavities. So they would actually stuff the body with like incense and other materials as well, right? Yeah, well first they'd rinse it once they forgot they'd take out the lungs to the abdomen. Oh, yeah right there. You can't get along out there. Right under the ribcage. A little side slit. And then they would rinse the chest cavity with palm wine, and then they would stuff it with the chute.

They would shake that. The chute basically. Yeah. Straw. Well, it didn't say what, actually, to sit other materials. I don't know. I would use straw. Maybe frankincense?

A little mer. Yeah. Just to complete the trilogy. Yeah. What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio.

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Stop you should know. Stop you should know. Yeah, it's straw Frankenstein's a murderer. Yeah, it's straw. That kept the body from like caving in on itself, basically, containing a little bit of shape. And then here is the key. This is the key to mummification. And as a matter of fact, I was gonna say it now,

I found it on the internet. There is a step-by-step, very easy to follow recipe on, I think, wiki howl, which I don't normally go on, but it's the only place I can find a recipe for mummifying a chicken using the Egyptian method and it calls for nature in Right, yeah, that's the key nature in is this Basically a compound that the Egyptians figured out they could gather and and combine from the Nile

Which is basically baking soda sodium bicarbonate, and salt, table salt, sodium chloride. You mix the two together and it becomes this perfect preservative. So they would put natrium powder, which is like this just accelerated the technique of mummification by light years. And they would cover the body with this stuff and leave it. And it would just completely dry the body out, right? Yeah, this took about 40 days. They had to guard the body while this stuff and leave it. And it would just completely dry the body out, right? Yeah, this took about 40 days. They had to guard the body while this was going on, obviously, because they didn't want vultures digging through the nature

for what lies beneath. After the 40 days, they moved the body then to the wabet, which is the house of purification. Yank all that incense and the stuffing out, refill it with the nature in, resin soaked linen and other materials, again, whatever these mysterious things are. Then they would sew all the incisions up,

cover the skin with resin, and then say, hey, it's time to wrap this puppy. Yeah, and this is where we get the idea for the mummy, our modern idea of a mummy, always wearing like, the handages that are always coming off. Yeah, they don't work there. You can just see the eyes, maybe something like teeth or something. Yeah. So this is where we're at. They're at the bandaging procedure. That 35 or 40 days while the nature and powder was doing its work, waking away all of the basically acting as the desk kit. The family of the deceased was going

around town going, do you have any linens we can have forever? Do you have some linens we can have? Colleagues like your linens to spend eternity in the heavens above. They collected about 4,000 square feet, just top of my head. That's about how much they gather Sure Of linen and we bring it to the embalmers and the embalmers would say hey, we like this piece that piece is horrible You're really gonna bury your your dad in this right and they would take the best stuff and they would cut it into or they would tear him into strips Three to eight inches wide of bandages and they would start the wrapping, which would take a little while, right? Yeah, it takes a week or two, I guess, probably depending on how big the body is.

It's common sense. Start with the hands and feet. You wrap all, this is the initial under wrapping, I guess. You wrap everything individually. Each little finger, each little toe, everything's wrapped. And then once everything's wrapped individually, they do a whole body wrap, applying new layers, coating the linen with, again, the hot resin to keep everything in place,

uttering spell, sometimes they would wrap amulets over different parts of the body, wrap it up in there with you, protect you in the next world. That kind of thing. Right. And then presto-changio, you are a mummy. And before we go further, the process we've just described, this really ornate wonderful lengthy process.

I know where this is going. You would think about it. Like there's so many, there were a lot of Egyptians running around and a lot of them died on any given day. And there was a lot of work to be done. So this process that we just described was for the people who had lots of money. For some reason, the wealthy have always been revered.

Right? And we've always gotten special treatment, right? Right. Yeah. If you were just an ordinary schmo, like me or Chuck, you were going to get the budget package, which is basically like instead of like carefully removing all of the organs. Preserving each one. They would inject oil, like this oil mixture, into your cavities. Let it sit

for a few days. It would stop up all your orifices for so it wouldn't leak out. Thank you. I don't know how they did that. I guess with other materials, right? So they would stop you up full of oil. Let you sit for a few days and then unstop your orifices and let all the oil drain out and it would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it. It's a lot easier and a lot faster. and it would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it.

There's a lot easier and a lot faster. So even this many thousands of years ago, you get what you pay for. Exactly. That's pretty sad. Yeah. There's always been a budget package or maybe that's a good thing. That it wasn't only just reserved. Like if you don't have any money, you just can't get mummified. That's a way to go.

They thought, you know what, let's think of a cheaper way to do this for you folks. Right. Let's just fill you up with oil, stop up your orifices and give you a good shake. Yeah. So you're prepared, you're all wrapped. However, they got your organs out, they're out, you're bandaged.

And you are now about to be outfitted with it's called a cartonage cage, which is kind of like a breastplate, some cool like forearm armor, leg armor, pretty much this thing that's gonna hold your body together for a while, right? And a funerary mask, which is like the famous masks we think of when we think of like King Tut,

like it's a death mask. Yeah. And these were extremely important because they directed the spirit, the caw to the right body afterwards. So it was in a person's visage, or possibly that of a god, but the spirit would be in on what to look for. They would know that.

That's how they knew. They would say, sure, this guy is supposed to either look like Josh or Anubis either way. I think that's him right over there. So let's grab him. And speaking of Anubis, you would be committed to your tomb following a funeral procession where you were carried and you're suet, right? Which is. That's what you think of with King Tut. That's the casket that looks like a person, like the gold casket in the shape of a human.

Right. That's a suet. That would be carried to your tomb, and there would be a priest dressed as the Jackal God Enubis. There was the ceremony of the mouth, which is pretty cool, because there was some sort of weird understanding, I guess, that you had died. And now certain things had to be restored. And the ceremony of the mouth was passing over of sacred objects across the sewage face, the casket face, and it would restore your five senses. Yeah, because you need that. Exactly. So you're placed, and this is weird, Chuck,

did you find this odd that your casket was placed leaned up against the wall? Yeah, it almost, like, I would do that while I was getting everything ready, and then I would lay it down, so it almost made me think that they kind of forgot, and they say, well, we left that first one lean and against the wall, so I guess that's the way we do it. Yeah. But that's not true.

No. I'm sure they had a very good reason. Probably because it was easier to just walk up right out of there. Well, yeah, I would think they wanted to leave it upright, but standing it upright, they didn't have like the perfectly level floor probably wasn't too secure. So they just gave it a little lean. It's sure, a little help. Which is far less secure than just laying it down on the floor. Yeah. Following that, you are your furniture. Don't forget your canopic jar of organs.

Lay next to you. Little food, maybe. Sure, your furniture. Mm-hmm. Basically, the stuff you're gonna need in the next life to be comfortable. Yeah. And you're set, your tomb is sealed up,

and it's probably inscribed with something along the lines of, as for anybody who shall enter this tomb in his impurity, I shall ring his neck as a bird's. It was a standard. Mommy curse. Yeah, a mummy curse on the tomb. Yeah, people became in the 1920s Howard Carter dug up King Tut's tomb,

and people were just crazy for mummies at the time. Yeah, Westerners are like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting, this cursed thing is so neat. Laurel and Hardy are doing mummy curse movies, and a microbiologist from Germany named Götard Kramer or Kramer. It said there may be something to this curse thing because they bury people with food,

produces mold spores. So when they unearth this tomb, all these mold spores are released into the air and it might kill you. So it's not that there's something to the curse, but it could lead people to tie the two together. If you unearth the tomb, then you die. Certainly there's something weird about the Carter expedition

who unearthed King Tut's tomb in 1922 because 11 of the people who were involved, not necessarily present but involved, died within seven years. And I think 11 people in a canary. His canary died right when they entered the tomb, a co-brated. That's bad luck.

It is. And then it just went downhill from there. So there's all sorts of explanations, but it's also Oddly intriguing and like you said Egypt Mania gripped the West Oh, yeah, they loved it all right, and there was actually unraveling parties where people get their hands on mummies and then like Unbanded jump see what's in there, which is, that's not what you do with a dead body. It's desecration. Yeah. It's bad luck too. What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance.

Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitation. Light stuff on your feet. You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me.

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Let's hope so, because, because that is with me. Ryan, a father of five, who's endured a public divorce and a string of unhealthy relationships, and Sharna, a self-proclaimed serial monogamous, have been in a whirlwind romance since meeting in 2020. Now they'll tackle the challenges of blended family life while dealing with relentless paparazzi. With the help of their friend Randy, they share their life lessons, pondering the meaning of it all in the world of the Oldish. And even though this Hollywood couple finally found each other, they don't have all the answers.

Oh, don't a second! Well, that's where I come in. I'm prepared to guide you, or listeners, through some of life's funniest, awkward, or difficult moments. Listen to Oldish on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So that pretty much is the Egyptian mummy and and that's what we mainly think of, but they weren't the first people to do this kind of thing. No. And then, in that interest thing?

Yeah, the first, the oldest mummies actually on the planet are from Northern Chile, the Chinchoro people. Yeah. Chinchoro? Let's go with Chinchoro. Okay. They started doing this about 2,000 years before the Egyptians, but they were not very much like the Egyptians.

They basically dismembered and disemboweled the body, put it back together again, sewed it up, and then covered it with black mud. Well, they put it back together with like straw and sticks. That's what they had. It was like, they made cupidalls out of these bodies, basically. Yeah. Covered it with black mud and shaped it into a human form. But they believe that this wasn't necessarily done to preserve the body for the afterlife. Maybe it was more for the people left

on the planet Earth to mourn the death of their loved one. Keep them around a little longer. Which is very sweet. Because they saw evidence of retouching of the paint, signs of wear and tear. So basically they were kept in households for a little while. They think. Basically it's statues, freaky, freaky statues.

Yeah. And that was 5,000 BC, which is 2,000 years before the Egyptians came onto the scene at all. That's right. And the, what did you say, the Chinchoro people? Yeah, they were Chorro. Which you said along. I think I went with Chinchoro. But someone will point that out if I'm wrong.

I'm Korean. They're not the only ones in South America who got into modification either. The Incas very famously did as well. They had a little habit of sacrificing children to their gods. Turks. And they culture relativism chose. That's right, not Turks. They would, through this process, like the child and the child's family were just treated

like royalty for this. Like it was a high honor to be chosen to be sacrificed to the gods. And they would get the child really wasted on this fermented corn concoction. Take the child up to the cave. Sometimes I think they would whack the kid over the head or other times they would get the child so wasted

that they just would leave them there in the cold temperatures exposed to the freezing temperatures and the child would die of exposure. I can't say jerks about this. You can. There are jerks. But there's a very famous mummy called the maiden who is a 15 year old girl and she was sacrificed as a thanks to the gods for a really good corn harvest by the Incas

and Peru 500 years ago. Did you see that picture I sent you? Oh yeah, was that her? It's like looking at a girl who's sleeping, but she's been dead for 500 years. Like, if you've been to South America, as I know you have, or Central America, like she looks just like one of those girls you might see down there. Like a Central American indigenous person. She's probably short then.

She looks kinda short. Yeah. That'd be funny if she's like six two. But then moving on up, there's also one, and it didn't make it into this article, but Chuck, I've been there myself. Wano-Wanto Mexico has a mummy museum, and they have the world's smallest mummy. I think it might have been a fetus. Really?

They were all naturally mummified to the great surprise of the 19th century townspeople who had to move a graveyard and found like, okay, there's a lot of mummies. How big was it? It was very small. Get an object. Coffee cup.

Coffee cup. Standard coffee cup. Coffee cup. Okay. Standard coffee cup, sorry. Gotcha. But then there's like people, they're still wearing their suits and it's really amazing. You walk into this little Mexican building and there's just dead people everywhere just behind this glass. It's very neat.

If you ever go to Wano-Wanto, Mexico, you have to go to the Mommy Museum. I think I should. Yeah. Lady Cheng, China, Chinese were, they were lousy with Mommies. Yeah. They loved the Mommify people. She was an aristocrat from about 2000 years ago, and she is believed to be about the best preserved ancient mommy so far. Did you see her picture? Yeah. But they're tongue sticking out? Pretty well-mumified. Yeah. And her hair still? Yeah. She was, they haven't studied her a whole lot, the Chinese haven't, so they don't know exactly how she was prepared, but they do think that mercury in the embalming fluid might have something to do with it. Yeah. I would imagine that will do it. Mercury? Yeah, sure. And also in China, mummies have kind of rewritten history a little bit. Some very, very ancient mummies from 1000 BC, before 1000 BC.

They found some people of Indo-Iranian descent. They linked them to basically Mesopotamia through tattoos and other implements that they had. And the shape of their face, the way they looked. Yep. And they figured out, like, wait a minute, these people were like Indo-European traders. What are they doing here? And they just made their way to settle in the deserts of China before the Honda Dynasty ever showed up.

Yeah. So that kind of changed things a little bit. I'm sure. If we talk about mummies, we got to talk about the more modern day mummies because of the big interest in mummification, thanks to TUT being found, was the big one. Yeah. That's right around the time Lennon died in Russia. And they said, you know what, let's preserve Lennon

and display them in the Kremlin. So that's exactly what they did. And we do not know exactly how, because it's an ancient Russian secret, I don't know about ancient, but it's a Russian secret. And it's ongoing, because they continue to immerse him in a preservative bath every now and then. Andy's where as a waterproof suit. That's right.

And if you've ever seen pictures of Lenin or Ava Perone, they look pretty lifelike. Yeah. But hers was, hers was way cool. They basically replaced all the fluids in her body with wax. Right. Which would be a very modern take on the ancient practice. There's also incorruptible corpses of the Catholic faith. It's basically a person who is so pure on earth that their body just didn't rot. And there's example of those. There's one, he's like a prince, he's like a child prince, I think, he died in like, he died more than a thousand years ago,

or about a thousand years ago. And his body's totally preserved, and there's no evidence that he was embalmed or anything like that. What? They don't understand it. There are some bodies out there that just defy logic.

I wrote an article and you should read it. It's a miracle. How can a court be incorruptible? We need to keep in track of these awesome ideas. Where's our person? Where's our boy Charlie? Or no our boy Friday. Okay. Charlie nowhere. And then Josh finally we have in the 1970s some scientists discovered something called plastonization. And that is when all of the water and lipids in the body cells are replaced with polymers and you basically become like plastic, very flexible and durable, you don't decompose and you don't stink too bad.

And that is used to preserve bodies mainly for anatomical research at this point. Or for bodies' world or bodies' the exhibit, have you been? No, I've never been, but that's how they do it. It is really something. I mean, you're right there up on this corpse missing its skin, and it is a dead person. And it's really interesting. There's one, the one that I went to in Atlanta,

it's two eyeballs and they're connected to the spinal cord, which is going down. And then the coming off the spinal cord are the major nerves of the central nervous system. And that's it. And it's just laid out perfectly and really kind of surprising. I'm shocked that I haven't been to that yet.

It's pretty cool, it's definitely worth going to. I did the dialogue and the dark thing. I have not been there, that's next door. Yeah, that was that good. You know, I was a little disappointed. Yeah. Not in the exhibit itself, but the way they do it, I think it could have been really awesome,

but the way they do it, it wasn't as awesome as it could have been. Just what I take. Yumi and her sister went and she said they would have liked it, but there was this very loud drunk woman who kept like falling into people. What? What? They wanted to kill. You can do that.

You're in the dark weather. You could just like kick her in the shed and run away. We should mention Bob, a Dr. Bob Briar real quick though. He is a Egyptologist who in 1994 said, you know what, I wanna try and replicate the Egyptian technique. And he did it with the chicken. Yeah, with the chicken. And he did it, it was pretty successful. The University of Maryland School of Medicine

and one of the things he learned from doing this that the way the body ends up looking is a result of the mummification process, not the fact that it's been in the ground for thousands and thousands of years. Like the shriveled wrinkled look? Yeah, yeah, so that's one thing in there. That's a big thing to learn though, I mean think about it, that's Egyptology hasn't really

advanced much in the last 50 years, hasn't it? Not that I know of. I never, although, didn't find squat. No, he didn't. No, that wasn't her, although her, although, looked for, um, compones. Oh, that's right. I watched that one, he didn't. No, that wasn't her all over. Her all there looked for um, compones. Oh, that's right. I watched that one. That was fun. I was a youngster and I was so excited and yeah,

but so disappointed when it happens. Just a total disaster. Yeah. For her all to. Well, that's it for mummies, right? Chuck, you got any more? I'm, I'm, are you mummyed out? Yep. All right. Um, if you want to learn more about mummies,

check out M-U-M-M-M-I-E-S in the handy search bar howstuffworks.com. You can learn how to mummify a chicken on wiki howl. And what else? I think there might be a website for the mummies of Wana-Wanto. That's, I think, G-U-A-N-A-J-U-A-T-O. Maybe? Sounds good to me.

Does it? You know, I think Matt and Rachel from Cool Stuff in the Planet did a thing on the Egyptian Mummy. Oh yeah? Or an Egyptian Mummy Museum. The Mummy Museum. Wanna want to want to a Mummy Museum? Yeah.

Yes. Cool stuff in the planet, check it out. That is definitely worth watching as well. It's worth watching anyway. And I said handy search bar somewhere in there, which means I guess time for listener man. Hi, Chuck and Josh and Jerry, my name is Maddie. 12 years old, I love your podcast.

I wait all day at school to get home so I can check for new podcasts. They always help me fall asleep, but not because they're boring, but because it gets my brain thinking and the brain gets tired. That's cool, man. It's great to find. I was wondering if you give a shout out to my best bud, Casey. Casey has a tumor in his leg and is in gets tired. That's cool, man. It's great to find. I was wondering if you give a shout out to my best bud, Casey. Casey has a tumor in his leg and is in a wheelchair.

He tells me he is very miserable, but at least he gets to listen to me, talk about you guys. And fun fact, he also has a pet rooster named Lewis. Sweet. And Lewis is how strange. So he just runs around the house. That is awesome. How strange chicken.

So please give Lewis, I'm sorry, Casey, a shout, and Lewis wanted to make him feel better, would make his day or even his year and tell me which podcast you're gonna put it on because I am just 12 and some of them are inappropriate. Was this one appropriate? I don't know, probably not the shaking the brain part out. We'll figure it out. Okay. We'll tell them to just listen to the listen and mail and let it as a parent. Just listen to the rest. And also a suggestion, the infamestory of that French queen who said let the meat cake. I don't remember her name. What's that? Marie Antoinette. That was Cirsten Dunst. And remember I do not have Facebook so please answering by email she says. And then- Oh, is this a she?

Is it DD or TT? It's DD. Oh, okay. And then her signature is potato in a mushroom. Mm-hmm, from Maggie, I don't even know what that means. It's all the kids are saying it this way. Really? Yeah.

All right. Potato in a mushroom, everybody. You just said Maggie, it's Maddie, right? Maddie. Okay, Maddie. Thanks for that email, Maddie. Did we give a shout out to Lewis and Casey? Well, Casey, we hope you're feeling better, bud.

I'm sorry to hear about that and hope you're up and around before you know it. Take care of Lewis. Yes. If you're an Egyptologist and you have some good mummy stories, we want to hear it. Yeah. You know what? If you have any good mummy story, we want to hear it. Wrap it up in an email and send that email to StuffPodcast at howstuffworks.com.

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