International reporting
Bolivia: researchers are interested in mummies to learn more about diseases of the past
Audio 02:33
A mummy on display at the Archeology Museum in La Paz, Bolivia.
© AP/Juan Karita
By: Alice Campaignolle Follow
2 mins
In La Paz, Bolivia, a team of researchers from the United States, Italy, Peru and Bolivia studied the collection of mummies in the archeology museum for several days.
They are about forty, and date from 1000 to 1450 AD.
These mummies have a lot to reveal, especially about the diseases from which people suffered at that time.
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From our correspondent in La Paz,
Anthropologists, cardiologists, microbiologists are busy around a table where a mummy is installed in a fetal position.
All wear protective gowns, masks, it looks like an operating theater, but we are actually in the archeology museum of La Paz.
Guido Lombardi, doctor and specialist in anthropobiology, explains that “
Andean mummies in general have the advantage, if we compare them with the well-known Egyptian mummies, of having all their organs inside the body.
The Andeans at the time only extracted organs from certain people who belonged to the elite, such as the Inca emperors.
»
Beyond the visual inspection by the researchers, and the taking of samples, the mummies will undergo other examinations and in particular x-rays.
"
It's a non-invasive way to look inside, like for example these mummies that are wrapped in priceless cloths that we don't want to destroy, so you can look inside the body and see their back bones. , connected tissues, arteries and veins, sometimes you can see their brains
,” says cardiologist Chris Rowan.
“
Thanks to this we can easily diagnose pathologies, we have seen mummies with collapsed vertebrae in certain specific places where we therefore assume advanced tuberculosis
.
»
Understanding the past to treat today's diseases
Chris Rowan is part of the Horus group that diagnoses cardiovascular disease in mummies.
These doctors operate hand in hand with the institute of mummies in Bolzano, Italy.
And they have already found on these corpses of several hundred years, signs of arteriosclerosis, a disease which damages the arteries, describes doctor Guido Lombardi.
Contrary to what we believed until now, that arteriosclerosis was a modern disease, the result of junk food and the fact of being sedentary, we discovered that this disease has existed for thousands of years, we found on Egyptian mummies, on Inca mummies, etc. So, now, one wonders “if the cause is not modern life, then what is this disease caused by?
Because we don't know where arteriosclerosis comes from at the moment.
But when we know, we can protect ourselves more easily, because it is the leading cause of heart attacks, we are still talking about the leading cause of death in the world!
It is therefore perhaps by understanding the peoples who lived several hundred years ago that researchers will be able to cure diseases today.
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Bolivia
Archeology