Mermaid mummies and tomb curses: how to separate the truth about archaeological finds from lies
Miscellaneous / / October 06, 2023
The work of researchers looks completely different from the Indiana Jones films.
Archaeological excavations are sometimes shrouded in many myths, and fictitious stories often appear in the media next to stories about real finds. Journalist and popularizer of science Alexander Sokolov helped us understand where the truth is and where the lies are. You can hear the full version of the conversation in our new podcast “Spray of Science”, and below is a summary with the main thoughts.
Alexander Sokolov
Founder and editor-in-chief of the scientific portal ANTHROPOGENES.RU, head of the organizing committee of the “Scientists Against Myths” forum, popularizer of science.
People are engaged in counterfeiting artifacts because of the thirst for profit, but not only
It’s true that scammers often falsify archaeological finds. Maybe their main motive is to make money. Especially if we are not talking about counterfeiting some unique things, but about conveyor production. This feeds a huge number of people in the world - entire dynasties and artels.
This has been the case since antiquity. There have always been people who made counterfeits, sold them, lived and live by this. But besides earning money, there is more ambition, the desire to become famous, to leave your name in science. Adventurers want to be remembered and admired. To name a real scientific discovery after a fake scientist.
So the goals of falsifiers are usually much more interesting than greed. Example - studies of Piltdown man and Cardiff man giant.
The Piltdown Man is a false sensation
This fake discovery was made by archaeologist Charles Dawson. Some scientists saw in the discovery of the early 20th century a missing link in evolution, a transitional phase between modern homo and ape. But their hopes were not justified.
Dawson said that he was walking in the town of Piltdown, and the workers who were sifting gravel showed him their find - a fragment skulls. They had nothing but this fragment - the workers said that everything else had been thrown away.
Dawson, first alone and then with assistants, carried out a series of excavations in Piltdown. As a result, archaeologists presented the public with several more pieces of the skull and a fragmentary lower jaw. And then they announced the discovery of a new human species. According to them, it appeared more than a million years ago. Its representative had a very developed brain, but the lower jaw was primitive, like an orangutan. Then, by the way, it turned out that it belonged to this very monkey.
However, at first the discovery became a sensation. After all, the noble ancestor was found not somewhere in Asia or Africa, but on the territory of Great Britain. Many liked this first Englishman with a big brain - a progressive, developed ancestor.
Then there was Piltdown 2 - another similar find. But it turned out that fragments of the skull and bones, fangs and permanent teeth, which archaeologists found during excavations, were planted. They did not even belong to one individual, but to several, and of different ages. And these finds are not a million years old, but maybe only a few centuries old. The fake artifact was most likely created by Charles Dawson himself.
Apparently, he made up all these stories about the workers. The teeth were filed, the bones were painted, the tools were planted. A planned, cunning falsification.
Alexander Sokolov
It is important that Piltdown Man was not like other primitive people found in China or Africa. Those had powerful jaws and a small brain, but this representative of an unknown species had the opposite. When scientists were able to analyze his bones in the laboratory and were convinced of falsification, they breathed a sigh of relief: the place on evolutionary tree this species would be difficult to find.
It is difficult to say why Charles Dawson needed this forgery. By the time he was exposed, he had already died. But he managed to get his share of fame.
Cardiff Giant - commercial fake
In the late 60s of the 19th century, George Hull arrived in the city of Cardiff, New York. He listened to the local priest, who told parishioners that giants once lived here. And he told him that he would soon show everyone such a giant.
He found stone cutters and bought a large block of plaster. They made a statue out of it in the strictest secrecy. They also made a face similar to him. It was then artificially aged, that is, specially treated with acid, some kind of metal they tapped the rods so that there were pores, and then they buried them quietly in the field, on the plot of their cousin Halla.
Alexander Sokolov
A year later, the adventurer hired workers to dig a well in this place. They, of course, found the “petrified giant.” Then tourists began to flock to Cardiff, and the owners of the site set up a tent at the excavation site and charged each person 50 cents for entry.
Then there were tours to different cities. One day a certain Barnum, another adventurer, tried to buy the statue for 50 thousand dollars. Having been refused, he made a second giant of the same kind. And he began to show it for money, saying that Hull’s was fake, and his giant was real. Then there was a trial, and all the forgeries were exposed. But the giant of Halla is still in some museum and brings in money.
Among the fakes there are not only artifacts, but also their packaging
That is, for example, not only mummies are falsified, but also the sarcophagi in which they lie.
It is a fact. In the archaeological finds market, as in any other, everything that is in demand is valuable. Mummies until some point no one appreciated it. When robbers broke into Egyptian tombs, they simply threw out the remains and paid attention only to the gold and stones.
Then demand appeared, and mummies began to be traded. But the flow of real finds began to dry up. Then the fakes appeared. At the same time, selling the “mummy in a sarcophagus” set turned out to be more profitable than selling these artifacts separately.
Let's say we don't fake anything, but we have a mummy from one tomb and a sarcophagus from another. We can sell them separately. But if you put the mummy in a sarcophagus, and also put some trinkets from the third burial on it and provide all this with some kind of legend, it can be sold for much more.
Alexander Sokolov
Therefore, in museums you can still see remains wearing jewelry from a completely different era. For example, in one of the museums in South America there is a mummy with a crown on her head. And in the Pushkin Museum there was a clay coffin with the remains of a child. And only recently it turned out that the mini-sarcophagus was made in the 19th century, and the mummy that lies in it is five thousand years old. Now this exhibit is valuable as a very old, skillful fake.
The Vatican also kept supposedly children's mummies. But at the beginning of the 21st century, scientists analyzed them using X-rays. And they found out that these were random bones of adults who died in Middle Ages. But the bandages in which they are wrapped are really ancient - they were apparently removed from some other mummy. And the bones are also covered with gold on top - it was made in Scotland in the 19th century. That is, it turned out to be a hodgepodge of different eras. And such cases happen quite often.
Adventurers manage to pass off even unreal creatures as discoveries.
An example of such falsification is the story of mermaids from the island of Fiji. In Southeast Asia, Japan and China, mummies appeared in the 18th–19th centuries mermaids. They were sold to Europeans and also kept in local museums and temples. Today, more than 10 such exhibits are in Japan.
This is a composite product, a stuffed animal, which was made from parts of different animals. That is, they took a fish tail and attached it to the body of a monkey, somehow disguised it with papier-mâché, and stuffed it with cotton wool. They tinted them, oiled them up, and passed them off as real creatures caught by some fisherman.
Alexander Sokolov
Some of these items ended up in European museums, such as the British one. Today they are of interest precisely as stuffed animals, as crafts that were created to entertain gullible people.
Another hoax - figures aliens. There is a myth that mummies of unearthly creatures were once found on the Peruvian Nazca plateau. The most popular of them is named Maria. Apparently, these are real remains that were found in one of the Peruvian caves.
The basis of the fake is the body, which was mummified after burial. Then the mummies simply cut off their ears and two fingers on each hand, smeared the body with some special composition, and the result was a figure similar to a humanoid. Moreover, this and other similar fakes were created by not very highly qualified specialists. Anthropologists and paleontologists used X-rays to discover that it was a fake.
Archaeologists do not hide inconvenient facts from the public
When critics want to give an example of how archaeologists hide a lot, they remember the crystal skulls. Similar to those we saw in the movie about Indiana Jones.
The first reports of such finds appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Some antiquity seekers said that these were artifacts from Mesoamerica from pre-Columbian times. Others say that this is evidence of alien visits. Skulls were even attributed magical properties. But in fact, these crystal things also turned out to be fake. It is important that not a single official archaeological expedition reported such finds.
The most famous falsification is the Mitchell-Hedges skull. It appeared in the 20s of the 20th century, and there was no news about it before. At first the skull was in the possession of some collector, then it was sold at auction. Then the crystal artifact was acquired by Mitchell-Hedges - by the way, it was one of the prototypes of Indiana Jones.
This same Frederick Mitchell-Hedges later recalls that he found it during an expedition to British Honduras. And then his daughter Anna Mitchell-Hedges says that it was she who found him. Anna pulled out this skull with her own hand in 1924. But then, when they started checking, it turned out that she had not even been on this expedition. Moreover, there are documents according to which Frederick Mitchell-Hedges bought the skull at auction for 400 pounds in 1943.
Alexander Sokolov
There are many such revelations. But for some reason, supporters of conspiracy theories still believethat the crystal skulls belong to an unknown civilization, and anthropologists simply do not want to admit it. There is a legend that Barnum, when he made a copy of the Cardiff Giant and began to exhibit the fake, said: “If a person wants to believe in a miracle, he buys it.”
Archaeologists have no reason to hide the facts. Scientists themselves would be happy to make a stunning discovery, but real science is much more complex than hoaxes. And those who engage in counterfeiting take advantage of naivety and gullibility people for selfish purposes.
Excavation of graves does not bring bad luck
There is a myth that terrible curses are hidden in ancient tombs. And those who dare to open the burial face dangerous traps, unknown diseases and numerous misfortunes. Or maybe death.
Yes, everyone who excavated the tomb Tutankhamun, have already died. But not from curses - just a lot of time has passed since then. Man is not eternal, and this is not news.
In reality, archaeologists are not superstitious people. They do not pay attention to possible curses and do not expect to be stung by a scorpion or trampled by a hippopotamus. Scientists simply remember safety precautions and do not take risks where they can do without adventure.
If a person is digging some kind of medieval burial ground, theoretically there is a possibility of catching some kind of infection. Therefore, there are closed shoes, gloves and certain precautions, but no mysticism.
Alexander Sokolov
More about excavations and antiquities🧐
- Anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky: why you don’t need to envy ancient people
- 6 Historical Artifacts That Turned Out to Be Fake
- “You walk, and dinosaur bones stick out of the ground”: an interview with paleontological historian Anton Nelikhov