Drunken mummies let down their hair
Mummy hair has revealed the first direct evidence of alcohol consumption in ancient populations, an international conference has heard.
The study, still in its preliminary stage, examined hair samples from spontaneously mummified remains discovered in one of the most arid regions of the world, the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and southern Peru.
The research was presented recently at the 5th World Congress on Mummy Studies in Turin, Italy.
"It is well known that immediately following ingestion, ethanol can be measured in any body fluid, as well as the expired air in our breath. Detecting exposure to alcohol days, months, or even years later is a more difficult task. You need to find direct, long term biomarks," said Larry Cartmell, clinical laboratory director at the Valley View Hospital in Ada, Oklahoma.
The researchers decided to look into mummy hair following previous success in demonstrating cocaine and nicotine traces in the hair of other Andean mummies.
Indeed, many drugs or their metabolic products circulate in the blood and are absorbed and incorporated permanently into the growing hair shaft. Due to their hydrophobic nature, fatty acid ethyl esters — metabolic products of ethyl alcohol — accumulate significantly in the hair and there they remain for the life of the hair.
"The purpose of our study was to determine if fatty acid ethyl esters are stable enough in measurable quantities to be found in mummy hair," Cartmell said.
The researchers tested seven hair samples, taken from five males and two females of various ages ranging from 15 to 50.
Belonging to the Maibas Chiribaya culture, the mummies were farmers who lived between 1000 and 1250.
Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry showed that three out of the seven tested samples had quantifiable levels of fatty acid ethyl esters in both male and female subjects.
"In modern human hair the levels would generally be in the ranges of social drinking, but we obviously don't know how much, if any, was lost in 1000 years of burial. Basically, we can say that for the first time we have direct markers of alcohol use in ancient populations," Cartmell said.
According to Professor Arthur Aufderheide of the University of Minnesota, the author of a book on mummies, the research has an interesting potential for further studies on mummies.
"We can't tell the nature of the drink, but we can tell that alcohol was consumed. The discovery of these alcohol markers will make it possible to find direct evidence of fermented drink consumption in other mummies. In the past we could only speculate about patterns of alcohol use and when alcohol was introduced in a widespread manner," Aufderheide said.
Researchers are pretty sure, however, that the mummies of the Atacama Desert drank a cloudy beer called chica. The favoured and most likely the only fermented beverage of that region, chica was generally made from maize and played an important role in the Andean culture.
"Missionaries working in post-contact Peru were appalled that during religious ceremonies the mummified bodies of Inca nobility were given cups of the corn beer to toast each other," Cartmell said.