MUMMY SECRETS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 19

MUMMY SECRETS.

WHAT SCIENCE REVEALS

TRACING RELATIONSHIPS,

WASHINGTON, June 15.

Kings and queens of ancient Egypt, 4000 years in their royal tombs, soon may bo "blood-typed" to determine their relationships to each other.

A method of finding the blood typo from dried muscle, regardless of the time the "owner" has been dead, has been worked out successfully with American Indian mummies several centuries old, according to an announcement by Drs. L. C. Wyman and W. C. Boyd, of Boston University, in the Journal of the American Anthropological Society. They believe that the technique will be just as applicable to Egyptian mummies.

Human blood groupings, they explain, are due to two extremely stable chemical substances, the nature of which is unknown, which are found chiefly in the red blood cells. Upon the basis of blood clotting reactions, they divide the human race into four groups —those possessing one or other of the agglutinating chemicals, those with both and those with neither. There are slight but not very significant racial and geographical differences. The substances are found in the blood of all races and even in that of the man-like apes.

These substances are very hard to destroy by such methods as heating or drying, they are found not only in the red blood ceils, but, in a lesser degree, throughout the body. This fact makes them valuable clues. The agglutinating reaction obtained from the dried saliva on- the butt of a smoked cigarette in one case revealed the blood type of the man who had smoked it. Naturally, the substances afford valuable clues to anthropologists.

The two Boston University physicians have worked out a special technique to determine the blood group from the dried tissue of the mummies. It lias proved successful with about 200 Indian cases. Since the laws of blood type inheritance are well established —so much so that they are given standing by the Courts in cases of disputed parentage —it is expected that it will be possible to identify at least some of the long-dead rulers ' and nobles whose ancestry is known and the mummies of whose parents arc available. —(N.A.N.A.)