NEW GUINEA MUMMIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22628, 20 July 1935, Page 2

NEW GUINEA MUMMIES

AT LEAST 1000 YEARS OLD (Fbou Dub Own Correspondent.' SYDNEY. July 11. What he termed an event of the first anthropological and ethnological importance —the discovery ot mummified remains, more than 1000 years old, in the depths of a labyrinthine cavern, in New Guinea—was described by Dr J. R. Atcherley, formerly of the lerntory Administration, and now of New Morobe Gold Options. The discovery, which has aroused wide scientific interest, was made in limestone caves in rough mountainous country about 30 miles inland from Salaraoa, and is remarkable because, Dr Atcherley says, there had been no definite knowledge hitherto of any New Guinea tribe which mummified, or preserved in any way, its dead. _ “ I was with a gold expedition when I discovered the cave,” said Dr Atcherley.' “It was about 40 feet from the ground, and was a tortuous, winding labyrinth. To explore it we had to use the classic device of a ball of string to mark the way back. Inside we found a shelved mausoleum, on which were hundreds of mummies, all sitting with their chins on their hands and their elbows on their knees. Many of them almost .reproduced the posture of Rodin’s sculpture, ‘The Thinker/ It appeared to me they had been preserved by the dripping of limewater from the cave stalactites. Local scientists believe, however, that there was mummification before the cave burial, as well.” Dr Atcherley added that the features of the mummies were negroid, although \ apparent pigmentation was lighter than that of the New Guinea native of today. This colouration, hoivever, might have been induced by the action of tba limewater. > “It is impossible to tell the age of the mummies,” he said. “ Opinion vanes between 1000 and 2000 years, but tests a>-e being made, including ray examination. which will reveal their approximate span.” Dr Atcherley lodged a specimen at the Rabaul Museum, and he said that Melbourne Museum was also eager to acquire one.

3lr H. A. Longman, director of th« Queensland Museum, Brisbane, commenting on the discovery, said that as tar back as ISSO L. M. D’Albertis, a wellknown Italian explorer, and a pioneer explorer of New Guinea, had discovered mummified human remains in New Guinea. Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, the famous Australian anatomist, had -tmserted tnat there could be no doubt that the practice of mummification had spread along the north coast of New Guinea, and then around its eastern extremities to the islands of Torres Straits, where the practice was seen in its fully developed form. Sir Grafton Elliot Smith considered that the practice of mummification in New Guinea and other parts of the world spread from ancient Egypt, and that many native races had adopted to some extent, although in a much more crude form, the methods of the Egyptian embalmers.