mummy

there's people of all walks of life at the pool.
i think i've mentioned a few over the past few months.
(can you believe i'll have been there for a year next month?)

anyway. i always say 'hi' to this guy Carlos, but i never have really talked to him until the other day. it came up that i'm into archaeology and primarily mexico/south america.
well, come to find out, he's from peru. awesome!
he proceeds to tell me how when he was younger he'd go out with his friends into the desert along the coast. one of his friends was into metallurgy and created some long metal poles. what they did with these poles was to prod them into the sands of the desert over and over.
why?

well. in the desert, one may happen to come upon and old gravesite. how the people there used to be disposed of was in a pit dug for them. more deep than wide. the body would be placed in the hole and the hole would be covered with bamboo, which would be covered by leaves, then topped off by sand to mimic the rest of the desert. the body would then dessicate over time becoming a mummy.
so these guys would go out a'grave robbin'.
if you stuck one of these graves, you would know it. you could feel the absence of sand.

carlos once found one and took it back to his house. his mother was pissed about having dead people in her house, but he insisted.
he was going to take it to one of the local universities, but they demanded a 50% cut for the university. Carlos denied their proposal since they did jack shit in finding it (although they could have probably told him a bit about the mummy).
he told me that the mummy he found had brass earrings and jewels across its face. nothing much of monetary interest was found.
apparently Carlos said that the culture along the coast, at the time, wasn't a very rich culture, and all the fortune was to be found up in the andes with the inca.

interesting dude...
i'll have to ask him what became of the mummy.

now i want to go to peru.
who's coming with me?