By Derek Olson
“What do you think the international reaction would be to news that mummies were found in Egypt that predated the earliest ones ever discovered there by more than 5000 years? This would surely would be front page news from one end of the planet to the other! Yet news that a 10,000 year-old mummy was unearthed in America has elicited barely a whisper.” – Richard Dewhurst
A long history of pre-Colombian European and Asian contact is evidenced all over the continent as seen in the artifacts and discoveries such as the 9,400+ year old mummy of Spirit Cave. Some scientists now claim it is over 10,000 years old, making him one of the oldest known mummies on the planet.
The original discovery of this mummy was made in 1940, yet it has taken more than 60 years to fully come to light. And a big reason for this may be that this skeleton was never originally turned over to the Smithsonian, but was kept instead at the Nevada State Museum.
The Spirit cave skeleton was found in a Nevada cave in 1940 wearing moccasins on his feet and with his body wrapped in a rabbit-skin blanket covered with reed mats. Spirit Cave Man was paraded at the Nevada State Fair the following summer before being handed over to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City where it was forgotten until the 1990s rolled around.
In 1996, R. L. Jantz from the University of Tennessee and Douglas W. Owsley, a scientist who worked for the Smithsonian institute examined the mummy and shared the results in their official Pathology report. Below are direct quotes from their study that stood out to me…
“The Spirit Cave Mummy was examined by scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Tennessee as part of a systematic survey of the human skeletal collection curated by the Nevada State Museum. “
“The hair is medium brown in color with reddish tones. Some of the longer strands are 150 to 198 mm long, indicating that it was at least shoulder length. Some of the hair was cut angularly, which suggests that some type of blade was used to groom the hair.”
“The cranial vault is long and narrow with a moderate vault height. The brow ridges are only moderately developed, and the frontal bone is long and curved. The height of the face is relatively short.. and is fairly gracile, especially considering the large size of the skull.”
“At the time of his death, this individual was recovering from an injury to the left temple that is evidenced by a circular impact site. Another unusual anomaly of the spinal column is the presence of thirteen thoracic vertebrae, instead of the usual twelve.”
“The Spirit Cave male classifies as Ainu on these twelve variables… Groups with high scores are Polynesians, and East Asians including Ainu. The Spirit Cave male is clearly aligned with this last group of populations and not with American Indians. Unlike Indians, the Spirit Cave cranium does not have a flat frontal configuration. It is most similar to East Asian and Europeans in this regard.”
“Facial Forwardness and Prognathism: The two closest groups related to this skeleton are both European, but Norse has a much higher posterior probability than any other group.”
“Face Height, Breadth, and Projection: The Spirit Cave male clearly has a very strong European resemblance on the facial variables.”
“The excellent quality of the preservation of the head, parts of the body, and the artifacts was recognized even then. The remains were exhibited at the Nevada State Fair for three days a few weeks after excavation. Over time, Spirit Cave Man’s remains were placed in a wooden box,covered with naphthalene crystals, and stored in the general collections area of the Nevada State Museum. It seems that, other than the pre-liminary report published by S.M. and Georgia Wheeler, little to no research was performed on the mummy until it was carbon dated in 1994.”
At this point, representatives of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe requested that the body be returned to Spirit Cave under the NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). Identifying the mummy as an ancestor whom they called “The Storyteller”, tribal leaders claimed a direct genealogical connection to the ancient individual.
The NAGPRA act was passed in 1990. In a nutshell, this law basically states that any ancient specimen that was or is found is Native American and should be removed from public display and buried according to the traditions of the individual tribes. Is there a deliberate plan to hide anything that does not fit the standard theory that Native Americans crossed the Bering Straight and settled in North America?
The local tribe requested that the body be returned to Spirit Cave under NAGPRA laws but the Bureau of Land Management refused to comply based on the findings that the skeleton was not Native American.
For two decades, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe argued their case, until thy eventually won a legal battle in 2018 when the Spirit Cave Mummy’s DNA was suddenly analyzed again by a professor Eske Willerslev who worked with the University of Copenhagen. His results apparently showed an unbroken genetic lineage linking the mummy with present-day Native Americans.
And guess what happened next? The controversial mummy was immediately repatriated closing a “seven decades-long legal dispute with anthropologists who fought for it to remain on display in a museum.
It’s interesting that professor Willerslev himself attended the reburial of the mummy & told reporters “it involved people crying, singing and praying as the mummy was put inside a casket and offered farewell gifts. The event was similar to if you and I were burying a very close relative. “It’s that emotional even though we are burying a mummy that was living 10,000 years ago.” He added “The burying of this skeleton marks the end to what have been deemed outlandish claims, and puts to bed arguments that indigenous groups “often fight for repatriation of remains in order to gain a political voice.”
Does it seem odd or all to convenient that after we had the 1990s test results tell us that this ancient mummy was 9,400+ years old with Caucasian origins, that all of a sudden in 2018 we have professor Willerslev come along…
Do you smell a cover up? Watch the full video episode below
sources:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/spirit-cave-mummy-0010987
megalithicmarvels.com 