A resident of a Colombian village was baffled to discover that her mother’s body had been naturally mummified after her death 30 years ago.
The fact was discovered in more than 100 other bodies that were exhumed from the San Bernardo municipal cemetery since the 1960s.
In many cases, the bodies still had hair and nails intact and in some cases still had skin tissue and eyeballs, which are usually one of the first to decompose after burial.
Locals have long believed that the bodies were mummified because of their active, agricultural lifestyle, or because they were too good during their life and were being rewarded or punished.
But new research may have found a scientific explanation for why the remains persisted: It could be a combination of humidity and the steep mountainside on which the cemetery sits.
People whose bodies were naturally preserved and mummified after burial (pictured) were discovered in the San Bernardo municipal cemetery
The people were found with skin tissue and nails intact, making researchers wonder if the steep mountainside on which the cemetery sits and the humid air helped preserve their bodies (pictured ).
Investigators cannot identify what caused the mummification process, saying the bodies were found in different areas of the cemetery and belonged to different age and gender groups.
The bodies were first discovered when they were exhumed from the San Bernardo municipal cemetery in 1963, and by the late 1980s, around 50 mummies were found each year.
Similar natural mummification has been observed in Guanajuato, Mexico, where underground gas and the chemical composition of the soil are responsible for the dead not rotting.
However, the dead in Guanajuato date back to the first half of the 19th century, while the San Bernardo mummies are comparatively young.
Mummification involves a process of preserving the body after death by deliberately drying or embalming the flesh, but the St. Bernard bodies were essentially mummified by accident.
After a body is buried, it only takes three to five days for its teeth and nails to fall out, but it can take a decade to decompose, leaving behind a skeleton and traces of hair, skin tissue and clothing fibers. .
But when Clovisnerys Bejarano unearthed her mother in 2001, who had been buried three decades earlier, she found her preserved and still dressed in her funerary clothing, saying she could simply have been asleep.
The body of Clovisnerys Bejarano’s mother (pictured) was exhumed in 2001, three decades after she was buried.
Bejarano’s mother (pictured) still had her skin, hair and nails when she was exhumed, and researchers have tried to discover why and how these bodies were mummified.
Nails are one of the first things to fall off the body between three and five days after the burial of the deceased.
The fact was discovered in more than 100 other bodies that were exhumed from the San Bernardo municipal cemetery since the 1960s.
‘She still has her dark, round face, her braids, her hair,’ Bejarano said. AFPand adds: “If God wanted to preserve it… it must be for a reason.”
Bejarano’s mother is exhibited in the mummy museum of the José Arquímedes Castro mausoleum along with 13 other bodies that were exhumed from the San Bernardo cemetery.
The cemetery removes the bodies from its mausoleum every year to make room for the recently deceased.
But the living deceased must give permission for their loved ones to be displayed inside display cases; many have chosen to cremate the mummified bodies.
Researchers investigating mummification have not found a pattern for how or why bodies were mummified, a process that involves embalming or drying the body of a deceased person.
The San Bernardo municipal cemetery first unearthed a mummified body in 1963 and in the late 1980s found 50 preserved bodies each year.
The bodies were completely preserved, leading many to wonder if it was the residents’ diet and active agricultural lifestyle that contributed to the slowing of decomposition.
A mummy from the mausoleum of Saint Bernard has been preserved without the need for any chemical treatment that would be carried out during the mummification process
They reported that all the bodies came from different areas of the cemetery and were in different age and gender groups.
‘When all this started, people were a little incredulous about what was happening; “They thought they were going to be isolated events,” museum guide Rocío Vergara told AFP.
“As time went on, it became more and more common to find bodies in these conditions,” he said.
At first, scientists thought that mummification could be due to the people’s healthy diet and active agricultural culture, but a person who was brought to the area from Bogotá, a city about 40 miles from San Bernardo, contradicted this possibility.
Now researchers are turning to one of the only possibilities they have left: the heat from the burial vaults combined with the elevated cemetery could mimic a furnace.
However, anthropologist Daniela Betancourt of the National University of Colombia said it could be due to the steep slope of the mountain.
‘The wind blows constantly because it is hot.
“You can assume that the vaults work like an oven… they dehydrate you,” anthropologist Daniela Betancourt of the National University of Colombia told AFP.
“There has been a lack of studies on what is happening and what specific conditions are causing people to mummify,” he said, adding that the theory will still need to be tested.
Regardless of the reason, some residents are glad their loved ones’ bodies have been preserved.
“Most people who lose their parents bury them or cremate them and never get to see them again,” resident Pabón told the New York Post in 2022, and said he visited his father’s remains every two weeks in 2015 after his body was found.
“But if I miss him, I can see him at any time and he is exactly what he was in life,” he added.
