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This presentations examines a group of five mummies that were not prepared for the journey to the afterlife but rather preserved and exhibited for commercial enterprise, the sideshow. The study originally comprised five episodes of a forty episode series, «The Mummy Road Show» broadcast on the National Geographic Channel in the United States and internationally. A brief history of the sideshow will be presented to demonstrate the mummies’ roles in the development of that unique segment of the entertainment industry. The method of embalming will be discussed from both its historical context and ability to preserve internal organs. The use of conventional radiography, computed tomography and videoendoscopy to examine the skeletons and well preserved internal organs will be considered in an attempt to substantiate or refute the stories associated with each mummy. In addition, an autopsy conducted on one of the mummies will be correlated to the imaging studies.

Human Chagas disease is a purely accidental occurrence. As humans came into contact with the natural foci of infection might then have become infected as a single addition to the already extensive host range of Trypanosoma cruzi that includes other primates. Thus began a process of adaptation and domiciliation to human habitations through which the vectors had direct access to abundant food as well as protection from climatic changes and predators. Our work deals with the extraction and specific amplification by polymerase chain reaction of T. cruzi DNA obtained from mummified human tissues and the positive diagnosis of Chagas disease in a series of 4,000-year-old Pre-Hispanic human mummies from the northern coast of Chile. The area has been inhabited at least for 7,000 years, first by hunters, fishers and gatherers, and then gradually by more permanent settlements. The studied specimens belonged to the Chinchorro culture, a people inhabiting the area now occupied by the modern city of Arica. These were essentially fishers with a complex religious ideology, which accounts for the preservation of their dead in the way of mummified bodies, further enhanced by the extremely dry conditions of the desert. Chinchorro mummies are, perhaps, the oldest preserved bodies known to date.

Consumption of alcoholic beverages has occurred for millennia. Sugar is common in most natural fruit juices and our ancestors likely discovered the fermentation process accidentally. Many indigenous populations developed their own fermented drink, which varied depending on local ingredients. In the Andean region, a cloudy beer called Chicha was the favored fermented beverage. Very little direct evidence is known concerning the pre-Hispanic pattern of use. When alcohol was introduced in this society in a widespread manner is also unknown. A direct alcohol marker would enhance our understanding of ancient use as it has with other drugs. Fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE’s) have been identified as metabolic products of ethyl alcohol in modern hair and recently tests have become available for their detection. This preliminary study was undertaken to determine if FAEE’s could be found in mummy hair to serve as markers of alcohol exposure.