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The hair of the mummy 2,000 years old along with artifacts from textiles is helping scientists figure out the diet in the weeks or months before they die.
A chemical analysis of the mummy's hair shows ancient people who lived in the south coast, Peru today are able to eat corn, beans, animals and plants in the sea before dying.
Professor of Anthropology at the research center at the University of Arizona Bioarchaeological Mr. Kelly Knudson, said: "We can study the hair to understand diet because hair simply create from what they we eat ".
Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello mummies found in 1925 during excavations discovered Paracas Necropolis of Wari Kayan, two burial site located in southern Peru.
Many archaeologists have studied the clothing, textile and dyeing cloth made of wool, cotton and crops were buried with mummies.
Mr. Kelly Knudson said: "The garment has been sent to museums around the world to study. But we do not really understand much about the people of that time."
Knudson and colleagues examined the mummy's hair to detect the diet of the ancient Wari Kayan people. Researchers income hair samples from 14 individuals buried in Paracas Necropolis and two other artifacts made from human hair in museums in Peru and the United States.
The researchers said that human hair grows slowly about 1 cm within 4 weeks. According to Knudson by methodological distance from the scalp to the ends, they can learn to eat what the people at that time in a few weeks or months before death.
Moreover, about 45% carbon hair and about 14% nitrogen by weight of the body. Thus, by analyzing the different isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the hair, the researchers can determine which foods to eat there in the mummy.
"The nitrogen isotopes reflect the deceased had seafood consumption," Knudson said. High nitrogen isotope values if predatory animals. These fisheries or marine plants have a higher value terrestrial species.
The hair of the mummy have nitrogen isotope values very high. This indicates that they may eat plants or animals from the sea.
Most plants like beans and fruits contain more carbon 3, while the few plants like corn produces carbon 4. According to the analysis, the mummies have eaten a general regime of both carbon 3 and 4
Besides, scientists are also studying plans to detect whether they have a beer before you die or not based on the kind of hair and buried with mummies.
The content is based on the reference implementation source from Live Science, a scientific paper online news born in 2004. Live Science specialist news of scientific breakthroughs, research projects and strange events from around the world
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