Frankenstein-corpses speculated to merge lines of descent

SOUTH UIST, SCOTLAND --- Archaeologists discovered mummies off the coast of Scotland. The corpses have resemblance to a 'Frankenstein-like composition', which speculates the theory that different ancestries were combined to a single lineage

In 2001, the bodies were first lifted from the ground underneath a 3,000-year-old roundhouse on an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland called South Uist. According to the researchers, the site was once very populated during the Bronze Age (2200 B.C. to 800 B.C.). The roundhouse, one of three discovered, is located in the prehistoric village of Cladh Hallan close to the modern graveyard.

The researcher team found what were apparently the remains of a teenage girl and a 3-year-old child at the site. However, they discovered two other bodies that look different than the others: the remains of a man and a woman found that were laid in a fetal positions or crouch burial position. Researchers are quoted saying, "as if they had been tightly wrapped up, reminiscent of "mummy bundles" seen in South America and other parts of the world". The report says that the two bodies were still "articulated", meaning to say that they are still in the same positions as they were in life. Evidences how that the sinew and most probably the skin were still holding them together when they were buried. Carbon tests revealed that these remains were buried up to 600 years after death, which let the researchers concluded that it must had been on purpose, since the remains of animals which are also buried at the same site were decayed.

Another evidence is the fact that the bones were entombed in acidic surroundings like peat bogs, that would have stopped microbes from decomposing the bodies. However interesting the bodies may seem, researchers have found a strange discovery. the man's remains were composed of bones from three different people: the torso and limbs of one man, the skull and neck of another, and the lower jaw from a third, probably taken of a woman - and according to Sheffield University's Prof Mike Parker Pearson said the composite were assembled at different times. 

According to Yahoo!News, mummification apparently took off in Britain about 1500 B.C. "at a time when land ownership — communal rather than private, most likely — was being marked by the construction of large-scale field systems," Parker-Pearson told LiveScience. "Rights to land would have depended on ancestral claims, so perhaps having the ancestors around 'in the flesh' was their prehistoric equivalent of a legal document."

"Merging different body parts of ancestors into a single person could represent the merging of different families and their lines of descent," Parker-Pearson, one of the researchers, said. "Perhaps this was a prelude to building the row of houses in which numerous different families are likely to have lived."

In another interview with BBC, Parker-Pearson explained that "I don't believe these 'mummies' were buried immediately, but played an active part in society, as they do in some tribal societies in other parts of the world."

He said as part of ancestral worship, the mummies probably would have been asked for spiritual advice to help the community make decisions.

Mr. Parker-Pearson said he believed there may be more examples of deliberate mummification in Britain that have been missed by archaeologists up until now.