Ron Oldfield and Jana Jones, Author provided Here you can see the individual ‘resin’-impregnated fibres. Pine resin, plant gum or sugar, aromatic plant extract, plant wax and natural petroleum (an oil seep) were mixed into a base of fat or oil. They had not just been mixed together, but heated at high temperatures. The chemistry showed that the toffee-like residues were actually complex This followed a number of unsuccessful attempts by other investigators.īuckley used mass spectrometry, an analytical technique that measures the mass of compounds with very high precision and accuracy. University of York biochemist Stephen Buckley, who has unique knowledge of ancient, aged and often degraded organic compounds from his previous work with mummies, was able to identify the embalming mixtures. Only about 12 biochemical analyses of embalming substances have ever been carried out. We were very fortunate to be allowed to take 92 samples back to Macquarie for textile and resin analysis, and micro and macro photography. I traced the textiles to the Bolton Museum in Bolton, UK, and examined them under the microscope with my colleague and award-winning microscopist Ron Oldfield. When they were excavated, it was the first glimpse of a previously unknown prehistoric civilisation, which predated anything known at the time. Some had only 50 graves, others 200, for a total of about 600. The sites consisted of clusters of small cemeteries.
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