WEBVTT - Can Copper Create Mummies? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:10.719 Lauren Bogel Bomb. Here. Imagine opening a dusty box shelved 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.080 away in a research facility. Inside you see some small bones, 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:18.279 a few antique artifacts, and a tiny mummified hand colored 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.360 an eerie shade of green. Would you shriek in terror? 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.120 Would you worry it was a harbinger of some terrible curse? 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:26.400 Would you at least see if the mummified hand could 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:30.120 grant you a wish or to remove the literary shock value? 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.959 And that's precisely the dilemma that presented itself in two 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.839 thousand five, when two biological anthropologists at Hungary's University of 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.760 Zaged investigated a box filled with small bones and the 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.879 mummified hand of a human baby found in central Hungary. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.280 Though discovered in a medieval cemetery, the remains of the baby, 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:50.120 either premature, miscarried, or stillborn, according to the researchers, date 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.680 back to only the second half of the nineteenth century. 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.360 But how was the baby's hand mummified and why wasn't 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.640 the rest of its body equally preserved. To answer this mystery, 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.520 the searchers looked to the artifacts found alongside these human remains, 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.960 A small ceramic pot and corroded copper coin were part 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.720 of the burial package. The researchers found that the copper 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.080 coin exactly fit in the baby's hand, and surmised the 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.880 copper from the coin leached into and preserved the organic material. 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.199 Their findings were published in a paper in the journal 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:24.800 Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. The paper details that the mummified 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:28.119 hand contained copper levels four hundred and ninety seven times 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.199 higher than would be expected, and that another baby found 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:33.680 at the site, buried without a coin, did not show 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.520 similar mummification. The outhers wrote in the paper, according to 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.520 ethnographic references, newborns who died without being baptized were rolled 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:43.920 up in some sort of textile and buried in a pot, 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.400 for example, a milk jug or small wooden box, and 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.440 abandoned cemeteries usually located close to the ruins of medieval churches. 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.640 They also point out that low value coins were occasionally 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.000 placed next to or in the hands of a corpse 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.560 as an offering to the afterlife. In its metallic form 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.400 is anti microbial and can rapidly kill bacteria, yeasts, and viruses. 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:08.840 Ancient civilizations knew of copper's microub fighting powers. In fact, 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.239 one of the oldest books ever discovered is an ancient 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:14.840 Egyptian medical text known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus. Dating 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.360 back to between d and b C. It describes using 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.080 copper to sterilize chest wounds and drinking water, and the 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.280 practice continues to this day. Researchers proposed in two thousand 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.280 nine using special copper drinking vessels to sterilize water in 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.040 areas where other antibacterial medicines and applications are less common. 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:40.920 Today's episode was written by Christopher Hauseiotas and produced by 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:43.520 Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.720 long lasting topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:58.440 dot com.