National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead (1998)

[bunniefuu]

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

Death always gets the final word -

no matter how we mock it.

Sworn to eternal silence,

the Dead seem beyond our reach.

Yet to some scientists,

they speak volumes.

"When I look at a mummy,

I'm looking at an encyclopedia."

Through the lens of modern science,

the grave has become

a window on the past.

Today we can learn intimate details

about how the Ancients lived-

and how they died.

"...that's really, that's, that's

really a common way that they did it -

the strangulation

or blows to the head..."

Bit by bit, their portraits emerge

from flesh, bone, and DNA.

"Bringing the people back to life,

I think that that's the fun part of it."

The unearthing of the past reveals

the tangled roots of our family tree.

But some see only the desecration

of their ancestors.

"They must be put back into

the bosom of sacred Mother Earth."

As the Living defend the Dead,

battle lines are drawn.

In truth, those who passed here

long ago still dwell among us.

From fragile remains,

their life stories unfold.

And as we hear them,

they become a part of us all.

Listen now to the voices

of the Dead.

This is the driest place on earth:

the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Life has found a foothold here:

not in the blazing sands,

but in the slender river valleys

that stretch across the desert

from the Andes to the sea.

The city of Arica stands where

two rivers meet the Pacific Ocean.

Countless generations of fishermen

have thrived here,

and many families have deep roots.

Whenever ground is broken,

there's a good chance

these roots may come to light.

The city's arid soil has yielded

several ancient burials,

to the delight of scientists

from the local university.

But physical anthropologist

Bernardo Arriaza,

now with the University of Nevada,

will never forget a visit

to a site where the water company

was digging trenches.

I remembered in 1983,

it was a quiet day

when the water company called us.

They said they had

found something unusual,

so that really caught our interest.

"And we get called all the time,

and you never know

what you're going to find,

so that's also

the exciting part of going.

You don't know

what it's going to be.

And this time it was quite

incredible, actually."

The shovels had exposed a plot

of nearly a hundred mummies.

Some would be dated to

of ancient Egypt.

Eerie masks were sculpted

over their faces.

Wigs were glued

directly to their skulls.

Bodies were completely made over-

paste and paint on the outside,

grasses and earth within.

Men, women and children

were mummified.

Even this eight inch long fetus.

These elaborate mummies were created

by a people called the Chinchorro.

They lived along the coast

in simple huts,

and left little behind-

no monuments, no written texts.

But from their bones and artifacts,

Arriaza has compiled a profile of

their lifestyle.

"The Chinchorro people were fishermen.

They fished from the rocks

with fish hooks made of shells.

They also collected shellfish

and hunted sea lions with harpoons.

And they wove beautiful nets

to gather their food.

Their clothing and ornaments

were minimal.

All their emphasis went into

mummifying the dead"

Why would a simple people

transform their dead

into such elaborate creations?

Arriaza has a theory.

"Someone is being mummified,

it's a lot of energy investment,

it's a lot of caring.

Even the fetuses are fascinating.

Why? Because they have long hair,

they have the mouth open.

That's conveying life.

"We tend to see our dead

as someone that's farther away.

We don't want to see the dead

with open eyes-

no, you think, wow,

that would scare me.

You want to see the dead

completely dead.

In the case of the Chinchorro,

they're seeing the dead

as part of the living."

Virtual works of art, their mummies

were not intended for the grave.

They played an important role

in the very heart of the community.

The mummy was an honored emissary who

moved between this world and the next-

sending word to the ancestors,

interceding before the gods.

The people rendered thanks

with songs and offerings.

Mummification helped ease the loss

of a loved one,

and strengthened bonds

between the living.

It made the community whole again.

Such rituals may have quelled the

awful fear of what lies beyond death-

no less a mystery 7,000 years ago

than today.

One of the earliest expressions

of the human spirit,

death rites date back at least

Even the Neanderthals buried

one of their own

beneath a blanket of flowers.

Every culture on earth

has evolved rituals

to bid a final farewell to the dead.

Some consign the body to

the embrace of the earth.

Others ensure the release

of the soul through fire.

In today's crowded world,

the practice of cremation is on the

rise wherever land is at a premium.

We even send our dead into space.

For about the cost of

a terrestrial burial,

a company in Texas will load

a container of ashes on a small rocket.

After orbiting for several years,

the ashes eventually fall into

Earth's atmosphere and vaporize,

like a tiny sh**ting star.

It's a fitting twenty-

first century sendoff...

but would have been unthinkable

in one of the greatest civilizations

the Earth has ever known.

The ancient Egyptians believed

the body had to last forever.

Without it,

the deceased could not rise again

in the next world

to enjoy eternal life.

To prevent decay, the bodies of

the dead were drained of moisture,

and reduced to the consistency

of leather.

Everyone wanted to be mummified.

There may have been cut-rate

embalming for the poor,

first-class treatment for the rich.

Even animals were mummified,

to accompany the dead

on their final journey.

Over some thirty centuries,

countless mummies were made.

But countless were also destroyed.

Almost from the moment they were sealed,

the Pyramids and nearly

every other well-

appointed tomb were ransacked

by thieves.

Kings or commoners, bodies were

hacked apart and left in tatters.

Things got worse when Europe

developed a taste for mummies.

By the 12th century,

they were imported by the ton

to be ground up and mixed

in potions purported to cure

everything from headaches to impotence.

In 1798, Napoleon's campaign

spawned a new wave of "mummy-mania."

Over the next century,

hundreds were dissected

both in laboratories

and at fashionable unwrapping parties.

The supply seemed endless.

Mummies made

cheap fertilizer and fuel.

In the 19th century,

trains from Cairo burned stacks of them

to power their steam boilers.

Our fascination with mummies continued

unabashed well into the 20th century.

"Is it dead or alive?

Human or inhuman?

You'll know. You'll see.

You'll feel the awful,

creeping crawling terror

that stands your hair on end

and brings a scream to your lips!

The Mummy!"

Today, Egypt's mummies are treated

as fragile time capsules.

Science now has the tools to explore

their secrets without destroying them.

"Take this side off right here."

Researchers can coax clues

about daily life 3,000 years ago

from the tiniest samples

of tissue and bone.

Egyptologist Bob Brier,

of Long Island University,

knows more than most about mummies.

But just how a mummy became a mummy

was a question that irked him for years.

"The party line

among Egyptologists was always,

'Oh we know how they did it,

they removed the brain through the nose,

they removed the internal organs.

We know pretty much how they did it.'

But there's no papyrus

that tells how to mummify a human.

The Egyptians never wrote down

how they did it.

It was a secret,

probably a trade secret."

A brief description was recorded by

Greek historian Herodotus around 450 BC.

For Brier,

it was not the final word.

I started to do

a mental mummification,

trying to just imagine exactly

what happened.

At some point I realized,

the only way we'll ever really

find out is to do it."

In 1994, Brier set about to perform

the first Egyptian-

style mummification

in two thousand years.

In Cairo, he tracked down

the embalming spices

mentioned by Herodotus,

including frankincense and myrrh.

He would also need special equipment.

"We had to have replica tools

made of all the instruments

we thought the embalmers used.

So for example,

we had to have obsidian,

an obsidian blade flaked by somebody

in the Southwest

who knew how to do this.

We had to have a silversmith

make bronze tools

just like ancient Egyptian

bronze tools."

"Not since the time of Sneferu

has its like been done.

Now I'm a little bigger than

the average Egyptian..."

Copying ancient designs,

Brier built an embalming board

for the elevation of the corpse

and drainage of fluids.

"And I'll tell you,

it might be good for the dead,

but it's not good for the living."

With his colleague Ronald Wade, at the

University of Maryland Medical School,

Brier would mummify a man

who had donated his remains to science.

"There were quite a few surprises

along the way

as we did the mummification.

One was in removing the brain.

Everybody always thought that

you kind of pull the brain out

a piece at a time through the nose,

at least that's how

all the articles say it was done.

We tried it,

it didn't come out that way."

"What we figured out,

what the Ancient Egyptians did was

they inserted a long hook

and then moved it around,

using it like a whisk.

And then broke down the brain until-

it was almost like

a, a milk shake consistency,

and then turned the cadaver

upside down, and then the brain ran out.

That's how they did it."

Internal organs were removed through an

incision made with an obsidian blade -

sharp as any modern scalpel.

Then the body was covered with

several hundred of pounds of natron -

a naturally occurring salt,

Brier had imported from Egypt.

Internal organs

were treated separately.

Left in place for about a month,

the natron was supposed to leach

all moisture from the body.

For Brier,

the suspense was overwhelming.

"What would we get?

Would it look like a mummy?

Or would it need another 3,000 years

before it looked like the things

in the museums?"

"One of the things

that was really almost shocking

was when we took the natron off,

we had a mummy."

A striking demonstration

that people are mostly water,

the body would shrink from more than

"What are the oils in it, Bob?"

"The oils are frankincense, myrrh oil,

palm oil, lotus oil, and cedar oil.

There are five that I got."

Brier anointed the body with oils

considered sacred by the Egyptians,

then began wrapping.

"Nice and tight."

Accurate to the last detail,

he used more than a hundred yards

of pure linen

inscribed with Egyptian spells.

Internal organs were placed

in replica funerary jars,

created by local college students.

"It's been perfumed

and now it's going to be wrapped

and we place it inside the jar."

"A lot of people don't realize

that we did the project

not to get the mummy,

but to get knowledge.

And the project isn't over.

Our mummy, it seems,

is what we say, dead and well.

He's been at room temperature

now for about two years,

no signs of decay, it's stable.

So we think we did it right.

But he's still being used

in research projects around the world.

We get requests for tissue samples,

from people doing studies

on ancient Egyptian mummies.

This is the only mummy in the world

for which we know exactly

what was done to him.

It's the only, so to speak,

ancient Egyptian mummy that

we have a full medical record on.

So it's an important mummy."

If only in the annals of science,

Brier's mummy has achieved immortality-

a fate the Egyptians

would surely have approved.

The quest for eternal life

still goes on today-

just in a different form.

Cryonics involves freezing the body

in liquid nitrogen

immediately after death.

Practitioners have faith

that scientists of the future

will have the know-how to revive them.

The sad truth is the human body-

about two thirds water,

plus a few basic chemicals-

is simply not built to last.

Exposed in warm weather,

a corpse could be reduced to

a skeleton in a matter of weeks.

Underground, or underwater, the

process usually takes somewhat longer.

Bone may last from months

to millennia.

But when conditions are just right,

Nature makes mummies.

In northwest China, near the route

of the fabled Silk Road,

the searing sands have yielded

more than a hundred heat-

dried mummies.

Surprisingly, they have

the features of Caucasians,

and date back

two to four thousand years.

Many must have lived

in the region centuries

before the opening of

the Silk Road around 200 BC.

Scholars had long been puzzled

by ancient Chinese texts

describing figures of great height,

with red or yellow hair.

Cave paintings in the region lent

credence to the accounts,

but the discovery of the mummies adds

an important piece to the puzzle.

Their existence suggests

foreign traders settled in China

much earlier than previously believed.

The bogs of northern Europe

have long inspired legends-

among them the "boogie-man."

Two thousand years ago,

the Celts and their kin believed bogs

were an entrance to

the realm of the gods.

They tossed in tribute

of silver and gold-

and other strange sacrifices.

Bogs are filled with

a natural "embalming fluid",

acidic water low in oxygen

and rich with tannins,

the same chemicals

used to cure leather.

Over time, this brew converts

dead vegetation into peat,

long harvested as a heating fuel.

It also works wonders on bodies.

More than a thousand "bog mummies"

have come to light;

most are some 2,000 years old.

Often, their bones are dissolved,

while their skin is transformed

into a supple leather that retains

a breathtaking impression of life.

Many bog mummies bear signs

of a violent death-

slit throat, strangulation,

or hanging.

Many scholars believe they were

sacrificed to fertility gods

by early farming communities.

They were plunged into the bog,

so the wheat would rise again.

More than 2,500 years ago,

the Altai mountains of Siberia

were home to a nomadic people

called the Pazyryk.

They lived by the horse,

and moved great herds across the land

in search of pasture.

Horses were their measure

of wealth and status.

The Pazyryk buried their dead in

chambers dug deep into the icy earth.

In 1993, Russian archeologists

opened an undisturbed chamber.

First, they found the remains of

six horses k*lled by blows to the head.

Surely, they thought, this must be

the tomb of a powerful man.

The coffin itself was

completely sealed in ice.

To everyone's surprise,

it contained a young woman-

her features gone,

but her body intact.

Tattoos of mythical creatures

adorned her sturdy hands.

Was she a Priestess? Warrior? Healer?

Her identity eludes us,

but she provides a new image of women

in this ancient culture.

On the west coast of Greenland,

a rocky cove once harbored

an Eskimo village,

home to a people called the Inuit.

Some five hundred years ago,

misfortune struck here,

and eight bodies were laid

to rest in a dry, sheltering cave.

Cause of death remains a mystery.

But these freeze? dried mummies,

in superb fur clothing,

rank as one of the most spectacular

archeological finds

from the arctic region.

The frozen heights of the Andes

preserve a record of the past.

Five hundred years ago,

the Inca ruled these highlands,

and worshiped the mountains as gods.

Traces of their sacred sites are

scattered throughout the peaks.

For nearly two decades,

anthropologist Johan Reinhard

has sought out the high altitude

sites of the Inca.

But in September 1995,

he first climbed Mount Ampato in Peru

with a different goal in mind.

"Ampato's been a peak

that's always been a mystery.

It's always stood out there and people

haven't really climbed it very often

and haven't seen much

that's been on it."

"And the idea was just to get

some pictures of another volcano

that was erupting nearby,

never really thinking we'd find

anything on the summit.

Now the reason for that is is that

it's never been seen

without a permanent

snow-capped summit."

The eruption had showered

Ampato with dark ash.

Even at more than 20,000 feet,

much of the snow had melted.

When my assistant, Miguel Zarate,

and I, we reached the summit,

I was taking some notes when

Miguel just continued on and,

all of a sudden,

gave a whistle and pointed.

And I looked and, sure enough, it was

clear from even, forty, fifty feet away,

that there were feathers

sticking out of the slope."

They adorned three Inca figurines

once buried, now exposed by a rockslide.

"We were still looking down the slope

and very quickly saw this bundle,

laying right out on the ice.

I asked Miguel to pick it up

and move it a bit.

And as he did, all of a sudden

we were looking into the face

of this dead young woman."

Mummified by the cold,

she had been sacrificed and buried

on the mountaintop

some five hundred years ago.

When her rocky tomb collapsed,

her face was exposed to the sun.

But her body was

intact-skin, muscle, bone,

even the blood in her veins

frozen solid.

Scientists estimate she was twelve

to fourteen years old when she died.

Never before had

the richly patterned clothing

of an Inca noble woman

come to light.

She is probably

the best-preserved mummy

ever discovered in the Americas.

In May 1996, the Maiden is flown,

still frozen,

to Johns Hopkins University

in Baltimore.

A state-of-the-art CAT scanner

produces a detailed three-dimensional

image of her body.

Her strong bones and teeth,

well-formed muscles and internal organs

speak volumes about

Inca nutrition and health.

It's a stunning sight for the man

who carried her down the mountain.

Then Johan Reinhard learns

the secret of the Maiden's death.

A fatal two-inch fracture

mars her skull.

"You can see it pretty nicely

just rotating it around but, uh,

would it, would it make sense

that she may have been hit by a blow?"

"Absolutely, that's, that's really

a common way that they did it-

the strangulation and blows

to the heads

were, were common ways

to do human sacrifice.

We just didn't see it."

"I kept having visions of what

it was like carrying her in the dark,

with the volcano and snowfall

and everything.

And seeing this modern machinery

and you could look at the screen

and view bones and even organs.

It was just amazing,

she just began to come alive."

To the Inca, human sacrifice

was the ultimate offering,

an act of gratitude when the gods

were generous;

a desperate plea

when they were angry.

Archeologists now know

the Ampato Maiden died

during a long-term volcanic eruption.

The cataclysm could have had

devastating effects on the region.

Daily showers of hot ash.

Air thick with smoke.

Water sources poisoned.

Crops and livestock decimated.

A circle of priests

would have led the Maiden

to the highest reaches

of Mount Ampato.

It was a grueling climb that took days.

She alone shouldered the fate

of her family and her people.

To be thus chosen was a great honor.

In exchange for her life,

she would earn an eternity of bliss

and a place among the gods.

Soon after she died,

the eruption spent itself,

and the snows returned to Ampato,

sealing the Maiden in ice

for the next five centuries.

Even now, she serves her people well.

"She's providing us

with so much information,

that I hope that we are

giving back something to her

by deepening our respect

and understanding for the culture

that she came from,

and the Inca civilization

five hundred years ago."

Across the globe,

another chain of snowy peaks

yields a messenger from the past.

The Alps seem impenetrable

from the air.

But for millennia,

shepherds and traders

have hiked their mountain passes.

Today's trekkers are mostly tourists.

Every year, millions enjoy the alpine

splendors of southern Austria.

In the fall of 1991,

unusual weather turns snow to slush.

On September 19th,

a couple of hikers stray from a marked

trail, hoping to find a shortcut.

Instead, in a melting glacier

at more than 10,000 feet,

they spot something that stops them

in their tracks.

Four days later,

delayed by bad weather,

an Austrian forensic team arrives.

This is not an uncommon sight

in the Alps.

The frozen bodies of mountaineers

are sometimes found decades

after they perish among the peaks.

But this body is so deeply icebound

the team borrows an ice axe

and ski pole from a passing hiker.

Somewhat puzzling

are the scraps of leather

pulled from the slush around the body.

Not to mention the strange artifacts.

Team members conclude this body

has been frozen a very long time.

They turn it over to experts

at the University of Innsbruck.

Still wearing a strange shoe

stuffed with grass,

it's the body of

a 25 to 40 year old man,

shriveled but virtually intact.

Teeth show heavy wear.

Simple blue tattoos

adorn his lower back and legs.

Seventy objects were found

near his body.

A quiver of animal skin

containing fourteen arrows.

A leather waist pouch,

not unlike a "fanny pack."

Bits of leather and grass rope.

A flint dagger.

Most telling, an axe

with an exquisite copper blade.

To archeologists,

the design of the blade

suggests its owner

may have died 4,000 years ago.

It was not the final word.

Skin, bone and grass samples

are sent to four eminent European

laboratories for radiocarbon dating.

All four conclude the Iceman

died about 5,300 years ago-

which makes him the oldest

frozen mummy ever found.

Almost immediately, word gets out.

The University of Innsbruck is overrun,

and a humble man from the Copper Age

becomes an overnight sensation.

Few archeological discoveries have

so completely dominated the headlines.

Nicknamed after the Otztal Alps,

"Otzi" provides endless inspiration

to local entrepreneurs.

Who was he? How did he die?

We may never know.

But his body and artifacts

have begun to yield glimpses

of a lifestyle practiced

more than 5,000 years ago.

X-rays speak of lifelong

physical stress:

broken ribs, heavily worn joints,

arthritis.

In his left foot

With an endoscope,

scientists remove a sample

from the Iceman's stomach

and found remnants of meat and grain-

his last meal.

His lungs made a startling sight,

blackened

by hours spent near open fires,

in close, smoky quarters.

Clinging to tatters of

the Iceman's fur clothing,

grains of primitive wheat suggest

he had passed through a farming

community near harvest time.

Found frozen in the snow

near his body,

a sloe berry also helped pinpoint

the season of his death:

the fruit ripens in early autumn.

At the discovery site, now determined

to be inside the Italian border,

researchers sifted through

six hundred tons of snow.

After days of melting and filtering,

they recovered part

of a plaited grass cloak.

Another fragment,

the upper edge of the cloak,

held hairs that fell from

the Iceman's head after death.

Chemical analysis would show the hair

was heavily coated with copper particles

the kind that are airborne

near the smelting of copper ore.

Not an unusual finding-

if the Iceman was a coppersmith,

or an assistant to one.

Finally, every last inch

of the Iceman's body

became digital information,

in a three? dimensional CAT scan.

This "virtual Iceman"

allows for unlimited study

without risking the fragile,

frozen remains.

It also provides a ghostly

foundation for a skilled artist,

as he resurrects a traveler

from a distant time.

Something drives him

to the heights-trade or duty.

He may be a renegade on the run.

He knows the mountains well,

but fails to heed the warning signs.

Perhaps he has no choice

but to press on.

He climbs higher than the trees,

beyond hope of any kindling to build

a fire against the terrible cold.

In the lee of a rocky ridge,

he'll lay down his belongings

and wait out the night.

He knows that with sleep

comes certain death.

But his senses are already numbed.

His lonely death deprived him

of funeral rites by his people.

But this everyday man,

frozen in time on his way somewhere,

has helped write a new chapter

on daily life in prehistoric Europe.

In southwest England,

Somerset is a region of limestone

cliffs and deep gorges.

Home to some 3,000 people,

the town of Cheddar is known

not just for its namesake cheese,

but for a series of spectacular caves

sculpted by an underground river.

Some 9,000 years ago,

Ice Age hunters camped here,

and left one of their dead

in the damp darkness.

Today a replica of "Cheddar Man"

marks the spot.

He lived before the age of farming,

when bears and wolves roamed the land.

The oldest complete skeleton

found in England,

it seems Cheddar Man died of

head injuries around age 40.

In 1996, a fragment

from his tooth was analyzed

by scientists at Oxford University.

The ancient bone

yielded traces of DNA.

A tiny fraction of Cheddar Man's

genetic fingerprint was revealed.

A local television producer

decided to test whether

any of Cheddar Man's descendants

were still living in the area today.

The high school became involved

in his experiment.

Students from local families

were asked to donate DNA samples.

Why are those two unpopular

and who are they unpopular with?

History teacher Adrian Targett,

himself a native of

the Somerset region,

helped coordinate the volunteers.

A simple cheek swab was all it took

to collect the necessary cells

for DNA analysis.

To make up an even twenty,

Targett donated a sample, too.

At Oxford University,

the DNA was parsed and sorted.

Within weeks, results were in.

"On the basis of what we've got here,

that would be an identical match

which would mean that they had

a common maternal ancestor.

So, who do we match this up with?

Let's see..."

"Number 12."

"Number 12, so who's number 12?"

On a Friday afternoon, the volunteers

were assembled to hear the news.

"You're all agog, no doubt,

to know who it is?

Who is related to the cave man

found in Cheddar? Yes?

What would it feel like

if it was one of you?

Because it's probably going to be

of interest to people

all over the world that there is

a link, over 9,000 years,

to this person found in the cave.

Think you could stand the publicity

and visits to California and wherever?

Yes? So, who is it?

It's Adrian Targett!"

"Thank you very much!"

"This is the man that's

closest related to Cheddar Man."

"I'm overwhelmed!"

"How do you feel about that?"

"A bit surprised! I was just about,

about to say, 'I hope it's not me!"'

"Adrian, what was your instant

reaction when you were told that

you had this amazing line

back 9,000 years to a caveman?"

"Well, it was a great shock,

but then I realized

that was why I had been put in next to

the person who was doing the filming."

The study of "dead DNA"?

is becoming a powerful tool

for unraveling relationships

long buried in the past.

It can help illuminate patterns of

gene flow between ancient populations,

or family ties among rulers

in a bygone dynasty.

DNA gave this man the oldest

documented pedigree in the world.

But there's more to it

for Adrian Targett.

It's essentially about our roots

and connections and families,

and I think, at heart, most people

want to know more about themselves,

where they come from, and of course

this story does just that."

The goal of archeology is

to understand our past.

Much of what we know about

long vanished peoples

comes from the excavation

of their graves.

This work has shed light

on the very roots of humanity.

But it has also disturbed

the sacred sites of earlier cultures.

In recent years, the collecting

and handling of human remains

have become more controversial,

as native peoples around the world

demand a new respect

for their ancestors.

The conflict is especially heated

in North America.

In the last century, countless Indian

burials have been stripped bare.

Today, museums and institutes

across the United States

house the remains of

some 300,000 Native Americans.

In 1927, this thousand-year-old

burial site in Illinois

was opened to the public.

The Dickson Mounds Museum

would prosper.

But in the 1980s,

Native Americans registered complaints

about the exposed skeletons.

By the 1990s,

protests were held outside the museum.

"...in our own land.

So this movement,

the American Indian movement,

is said to be first

a spiritual movement."

To political activist

Vernon Bellecourt,

of the Ojibwa tribe,

and to many others,

the burial display

was deeply disturbing.

"We practice our spiritual

way of life.

We still have our language,

our prayer songs and,

and many of us who follow

the traditional teachings of our,

of our grandfathers and grandmothers,

we then take exception

when we see our burial sites being

desecrated and the physical remains

of our ancestors

who are in an open burial pit

for tourists and others to witness.

We decided to take

some direct action."

In 1991, Bellecourt and four

other activists were forcibly removed

from the museum for attempting

to rebury the skeletons.

One year later, museum officials

closed the display,

and completely covered it with earth.

Under a law passed in 1990,

federally funded institutions

have begun to return Indian remains

to their tribes.

Native peoples

in Australia, New Zealand,

Africa and elsewhere are calling

for similar policies.

Across time and space,

the voices of the dead still reach us-

in the most surprising ways.

In 1991, a British housewife purchased

a book at an antique market

near her home

in the town of Bromsgrove.

Since childhood,

Elizabeth Knight had been captivated

by Native American culture.

Her new book included a 1920s essay

about an Indian chief

who visited London-

and never returned home.

It was the story of Chief Long Wolf.

Legend has it, he was a seasoned Sioux

warrior who fought at Little Big Horn.

Documents suggest he was one of

several Indian "prisoners of w*r"

released by the US Government

to the custody of Buffalo Bill Cody.

In 1892, Cody's Wild West Show

toured Europe.

Chief Long Wolf, at age 59,

was the oldest performer in the troupe.

In London, the show was applauded

by Queen Victoria.

But Long Wolf developed pneumonia.

As he lay dying,

he asked his wife to take his body

back to the land of his ancestors.

But on June 13th, he was buried,

under the sign of the wolf,

in London's Brompton Cemetery.

His wife and child returned home.

In time, his gravesite was forgotten.

The chief's final wish

touched Elizabeth deeply.

"I had the book for

a couple of weeks and,

I put the book back

on the shelf several times,

but eventually I had to take it down

and said to my husband,

'I'll have to do something about this

because it's really bothering me."'

Some 35,000 gravestones rise

from the grounds of Brompton Cemetery.

On May 1, 1992, Elizabeth

searched the aisles

until she found the weathered wolf.

"I made a vow to try and help him.

To try and find his family, because I

knew his spirit would forever wander."

Half a world away, in Tempe, Arizona,

Long Wolf was far from forgotten.

A retired mechanic, John Black Feather

was born and raised in South Dakota,

not far from the site of Wounded Knee.

John had always known his great

grandfather was buried in London-

but he had no idea exactly where.

"I've been hearing about Long Wolf

ever since I was about five years old.

My mother always talked about

trying to find him but still,

we didn't know how to go

about finding him.

That's like looking for

a needle in a haystack."

In 1992,

John's wife spotted a newspaper

article that changed everything.

Elizabeth Knight's letter

marked the beginning of four years

of planning and fundraising.

"Maybe you should writer her, a letter

to her right away and see what..."

"I always knew that

he would one day come home.

I never thought I'd be involved with

it a hundred years later, but, I did."

September 25th, 1997.

The Black Feather family come to

London to claim one of their own.

"It's not a sad day for us.

It's, it's, it's gonna be like

a great homecoming for him

when we get him back to South Dakota."

For Elizabeth Knight it is a day

of promises kept.

"This is a moment of resolution,

of achievement, and blessing."

"It was the most extraordinary day

of my life.

And I'm sure Long Wolf's spirit

was there."

On September 28th, 1997,

Long Wolf is laid to rest

in a small cemetery in Wolf Creek,

South Dakota.

His descendants reenact

an ancient rite,

this gesture of love beyond death.

More than anything else,

it may be what makes us human.

We all stand on the shoulders

of those who came before us.

We walk in their footsteps.

We live on their graves.

Each time we speak their names,

or honor their ways,

perhaps they do live again.

To be remembered, and nothing more.

That alone may be the secret

to immortality.