The mummified remains of a village chief in Papua New Guinea have undergone a transformation, aiding members of his clan in connecting with his spirit in the “ghost world.”
The mummy, once a former shaman and warrior named Moimango, endured the elements over the past several decades, causing his body to deteriorate. However, scientists successfully restored Moimango’s body using materials sourced from the jungle.
The researchers also gained insights into the precise techniques employed in the creation of smoked mummies, as mentioned by study co-author Ronald Beckett, a professor emeritus and bioanthropologist at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
Perched high above the village of Koke, on a cliff sheltered by a small overhang, rest the mummified remains of several departed members of the Anga clan. The village, located in the Aseki region of Papua New Guinea, occupies a secluded area between the highlands—experiencing an influx of foreigners due to gold mining—and the coast, which maintains contact with the outside world through its ports.
Beckett initially became aware of these mummies through photojournalist Ulla Lohmann, who had made multiple visits to Koke. The clan leader, a man named Gemtasu, sought to improve the condition of his father Moimango’s remains. Moimango had been mummified in the 1950s, and Gemtasu aimed to restore his father’s body in the hope of reviving the cultural practice of smoking mummies, a tradition discouraged by missionaries for decades.
Mummies serve as markers for the Anga’s territory. Relatives, like Gemtasu, often consult with their departed loved ones for guidance and include them in celebrations. According to Beckett, being able to see the face of the departed loved one is crucial for this process.
According to the Anga, individuals of significance whose bodies are not properly cared for may wander the jungle as spirits and potentially disrupt hunting or agriculture, Beckett explained.
“The ghost world—that’s a very, very real thing to them,” Beckett said.
Mummy Restoration
The passage of time had not been kind to Moimango. His jaw was dislodged, and his head was sagging dangerously, on the verge of falling off. Lichens had infiltrated his body, and at one point, a rodent had burrowed into Moimango’s side, creating a nest inside, as explained by Beckett.
Beckett and his colleague, Andrew Nelson of the University of Western Ontario in Canada, wanted the Anga people to be capable of maintaining the restorations themselves. So, in 2008, the team arrived and requested villagers to identify suitable restoration materials from the jungle.
“I went to Papua New Guinea with practically nothing other than some examination tools,” Beckett recounted.
The team utilized bark cloth known as tapa to patch and support various body parts, including the jaw and the head. They employed heated sap from the kumaka tree as glue. To address the lichens permeating Moimango, the team applied a lime-based substance called suca, made from crushed shells, which shares the same pH as bleach. Additionally, they touched up the ocher clay on the body and restored some of the other mummies on the cliff.
The locally sourced materials proved to be highly effective.
Upon witnessing the final results, “Gemtasu was very pleased — he started to cry, he started to sing, he started to dance, he took my hand,” Beckett said.
Two years later, when the team returned, Moimango was still in good condition, and the lichens had not grown back.
Smoking the body
The team also mummified a forest pig to understand how the smoking process worked.
Here’s how the villagers mummified loved ones: First, they scraped the bodies with a bristly plant before placing it in a hut filled with smoke for 30 days. A bamboo pipe served as an anal spigot to evacuate the gut contents, and bodily fluids leached out of tiny holes poked in the hands and feet that were massaged by villagers.
Finally, villagers slathered the bodies with ocher, a clay-like form of iron oxide, which further wicked moisture from the body and created a capsule to protect the mummifying remains from the elements.
Even in the sweltering conditions of Papua New Guinea, which normally accelerate the decomposition of corpses, the process worked remarkably well, Beckett said. The smoke creates a hostile environment for bacteria and prevents insects from laying eggs in the body. Arsenic in the smoke also acts as a preservative, Beckett said.
Though the process may seem strange to those unfamiliar with it, the spiritual belief underlying it — that the physical remains of the dead person are a way to communicate with them — isn’t all that different from Western mourners leaving flowers on the grave of a loved one or going to a cemetery to talk to their deceased relatives, Beckett said.