Acidification of Chinchorro

Having survived 8,000 years, the Chinchorro found in modern-day Chile and Peru have started decaying more quickly than ever before. Sometimes even melting into gelatinous The Chinchorro , the oldest manmade ones in the world, originate with the Chinchorro people, who preserved their dead by filling the bodies with fiber and straw. Unlike the Egyptians, the Chinchorro mummified all of their dead. Hundreds of these mummies are still buried in Chilean valleys, where they are often uncovered by construction. However, upon the scavenge, hundred of people died of inhaling poison gas emitted from the Chinchorro. The decaying problem began with them that should be been kept most safe inside of a sacred tomb untouched. The survivors noticed the decay accelerating over the past decade. So they decided to bring in scientists who determined that the cause was bacteria. But they had survived thousands of years already. Why did bacteria suddenly take a liking to them now?

The ideal humidity for the mummies turns out to be high. Too high and they rot; too low and acidification can happen. That's good to know for a museum with climate control, but a changing climate could spell doom for the hundreds of Chinchorro. They have survived for so long, but they may not survive the humidity. Many protest against this project but none care about it. They stayed remarkably well preserved for millennia, during the past decade many of the Chinchorro have begun to rapidly degrade. It remained as one of the many mysteries around threatened cultural heritage artifacts. The scientist in charged isolated microbes present in the samples of both the degrading skin and uncompromised skin. But since there was only a limited amount of Chinchorro skin, they needed a surrogate for the next step: culturing the organisms in the lab and testing them to see what happened when the samples were exposed to different humidity levels. The next day, the scientists went missing along with their research and never to be heard again.