Mysteries of the Ancient Dead

To ensure body and spirit remained everlasting, the ancient Egyptians developed elaborate rituals, massive tombs, and magic incantations to entomb their remains. When laying bodies to rest, the Romans were all about processional pomp and grandeur.

A well filled with bones reveals practices from ancient Persia, archaeologists digging in Mongolia uncover a 2000-year-old textile that holds the key to the mystery of an elixir, and hanging coffins are discovered in Sichuan, China.

Explorers uncover one of the largest Incan burial sites at Ancon on the Peruvian coast. It may be proof that the Chacoans were a matriarchal society.

In 1928, an earthquake shift uncovers a row of painted warriors: seven-foot statues encasing mummies from an ancient civilisation; curious bone arrangements in Winterborne are somehow linked to intermingled ashes from dig sites in Slovenia.

The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, rests in a tomb so large that the archaeological dig could last a century; researchers discover that the oldest of the Chinchorro mummies are children.

Researchers find evidence at the sacrificial alter El Castillo that could shed light on the Maya.