WEBVTT

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When they show me the Chinchorro mummy,
That was small like this,

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and I suddenly see a part of the ear.

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And there I realized that it was a body.
It was a human body.

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The Mummies did not resemble mummies
that everyone knows,

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the Egyptian mummies, with bandages.

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They are priceless. I think it\'s a crime
to sell or traffic a mummy.

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In fact, it is punishable by law.

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It would speak very badly about us
if the mummy would pass

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the exit controls of the country.

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Hello, yes?

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The owner was trying to sell the mummies
to a museum. He offered them to my museum,

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and I told them that we should
not look at this proposal.

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To imagine people trafficking that is
completely morbid and insane.

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Then he said, if I cannot sell them,
if I cannot give them,

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then I might as well destroy them
because what am I going to do with them.

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All South American countries,
who became independent in the early 1820s

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have laws that prohibit the export of
cultural property, archeological material.

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And for almost two centuries
it just poured out.

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By dealers, traders, diplomats.

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We have collections here that were made by

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a medical doctor who was
an amateur archeologist.

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He would go to Chile and dig,
take things and send them to Geneva.

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Back in 2008 probably,
when I was still a curator in this museum.

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I received an offer to buy a
collection of Chinchorro Mummies

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And the collector whose name
I cannot give you,

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because its kept confidential,
wanted to sell it.

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I must say I didn\'t know much
about the Chinchorro,

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but I had in my training

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the kind of basics of Pre-Columbian
art and material culture.

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So I knew about some places,
I knew about the Atacama.

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So it was very easy for me to identify,

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when the offer was made
to buy some Chinchorro material,

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to identify where it was from,
and to find out about the culture.

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And I knew that they were some of the
oldest mummies you can find in the world.

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This desert that you usually see empty,
it isn\'t empty.

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It looks empty because you don\'t know it.

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But as you start looking,
walking, breathing, living those paths,

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those desert landscapes, you realize that
there are fantastic changes on the moon,

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in the color, in the landscape,
in the monuments.

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Suddenly you look more carefully,

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and you realize that there is
a human settlement.

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That thousands of years ago,
there were more resources.

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So what today is a desert,
Yesterday was an oasis.

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So since we\'re here,
let\'s go behind.

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Go over there and then turn right.

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When we were young,
we awakened digging.

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Nobody cared,
we even appeared in the newspaper.

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My brother may he rest in peace,
appeared with a giant vase

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in the newspaper La Concordia,

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when we dug the mummies,
when we were kids.

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And now, that it\'s too late,
They suddenly care about it.

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I started doing archeology in
October 17, 1965.

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It was when a child my age,
who was a classmate

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he told the teacher that
he had collected some remains of ceramics.

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And it got me like \"pum!\"
It got me like...

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I jumped into the grave and started digging
as if I have done it all my life.

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My friends told me to go out
but I was possessed.

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There were jars, pumpkins,
remnants of textiles.

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Then I kept taking things out,
small jars, spoons, hats, everything.

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And at the end, was the body.

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I discovered a cemetery, I emptied it,
as if it were mine

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No one cared.

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When I discovered Tiwanaku Cemetery,

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the most valuable thing
was the four-pointed hats.

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I dug out 26 hats.

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No one cared about archeology

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and I dug out precious things
out of everywere.

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Very beautiful.

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Well, Arica is an ancient city.

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The archaeological record reaches
around 11 thousand, 12 thousand years old.

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It\'s a place that has hosted human life
and society for a long time.

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What is interesting too,
is that all that area of the Morro,

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It is a huge archaeological site.

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You have Chinchorro, formative periods,
there is Inca evidence,

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there is also evidence of the Pacific war.

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And the current populations.

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You dig a small trench,

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or people are making a small
arrangement of their yards

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and mummies will appear.

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Our decision to come to Arica
was to leave Santiago.

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But without knowing it, we bought a place
to be able to settle here,

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and build a couple of places
where foreigners could sleep.

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We bought Colon 10 and when
we started the study of soil mechanics

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and the first excavations,
these remains appeared.

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Our first reaction was
to ask the people from Arica,

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What should we do in this situation?

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And everyone\'s response was:

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Look, you have to come at night
with a truck,

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take out the bones
and take them to a dumpster,

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make them disappear, because otherwise
your project is not going to be possible.

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Everyone has bodies under their houses.

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If one could read the subsoil
of the Morro of Arica.

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I assure you there are thousands of bodies,
still buried there.

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Finally, we took the decision
to denounce and declare,

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and sometime later the experts,

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archaeologists, and anthropologists
of the University of Tarapacá,

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commissioned me as an architect,
to develop a museum on site.

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Living on a farm, at 8 - 9 years old
we found an archeological site

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that had been destroyed by a company,

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and the mummies were scattered
around the place.

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And we started playing with those mummies,
and we played ball with the heads.

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We disarticulated the bodies,
dug what could be dig up.

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The ariqueños of old and not-so-old families
have such memories.

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And I haven\'t told this anecdote
to anyone for a long time

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because I felt ashamed.

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Looting is part of the history
of archeology.

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Archeology has always been the exploration
of remains that are not ours.

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Until the year 1970 there was no official
protection of archeological sites.

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But really when the law begins
to be applied is from the year 1990.

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Today the law protects
all archeological sites equally.

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And everyone who excavates
without permission

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is committing a crime.

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In 1966 I was digging in the cemetery,

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and I discovered at
a height of about 30-40 cm

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some whale bones, ribs.

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And at the same time,
I discovered the Chinchorro mummies.

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It was a family grave.
The graves were covered by whale ribs.

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And there were the mummies
from the oldest to the youngest.

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All mummified.

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They were 15.

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Over there, where those houses are,

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that empty place is a huge settlement.

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And over there,
where you see the white building.

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That\'s where I found
the Chinchorro mummies.

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In that place. The white house.

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Logically, one immediately realizes
that its something different and I said:

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This is older than everything!
I imagined so.

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So I took seven home.

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When I discovered those mummies,
it was the year 1966 in summer.

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A long-time after, the newspapers here say

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that in Arica the oldest mummies
in the world have been found.

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10.000 years old, of
complicated artificial mummification.

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And when I read the newspaper said:
But I dug them 17 years before that!

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We all knew that the oldest was Egypt,

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and then we found out
that the oldest was here in Arica.

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How can we not be proud?

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They lived 9.000 years before the present
until 3.500 years before the present.

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And what distinguishes it from other
early hunter-gatherer societies,

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from the rest of the American continent.

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It\'s that their funerary practices
are very exceptional.

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They are groups adapted to
a maritime environment.

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They are basically maritime societies.

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They probably knew the desert
as the palm of their hand,

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and they knew every hill,
every landscape, every geo symbol.

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They articulated also the highlands.

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These populations moved in that territory

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but their daily life
happened at the seashore.

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There were their shells, their homes,

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and most importantly,
there were their cemeteries.

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The Chinchorro populations inhabited

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the entire length
of the Atacama desert coast.

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The first explorers of this desert,
of this coastal desert area.

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They obviously arrive
in a pristine environment

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that was not previously occupied,

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and if one had to make an analogy
with today\'s landscapes,

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a good place would be Camarones.

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I imagine many people fishing,
someone over there knitting,

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collecting resources,
drying those vegetable fibers

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and then weaving them.

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And I think there must have been
a lot of smoke, surely burning the seaweed,

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obviously, the children playing,
messing around.

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You have to imagine that landscape
of people doing different activities.

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I imagine a paradise,
the abundance of animals, of plants,

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by the river, wild animals,
a lot of seafood, fish.

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But there was a hidden danger:
the arsenic in the water.

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The large amounts of arsenic
that is present in the water

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cause women to have premature births,
children with low weight

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and in general high perinatal
mortality and also the fetus.

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There are big research questions
that one develops.

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One of them is:
Why does mummification begin?

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There is an environmental hypothesis
that I have developed

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that has to do with arsenic.

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With a mummy\'s hair, you can quantify

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different chemical elements
that were being accumulated.

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The standard tells you one microgram
per gram of arsenic in the hair.

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And with studies made by
my colleagues here

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we have found out that some
have 20-30-40 times more

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than what\'s nowadays is recommended.

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That has affected the health
of the populations,

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there was a lot of natural abortions.

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But on the other side, the person has
an emotional response towards death.

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First, when someone dies,
there is an act of separation,

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and a lot of pain.

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The pain of a person, of the society.
A very strong social pain, a shock.

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You don\'t know what happens with the body,
with the soul, with the spirit.

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So this mourning process,
I imagine it looking for plants,

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looking for sediments, pigments,
looking for clay, wood, skins.

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They prepare it, decorate it,
until the moment of the great finale comes.

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Where the body is finished,
prepared, painted, decorated,

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and then there is another ritual.

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It\'s also interesting that they have
open eyes, an open mouth.

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There is a representation
of a living being.

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To close this cycle of pain.

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From the minute when they do this
huge effort of mummifying these bodies

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doing this spectacular job,
to eviscerate them to model them

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one is looking further than death,
you are looking at life.

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They want this person
-that it\'s their relative, their loved one-

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to stay for a longer time.

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In the red mummies,
what they do is that through cuts,

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they take the soft tissue
and fill the thorax with camelid skin,

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seaweed and a lot of fibre.

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In the black mummies, the skulls are cut
to take out the brains.

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They leave the skeleton.

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And on top of the bones and wood
they model with clay.

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Then they take the skin,
to place it on top of the clay.

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It\'s almost a sculpture.

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We always affirm that the bodies
were made in this way,

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with such complexity, to be seen.

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They are not doing this to leave
it behind, isolated,

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there is a need to see this body.

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It\'s a phenomenon that we also see today,
for different reasons:

00:23:09.159 --> 00:23:13.159
Political, religious, emotional.

00:23:13.849 --> 00:23:18.957
Because when someone dies,
we want to see the body.

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We want to know that the body exists.

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What is really exceptional
about this culture

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is the funerary ritual
that is given to human fetuses.

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They have clothes, artifacts.

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The neonates don\'t have hair,
so that hair that is there,

00:23:59.002 --> 00:24:05.423
that was given at his funeral, was donated
by their parents, their community.

00:24:07.845 --> 00:24:12.195
That is a gesture of love, of respect,
of dedication.

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When I see the delicacy in
which the mummies were made.

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There is clearly an act of love.

00:24:47.005 --> 00:24:52.568
So back in 2008, the same individual
came back with an offer:

00:24:52.681 --> 00:24:57.230
He said well there is no way
I can sell this material,

00:24:57.230 --> 00:24:59.169
so what if I gave it to you.

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I replied that we did not require to buy

00:25:04.708 --> 00:25:07.197
any archeological material
from South-America.

00:25:07.684 --> 00:25:09.432
And he came back to me and said:

00:25:09.432 --> 00:25:12.620
Look I\'ve tried everything
but no other museum wants this material.

00:25:12.853 --> 00:25:16.095
So if nobody wants it
I will put it in rubbish bags

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and put it in the rubbish,
so I get rid of it.

00:25:19.283 --> 00:25:20.843
So I said well... no.

00:25:26.941 --> 00:25:30.194
The collector became insistent,
we need to find a solution

00:25:30.194 --> 00:25:32.303
otherwise, we have to get rid of it.

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Maybe I can try to do something

00:25:36.229 --> 00:25:39.837
but would you be ready
to send it back to Chile?.

00:25:46.032 --> 00:25:50.698
We were called to a meeting with
the minister of foreign affairs

00:25:51.257 --> 00:26:01.179
to talk about a person who supposedly had
some Chinchorro bodies.

00:26:01.179 --> 00:26:05.161
So we participated as experts together

00:26:05.161 --> 00:26:08.863
with the archeologist of
the National Heritage Council

00:26:08.863 --> 00:26:10.675
Claudia Prado.

00:26:18.995 --> 00:26:22.870
They took us to a house
where the remains were,

00:26:22.870 --> 00:26:24.505
in a house in Malagny,

00:26:25.112 --> 00:26:28.675
outside of Switzerland,
in a cottage in a village.

00:26:31.749 --> 00:26:33.810
We drove with the collector

00:26:33.810 --> 00:26:36.982
and were very nervous because
the guy was very strange.

00:26:37.659 --> 00:26:40.295
Because if you are collecting
human bodies,

00:26:40.295 --> 00:26:43.351
request them from another country
and have them in your home.

00:26:44.042 --> 00:26:47.049
You ask yourself if
that person is sane or not.

00:26:47.258 --> 00:26:51.189
Afterward, we talked about it with Vivien
and yes, we were both very worried,

00:26:51.189 --> 00:26:55.280
because we were trying to be professional
but we still had a human fear.

00:26:58.484 --> 00:27:04.778
Well, I had to go with my colleagues
to see a collection of human remains.

00:27:07.032 --> 00:27:15.148
It was a very big house, very pretty
and there was a cellar beside the house.

00:27:16.610 --> 00:27:20.865
They were in this cellar,
a very humid place.

00:27:21.484 --> 00:27:23.955
There was a very strong smell.

00:27:29.341 --> 00:27:33.060
You go down a couple of steps.
And it was full of mold.

00:27:33.060 --> 00:27:34.479
There was no light.

00:27:34.955 --> 00:27:39.919
Luckily it wasn\'t raining and they help
to take the human remains to the light.

00:27:40.366 --> 00:27:46.955
Everything was very bizarre,
there was a tank, the sir had a fondness,

00:27:46.955 --> 00:27:49.615
for things like war.

00:28:04.784 --> 00:28:12.265
There were 10 heads,
each head in a glass showcase.

00:28:12.913 --> 00:28:16.421
They weren\'t authentic.

00:28:16.660 --> 00:28:26.249
The weirdest thing was that some
of the bodies were dressed as soldiers

00:28:26.249 --> 00:28:28.814
of the pacific war.

00:28:30.852 --> 00:28:35.258
And I start to look and touch the body,
and I felt a wire. \"That\'s weird\".

00:28:35.604 --> 00:28:38.782
We moved the clothes
and we saw that they were articulated.

00:28:38.782 --> 00:28:43.678
They cut the leg and
made a joint of wire

00:28:43.678 --> 00:28:46.715
to give them the pose of
the dead in battle.

00:29:00.307 --> 00:29:02.556
The mummies that didn\'t have
an intervention,

00:29:02.556 --> 00:29:04.156
two of them were Chinchorro.

00:29:04.782 --> 00:29:08.325
One of them was an infant
or even a neonate.

00:29:09.475 --> 00:29:14.130
That one had a black mask
and is 4.800-6.000 years old.

00:29:15.074 --> 00:29:20.016
The other one had a red mask
and was more recent.

00:29:20.016 --> 00:29:21.369
Around 4.000 years old.

00:29:28.881 --> 00:29:31.845
It\'s always shocking, because behind that,

00:29:31.845 --> 00:29:38.410
there was a person, a kid, a baby,
a woman, a young man.

00:29:39.118 --> 00:29:43.343
They did a ritual, they buried him
in a certain place.

00:29:43.833 --> 00:29:48.149
And you find it suddenly
in this other context

00:29:48.149 --> 00:29:50.798
on the other side of the world.

00:29:51.592 --> 00:29:53.361
It\'s shocking.

00:29:54.166 --> 00:30:02.221
When you think on those remains
that are there were people.

00:30:08.650 --> 00:30:16.581
To see these unconserved, stored bodies.
It is something I had never seen.

00:30:16.735 --> 00:30:18.893
I had seen them in museums,

00:30:18.893 --> 00:30:24.082
but when it comes to human bodies,
is something more violent.

00:30:27.219 --> 00:30:32.285
Well, we decided to keep them
in the museum

00:30:32.285 --> 00:30:37.751
so they have better storage conditions.

00:30:38.425 --> 00:30:41.190
Waiting for the decisions.

00:30:48.158 --> 00:30:52.162
My idea at first was to make a museum.

00:30:56.094 --> 00:30:57.834
In my childish mind.

00:30:58.639 --> 00:31:04.361
So, with the money
I had to buy candy at school.

00:31:05.086 --> 00:31:08.698
I started saving that to buy glass
to make showcases.

00:31:13.707 --> 00:31:16.776
I just arrived from an excavation
and suddenly a jeep arrives.

00:31:16.776 --> 00:31:18.537
and two people get down.

00:31:18.687 --> 00:31:21.872
And one of them was
a General of the Airforce,

00:31:21.872 --> 00:31:27.071
Eduardo Iensen Franke,
Former general of the Chilean Airforce.

00:31:29.236 --> 00:31:33.155
Finally, we became so good friends,
and I had so many pieces

00:31:33.865 --> 00:31:37.395
that I start selling.

00:31:37.876 --> 00:31:39.195
He was my first buyer.

00:31:41.881 --> 00:31:45.050
Most of the buyers are wealthy people.

00:31:45.918 --> 00:31:49.179
Judges, lawyers, officers,

00:31:49.179 --> 00:31:52.441
the owner of Coca-Cola
a distinguished collector.

00:31:53.003 --> 00:31:55.320
The General Eduardo Iensen Franke.

00:31:55.977 --> 00:32:01.353
Notaries are all millionares,
and they all have huge collections.

00:32:02.177 --> 00:32:05.254
So they look for what they don\'t have,
the prettiest things,

00:32:05.254 --> 00:32:08.172
because they are friends
and visit each other.

00:32:08.317 --> 00:32:12.481
\"I have this. I have better. I want this.\"
So they asked me.

00:32:12.780 --> 00:32:17.059
Whatever strange thing I found
to talk to them.

00:32:17.509 --> 00:32:22.716
And then the price was different.
Whatever I asked for I got.

00:32:23.485 --> 00:32:28.132
They are not common people, because common
people, even if they like archeology,

00:32:28.132 --> 00:32:31.541
will never buy me something
because they don\'t have the money.

00:32:31.541 --> 00:32:34.950
They prefer to buy... candy.

00:32:58.365 --> 00:33:02.578
The collector is generally someone
who disguises as a tourist,

00:33:02.733 --> 00:33:05.817
they have a lot of free time,
a lot of resources,

00:33:05.817 --> 00:33:08.022
and they have to feed a prestige,

00:33:08.933 --> 00:33:12.705
and I truly don\'t know them.
I have no idea where they are.

00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:26.853
People who have been collecting
Pre-Columbian Art tend to live longer.

00:33:28.196 --> 00:33:33.947
I had two customers, they both died
a year apart at 94 years old.

00:33:37.447 --> 00:33:43.004
As a dealer what you have to do is learn
about whether something is authentic or not,

00:33:43.917 --> 00:33:45.720
and that fascinated me.

00:33:46.049 --> 00:33:49.857
It was interesting for me
to learn about the cultures in Chile,

00:33:49.857 --> 00:33:53.370
the influences from Bolivia,
and the Inca influence.

00:33:54.110 --> 00:33:57.459
I thought the Mapuche culture
was fantastic.

00:34:00.459 --> 00:34:04.342
The amount of capital that
a dealer has to use

00:34:04.342 --> 00:34:05.672
and the risk...

00:34:06.241 --> 00:34:07.836
...whenever there is risk.

00:34:08.773 --> 00:34:11.452
and how hard it is to make the sale.

00:34:12.044 --> 00:34:14.134
It\'s not a business to make money.

00:34:17.171 --> 00:34:21.230
the Chinchorro mummy
is quite a special thing

00:34:21.230 --> 00:34:23.079
but it\'s not for everyone

00:34:24.010 --> 00:34:27.947
there are very few collectors who
collect the macabre in life,

00:34:28.218 --> 00:34:30.695
mummies, or skulls.

00:34:31.452 --> 00:34:35.822
But for the time period that they were
made, I think that\'s...

00:34:35.822 --> 00:34:38.642
That\'s really a great achievement.

00:34:43.829 --> 00:34:46.056
I found these three gold masks.

00:34:47.173 --> 00:34:54.061
I sold two of them to this
private museum in Chile.

00:34:55.346 --> 00:34:58.813
And the person didn\'t want
to buy the best one.

00:34:59.590 --> 00:35:04.150
So i kept the best one
and put it on my webpage,

00:35:04.150 --> 00:35:07.750
which is how i got contacted by you.

00:35:08.547 --> 00:35:15.916
[Did you know if at that time,
to buy archeological objects was illegal?]

00:35:16.293 --> 00:35:17.752
It wasn\'t.

00:35:19.982 --> 00:35:22.043
For what I knew.

00:35:23.294 --> 00:35:30.699
If there was a law, it was a law so vague
that there was no way to enforce it.

00:35:30.699 --> 00:35:33.622
And there were no people to enforce it.

00:35:36.068 --> 00:35:38.267
[Do you remember what year was that?]

00:35:43.712 --> 00:35:45.671
I\'m guessing it was maybe...

00:35:48.029 --> 00:35:52.844
I don\'t even remember what year I sold
the pieces to Ricardo Claro.

00:36:06.471 --> 00:36:09.643
The protection of heritage
since the law of the \'70

00:36:10.351 --> 00:36:13.059
Establishes that are national monuments
and property of the State...

00:36:13.059 --> 00:36:15.009
all the archeological
and paleontological goods.

00:36:16.179 --> 00:36:19.029
So from that point of view,
the tenure of a private citizen

00:36:19.029 --> 00:36:22.710
should be at least be
authorized by the State.

00:36:23.290 --> 00:36:28.547
I believe that it\'s not possible to sell
archeological or paleontological goods.

00:36:28.592 --> 00:36:31.272
Those are objects that are
excluded from trade,

00:36:31.272 --> 00:36:33.807
therefore it was an illicit sale.
On my view.

00:36:33.927 --> 00:36:38.124
The law will not prosecute him
outside of the country

00:36:38.814 --> 00:36:41.028
but if this illicit happened in Chile.

00:36:41.824 --> 00:36:44.554
It could have generated
some Penal prosecution.

00:36:53.278 --> 00:36:56.665
There is no big demand for
Chilean artifacts.

00:36:56.665 --> 00:37:00.013
So what\'s the point of
having it concentrated.

00:37:00.013 --> 00:37:04.533
Makes a lot more sense to
have it distributed around the world.

00:37:06.113 --> 00:37:11.240
Most Museum exhibitions
are usually sponsored by collectors.

00:37:16.517 --> 00:37:18.667
If we have these things
in our collections,

00:37:18.667 --> 00:37:20.817
if we know about this,
we must talk about it.

00:37:20.817 --> 00:37:25.158
So that people understand
that the colony did not stop in 1823

00:37:25.158 --> 00:37:29.988
but many people kept on acting
as if they were in a colony

00:37:29.988 --> 00:37:31.631
and just plundered everything,

00:37:31.631 --> 00:37:35.201
send it back, and said, well at least
we keep it in our collections

00:37:35.201 --> 00:37:37.511
at least we keep it properly in a museum.

00:37:37.698 --> 00:37:39.321
But this is wrong.

00:37:49.621 --> 00:37:53.187
On June 6th, I came from work.

00:37:54.106 --> 00:38:02.296
And in my house, I received a citation
from the Investigation Police.

00:38:02.658 --> 00:38:07.825
The commissar said that I\'ve been called
because they are investigating

00:38:08.715 --> 00:38:14.525
the murder of a young man,
and that in his body a check was found,

00:38:14.756 --> 00:38:22.356
with my name on it for
a big amount of money for that time,

00:38:22.984 --> 00:38:25.428
and they wanted to know
what that was about.

00:38:25.610 --> 00:38:29.078
They thought I got paid
to kill that person.

00:38:30.038 --> 00:38:32.667
The check was from the notary
of Punta Arenas.

00:38:32.997 --> 00:38:36.562
They asked him: \"Why do you have to pay
so much to Jaime Quinteros?\"

00:38:37.322 --> 00:38:39.994
He said that he bought
archeological pieces from me.

00:38:41.649 --> 00:38:43.591
And that\'s how they caught me.

00:38:45.516 --> 00:38:50.033
The commissar said that I was not a
suspect because they caught the murderer.

00:38:50.763 --> 00:38:55.381
But I was detained for archeology.

00:39:02.898 --> 00:39:08.553
I heard about him being arrested
about six months after it happened.

00:39:09.156 --> 00:39:11.026
It\'s just a shame.

00:39:13.576 --> 00:39:18.826
You know, he is an easy target.
He has no money to defend himself.

00:39:19.466 --> 00:39:21.027
And he makes the press.

00:39:21.637 --> 00:39:29.156
But actually you should make him a hero
for doing as much as he could

00:39:29.706 --> 00:39:32.055
because he cared about the artifacts.

00:39:33.575 --> 00:39:36.621
I believe that he was addicted,

00:39:37.491 --> 00:39:41.857
and heritage and antiquity collection
can be very addictive.

00:39:42.497 --> 00:39:43.903
Like a disease.

00:39:44.063 --> 00:39:45.160
I will not justify it,

00:39:45.160 --> 00:39:48.929
but I understand it as a person
in the context that he lived in.

00:39:50.549 --> 00:39:54.684
Oh, it\'s so sad, but well,
the destruction is not...

00:39:54.684 --> 00:39:56.378
things are not black and white.

00:40:25.902 --> 00:40:31.376
UNKNOWN
Arica

00:40:31.553 --> 00:40:36.326
Later, I got the information
that Chile would require

00:40:36.326 --> 00:40:39.579
the return of only a couple of mummies.

00:40:39.832 --> 00:40:42.779
I think only two or three
and a small baby.

00:40:42.943 --> 00:40:46.732
And that the rest of the material
should be disposed of.

00:40:46.969 --> 00:40:49.583
So the first thing we would need
is a death certificate

00:40:49.583 --> 00:40:52.094
for mummies that
were already dead at 9.000 years.

00:40:52.701 --> 00:40:57.437
Anyway, eventually all the administrative
aspects were lifted,

00:40:57.437 --> 00:41:02.262
to actually bury them in the cemetery
of Saint Georges here in Geneva.

00:41:09.519 --> 00:41:13.199
They were in a very fragile state,

00:41:13.199 --> 00:41:16.879
it was absolutely necessary
to condition them very well,

00:41:17.680 --> 00:41:22.625
for their transport by plane.
It\'s always a risk.

00:41:24.874 --> 00:41:28.702
So I assisted the packaging
with other professionals.

00:41:28.702 --> 00:41:31.060
And the four mummies departed.

00:41:35.568 --> 00:41:38.019
You can think as a Chilean,

00:41:38.019 --> 00:41:40.411
that it would be great
that all of them came back.

00:41:40.411 --> 00:41:41.778
But that requires resources

00:41:41.778 --> 00:41:44.915
and since there was not enough money
to bring them all back.

00:41:45.327 --> 00:41:46.505
We prioritized.

00:41:46.646 --> 00:41:49.680
We prioritized the ones
that didn\'t have an intervention.

00:41:51.958 --> 00:41:54.850
That they could contribute
to the collection

00:41:54.850 --> 00:41:57.104
of the San Miguel de Azapa Museum.

00:42:59.882 --> 00:43:01.727
The important thing is...

00:43:04.908 --> 00:43:08.401
that they came back.

00:43:09.771 --> 00:43:10.875
To their territory.

00:43:10.875 --> 00:43:15.654
As human beings, we always have
a connection with our territory.

00:43:15.823 --> 00:43:19.817
People always want to come back
to the place, where they lived,

00:43:19.817 --> 00:43:21.482
where they spent their childhood.

00:43:22.703 --> 00:43:26.254
So this closes a cycle somehow.

00:43:28.697 --> 00:43:36.399
It\'s true that these bodies
have left their country of origin

00:43:37.813 --> 00:43:46.634
to be used for a purpose that had
no relation to the will to inhumate them.

00:43:46.634 --> 00:43:51.732
They have become mute, unable to attest
to their culture of origin.

00:43:52.623 --> 00:43:58.597
So they not only ripped them out of their
culture of origin.

00:43:58.597 --> 00:44:02.446
But they also took away the testimony
they could provide.

00:44:03.756 --> 00:44:13.387
That\'s what most of the time is sad
about a situation like this.

00:44:19.558 --> 00:44:21.625
So, that has to be very clear.

00:44:21.910 --> 00:44:27.688
The problem with illicit archeology,
looting,

00:44:27.988 --> 00:44:32.376
is that it removes cultural artifacts
from the context,

00:44:32.544 --> 00:44:35.882
and the objects are in certain places,
certain buildings.

00:44:36.333 --> 00:44:38.784
In some regions, not some others.

00:44:38.862 --> 00:44:42.281
So you can understand the way,
where objects were produced,

00:44:42.281 --> 00:44:44.295
who used them, why was it used.

00:44:44.635 --> 00:44:48.013
With looted material,
things come on the market,

00:44:48.013 --> 00:44:51.122
valuable for the collector or the market.

00:44:51.342 --> 00:44:53.950
You think this should be
a great museum piece,

00:44:53.950 --> 00:44:56.348
but the context is completely lost.

00:44:56.914 --> 00:44:59.550
Because you just don\'t know
where it came from.

00:45:11.885 --> 00:45:16.243
In the past, people only looked
for gold objects.

00:45:16.823 --> 00:45:19.022
And all the pottery was thrown away.

00:45:19.670 --> 00:45:25.523
In the past, when textiles were dug,
they washed them to exhibit them.

00:45:26.092 --> 00:45:29.484
So you are throwing away
a lot of information

00:45:29.484 --> 00:45:31.087
that could have been collected.

00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:34.550
Polen analysis, microfiber.

00:45:35.242 --> 00:45:39.001
I don\'t know what technological advances
will be in the future.

00:45:39.571 --> 00:45:42.080
I don\'t know if a document
is important or not.

00:45:42.667 --> 00:45:45.458
I don\'t know if a heritage element
is important or not.

00:45:45.697 --> 00:45:53.557
I tend to think, maybe biased,
that these small bodies

00:45:53.817 --> 00:46:00.081
of human fetuses,
that require a lot of fine motricity,

00:46:00.081 --> 00:46:02.775
to be made, to be prepared

00:46:05.505 --> 00:46:10.953
I tend to think that maybe women
had a relevant role

00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:17.517
at least in the bodies
of the smallest individuals.

00:46:18.196 --> 00:46:21.643
But that is only intuition.

00:46:22.569 --> 00:46:31.756
I wish to have more knowledge about
the Chinchorro that show us other facets.

00:46:36.649 --> 00:46:40.435
It\'s about imagination and technology,

00:46:41.405 --> 00:46:45.978
Maybe in the future, we will be able to
read the thoughts in a mummified brain.

00:46:46.898 --> 00:46:49.740
It\'s a great question,
are ideas also mummified?

00:46:49.933 --> 00:46:54.798
Is there maybe a neuron left
with a connection that you could read?

00:46:55.653 --> 00:46:58.453
Some pieces of thought from the past?

00:46:58.763 --> 00:47:00.673
Because the brains are mummified.

00:47:00.783 --> 00:47:03.053
It\'s somehow like science fiction.

00:47:32.466 --> 00:47:37.387
They took 6.334 archeological
pieces from me.

00:47:38.728 --> 00:47:41.068
6.334

00:47:41.558 --> 00:47:45.273
The sentence was 730 days, but I appealed.

00:47:45.988 --> 00:47:48.767
The 730 days, were raised to 3 years.

00:47:51.079 --> 00:47:53.212
I got night reclusion.

00:47:53.690 --> 00:47:56.165
I did my three years.

00:47:57.321 --> 00:47:59.385
In between all my registry were taken.

00:47:59.968 --> 00:48:07.690
Behind every photo I wrote the culture,
the width and the depth of the tomb,

00:48:07.850 --> 00:48:09.292
and to whom I sold it.

00:48:09.473 --> 00:48:11.286
In dollars and pesos.

00:48:11.456 --> 00:48:17.285
So I didn\'t say anything,
the registry talked.

00:48:23.371 --> 00:48:25.979
The justice was kind with the buyers.

00:48:26.942 --> 00:48:31.552
They ask them to return the pieces
to the closest museum.

00:48:32.235 --> 00:48:34.724
And that\'s all that the justice
did to them.

00:48:34.904 --> 00:48:37.591
And the newspaper said that
they also had to be judged.

00:48:37.591 --> 00:48:40.953
Because the buyer is as guilty
as the seller.

00:48:41.086 --> 00:48:42.621
But justice was benign.

00:49:14.910 --> 00:49:22.455
If they took these bodies out of Chile
it must have been a large operation.

00:49:26.891 --> 00:49:30.720
We are not sure that all of them
left at the same time.

00:49:31.114 --> 00:49:37.053
How they were transported, by sea,
by plane, we have no idea.

00:49:42.871 --> 00:49:46.363
There are very big networks, very big.

00:49:46.483 --> 00:49:49.616
And they move a large amount of money.

00:49:49.866 --> 00:49:55.227
But the first one that gets the object,
is the one who earns the least

00:49:55.948 --> 00:49:58.239
of what the objects cost.

00:50:42.285 --> 00:50:51.320
Nowadays, moving, extracting, taking
a complete body with its objects is hard.

00:50:51.912 --> 00:50:54.348
I\'m not saying it doesn\'t happen.
But it\'s difficult.