SWIC radiology professor makes surprising find in skulls of Peru's mummies

About two weeks into X-raying mummies at an isolated and slightly primitive museum in Peru, Julie Ostrowski noticed something odd.

The frontal sinus - the cauliflower-shaped cavity in the middle of the forehead - was missing in most of the mummies. Typically, only 1 to 4 percent of the population is missing the frontal sinus.

The Belleville woman went back and reviewed the X-rays she had already taken on that June trip, and added it to her findings: 72 percent of the mummified remains of the Chachapoya were missing frontal sinuses.

Why? Nobody knows.

"When I brought it up" to the other scientists, "I started to see a lot of eye(s) opening wide," she said.

Ostrowski hopes to go back to Peru next summer, again when she's not teaching radiology at Southwestern Illinois College, and pursue if elevation has an effect on that particular sinus cavity. She did not notice signs of agenesis, or a missing sinus, in the other sinus cavities.

"I think anything we learn of the past is going to give us a pathway to the future," Ostrowski said from her home.

The expedition had scientists and experts from several countries helping to preserve and document the mummies and relics of the Chachapoya, a civilization conquered by the Inca Empire. The mummies were between about 800 to 1,000 years old, and most of them were in their 20s, 30s and 40s at the time of their death.

"Fifty was considered pretty old," she said.

Ostrowski has a habit of naming things, she says.

"I like to call him 'Juicy,'" she said while showing photos of a skeleton that still had skin. The Chachapoya mummified their dead with the hands cradling the face, sitting with the knees drawn up tight. They broke bones to push the bodies into small bundles, which were wrapped in textiles.

Most bundles remained wrapped during documentation, Ostrowski said. Those that were not, like "Juicy," were cleaned of dirt and rocks and rewrapped in a cloth for safe storage.

The mummies are stored at the museum to prevent looting. Many mummies are unadorned by precious stones, but some have amulets with diamonds or amethysts or copper jewelry, Ostrowski said, that looters will hack open the bundled mummies to find.

I think anything we learn of the past is going to give us a pathway to the future.

Julie Ostrowski

"I love this one," she says at another photograph. "I named him George - look at those toes! I love those feet. Juicy feet. He's 500 years old" and the mummy's foot looks freshly preserved.

From Peru, Ostrowski went to Uganda to be part of a medical mission in July. They saw 1,250 people in four and a half days on one island, she said, treating 1,028 of them for malaria, syphilis, parasites, HIV and other diseases.

"We can treat you, but there's no (ongoing) care" in that area, she said.

Ostrowski, wife of a retired airman and daughter of a Navy Seabee, finds going from Peru to Uganda, and then to Mississippi and Kentucky to visit family, a comfortable way to spend the summer break from SWIC.

"I did not want to come back," she said. "Coming back to reality is hard."