常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

exhumation 復習

南米チリのアタカマ砂漠にある教会で2003年小さなミイラ化した遺体が発見された問題で、新たな知見が得られたとする研究論文がこのほど発表されました。

Researchers examined the DNA of this mummified skeleton from Chile. After their study was published days ago, the Chilean government started an inquiry into whether the remains were illegally exhumed and smuggled out of the country.CreditBhattacharya S et al. 2018


Days after researchers announced that a tiny mummy once rumored to be an alien was actually a human infant, Chilean scientists condemned the new study as unethical and their government began an investigation into grave robbing.

The Chilean National Monuments Council, a government agency, said in an email Tuesday that it had initiated an inquiry into whether the little girl’s remains were illegally exhumed in 2003 and smuggled out of the country. The council has turned over its records to the Public Ministry of Chile in response to the outcry from Chilean researchers. They contended that the grave site was plundered and the mummified skeleton was stolen, violating the country’s laws.

“It’s offensive for the girl, for her family, and for the heritage of Chile,” said Francisca Santana-Sagredo, a biological anthropologist at the University of Antofagasta and the University of Oxford.

In a telephone interview, two authors of the new study, Dr. Garry P. Nolan, an immunologist at Stanford University, and Atul Butte of the University of California, San Francisco, defended the ethics of their research.


“We had no involvement or knowledge of how the skeleton was originally obtained nor how it was sold or exported to Spain,” Dr. Butte said. “We had no reason to suspect in this case that this sample was illegally obtained.” He noted that there were reports about the remains on Chilean television for 15 years without the government investigating the case.

Those reports, from the early 2000s, indicate that a man named Oscar Munoz discovered the six-inch-long mummy next to an abandoned church in a ghost town called La Noria. The body was remarkable not just for its size, but also for its abnormalities, including an elongated skull that ended in a point, giant eye sockets and bones that were as mature as those of a 6-year-old.



Publication of the study in the journal Genome Research enraged some researchers in Chile, where the looting and sale of artifacts and even mummies have long been a concern.

Like many other countries, Chile now has laws that make such exhumations and smuggling illegal, punishable by fines and prison sentences. But it can be hard to stop treasure hunters from plundering remote sites.

 “exhumation” を取り上げます。『ジーニアス英和辞典第5版』(大修館) によると「(死体などの) 発掘、捜索」とった意味があります。 『ケンブリッジ英英辞典』で定義を見てみると“to remove a dead body from the ground after it has been buried” とあり埋まっていた死体を取り出す意味合いがあると窺えます。
 “exhumation” は「人間の、人の」といった意味を伴う “hum” と外部などの外のニュアンスを含む接頭辞 “ex” が結び付き「人間が外に現れる」と直訳でき、「(土から死体の) 人間が現れる」と使われるようになったと推察できます。また「死体の発掘」といった意味以外にも、「今までわからなかった情報が明るみに出る」とというでも意味でも使われることわかりました。

 このミイラについては人間でなく宇宙人やエイリアン説も飛びましたが、遺体は新生児の女児のもので小人症、形態異常、早期老化症などに関連するとみられるまれな遺伝子変異を持っていたことが分析で明らかになったとそうです。(Happidra)

exhumation - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心:言葉の森から
 
exhume#2 - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心:言葉の森から