Mystical places in Chile
3 legends · 3 cities
Regions and cities
Antofagasta Region1
Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region1
Valparaiso Region1
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La Noria and the Ata Mummy
In 2003 a mummy six inches long was found in the abandoned nitrate town of La Noria in the Atacama: an elongated skull, ten pairs of ribs instead of twelve, bone maturity like a six-year-old's. A 2013 UFO documentary announced an alien. The genome was sequenced at Stanford, and the result published in Genome Research in 2018 is not ambiguous: a human girl of Chilean descent who died at or before birth, carrying a rare combination of mutations in seven genes governing skeletal development. Chilean authorities later took an interest in how the remains had left the country at all.
The Bloop
In 1997 hydrophones belonging to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded an ultra-low-frequency sound in the South Pacific loud enough to be picked up by sensors three thousand miles apart. Its profile resembled a biological one, and for two decades the Bloop was the leading exhibit for anyone who believes in undiscovered giants in the ocean. NOAA settled it in 2012: an icequake, an iceberg fracturing off Antarctica. The sound stopped being a mystery but remains one of the best-known audio files in internet history.
Easter Island
One of the most remote inhabited islands on Earth, holding nearly 900 moai statues. How they were carved, moved for kilometres and raised had a simple Rapa Nui answer: the moai "walked".