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n the winter of 1993, miners came across a body with long red hair and a beard, and associated artefacts, in the Chehrabad salt mines located to the west of the city of Zanjan, Iran. They found the remains of a body, a lower leg still inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a pair of woollen trousers, a silver needle, sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, and even a walnut.  The body had been buried in a tunnel approximately 45 metres in length.

As the years went by a further five corpses, including a teenager and a woman, were discovered in the salt mine.

Salt man's head, Bastan Museum, Tehran. Image: Hugues Desponts

Recently isotopic analysis was carried out on five of the salt-preserved bodies which are now dated to between  4th century BCE through to the 4th century CE. In an attempt to identify the geographical origins of these people, researchers from the Department of Environmental Sciences, Università Ca’ Foscari in Italy, matched osteological samples from various sites in Iran and those from the salt mine bodies. It was possible for them to hypothesise that two of the “mummies” may have come from the Tehran/Qazvin Plain region (local to the salt mine), and a further two app... >>>