Hair

[amphibian]

I thought hair did not decompose.   ??? They have found Egyptian mummies over 2000 years old still bearing a full head of hair !  :o ::)

Perhaps it needs to be treated before putting on the compost heap ?

But the hair on a mummy is in very dry, worm free environment, afterall the rest of the mummy hasn't rotted away either.

Mummification (whether wet or dry) stops hair decompossing, but in the soil it will break down over time. Check out the hair on the Tollund Man, who'd been lying in a peat bog for 2500 years.

[amphibian]

[Robert_Brenchley]

Hair is denatured protein, and will rot under normal conditions, albeit slowly. Peat bogs and mummies in the Egyptian desert are definitely not 'normal conditions'!

[Marianne]

Amphibian thanks for that post, VERY interesting indeed and hard to believe this man has been lying in the bog for that long.  It looks as though he could awaken any time !

:)

[amphibian]

Amphibian thanks for that post, VERY interesting indeed and hard to believe this man has been lying in the bog for that long.  It looks as though he could awaken any time !

:)

He looks very peaceful for a man that was ritually murdered and dumped in a peat bog.

[Marianne]

Yes - I remember watching a programme about "his" discovery many years ago.  It is just absolutely amazing and it really looks as though he is asleep.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Perhaps he didn't mind bering sacrificed, if thet's what it was. He may have thought he was going straight to heaven, if they believed in any such place back then.

[amphibian]

Perhaps he didn't mind bering sacrificed, if thet's what it was. He may have thought he was going straight to heaven, if they believed in any such place back then.

Quite likely, his last meal was a ceromonial one, as was Lindow Man, a man that died in a very similar fashion, and was fished out by a peat cutter (alas she had been cut in half by a mechanical cutter.

[Marianne]

Amphibian - you say his last meal was a ceremonial one.  Do we know what he last consumed before his death??

[RosieM]

I also add hair etc to the compost heap, added the said compost to the raised beds this spring. No apparent problem.

I dug up a large lump of my daughters hair the day before yesterday and although I am anything but sqeamish, it did give me a bit of a turn!!

:o

I'm not sure about the hoover bag thing though, isn't it supposed to be unacceptably high in heavy metals? Or am I thinking of something else?

Rosie

[amphibian]

Amphibian - you say his last meal was a ceremonial one.  Do we know what he last consumed before his death??

Yes, the bog people, sufficiently preserved to tell, had enjoyed a last meal of a soup containing unusual seeds.

[Marianne]

Amphibian - thank you for that additional information.  I am very interested in the subject.  :D