The Earth is giving up its secrets: Mummies, people immortalized by ancient science or nature's whim, bodies that have hardly decomposed. Each one is an archaeological bonanza no matter how incomplete. Anthropologists pick over them inch by inch for the information they contain. Their preserved remains give us clues across millennia, silent witnesses that speak through their clothes, skin, and fingernails, telling us truths about the past, and giving up secrets long forgotten and what they are saying could help shape the future.