The Oldest Known Mummies Have Been Found
upstart writes:
The oldest known mummies have been found:
Southeast Asians created the oldest known human mummies roughly 7,000 years before Egyptian mummies debuted, researchers say.
From around 12,000 to 4,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers across southern China, Southeast Asia and islands to the south and east bound the dead in crouched postures. They then slowly dried the bodies over smoky, low-temperature fires for several months, say archaeologist Hsiao-chun Hung of Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues.
[...] Smoke-dried mummification may have developed from ancient beliefs that focused on preserving the bodies of revered ancestors. These poorly understood beliefs moved across southern Asia and possibly into Northeast Asia after human groups migrated out of Africa starting around 60,000 years ago, Hung suspects.
[...] Irregular bone charring and the careful positioning of largely intact skeletons indicated that people had heated dead bodies slowly over smoky fires, the researchers say. Continuous smoke exposure dried out and mummified corpses' skins, helping to keep skeletons from falling apart.
Journal Reference:
(DOI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2515103122)
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