Egypt’s mummies are old, but not the record-holders. Southeast Asians preserved their dead some 7,000 years before Egyptians, new research shows.
Hunter-gatherers across southern China, Southeast Asia and nearby islands mummified bodies as long as 12,000 years ago. They bound the corpses in crouched postures, then dried the bodies over low-temperature fires for several months, says Hsiao-chun Hung. She’s an archaeologist at Australian National University in Canberra.
Hung was part of a team that described their findings Sept. 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team studied the remains of people buried in crouched or squatting positions. The mummified bodies came from 95 sites in Southeast Asia and nearby islands (including Borneo and Java). Some remains had burned patches on the skull or other bones.
The bodies’ postures and the spotty scorching hinted that these dead had been exposed to slow-burning fires. Low heat and smoke dried out and mummified the corpses’ skins. This helped to keep their skeletons from falling apart.
The team also did molecular analyses on 54 individuals representing 11 sites. The bones’ internal structure revealed signs of extended heating at low temperatures.
Mummifying bodies by smoke-drying may stem from ancient beliefs about how to preserve revered ancestors. These beliefs spread across Asia as people started migrating from Africa some 60,000 years ago, Hung suspects.
Smoke-drying of bodies before burial has been observed historically among Indigenous Australian groups. Today, the practice continues in parts of the New Guinea Highlands.
South America’s Chinchorro people began mummifying their dead some 7,000 years ago. Living in a coastal desert, their custom involved removing the body’s internal organs and brain. Then they left a corpse in the desert to dry out. Egyptians’ use of resins and other substances to embalm the dead began roughly 6,330 years ago.
“The fact that smoke-dried mummification spread across such a vast area — and endured for more than 12,000 years among Indigenous groups — is remarkable,” Hung says.
She plans to look elsewhere for smoke-dried mummies in crouched postures. First on her list: southern Chinese and Southeast Asian sites dating to more than 20,000 years ago.