Oldest Human Mummies Found, And They’re Not What We Anticipated : ScienceAlert

[ad_1] Mummifying the useless is a funerary ceremony that has been practiced for 1000's of years in lots of places internationally.

A brand new discovery reveals that we could have been underestimating precisely how widespread the follow has been. Bones that present indicators of deliberate mummification have been discovered throughout Southeast Asia and southern China, with ages relationship again to the pre-Neolithic interval as much as 12,000 years in the past.

That is a number of 1000's of years older than the cultures greatest identified for mummification, the Chinchorro folks of Chile, who have been mummifying their dead 7,000 years ago , and the traditional Egyptians, who have been training the craft 5,600 years ago .

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<img decoding="async" src="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial1.jpg" alt="" width="642" height="856" class="size-full wp-image-173912" srcset="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial1.jpg 642w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial1-311x415.jpg 311w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial1-600x800.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px" loading="lazy"/> A middle-aged girl from southern China who was smoke-mummified previous to burial. (Zhen Li) The rationale we'd have missed it? The approach utilized by the sooner Asian cultures is sort of totally different from the extra well-known mummification practices. In keeping with a workforce led by archaeologist Hsiao-chun Hung of the Australian Nationwide College, the people of their research have been slowly smoked over an open hearth for lengthy stretches of time.

This follow is just like burials seen in Australia and New Guinea at a barely later date, suggesting a cultural hyperlink through shared funerary rites.

"Our burial samples from Southeastern Asia spotlight a remarkably enduring set of cultural beliefs and mortuary practices that endured for over 10,000 years amongst hunter-gatherer communities who have been associated via their craniofacial attributes and genomic affinities to Indigenous New Guinea Highland and Australian populations," the researchers write in their paper .

<img decoding="async" src="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial-set.jpg" alt="" width="642" height="541" class="size-full wp-image-173914" srcset="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial-set.jpg 642w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial-set-492x415.jpg 492w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/burial-set-600x506.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px" loading="lazy"/> Early and Center Holocene human burials from southern China. (Hung et al., PNAS , 2025) Archaeologists had beforehand seen that numerous pre-Neolithic burials throughout a large geographical area that features Southeast Asia and southern China have rather a lot in frequent . In lots of, the person is curled in a crouching or fetal place, tightly sure in place. Furthermore, many of those burials present some burning of the bones.

How these cultures processed their useless for burial, and the way they achieved the distinctive burial postures, have been open questions. Hung and her colleagues postulated that the stays have been smoke-dried, in an analogous method to how some New Guinea Highlands cultures course of their useless to this present day.

The analysis workforce's examination concerned 69 bone samples from 54 pre-Neolithic burials, relationship between 4,000 and 12,000 years in the past, from 11 totally different websites throughout southern China, northern Vietnam, and Indonesia.

<img decoding="async" src="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/smoked-man.jpg" alt="" width="642" height="492" class="size-full wp-image-173917" srcset="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/smoked-man.jpg 642w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/smoked-man-542x415.jpg 542w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/smoked-man-600x460.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px" loading="lazy"/> A smoke-mummified man who died in center age, some 9,000 years in the past. (Yousuke Kaifu and Hirofumi Matsumura) These bones have been subjected to X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). XRD is especially efficient at detecting modifications to the construction of the bone that happen beneath temperatures increased than 500 levels Celsius (932 Fahrenheit). FTIR is best for detecting bone modifications induced by publicity to decrease temperatures.

5 of the samples didn't return dependable FTIR outcomes, which left 64 samples. Most of those – round 84 % – confirmed proof of warmth publicity. A few of the bones additionally had soot deposits, whereas totally different bones taken from the identical particular person returned totally different values, suggesting that the heating was utilized selectively. There have been additionally lower marks on a number of the bones.

Based mostly on their findings, the researchers imagine that the method was just like the modern-day rites of the Dani people in New Guinea. The deceased particular person is tightly sure earlier than being suspended over low, smoky fires for intervals of weeks to months. Cuts on the bones may point out cuts made for drainage or disarticulation functions.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/papua-mummies.jpg" alt="" width="642" height="437" class="size-full wp-image-173915" srcset="https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/papua-mummies.jpg 642w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/papua-mummies-610x415.jpg 610w, https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2025/09/papua-mummies-600x408.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px"/> Smoke-mummified people from New Guinea, photographed in January 2019. Each are stored in non-public households. (Hung et al., PNAS , 2025) As soon as the person is sufficiently mummified, the burial rites can proceed. For the Dani folks, that includes open-air shows; for pre-Neolithic cultures, it seems to have been burial.

These findings recommend that deliberate mummification is much extra widespread around the globe, extra complicated and various, and older than we thought.

"The custom of smoked mummification serves as compelling proof of long-term cultural persistence between historic Southeastern Asian and ethnographic Papuan and Australian mortuary practices. Moreover, archaeological findings recommend that this custom could have been identified amongst hunter-gatherer societies throughout an enormous area, for a lot of millennia, extending from northeastern Asia and Jomon Japan to western Oceania and Australia, and probably farther," the researchers write .

"By this follow, the smoked and preserved stays of the deceased allowed folks to maintain bodily and non secular connections with their ancestors, bridging time and reminiscence."