The world's oldest mummies found in Asia

The most famous mummies are undoubtedly those of Egypt, not only for the wealth of sarcophagi and the refined techniques for preserving corpses, but also for the wealth of texts describing beliefs about death and the afterlife. Now, a team of archaeologists believes they have found the oldest known mummies—twice as old as the Egyptian ones—in several locations in Southeast Asia. In this case, there is not a single written text that would allow us to understand the ideas behind this type of burial in positions worthy of a contortionist, but researchers are certain that it was a widespread practice. Curiously, some peoples of Asia and Oceania continue to preserve their dead using very similar techniques.

“Our study reveals a unique blend of technique, tradition, culture, and beliefs,” archaeologist Hsiao-Chun Hung , first author of the paper, explains to this newspaper. Her team, which includes scientists from Australia, Japan, China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries, has identified more than 50 burials dating between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago in southern China, Vietnam, and Indonesia that follow a very similar pattern: all the bodies were buried in extremely crouched, almost unnatural positions, but with no signs of broken or damaged joints.

“The very crouched or squatting posture is a characteristic feature of pre-Neolithic burials [before the arrival of agriculture] in East Asia, particularly common in southern China and Southeast Asia,” explains Hun, of the Australian National University. “Over the years, we've observed several hundred examples, but there was always something unusual about them. Hirofumi Matsumura, also an author on this paper, is a highly experienced physical anthropologist and anatomist, and he was the first to point out certain skeletal positions that seemed anatomically impossible. We realized it wasn't correct to simply classify them as ordinary primary burials,” she adds.

Researchers analyzed the skeletal remains using two techniques: X-ray and infrared. Their results show that, although many bones showed no visible signs of exposure, they had been exposed to fire and smoke. The analysis suggests that the bodies were smoked to slowly dehydrate them. This would explain how they managed to maintain these positions without breaking their joints.

The researchers found evidence of this type of mummification in several Southeast Asian countries and point out that there are other similar burial sites where the techniques are very similar. They believe they are dealing with a mummification and burial technique that was prevalent among the hunter-gatherer peoples who first populated Asia.

These early populations were closely related to the earliest members of our species, Homo sapiens , who had left Africa around 70,000 years ago and populated Asia and Oceania for the first time. When the Neolithic Revolution reached this area, these burial practices were replaced by more conventional burials, with the body upright and face up, the researchers explain in their study, published Monday in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

"These are the oldest known mummies," the study highlights. Egyptian mummies, for example, date back some 4,500 years. In Chile's Atacama Desert, the Chinchorro culture took advantage of the extremely dry and hot conditions to mummify children and adults, who were then covered with clay death masks, some 7,000 years ago, making them the oldest known mummies to date. Although the new Asian mummies are not as well preserved, scientists emphasize that some of them are more than 10,000 years old. In the hot and humid climate of Southeast Asia, it was impossible to preserve bodies using Egyptian or American techniques, so the use of fire to dehydrate the remains became widespread.

“Smoke mummification was probably a widespread practice,” Hun believes. “This shows us that hunters and gatherers of the past, in different places, had the impulse to preserve their ancestors so that they would continue to have a physical, tangible, and visible presence,” he adds.

Researchers have traveled to Papua New Guinea to study very similar modern mummies. The Dani tribe, for example, contorts corpses shortly after death and slowly smokes them in a process that can take several months. The mummies in this case are kept in a special room in the house and brought out during special celebrations. The Anga, also in Papua New Guinea, have almost identical practices. For them, the researchers explain, the spirit of the deceased moves freely during the day and returns to rest in their mummified body at night.

“The similarities are evident in the hyperflexed burial position, and these ancient hunter-gatherers also show physical ties to the indigenous populations of the New Guinea Highlands and Australia through their craniofacial characteristics and genomic affinities,” Hun explains. “This practice was likely underpinned by strong spiritual beliefs. Only deep faith and love for those who had passed away could provide the necessary motivation to carry it out. However, clear evidence of the details through archaeology is difficult to find. For now, we can tentatively consider ethnographic records and contemporary societies that display similar practices,” he adds.

“We are realizing that mummification is much older than we thought,” emphasizes Edgard Camarós , an archaeologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela who was not involved in the study. The specialist highlights other similar known cases. For example, in the Sado Valley , in Portugal, several burials dating back some 8,000 years have recently been found in which the remains also showed signs of fire mummification. Camarós himself is analyzing another case in his laboratory: one of the fire mummies from Kabayan, another similar mummification culture from 8,000 years ago located in the northern Philippines. Until now, Camarós points out, it was difficult to investigate these types of practices, given that skeletal remains are much less well preserved than in Egypt, for example. "In these cases, you don't find the mummy itself, but rather the shadows of a past mummification that, through a very thorough and exquisite analysis, as is the case here, allows us to interpret that mummification was a common practice in prehistoric societies, contrary to what we thought until now. Although their interpretation is debatable, as there are other funerary practices that could produce the same results, I find it to be a convincing work," he emphasizes.

Bioarchaeologist Rita Peyroteo Stjerna , from Uppsala University in Sweden, is one of the specialists who analyzed the possible mummification in the Sado Valley. She believes that this study “makes an important contribution by using two advanced analysis techniques, X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform spectrophotometry, to expand knowledge about mortuary practices in prehistory.” However, she believes that there are still loose ends, such as the fact that these techniques have not been used on current mummified corpses to support some of the study’s conclusions and that some of the datings are not as consistent as they should be, she adds.