People in Southeast Asia and China were mummifying their dead thousands of years before the Egyptians did, smoke-dried human remains reveal
The oldest known human mummies in the world were created by smoke-drying corpses 10,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and China, well before mummification has become commonplace Chile And Egyptshow new research.
A study of dozens of old tombs found in China, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia revealed that many skeletons that have been found in a tight fetal position were treated by a prolonged drying period on fire before being buried. Research was published Monday September 15 in the journal PNA.
Researchers had been perplexed by the high number of burials in China And Southeast Asia of 4,000 to 12,000 years in which skeletons were “hyperflexible” or distorted in closely crouched non-natural positions. A similar skeleton found in Portugal in 2022 was interpreted as proof of mummification because it was hyperflexible – probably linked so that the arms and legs could be moved beyond their natural limits while the body decomposed.
But in many ancient burials from Southeast Asia, the researchers discovered that there were proofs of burning on the skeletons and not in the tombs, which suggested a kind of ritual treatment of the body which included fire and smoke.
The researchers used X -ray diffraction, a non -destructive technique that allows scientists to study the internal microstructure of a material and an infrared spectroscopy to assess whether the bones had been exposed to heat. Many skeletons have revealed evidence of heating and low -intensity of soot, rather than evidence of direct combustion such as a cremation. This suggests that a specialized mortuary practice involving the smoking of a corpse was probably widely practiced in pre-aggregating communities in southern China and Southeast Asia, researchers wrote.
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According to researchers. They went to Papua, a province of Indonesia, in 2019 and observed the Dani and Pumo People creating mummies from their deceased ancestors by closely linking the corpses, putting them above a fire and smoking them until they are entirely black. Based on these examples, the researchers concluded that ancient individuals were closely linked after death and smoked for long periods on fires at low temperature.
Although the deceased people that researchers have studied in their study are only bones – skinless, soft tissues or preserved hair – they consider leftovers as mummies because they were deliberately mummified by the drying of smoke.
“The main difference from the mummies that we generally imagine is that these ancient smoked bodies were not sealed in containers after the process, and consequently, their preservation generally lasted only a few decades to a few hundred years,” said Hung. In the warm and humid climate of Southeast Asia, smoking was probably the most effective way to preserve bodies, she said.
But how these ancient hunter-gatherers discovered that smoking a human body could preserve it “remains a fascinating and stimulating mystery,” said Hung, and “we cannot say with certainty if smoking has been designed for the first time as a means of preserving it”. It is possible that ancient people accidentally discovered smoking, as a sub-product of a kind of ritual practice, or that they first discovered animal meat smoking first, then applied it to dead humans.
“What is clear is that the practice has extended the visible presence of the deceased, allowing ancestors to remain among the living in a tangible way, a poignant reflection of sustainable human love, memory and devotion,” said Hung.
Two -layer migration model
Mummies can also support a “two-layer” model of early migration in Southeast Asia. This model is based on the idea that the former hunter-gatherers came as a wave of migratory people 65,000 years ago and were distinct from the last Neolithic farmers and their funeral traditions which did not arrive 4000 years ago. Former hunters who used smoked burial practices may have given birth to modern human populations in Southeast Asia, such as Dani and Pumo people who always practice this form of funeral ritual.
Ivy Hui-yuan YehAn biological anthropologist from Nanyang Technological University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that the new results support the two-layer model and “are consistent with the models of early human migration, distribution and interaction in Asia”.
If the hyperflexible burials identified throughout Southeast Asia can be interpreted as smoked mummies, this suggests that “smoked mummification could have come earlier and has been more widespread, than what is currently identified in the archaeological file”, wrote the authors in the study.
In fact, the smoke drying process of a corpse can return to the early expansion of Homo sapiens From Africa to Southeast Asia, and potentially up to 42,000 years, presenting a “deep and lasting biological and cultural continuity”, concluded the researchers.
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