Hsiao-chun Hung/The Conversation
Smoke-drying mummification of human remains was practiced by hunter-gatherers across southern China, southeast Asia and beyond as far back as 12,000 years ago, my colleagues and I report in new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is the earliest known evidence of mummification anywhere in the world, far older than better-known examples from ancient Egypt and South America.
We studied remains from sites dated to between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago, but the tradition never vanished completely. It persisted into modern times in parts of the New Guinea Highlands and Australia.
(Warning, this article contains imagery of deceased people.)
Hunter-gatherer burials in southern China and Southeast Asia
In southern China and Southeast Asia, tightly crouched or squatting burials are a hallmark of the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region between roughly 20,000 and 4,000 years ago.
Archaeologists working across the region for a long time have classified these graves as straightforward “primary burials”. This means the body was laid to rest intact in a single ceremony.
