Scientists have found what could be the world’s oldest known mummies in southeast Asia, with some of the preserved remains believed to date back 12,000 years.
Researchers found human remains that were buried in crouched or squatted positions with some cuts and burn marks in various archaeological sites across China and Vietnam.
Other remains were found in the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists revealed the bodies were likely exposed to heat and suggested they had been smoke-dried over a fire and mummified.
Study author Hirofumi Matsumura, with Sapporo Medical University in Japan, said the practice “allowed people to sustain physical and spiritual connections with their ancestors, bridging time and memory”.
While mummification can happen naturally in places where conditions can stop decomposition, various cultures also mummified their ancestors through embalming to honour them or send their souls to the afterlife.
Egyptian mummies are the most well-known, but some of the oldest known mummies were prepared by a fishing people called the Chinchorro about 7,000 years ago in what is now Peru and Chile.
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In modern times, indigenous communities in Australia and Papua New Guinea also smoke-dry and mummify their dead.
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Rita Peyroteo Stjerna, a human evolution expert with Uppsala University in Sweden, who was not involved in the research published on Monday, expressed some doubts about the study, saying that the dating methods used could have been more robust.
She added it was not yet clear that mummies were consistently smoke-dried across the locations in southeastern Asia, but added in an email to the Associated Press that the findings offer “an important contribution to the study of prehistoric funerary practices”.
