A 12,000-year-old mummy has been found in Asia
An international group of scientists has discovered in the territory of Southern China, Vietnam and Indonesia the oldest evidence of human mummification, the age of which reaches 12 thousand years.
This discovery makes the discovered remains the earliest known examples of mummification in the world, significantly ahead of the famous examples from Egypt and South America, The Conversation reports.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that hunter-gatherers used low-temperature smoking of bodies as a form of ritual burial. The bodies of the dead were placed in a sitting or bent posture, a form of burial previously thought to be the usual "primary" burial (i.e., without pre-treatment of the body).
However, the physical anthropologist Hirofumi Matsuura drew attention to the oddities in the anatomical arrangement of the bones and traces of scorching in areas with the least amount of soft tissue. Scientists surmised that the bodies had been deliberately smoked at low temperatures to prevent decomposition and preserve the remains.
The inspiration came unexpectedly during a 2017 excavation in central Vietnam. The researchers remembered the tradition of smoked mummies in Papua New Guinea. In 2019, they travelled there to personally examine modern mummies stored in private homes. The similarities to the ancient remains proved striking.
Pandemic COVID-19 suspended field work, but the scientists continued the study, applying two laboratory methods: X-ray structural analysis and infrared spectroscopy. Both methods confirmed - the bones were indeed exposed to low temperature, that is, the bodies were smoked.
In total, remains from 54 burials at 11 archaeological sites were analysed. The geography of the discovery covers southern China, Vietnam and Indonesia. The practice of smoked mummification, as scientists believe, was widespread not only in East Asia, but probably in Japan as well, and its origins may go back more than 20,000 years.
Ethnographic data show that similar practices persisted in the highlands of New Guinea and South Australia until the end of the XIX century. There, the preparation of a single mummy could take up to three months and was accompanied by deep spiritual devotion.
"This tradition reflects the universal human desire to maintain a connection with departed loved ones," the researchers emphasise.
The findings offer new insights into the cultures and rituals of the earliest communities, as well as their ties to the indigenous peoples of Australia and Oceania.