🌅 The World’s Oldest Mummy Was Smoked Not Wrapped

SOURCE

Hung et al. (2025)

WHAT TO KNOW

• A new study by researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra suggests the world’s earliest known evidence of mummification isn’t wrapped bodies in Egypt or dried corpses in Chile, but ancient skeletons that were smoked over bonfires across China and Southeast Asia up to 12,000 years ago. The team studied 54 ancient burial sites in China, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, finding hunter-gatherers commonly smoke-dried corpses as a means of preservation in a cultural practice that endured for thousands of years (the study suggests the practice began to disappear around 4,000 years ago) across vast geographic distances.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Testing revealed smoke-dried mummies found in southern China, Vietnam, and Indonesia were more than 10,000 years old, predating other well-known practices of mummification by thousands of years, including in ancient Egypt (about 4,500 years ago) and by the Chinchorro culture in northern Chile (about 7,000 years ago). However, smoke-drying only preserved the corpses for a few centuries at most, a much shorter duration than that of Egyptian mummies, which were embalmed and stored in sealed containers, preserving them for millennia.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Corpse-smoking is still practiced today by the Dani people in Indonesia, who mummify bodies by binding them tightly and smoking them until they turn black. The mummies are kept at a family member’s home in a special room and brought out on important occasions. The researchers believe the Dani people are practicing a cultural tradition brought to the area by migrating humans long ago.