In a new study, an international research team found that pre-Neolithic people in Southeast Asia were mummifying their died by smoke-drying them. This would make them the oldest human mummies made intentionally, predating the previous contenders by thousands of years.
This find is an entire new chapter in the history of human funerary practice. Not only was this burial method widespread, it’s still being practiced today.
These flexed burials from Vietnam date back to the Holocene. Photo: Zhen Li, Hirofumi Matsumura, Hsiao-chun Hung
An ancient practice
For the Dani (also known as Hubula) people in West Papua, Indonesia, it’s important to preserve important deceased community members. They will pose and wrap the bodies of their loved ones into a fetal position, then expose the wrapped body to smoke in order to preserve them. This results in what are called “hyper-flexed” remains.
Hsiao-chun Hung, a researcher with the Australian National University in Canberra, was familiar with the Dani’s funerary practices. So when she was in the field in Vietnam in 2017, she immediately noticed the similarity between the ancient burials and the modern Dani ones.
Hyper-flexed or crouching remains were a common practice among the ancient peoples of Southeast Asia. Traditionally, archaeologists have classified them as “primary burials.” Primary burials are when the deceased is buried directly in the ground shortly after death. Secondary burials, in contrast, are defined by post-mortem treatment of the body prior to internment.
But Hung, observing the similarity to Dani practices, hypothesized that these Vietnamese burials may have been more elaborate than we thought.
They tested 69 remain samples from southern China, northern Vietnam and Indonesia. The sites were burial mounds, caves, and open-air. While all the remains were curled up, some were flexed on their sides while others were sitting upright or even prone. But over 80% of them showed signs of significant heat exposure.
The Dani people of Papua keep these carefully preserved bodies in dedicated rooms, only taking it out for significant occasions. The black skin is the result of the smoking process. Photo: Zhen Li, Hirofumi Matsumura, Hsiao-chun Hung
Smoking the dead
The team used several different tests to gauge whether the remains had been heated after death, including a simple eye test. Many of the bones are visibly burnt, especially in the cranium, lower limbs, and elbows. This suggests that they were deliberately exposed to controlled heat, rather than fully cremated. The bones only burnt in areas with a thinner covering of flesh.
But not all heat treatment leaves visible marks on the bone. X-ray analysis examined the chemical structure of 20 samples. Nine had been heated above 525˚C, and another eight may have been exposed to lower temperatures.
To investigate the lower-temperature treatments, researchers used infrared spectroscopy. Heat exposure changes materials on a structural level, so by examining the bone crystallinity, scientists can tell whether bone, even ancient bone, has been heated above 400°C. Of the 64 samples they tested this way, only eight had not been exposed to heat.
The study suggests that most of the bodies were tightly bound shortly after death, then smoked over low heat for a long time, before being buried.
The most famous early mummies, like those of Egypt or Peru, were desiccated. The dryness of their surroundings sucked out any liquid, leaving a dry, preserved body. But in climates like East and Southeast Asia, the environment is too damp. Instead, they resorted to smoking their dead in order to preserve them. And as these new findings suggest, they’ve been doing it for a long time.
The burning is very visible in the remains of this young man from Guangxi. Photo: Zhen Li, Hirofumi Matsumura, Hsiao-chun Hung
Oldest human mummies
Before this find, the oldest known man-made human mummies were the Chinchorro mummies of modern-day Chile. The oldest of these dates to 5050 BCE. The Chinchorro people preserved bodies through a complex process of disassembly, heat treatment, and reconstruction. The arid Atacama Desert helped preserve these ancient remains.
But the oldest sample Hsiao-chun Hung and the research team examined was from over 14,000 years ago, roughly twice the age of the Chinchorro mummies. Not only are these mummies much older, but they’re from a climate very different from what is usually associated with mummification practices.
While the 14,000-year-old specimen is the oldest we know of, Hung believes the practice may be even older, citing flexed burial sites across the region from as much as 42,000 years ago. In much of Southeast Asia, the practice faded out once people adopted farming 5000 to 3500 years ago.
The geographic range is also massive, extending across most of Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. One of the tantalizing unanswered questions is whether the burial practices of Papua share a common lineage with those of the ancient Southeast Asians.
Are similar sites in Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia all descended from one tradition? How ancient really are the oldest human mummies?
