AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
Researchers have potentially discovered the world’s oldest mummies in southern China and Southeast Asia, dating back 4,000 to 14,000 years. These pre-Neolithic burials feature partially burned skeletal remains, belonging to a hunter-gatherer population. Previously, mummies from Peru and Chile, prepared by the Chinchorro people around 7,000 years ago, were considered the oldest. This new find expands the definition of “mummy,” encompassing preserved bodies across different cultures aiming for bodily preservation, as noted by Egyptology professor Salima Ikram. The findings are based on years of accumulating evidence, like a “detective work” effort, according to lead author Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
Mummies are most often associated with Egypt, where the oldest ones are about 4,500 years old. But researchers say they have found mummies that are much older, on the other side of the world.
“We found that in southern China and Southeast Asia, there were many archeological sites that contain human burials that are between four and 14,000 years old,” Professor Peter Bellwood, a co-author of the study, told NBC News in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Burials with partially burned skeletal remains were frequently observed at pre-Neolithic sites in southern China and Southeast Asia. Hirofumi Matsumura
The remains “belong to an original hunter-gatherer population that occupied Southeast Asia in Paleolithic times, and that continued in occupation in places like Australia and New Guinea through into current times,” said Bellwood, an emeritus professor of archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Previously, the oldest known mummies had been found not in Egypt but in modern-day Peru and Chile, where they were prepared by a fishing people called the Chinchorro about 7,000 years ago.
A modern hyper-flexed, smoke-dried mummy of the Dani people, kept in Jayawijaya, Indonesia, which closely resembles many pre-Neolithic burials documented in southern China and Southeast Asia.Hirofumi Matsumura
“The term has been taken on by other groups to identify other preserved bodies. So it’s got a much more general understanding now,” Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who was not involved in the research, said in an interview.
“What is nice is that the idea behind it is similar, because they wanted to preserve the body,” she added.
“We have gradually gathered multiple lines of evidence over many years,” Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung, a lead author of the study, said in an email. “It’s a bit like detective work — finding small clues, piecing them together, and growing increasingly confident in the hypothesis.”
The Associated Press contributed.
