Smoke-dried mummies found in Southeast Asia are the oldest known

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Science News by Bruce Bower 10/31/2025

Smoke-dried mummies found in Southeast Asia are the oldest known

These crouched corpses pre-date Egypt’s mummies by at least 7,000 years

Egypt’s mummies are old, but not the record-holders. Southeast Asians preserved their dead some 7,000 years before Egyptians, new research shows.

Hunter-gatherers across southern China, Southeast Asia and nearby islands mummified bodies as long as 12,000 years ago. They bound the corpses in crouched postures, then dried the bodies over low-temperature fires for several months, says Hsiao-chun Hung. She’s an archaeologist at Australian National University in Canberra.

Hung was part of a team that described their findings Sept. 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team studied the remains of people buried in crouched or squatting positions. The mummified bodies came from 95 sites in Southeast Asia and nearby islands (including Borneo and Java). Some remains had burned patches on the skull or other bones.

More: https://www.snexplores.org/article/oldest-mummies-smoke-dried-asia