For History.com, I wrote about the new discovery of the world’s oldest known mummies. Boy was I glad the head of the World Mummy Institute responded to my email:
For thousands of years, humans have used various methods to preserve their dead—by embalming, drying out or otherwise shielding bodies from decay. While the most famous examples come from ancient Egypt and South America, the origins of mummification may stretch back much earlier—to the Stone Age.
Analysis of remains found in graves across Southeast Asia, from China to Indonesia have shown that humans were practicing mummification as far back as 12,000 years ago. That makes these remains older than mummies from the Chinchorro culture in South America (about 7,000 years ago) and Egypt’s Old Kingdom (around 4,500 years ago). Unlike those better-known examples, the Southeast Asian mummies were preserved by being dried over smoky fires for periods lasting several months.