Oldest mummies in the world explained

Douglas Heaven

(Image: Bernardo Arriaza)

Behind this mask lies the well-preserved face of someone who died many thousands of years ago, in the coastal desert of what is now northern Chile and southern Peru. A new theory may explain why the locals there began mummifying their dead.

A number of human cultures developed a tradition of mummification. The Chinchorro people of South America were the first. Their mummies are between 7000 and 8000 years old, predating the earliest evidence of mummification in Egypt by about 4000 years.

Now Pablo Marquet of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and colleagues may have worked out why the ancient hunter-gatherers began to handle their dead this way. It may all be down to the environment.

They suggest that the extreme aridity of the region would have naturally preserved corpses. A population explosion in the region - partly due to the bountiful coastal waters - meant that these naturally preserved corpses became an increasingly common part of the physical and cultural landscape.

The complex mortuary practices may have emerged automatically as a consequence of this exposure to the well-preserved dead. The accelerated social and political development of the growing population probably provided a suitable environment to experiment with the mummification process.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1116724109