When we imagine mummies, most of us picture the golden sands of Egypt, sealed tombs, and linen-wrapped pharaohs lying in eternal slumber. But a startling discovery in Southeast Asia has shifted this image dramatically. Scientists have uncovered what they believe to be the world’s oldest known mummies—human remains dating back up to 12,000 years, thousands of years before the famous mummies of Egypt or even the Chinchorro people of South America.
This remarkable finding suggests that the human desire to preserve the dead, to keep bonds with ancestors alive across generations, stretches back further in time and across more regions of the globe than ever imagined.
What Mummification Really Means
Mummification is more than the physical preservation of a body. It is both a biological process and a cultural act. Nature sometimes lends a hand, halting decay in dry deserts like Chile’s Atacama or in the oxygen-poor waters of Irish bogs. But human beings across countless societies also learned to intervene—embalming, wrapping, or drying their dead to honor them, guide their spirits, and ensure they remained part of the living community’s memory.
The Egyptians perfected elaborate rituals, filling tombs with treasures for the afterlife. The Chinchorro, a fishing people of Peru and Chile, practiced careful preservation as early as 7,000 years ago, creating some of the world’s oldest deliberately prepared mummies—until now. The new discovery in Asia pushes that tradition back almost twice as far, into the deep shadows of prehistory.
Unearthing Ancient Secrets in Asia
Archaeologists studying sites across China, Vietnam, and other parts of Southeast Asia began noticing something unusual in ancient human remains. Bodies were often buried in crouched or squatted positions. Many skeletons bore subtle cut marks, signs of burning, or other alterations. At first, these details seemed puzzling. But further analysis revealed a startling pattern: the bones showed evidence of exposure to heat in a way consistent with smoke-drying over fire.
This suggested that early hunter-gatherer groups in the region may have intentionally preserved their dead through smoke-drying—an early form of mummification. Rather than allowing bodies to decay naturally, they used fire to halt decomposition, leaving behind remains that could endure for generations.
It was not merely about preservation for its own sake. As study author Hirofumi Matsumura of Sapporo Medical University explained, the practice likely “allowed people to sustain physical and spiritual connections with their ancestors, bridging time and memory.” In other words, it gave families and communities a way to keep their dead present, not lost to the soil.
A Cultural Bridge Through Time
The emotional weight of this discovery cannot be overstated. It suggests that tens of thousands of years ago, people were already grappling with the same questions we face today: How do we honor our dead? How do we carry their memory forward? And how do we reconcile the finality of death with the longing for continuity?
By carefully preserving their loved ones, these ancient communities in Asia may have been creating something more profound than simply bodies without decay. They were shaping a bridge between the living and the dead, ensuring that the presence of ancestors lingered, protecting and guiding the community.
This mirrors practices around the world. In ancient Egypt, mummies were prepared to secure safe passage into the afterlife. Among the Chinchorro, the mummification of adults and even infants may have reflected deep communal care. And in Southeast Asia, smoke-drying could have served both practical and spiritual purposes, reinforcing ties between generations.
Not Without Questions
As groundbreaking as the study is, scientists caution that uncertainties remain. Dating methods used on the remains could be more precise, and it is not yet clear whether smoke-drying was practiced consistently across all sites in China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Some of the evidence may reflect variations in ritual or preservation methods.
Human evolution expert Rita Peyroteo Stjerna of Uppsala University, who was not involved in the study, praised the discovery but urged caution: “The findings offer an important contribution to the study of prehistoric funerary practices,” she noted, while pointing out that more robust dating and context are needed before drawing firm conclusions.
Even with these caveats, the evidence paints a tantalizing picture: deliberate mummification may have been more widespread—and far older—than we ever suspected.
Living Traditions of Preservation
Perhaps most astonishing of all, this practice has not vanished into history. Even today, Indigenous communities in Australia and Papua New Guinea continue to smoke-dry and preserve their dead. This cultural thread, stretching across continents and millennia, underscores a shared human desire: to resist the erasure of time, to keep ancestors close, and to turn memory into something tangible.
It is humbling to realize that when modern people honor their loved ones—whether through rituals, photographs, or memorials—they are participating in a tradition as old as humanity itself. The ancient smoke-dried mummies of Southeast Asia are not just archaeological finds; they are voices from the deep past, whispering that remembrance and connection are universal human needs.
Why These Discoveries Matter
At first glance, mummies may seem like relics of an ancient world, curiosities for museums and textbooks. But they are more than that. They reveal how people thousands of years ago thought about life, death, and belonging. They show us that the impulse to honor our dead is not tied to one civilization or continent but is woven into the very fabric of what it means to be human.
The discovery of the world’s oldest known mummies in Southeast Asia does not just push back a historical timeline—it deepens our understanding of ourselves. It reminds us that across cultures and ages, people have sought the same comfort: that love and memory can outlast the body, that death need not be the end of connection.
A Shared Human Story
The sands of Egypt, the deserts of Chile, the fire pits of Southeast Asia—each of these places tells a different version of the same story. Humanity has always sought to preserve what it loves. The methods differ—wrappings of linen, careful embalming, or smoke and fire—but the meaning is constant.
When we look upon these ancient mummies, we are not just studying bones or artifacts. We are seeing echoes of ourselves—our fears, our griefs, our hopes for continuity. The hunter-gatherers who smoke-dried their dead 12,000 years ago were not so different from us. They, too, stood before the mystery of death and asked: How can we hold on to those we love?
And in their answer—smoke, fire, and preservation—they have left behind not only bodies but a timeless message: memory is humanity’s greatest inheritance.
More information: Hung, Hsiao-chun et al, Earliest evidence of smoke-dried mummification: More than 10,000 years ago in southern China and Southeast Asia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2515103122. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2515103122
