A large group of Asian researchers, gathered in an international consortium, has just published a revolutionary study that could rewrite the chronology of the most remote known mummification practices. Scholars have identified traces of a particular type of mummification, obtained with exposure to heat, on a sample of 54 pre-neolithic burials from 11 archaeological sites ofAsia Sudorientale In China, Vietnam and Indonesia datable between 12,000 and 5,000 years ago. These practices, Similar to the harvesting still used in Papuaanticipate about 3,000 years the most ancient mummies known, namely those of the Chinchorro of the Andes.
The research group is led by Hsia-Chun Hungof the University of Canberra in Australiaand composed of researchers from China (University of Beijing, Institute of Archeology of Guanxi, Dingsishan Museum, Hunan Archeology Institute), Japan (University of Tokyo, Rykkio, Niigata and Sapporo), Indonesia (Center for Prehistoric Studies, Center for Archaeometric Research of Jerty, Department of Culture and Tourism of Papua) and Vietnam (Center of Archeology, Institute of Archeology). A feature that unites the burials taken into consideration is the position in which the individual was buried, or “hyperflex“. In archaeological language, this term indicates when the body of the deceased is folded in an extremely position unnatural, curled upnot possible to keep in life for a long time, with the knees extremely close behind it. It is therefore a manipulation of the body necessarily obtained post-moral. This funeral use is attested in many prehistoric burials of South-Eastern Asia, an expression of the funeral cultural of the groups of hunter-gathers who populated this territory.
When a body yes decompose inside the ground, the disappearance of soft fabrics leave some empty spaceswithin which the smaller bones (especially the falanges of the fingers of the feet or hands), due to the severity or infiltrations of water tend to movemoving away from their original position. In Tabonomy (the science that studies the changes that involve a body after death) This phenomenon is called “decomposition in empty space“, And it is very common when an individual is buried within a cashier, but also in a fairly compact ground, as in the prehistoric cases taken into consideration in this study.
However, to hit the researchers, it was the fact that although there were the conditions for this to happen, in the sample of burials chosen the positions so strictly hyperflex of the bodies have not allowed a great one dispersion smaller bones inside the pit. To understand the reason for this anomaly, the human remains have undergone X -ray analysisand Fourier transformation spectroscopytechniques to detect theheat exposure. These have reported that some bones, in precise points, were exposed to a certain point at one intense source of heat. This particularity had already been noticed macroscopically on the bones, with some points decidedly blackenedwho immediately took the attention of scholars. The temperatures to which these bodies have been exposed have not been high enough to carbonize the bodies, but enough from “dry them“.
Exposure controlled to a source of heat, which caused the burning of only some parts of the body of the deceased, could have been used to cause a drilling of soft fabricsallowing them to keep in anatomical connection for a certain period of time. This is the fact of the same principle assmokingwhich allows the organic material of keep yourself longerused for the conservation of some food. It is obviously a rather conservation technique of bodies rudimentaryin fact in the prehistoric sample taken into consideration Sliding fabrics have not been keptbut that in a wet climate like that of South -Eastern Asia would have allowed a body of keep yourself a little longer than normal. The use of this particular technique of “mummification“Artificial would explain how these bodies have been deposited so hyperflex inside the tombs, keeping In the same exact position after millennia, without a dispersion of the small bones directly linked to the cadaveric phenomena.
Also a modern ethnographic comparison It seems to support the theory of the Asian research group. Similar practicesaimed at creating “smoked mummies“, are attested to some Aborigne cultures of Australiabut above all on the island of Papua (politically divided between Indonesia and the state of Papua New Guinea).
To Papua, at some Tribus of the interioris still common “smoke“The deceased loved ones, in such a way that the body, hyperflex, can be kept and revered inside the house. Some details detected on the bones of the archaeological champion studied, such as the precise points exposed to heat, seem to suggest that the smoking practices of the hunters-cackers of southern and Vietnam of 12,000 years ago were not very different from those still used to Papua.
These traces of intentional mummificationthat is, not connected to certain climatic situations such as the arid desert climate or the glacial one, would therefore be the oldest in the worldprior to the mummies of Chinchorro of Peru and Chileso far considered the first artificial mummies never found, of well 3,000 years.
