Hunter-Gatherers in Southeast Asia and South China Smoke-Dried Their Dead More Than 10,000 Years Ago

Long before Egypt’s pharaohs, hunter-gatherers in southern China and Southeast Asia may have preserved their dead by drying them over smoky fires. A team led by the Australian National University (ANU) reports that evidence in a 2025 paper in PNAS.

What the team studied

The researchers examined 54 burials from 11 sites across southern China and Southeast Asia. Many of the bodies lay in tightly bent, crouched positions, and the bones and tissue carried marks of long, low-heat exposure to smoke. The team concluded that people bound the bodies and dried them over fire rather than wrapping them in cloth.

How old the practice is

The paper reports smoke-drying more than 10,000 years ago, and one burial dates to about 14,000 years ago. The ANU release describes the evidence as the oldest known for mummification. The sources do not compare these dates directly with Egyptian or Chinchorro mummies, so any claim that this practice came first rests on the wider literature, not on this study alone.

Why it matters

The finding suggests that people treated their dead with deliberate, careful methods well before farming or cities. It also shows that mummification took more than one form around the world.

Sources

• Hung et al., “Earliest evidence of smoke-dried mummification: More than 10,000 years ago in southern China and Southeast Asia,” PNAS (2025)
• ANU College of Asia and the Pacific: Oldest evidence of mummification uncovered
• Archaeology magazine: Study reveals world’s oldest evidence of mummification