Chinchorro Mummies

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Surprise! The world's oldest mummies are not in Egypt
Arica, Chile (CNN) — The first humans known to have mummified their dead did so in a rather improbable spot: the driest place on Earth. The Chinchorro people settled in coastal bays of the Atacama Desert, in what is present-day Chile, around 7,000 BC and developed a technique for mummification around 5,000 BC. That's roughly 2,000 years before the ancient Egyptians. Yet, while the Egyptians were a complex civilization mummifying elite pharaohs, the Chinchorro were pre-ceramic hunter-gatherers with a more egalitarian approach to honoring the dead.

What Have the World’s Oldest Mummies Kept Under Wraps?
Researchers are making digital reconstructions of the 7,000-year-old bodies, which face rapid deterioration from microbes. Roughly 2,000 years before the Egyptians began mummifying their dead, the people belonging to the Chinchorro culture had already developed fairly sophisticated methods for embalming. Now, reports Giovanna Fleitas at the Associated France-Presse, researchers are using medical technology to help unravel the history of these preserved corpses.

Scans unveil secrets of world's oldest mummies
The world's oldest mummies have just had an unusual check-up.

References

References

CGTN. (2019, August 8). These people were mummified 2,000 years before the Egyptians [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/74uiPVg9lj4
Daley, J. (2016). What have the world’s oldest mummies kept under wraps? Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-oldest-mummies-get-ct-scan-180961578/
Fleitas, G. (2016, December 24). Scans unveil secrets of world's oldest mummies. phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2016-12-scans-unveil-secrets-world-oldest.html
Johanson, M. (2019, May 1). Surprise! The world's oldest mummies are not in Egypt. CNN Travel. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-oldest-mummies-chile/index.html
Timeline-World History Documentaries. (2018, February 28). The oldest mummies in the world [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/9LZZk376voI

HSIE - Elective History - Year 9 - Preserved Human Remains: Chinchorro Mummies