14,000-Year-Old Smoke-Dried Mummies in Asia: Humanity’s Earliest Embalming Technique to Preserve Loved Ones!

In a groundbreaking PNAS study published September 2025, researchers have documented the world’s oldest known artificial mummification: smoke-dried human remains from hunter-gatherer communities in southern China and Southeast Asia dating back more than 14,000 years—pushing the origins of deliberate body preservation millennia earlier than the Chinchorro mummies of Chile and Egyptian practices by roughly 9,000 years.

Analyzing 69 bone samples from 54 pre-Neolithic burials across 11 sites in Guangxi (China), Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the team identified unmistakable signatures of low-temperature smoking. Microscopic heat alteration, charring patterns, and microstructural changes in the bones confirm prolonged exposure to smoky fires rather than natural decomposition or cremation. Many bodies were тιԍнтly bound in crouched “fetal” postures, with some showing evidence of post-mortem dismemberment before smoking—suggesting a ritual process designed to preserve the physical form for ancestor veneration.

The oldest examples, including individuals from Guangxi dated ~14,000 years ago, represent the earliest confirmed mummification technique on record. This practice endured for over 10,000 years among mobile forager groups genetically linked to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and New Guinean Highlanders, where similar smoke-drying rituals continue today.

“This is the first archaeological proof of a sophisticated, region-wide mortuary tradition that predates all other known artificial mummification by thousands of years,” lead author Hsiao-chun Hung and colleagues state. Far from simple burials, these “smoke mummies” reveal deep spiritual beliefs about death, continuity, and the body’s role in the afterlife among Pleistocene-Holocene hunter-gatherers.

The discovery upends ᴀssumptions that complex body preservation emerged only with agriculture or complex societies. Instead, it highlights remarkable cultural continuity and ingenuity in pre-farming Asia. As more sites are examined, these ancient preserved corpses continue to rewrite the global story of how humanity first learned to defy decay for the sake of loved ones.