World’s Oldest Mummies: 12,000-Year-Old Smoke-Dried Bodies from Southeast Asia and Southern China Precede Egypt by Millennia

A landmark PNAS study published in September 2025 has revealed the earliest known deliberate human mummification: smoke-dried corpses from hunter-gatherer societies across southern China and Southeast Asia, dating back 12,000–14,000 years—thousands of years before the first Egyptian or Chinchorro mummies.

Led by Hsiao-chun Hung (Australian National University), the team examined 54 hyperflexed burials from sites in Guangxi (China), Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Bodies were тιԍнтly bound into crouched or squatting postures impossible for fresh corpses, then slowly smoke-dried over low fires for months—exactly as practiced ethnographically in Highland New Guinea and parts of Australia today. Bones show clear charring, heat-induced fractures, and discoloration consistent with prolonged low-temperature smoking rather than cremation.

Radiocarbon dates push the oldest examples (including a charred arm bone from northern Vietnam) to ~14,000 years ago, with the practice widespread between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago. In the humid monsoon climates of the region, natural desiccation was impossible; smoke-drying was a deliberate ritual and practical solution to preserve the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ for secondary burial or display.

“This is the oldest artificial mummification in the world,” Hung stated. The tradition endured for over 8,000 years across a vast region, proving that sophisticated funerary practices emerged among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers long before the rise of complex civilizations.

The discovery rewrites the global history of mummification: Egypt’s famous linen-wrapped bodies (~4,500 years ago) and Chile’s Chinchorro mummies (~7,000 years ago) are relative newcomers. Southeast Asia’s smoke-dried ᴅᴇᴀᴅ—bound, heated, and honored—represent humanity’s earliest known effort to defy decay and keep ancestors present.