Researchers have discovered evidence that ancient people in southeast Asia practiced a unique form of mummification more than 10,000 years ago. According to a study published on September 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, human remains found at several archaeological sites in southern China and Southeast Asia show signs that bodies were intentionally dried before burial.
The team examined 54 pre-Neolithic burials from 11 different sites. They observed that many skeletons were tightly crouched or squatting, with limbs so closely pressed to the torso that no empty spaces existed between bones—unlike typical burials where decomposed soft tissue leaves gaps. “In southern China and Southeast Asia (collectively, southeastern Asia), Terminal Pleistocene and Early to Middle Holocene (about 12,000 to 4,000 years before present) hunter-gatherer burials feature tightly crouched or squatting postures, sometimes with indications of post-mortem dismemberment,” researchers said in the study.
These findings differ from Neolithic period burials in the same region, which typically placed bodies flat on their backs with extended limbs. Researchers concluded that the compact positions suggest some alteration occurred before burial. “However, our observations at several sites in northern Vietnam and southern China … reveal that many of the hyper-flexed burials were so tightly contorted that no empty spaces existed between limbs and torsos,” researchers noted. “This suggests that no soft tissues, apart perhaps from dried skin, remained around the skeletons when they were buried.”
Unlike Egypt or Chile—regions known for natural mummification due to dry climates—southeast Asia’s humid conditions would not allow for natural preservation. The research team believes these ancient people used smoke-drying as a method of mummification. Study author Hsiao-chun Hung explained: “Smoked mummification takes about three months, during which time the body is slowly and continuously heated over a low fire.”
To investigate further, researchers studied current practices among communities in Indonesia where smoked mummification still occurs today. The Dani and Pumo peoples create mummies by binding limbs close to the body shortly after death and then drying them over a fire for months. “The Dani mummies were often tightly compressed with their four limbs bound to the trunk, an action presumably undertaken immediately after death and prior to the onset of rigor mortis, although the actual degrees of flexion varied and some appear to have been unbound,” researchers stated. The Dani keep these preserved ancestors inside special rooms within their homes for ceremonial occasions.
A similar practice was found among the Kukukuku people in Papua New Guinea. Revered individuals such as warriors or shamans are seated above fires until sufficiently dried out before being placed on ledges or cliffs for safekeeping rather than burial.
“Presumably, when they mummified them, they would have put them in the ground fairly quickly, rather than sitting them around the place like people have tended to do in ethnographic times in New Guinea and Australia,” said study author Peter Bellwood.
Bellwood added: “It is quite possible that we are seeing the descendants of the first modern humans in southeastern Asia. The oldest dating for these burials is about 14,000 years ago, and these people are, we think, very close to the ancestors of the people who live today as Indigenous Australians and New Guineans.”
Despite similarities across regions and eras, it remains unclear whether this smoked mummification tradition spread through shared culture or developed independently due to environmental challenges faced by each group.
“Our findings highlight a deep and enduring biological and cultural continuity, linking ancient hunter-gatherer populations in Southeastern Asia with modern Indigenous communities in New Guinea and Australia,” researchers concluded. “The tradition of smoked mummification serves as compelling evidence of long-term cultural persistence between ancient Southeastern Asian and ethnographic Papuan and Australian mortuary practices.”
The research was conducted by an international team including Hung, Bellwood, Zhenhua Deng, Yiheng Liu, Zhiyu Ran, Yue Zhang, Zhen Li, Yousuke Kaifu, Qiang Huang, Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen, Hai Dang Le, Guangmao Xie, Anh Tuan Nguyen, Mariko Yamagata, Truman Simanjuntak, Sofwan Noerwidi, Mohammad Ruly Fauzi, Marlin Tolla, Alpius Wetipo,Gang He Junmei Sawada Chi Zhang,and Hirofumi Matsumura.
