Scientists say they've found the world's oldest mummies, and they're far from Egypt

Mummies are most often associated with Egypt, where the oldest ones are about 4,500 years old. But researchers say they have found mummies that are much older, on the other side of the world.

Mummies are most often associated with Egypt, where the oldest ones are about 4,500 years old. But researchers say they have found mummies that are much older on the other side of the world.

“We found that in southern China and Southeast Asia, there were many archeological sites that contain human burials that are between four and 14,000 years old,” Professor Peter Bellwood, a co-author of the study, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

The study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined 54 pre-Neolithic burials from 11 archaeological sites in southern China and Southeast Asia, with large numbers of samples coming from Vietnam and China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and smaller numbers coming from the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Human remains were found in tightly crouched or squatting postures, often with traces of burning. The researchers said findings confirmed that many of the remains had been smoke-dried over fire for extended periods before burial in a process of mummification.

Burials with partially burned skeletal remains were frequently observed at pre-Neolithic sites in southern China and Southeast Asia. Hirofumi MatsumuraThe remains “belong to an original hunter-gatherer population that occupied Southeast Asia in Paleolithic times, and that continued in occupation in places like Australia and New Guinea through into current times,” said Bellwood, an emeritus professor of archaeology at the Australian National University in Canberra.