Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
The earliest mummies are typically associated with the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, but as an intensive examination of a 5,600-year-old mummy confirms, the methods used for this iconic funeral practice date back to well before the age of pharaohs.
The practice of mummification and the techniques used for embalming (such as the use of resins) were thought to have originated in ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom (also known as the "Pyramid Age") around 2500 BC. But this interpretation was challenged by a 2014 analysis of funeral textiles found at the southern Egyptian site of Mostagedda, which pushed back the origin of Egyptian mummification by over 1,500 years.
[...] Indeed, this embalming technique dates back to the Naqada stage of Egyptian prehistory, which is substantially earlier that the Pharaonic Period. But the analysis also revealed the use of an antibacterial conifer resin that isn't native to Egypt. This compound must have been imported, therefore, likely from the Near East in what is now Israel/Palestine.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/ancient-egyptians-mastered-mummification-long-before-th-1828360911
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:46AM (1 child)
Well, I don't know whoever thought people just started building pyramids and changing the way they preserve dead just appeared out of the blue at the same time.
Mummification still goes on today. There are tribes in (I think) Madagascar who regularly go back to the family graves, unwrap them, re-wrap them and inter them again every year, while telling stories about what they did and when they lived, and telling the corpses about what's happened in the family.
I fail to believe that just popped into existence at roughly the same time as people thought "maybe we should build huge places to bury famous people in".
That mummification has been around for thousands of years isn't a surprise to me. It takes minimal resources, preserves the body, can be seen to be working very quickly (i.e. the body doesn't instantly decay) so it's something that people could discover on their own just if their grandma died on a trip and they want to get her back home, so decide to preserve her a bit so she can go through the normal ritual. Before long, it becomes part of the ritual itself, and takes nothing more than a few resins and some cloth.
Pyramids, however, are not a whim - and they may have been built centuries before the earliest surviving ruin, you just wouldn't know about it as it probably wasn't very good, didn't last or was scavenged for stone for someone more famous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:39AM
mummification has been around for
thousandsbillions of yearsFTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:05PM
"Naqada stage"
For use as a nuclear power plant style battery or explosive?