Chinchorro artificial mummification
Momificación artificial Chinchorro
- Date
- c. 5050 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Arica, Arica y Parinacota, Chile
- Credited to
- Chinchorro culture (fishers of the Atacama Desert)
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The Chinchorro disarticulated the corpse, removed organs and muscles, reinforced it with sticks and fibres, modelled it with clay and painted it with manganese or ochre. They are the oldest artificial mummies in the world, two millennia before the Egyptian ones.
Worldwide priority over Egyptian natron mummification (c. 2600 BCE), which is an independent tradition.
What it led to
- practical knowledge of human anatomy
- a funerary cult without agriculture or state hierarchy
- UNESCO World Heritage status (2021)