Around 10,000 years before the Egyptians developed their sophisticated embalming practices , people in Southeast Asia were already mummifying the dead. According to new research, the mortuary tradition may have been developed by the direct descendants of the very first modern humans to reach the easternmost region of Eurasia, and persists to this day among certain Indigenous groups in Australia and Highland New Guinea. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Previously, archaeologists had noticed that while Neolithic burials from ancient farming communities tend to be found lying on their backs surrounded by stone axes and other grave goods, pre-Neolithic corpses in Southeast Asia often display crouched or squatting postures.

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