where did real mummies orginate?

Real, human-made mummies originated in more than one place, but the earliest known intentional mummification comes from the Chinchorro culture of coastal northern Chile and southern Peru, thousands of years before the famous Egyptian mummies. Ancient Egypt later became the most iconic center of mummification, developing very elaborate embalming methods.

Quick Scoop

Where did “real” mummies start?

• The oldest known artificial mummies come from the Chinchorro people in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru.

• They began mummifying their dead roughly 7,000 years ago, preserving bodies in the extremely dry coastal desert.

• This practice seems to have been inspired by naturally dried corpses that the desert preserved, which the Chinchorro then copied with deliberate techniques.

And what about Egyptian mummies?

• Ancient Egypt is the most famous mummification culture, but not the first.

• Early Egyptian bodies were preserved naturally by hot, dry sand; later, Egyptians developed complex embalming, resins, and linen wrappings.

• Evidence now shows that deliberate embalming in Egypt began earlier than once thought, with embalming mixtures on linen as far back as prehistoric cemeteries (4th millennium BCE).

So, where did “real mummies” originate?

• If “real mummies” means the earliest intentional, technical mummification , then the origin lies with the Chinchorro of South America, not Egypt.

• If the focus is on the most developed and widely recognized mummification tradition , then ancient Egypt is the classic homeland of mummies in popular culture.

TL;DR: The very first intentionally made mummies come from the Chinchorro people of coastal Chile–Peru, but Egypt later perfected and popularized mummification, which is why Egyptian mummies dominate modern images and discussions.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.