#chinchorro

This period sees the much wider expansion of agriculture through the world, both in the form of existing crops and animals and the domestication of new ones. It also sees increasing adoption of permanent settlements – sometimes in concert with agriculture, but not always.

I want to start with the Mehrgarh site, because it’s one of my favourite things I’ve learned about during this project. Mehrgarh is in the Balochistan area of Pakistan, and the key thing about it is that it has numerous layers from different periods of settlement that give us a time-lapse view of the progress of the Neolithic Revolution (agriculture, pottery, permanent settlements). As you move up through the layers from roughly the 6000s to 4000s BC, animal bones go from those of wild animals, to a mix of wild and domesticated, to domesticated animals making up a larger share. In addition, the extent to which animals are domesticated (there are changes to the skeletal structure of animals that indicate domestication – for example, domesticated animals are smaller) increases over time. Similarly, there’s a mix of types of barley – wild, partially domesticated, and fully domesticated – as well as the introduction of domesticated wheat, which is not native to the region. There’s also cotton. And finally, there’s a progression up from no pottery to handmade pottery to large-scale production of wheel-thrown pottery. By the layer where you get wheel-thrown pottery, there’s also copper smelting. The size of the settlement also grows over time. In addition to giving us a picture of change over time, it also shows how agriculture was both being gradually developed at this site (rather than being introduced to southern Asia from western Asia, as was previously claimed) and influenced from outside (the adoption of wheat, which was not native to the region).

Cotton and wheel-made pottery deserve particular note. In addition to Mehrgarh, there’s evidence of cotton being grown during the 5000s or 4000s in western Peru and (based on the finding of a spindle whorl) in Sudan. Cotton wasn’t the first plant grown for textiles – cultivation of linen in Western Asia goes back further – but it was a major one.

The presence of wheel-made pottery in Mehrgarh is also highly significant, because the potter’s wheel is the first type of wheel we have, predating the use of wheels for transportation. There’s a lot of different claims about when the wheel was first invented, with most sources attributing its origins to western Asia in the 4000s or 3000s BC, while others claim Europe. Whether it was first developed in western Asia, southern Asia, or eastern Europe, its use appears to have diffused between these regions relatively quickly.

Back on the topic of agriculture, during this period people in a lot of new areas started farming or herding. These included western Africa around the Niger River (yams), Ethiopia (the grains t’ef and finger millet in the northern regions, a plant called enset further south), Papua New Guinea (taro and yams), Ukraine (herding livestock), and much of Europe, as far as the Netherlands and Spain (wheat and barley). In some places, environmental changes played a role in this. The Sahara dried out substantially during this period, going from grasslands to desert, and people around the Sudanese Nile and Lake Chad, who had been relying mainly on fishing and hunting aquatic animals, switched to herding goats. In other areas, people who were already doing some farming relied increasingly strongly on it: for example in south-central Mexico (maize and beans) and along the Yangtze River in China (rice). The donkey was domesticated in the Red Sea Hills of eastern Egypt, and spread rapidly both to the rest of North Africa and to western Asia.

Permanent settlements became both more common and larger. One of the main sites in China from this period is the village of Banpo (part of the Yangshao culture) in the Yellow River valley near Xi’an, based on growing millet in riverside gardens that flooded each spring; another is a rice farming village at Hemudu in the Yangtze valley. Probably the biggest example of both agricultural intensification and permanent settlement at this time was in Mesopotamia. Increases in food production through use of irrigation agriculture enabled the formation of what has been called the world’s first city: Eridu, in Mesopotamia, which may have had up to 5,000 people.

Not all permanent settlements were based on agriculture, though. On the Santa Barbara coast of California, people had permanent settlements based on a combination of marine harvesting and gathering acorns on a large scale. People also lived in permanent settlements at the Koster site on the Illinois River, hunting and gathering a wide variety of foods from the river and surrounding forest. On parts of the Peruvian coast, people in permanent settlements relied heavily on fishing, while also growing vegetables and, as mentioned above, cotton.

There were a lot of other things going on in South America as well. The first pottery in the Americas is from a site in the Brazilian Amazon, called Painted Rock Cave, during this time. The Valdivia culture of the Ecuadorian coast produced high-quality pottery in the late 4000s BC. The Chinchorro people of northern Chile were the first to create mummies.

Finally, this is the period when we see the earliest megalithic architecture outside of western Asia, with examples both in Europe and Africa. In Europe, the main region of megalithic building was in Brittany, with some of the standing stones at Carnac dating to this period, as well as megalithic communal tombs. The tombs could be very large: the one at the Barnenez site in Brittany is 72 metres long, over 8 metres high, and has several chambers.

A Chinchorro child, mummified using the black technique. The Chinchorro culture flourished in modern-day Chile from approximately 9,000 to 3,500 years ago and produced the world's oldest intentionally preserved mummies from c. 5500 BCE. The black technique involved systematically dismembering, heat-treating, and reassembling the body.

Jose the Coquí vs. Chinchorro

Chinchorro mummies, including the example you mention from around 5020 BC, in the Atacama Desert, represent some of the oldest known intentionally preserved human remains in the world.

These mummies predate the more famous Egyptian mummies by thousands of years, showcasing the advanced mortuary practices of the Chinchorro people, a preceramic culture that lived along the coasts of present-day northern Chile and southern Peru.

The extreme dryness of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, played a crucial role in the natural preservation of these remains.

The lack of moisture in the environment inhibited the growth of bacteria, which are typically responsible for decomposition, allowing soft tissues, hair, and even clothing to survive for millennia.

What sets Chinchorro mummies apart is that this culture practiced intentional mummification, beginning as early as 5000 BC.

They developed intricate techniques that included removing the skin and organs, reinforcing the body with sticks and clay, and sometimes painting the exterior, often with black manganese or red ochre.

This practice suggests that the Chinchorro people had a profound respect for their dead, possibly seeing mummification as a way to maintain a connection with their ancestors.

The mummy in the photo is a poignant example of how the Chinchorro culture intertwined with the unique environmental conditions of the Atacama Desert to create a lasting legacy.

Nine thousand years ago, communities of peoples lived on the hillsides here. They were semi-nomadic. Fisherfolk. They survived off of the ocean from the abundant seafood and fish. 

Their water came from the nearby Camarones River, which poured down from the Andes Mountains, like a vein from the gods, transforming its meandering path into a fertile river valley.

This was one of the homes of the Chinchorro people. But here, alongside the refreshing cool waters of the Pacific Ocean and under the neverending blue sky, the Chinchorro suffered.

Miscarriages were common. Birth defects. They watched their babies die before they even took their first breaths.

The elders, the women and men, feared for future generations.

And it was this, the experts say, that led the Chinchorro mothers to mummify their first deceased babies roughly 7,000 years ago. To try to hold on to them.

“It’s like you’re still here. You’re still with me. And I want you to stay. Even though you can’t speak, you’re still with us,” says archeologist Jannina Campos.

They removed the organs and covered the skeletons with wood, mud, earth, and clay. Then they gave their mummies a mask. Tiny eyes, nose, and a mouth. A mask that still seems to speak thousands of years later. A mask that seems to reach into their very souls and connect these people into the present.

CHINCHORRO

The Chinchorro mummies are mummified remains of individuals from the South American Chinchorro culture, found in what is now northern Chile. They are the oldest examples of artificially mummified human remains, having been buried up to two thousand years before the Egyptian mummies.

I didn't forget about you, I just got distracted a lot as I was writing this.

Many of the people who believe that the Egyptians are among the first, or very first, to practice mummification would be intrigued to know that there is another civilization who had practiced mummification for two or three millennia prior. With the new found recognition of the oldest human-made mummies in the world belonging to one culture and recognized by UNESCO, the Chinchorro are once more walking with the living. The Chinchorro are a long extinct culture, with an the estimated range of 7000 to 1500 BCE that had lived in the regions of Southern Peru and Northern Chile on the west coast of South America. These people have brought many an archeologist great joy with the sheer amount of knowledge that can be found regarding the topic of this bare bones dissertation: mummification.

As their culture was relatively long lasting there have been shifts of their practices regarding the process of mummification. Right at the start there is a glaring difference between Chinchorro and Egyptian mummies. While the Egyptians chose who got mummified, and had got paid for it, the Chinchorro practiced mummification on all of the dead, regardless of age or gender. However, unlike the Chinchorro, death was biased. The very land which gave them access to plenty of fish was poisoning them with arsenic.

One leading theory on why they practiced mummification as they did was due to their high infant mortality rate, which is recorded by the amount of infant mummies against adult mummies. Arsenic was also not the only thing poisoning them, as manganese is also toxic and heavily used in the funerary practices. Red ochre is non-toxic. The reason for why those were labeled toxic or non toxic will be expanded upon below.

At this moment in time, there are three known distinct periods that the dead were treated with. The oldest method has been coined ‘Black Mummies’ that were largely practiced around 5000 BCE. In between was the ‘Red Mummies’ that was used around 3000 BCE and made way for the last technique. Being the last, but not exclusive, mummification process used, the ‘Bandaged Mummies’ have a largely unknown time scale. The following paragraphs will go into greater detail of the Chinchorro exciting way of living with the dead.

If you do not wish to learn the detail of mummification you can skip to the next paragraph. Beginning with the base process as a reference point for all three techniques. Strong evidence shows that the family who experienced the loss would handle the mummification, with the woman likely in charge of the process. It has been found that since the women would be in charge of cutting and cleaning the meat of kills, they were then chosen, or chose, the delicate task of deskinning the dead and removing the muscles. After the flesh had been removed the organs followed and thus begins the changes of the techniques.

With ‘Black Mummies’ their chest cavities would remain empty, their skeletal structure was reinforced with sticks, and then the skeleton would be molded with clay to reform the body. Following that, the skin was placed back on the body and would be painted black using manganese, and a black clay facial mask would be placed. The mask itself would have accurate recreations of the eyes, mouth, and mouth. The end product would leave a hollow space on the inside, and the head was largely left alone. Once it was finally finished the mummies would then be buried in plots much like the ones that we use today.

Used during the height of practiced mummification; ‘Red Mummies’ would have the same methods as their predecessors but would instead have their entire body (including the head) emptied then stuffed with plant fibers, clay, and animal fur/feathers. The body was also built back up with clay with the skin also placed back onto the body and then painted red with red ochre. The death mask was also painted using black paint and black hair was added to the head. These mummies were also buried in plots and similarly to the ‘Black Mummies’.

Moving on to the last practice during the waning of the Chinchorro, the ‘Bandaged Mummies’. These were largely similar to the ‘Red Mummies’ and mostly differed by having their skin put back onto the bodies like bandages. Which is where they got the name ‘Bandaged Mummies’. As this is the last known practice, it is currently unknown when this was last used among the Chinchorro population. These mummies were also buried like their predecessors.

Which leaves on to the last segment: the burial. As the Chinchorro were near the coast, reeds were common to find and their usage in making the equivalent of burial shrouds/caskets. All of that would not be enough to ensure that the mummies still wouldn’t decay but the arid climate from the Atacama Desert helped stave off the worst of the damage to human history. Climate change, however, is destroying the bodies of loved ones long since passed and the bodies are quickly degrading by the rising humidity off the coast that the Chinchorro once called home.

I’m normal about things, why do you ask? Stop doubting me, you’re the one who read it on tumblr!

Favorite misspelling: Chinchorror

Sepúlveda, M., Rousseliere, H., Van Elslande, E. et al. Study of color pigments associated to archaic chinchorro mummies and grave goods in Northern Chile (7000–3500 B.P.). herit sci 2, 7 (2014).

Christopher Hewitt, The Chinchorro Created Mummies Thousands of Years Before the Egyptians (2014).

UNESCO, Settlement and Artificial Mummification of the Chinchorro Culture in the Arica and Parinacota Region.

Paul Karoff, Saving Chilean mummies from climate change (2015).