One does not simply start mummifying one’s dead. Mummification is a technically challenging business that involves sophisticated tricks for preparing a corpse. It’s also steeped in intricate cultural traditions. How does such a practice start?

Chilean scientist Pablo Marquet has tried to answer that question by studying the world’s oldest mummies – those created by the Chinchorro people of northern Chile. The Chinchorro were preserving their dead some two thousand years before the Egyptians started doing so. Rather than just mummifying their elites, the Chinchorro preserved all of their dead – man and woman, elderly and infants. They went to great pains to do so. They would remove the organs and muscles of their dead, reinforce the skeletons with