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The mummies were found in Arapouco.
Studies carried out on mummies found in Portugal more than half a century ago confirmed that they are the oldest of their kind in Europe. These are mummies found in excavations carried out between 1958 and 1964 in Arapouco, in the Sado Valley, in the south of the country.
The mummies were found in what, in archeology, is called “conchero”, that is, a prehistoric site where there are remains of shells, fish and molluscs that were left there by humans. That is why they are considered places with a large amount of material on the behavior of humans, who might sometimes perform burials or ceremonies there.
late 50’s more than a hundred skeletons were found in various shell middens. The bodies were between 8 and 7 thousand years old. Despite this, it had not been possible to determine the position of the skeletons. Closer in time, two undeveloped film reels from the time of the excavation turned up.
Thanks to those images, and to the work of Uppsala University, it was learned that two of the dead had been mummified before being buried, evidence of the oldest mummification in Europe. Ergo, there would have been mummifications 8 thousand years ago in the Old World. The two mummies of Portugal “they stand out for the unusual position of their bodies”According to the magazine European Journal of Archaeology. It is believed that they were first tightly wrapped and then air-dried or fire-dried before being buried in the shell midden.
“Our analysis shows that the bodies of the dead were prepared in a hitherto unknown manner before the burial”, affirms the study that was disclosed. It is estimated that the idea was to facilitate the transport of the dead to another burial place.
Thus, the importance of the rite of death in that culture should be considered. “Mummification should not be understood only functionally. Rather, the change in the appearance of the corpse shows a cultural understanding of how to deal with death and perhaps even how to control it.”
