In Chile's Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth, mummies have been found that pre-date the Egyptians' by 2,000 years. So while the Egyptians may be the most famous culture to mummify their dead, it turns out they weren't the first to do so.

     "They  are the very first people that inhabited the north of Chile and the south of Peru," said Bernardo, a physical anthropologist with the University of Tarapacá. "They are the pioneers of the Atacama Desert." And, he added, they are also the first known culture in the world to mummify their dead, starting around 5,000 BCE.

    The remains of hundreds of these marine hunter-gatherers – who lived on the Pacific Coast of the Atacama from approximately 5450 BCE to 890 BCE – have been found in the Africa. In 2021, these cemeteries were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for the immense archaeological value they provide. Not only do they reveal the detailed mortuary and funerary practices of the ancient culture, but they offer insight into the community's social and spiritual structures. For instance, mummification was not reserved for the upper class of society (like it was for the Egyptians) but was a ritual for all.

    The culture is relevant in many aspects: They are the first funerary practitioners, the earliest in this region. And the bodies that we know today  are true pre-Hispanic works of art. They are the artistic expressions of the feelings, of the emotions of the ancient populations."

    But even though UNESCO recognition only came recently, residents of Arica have known about the unique archaeological remains for much longer. That's because the bodies are buried very close to the surface. Indeed, the remains are literally part of the town's foundation. For example, Johnny Vásquez, who has lived in Arica for 60 years, remembered that when workers first dug sewer pipes for his neighborhood, they found "layers and layers of mummies". And in 2004, when workers started to excavate for a hotel, they ran into bones less than 1 m underground and instead turned the site into a museum.

    Hundreds of mummies have been uncovered so far, including those of infants and children. As Vivien explained, the soil here contains a lot of naturally occurring arsenic, which likely contributed to a high death rate for the population, as well as many miscarriages. Scientists have also determined that they  painted their bodies with manganese for, they think, traditional purposes – but as manganese is toxic, they were also inadvertently damaging their health.

    Living on an ancient necropolis might seem unsettling, but Arica resident Marina  said no: "I'm not scared at all. Yes, I have a normal life here at home. I hardly think much that there are dead [bodies]."

    Instead, locals see the deceased around them as their ancestors and themselves as their caretakers. "I feel that we are the continuation," said Alfredo Guerrero, another Arica resident. "In the last 10 years, I have felt, and I have told my family [this], that I am not going to leave this place. I will always remain, so I will always be visiting them."

    Jorge, a local diving fisherman, agreed. They were fishermen just like us, and they were in this place. And after thousands of years, we came to settle here. Then we, as a community of fishermen… we have taken that, let's say, authority, that we consider ourselves as their heirs, and that is why we want to [preserve] the remains they have left, as a great legacy for the current community, he said. We are  contemporary  at this very moment.

   The Oldest Mummies in The World Are Turning Into Black Slime.

   A collection of mummified human remains found in northern Chile is turning into black slime due to rising humidity levels, and researchers are at a loss for how to stop it.

   More than 100 of these mummies - which are at least 7,000 years old - have started to turn gelatinous, and last year local officials applied to the United Nations' cultural agency, UNESCO, to have them recognised as a world heritage site.

   Of course, getting approval won't save the mummies on its own, but the researchers hope that increased attention from the international community will help them find solutions to the black go.

 The go is thought to be the result of colonies of bacteria thriving in the mummified skin.

 "The application is not a goal in itself, but the start of a process of improved conservation tools, with the Chilean state and the international community," Sergio Medina Parra, anthropologist and department head at University of Tarapaca in Chile.

  Since the early 1900s, almost 300 human mummies have been uncovered along the coast of southern Peru and northern Chile, including adults, children, infants, and miscarried foetuses.

  With some dated to as far back as 5050 BC, these are the oldest mummies discovered in the world to date.

  They were made by a group of hunter-gatherers, who were mummifying their dead roughly 2,000 years before the ancient Egyptians began mummifying their pharaohs.

  Tissue sample analysis from the mummies revealed that they were crawling with bacteria - but it wasn't ancient bacteria, they were the kind that normally live on people's skin. And they're now speeding up the degradation process like nothing else.

   As soon as the right temperature and right moisture appeared, they started to use the skin as nutrients,"  adding that unless local researchers can keep the mummies under the right temperature and humidity conditions, "the native microorganisms are going to chew these guys right up.

 There's no word yet on whether the application to UNESCO will be approved, but let's hope the local researchers will find the help they need to keep these mummies safe.

 Because having the remains of humans that existed more than 2 millennia before the ancient Egyptians is mind-boggling, and we can't just let that be eaten away.