Researchers studied photos of the skeletal remains of 13 people excavated in the early 1960s in Portugal's Sado Valley, and were able to reconstruct the sites where the bodies were buried, providing a "unique opportunity" to learn more about funerary rituals dating back 8,000 years.
The analysis showed that some of the bodies were buried in bent and compressed positions with the legs bent at the knees and placed in front of the chest.
Experts revealed that some of the bodies may have been embalmed before burial, perhaps for reasons "related to their arrangement and transportation."
So far, the 7,000-year-old Chinchoro mummies in northern Chile are the world's oldest intentionally preserved by humans.
Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptians had been embalming mummies for as long as 5,700 years, according to a previous study.
This new research shows that the oldest known embalming practices were in the Sado Valley. In other words, the corpses of Sado Valley are believed to be the first known human corpses to be embalmed.
The new study was conducted by archaeologists at Uppsala University, Linnaeus University in Sweden and the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
The researchers based their findings on images obtained from the personal effects of Portuguese archaeologist Manuel Farinha dos Santos (1923-2001).
"A few years ago, three rolls of film came back from excavations at two Mesolithic burial sites in the Sado Valley in southwest Portugal," they say.
The rediscovery of these images provided a unique opportunity to add to our knowledge of Mesolithic funerary practices.
Unlike bones, finding soft tissue at archaeological sites is rare due to conservation issues - particularly in temperate and humid climates, such as in Europe, the paper said.
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