The world's first mummy

 Was the world's first mummy made by Portuguese 8000 years old?

European experts claim that the process of making mummies began in Portugal thousands of years before Egypt. (Photos: European Journal of Archaeology).

Lisbon: Archaeologists in Sweden and Portugal say the world's first mummy was not found in ancient Chile or ancient Egypt, but 8,000 years ago in the "Sadu Valley", which is now part of Portugal.

He made the claim based on some recent photographs taken by a famous Portuguese archaeologist in the 1960's.

It should be noted that the process of wrapping a person's body with certain spices after death to preserve the body is called 'mummy making', while the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs are more famous all over the world.

Investigations so far have shown that mummy-making began in Egypt 5,700 years ago, while some mummies found in Chile are 7,000 years old, about 1,300 years older than Egyptian mummies. The oldest mummy "Otzi" discovered in Europe is about 5300 years old, 400 years after the Egyptian mummies.

However, a recent discovery by European archaeologists proves that mummy-making in Europe began a thousand years before Chile.

Renowned Portuguese archaeologist Manuel Fernandez dos Santos took photographs of 13 human skeletons from the Sados Valley area in the 1960's, dating to 8,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, he was not able to remove the structures, nor was he able to wash the pictures and publish them anywhere.

However, in addition to making a map of the surrounding area with his own hands, he also noted some details which were kept in the National Museum of Portugal after his death in 2001.

Many years later, some more of Manuel Fernandez's personal belongings became available, including some movie rolls that had not been washed.

The world first came to know about these photographs after washing the film rolls, while some other manuscripts revealed that they belonged to the maps and notes made by Manuel Fernandez in the Portugal Museum.

Considering the analysis of these photographs and the explanations written by Manuel Farnha, now experts say that mummies of all these people were made at the time of burial.

The legs of the skeletons seen in the pictures are unusually bent towards the abdomen, suggesting that the dead may have been left for several days after being tied tightly with cotton ropes.

However, experts at the Open University of Portugal, Uppsala University Sweden and the University of Lenis Sweden have gone so far as to suggest that several days after being tied to the ropes, When it dried up and they lost a lot of weight, they were subjected to mummy making. After being buried underground for a long time in the humid environment of Sados Valley, all the signs of ropes and mummies disappeared from these bodies. However, his body remained in the same condition in which he was buried.

Was this idea based on pictures true or false? To find out, these scientists developed a careful computer simulation to make a mummy out of a corpse tied with ropes and then observe its decomposition in the natural environment for a long time. In addition to computer simulation, he also used various modern techniques. Other experts weren't particularly surprised by the discovery, as traces of mummy-making were allegedly found 10,000 years ago in Israel from "Al-Wad" and "Ain al-Malha", and 30,000 in Kostini, Belarus. There is evidence of mummy making years ago that needs further research.