#sado valley

Roughly 60 years ago, an archaeologist snapped photos of several skeletons buried in 8,000-year-old graves in southern Portugal. Now, a new analysis of these previously undeveloped photos suggests that the oldest human mummies don’t hail from Egypt or even Chile, but rather Europe.

More than a dozen ancient bodies were found in Portugal’s southern Sado Valley during excavations in the 1960s, and at least one of those bodies had been mummified, possibly to make it easier to transport before its burial, researchers said after analyzing the images and visiting the burial grounds.

And there are signs that other bodies buried at the site may have also been mummified, which suggests that the practice could have been widespread in this region at this time. Read more.