mummy for Halloween or a costume  party? Some of you probably have.  

After all, Mummies have always played an  important role in the world of horror.

However, do you know what mummies really are?  Or even better: Do you know all the different  

kinds of mummies that exist? We certainly  didn't! And we got really surprised when we  

learned about the many peoples and cultures  that used to mummify their dead, tiktakers.

First of all, technically speaking a mummy  is: The corpse of a human being or an animal,  

which has been conserved pretty  well without decomposing,  

due to natural causes or special  substances applied to the corpse. So,  

let's start by keeping in mind that  there can be different kinds of mummies:

When most of us think of a mummy, we most  likely think about the Egyptian ones.  

And sure enough, the Egyptian mummies are  probably the most well-known in the world.  

One of the most famous ones was the  mummy of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun,  

which was discovered in 1922, and has been  an object of study and cult since then.

In Egypt, the process of mummification  consisted of several steps: 

- First, the corpse had to be  washed and perfumed on the outside 

- Then the organs would be  removed, and placed in glasses 

- Then the abdomen would be filled with  myrrh, and the body would then be submerged  

in a mineral called natron for 70 days - After that time, the body would be  

dried pretty well, and then would  be completely stuffed with myrrh

Once that entire process was completed,  the body would then be wrapped in bandages  

impregnated in resins or tar. Sometimes, amulets  would also be added to the bandages. And lastly,  

all that was left was to put the mummy in the  sarcophagus. Keep in mind that this process  

was carried out only for very important  people tiktakers – commoners in Egypt were  

buried in pits with specific characteristics  that made natural mummification possible.

And even though we know about  Egyptian mummies really well,  

turns out the Egyptians weren't the  first ones to mummify their deceased!  

Two millennia before them, the Chinchorro  culture already practiced mummification in  

northern Chile, and they also employed pretty  sophisticated mummification techniques!

However, it took a long time for us to discover  that. It was in 1917 when several researchers  

found near the Atacama desert, at the Chinchorro  beach, a few bodies that were surprisingly well  

conserved. Archaeologist Max Uhle was in  charge of studying and classifying them,  

but at the time they didn't have the advanced  techniques we have today to analyze them.  

And so, many questions about those  bodies could not be answered yet.

We had to wait until 1983 to discover that those  were in fact, the most ancient mummies in the  

entire world. During some works in a promontory,  a graveyard filled with bodies was found.  

This time around, anthropologist Bernardo  Arriaza was in charge of investigating the place,  

and with his team they managed to determine  that those bodies were approximately  

7000 years old. That marked a before  and after in history, tiktakers!

Over time, we learned that at first, the  Chinchorro people limited themselves to bury  

their dead in the dessert, covering  them with mats and camelid skins.  

They would also add shells, fishhooks, or fishing  nets to the bodies. However, over time they also  

started doing artificial mummification. The  first mummies date from the year 5050 B.C.,  

and ended up completely black because  they painted their bodies in magnesium.

The process was specially gruesome, since they  would decapitate the corpse, then cut off the  

feet, and then flay all of its skin off. Then  the brain would be removed to fill the skull with  

herbs, ashes or sand, and then they would tie up  the skull and the jaw with rope afterwards. They  

would leave just the skeleton of the body to then  rebuild it, and cover it with a white ash paste.  

Later on they would put the skin and hair back  on, to then spread magnesium all over the body.

This changed more or less in the year 2500 B.C..  There is evidence that then appeared a second  

type of mummies: Red mummies. In this case, they  would extract the dead person's organs through  

small cuts. Then the body would be dried up, and  held with sticks. Inside, they would put ashes,  

feathers, herbs, and other substances. All of  this was done through the hole of the head, part  

of the body which they would then put back in its  place. Another curious aspect about this is that  

they also replaced the flesh on the face. In that  case, a red paste was spread over the entire body.

And later on, in the year 2000 B.C., they  started to use a different technique. This  

time around they would smoke the bodies, and then  cover them in a thick layer of sand and clay.

As you can see, the mummification process has  evolved over the years, but the Chinchorro culture  

developed pretty advanced conservation techniques  for the time. Were you familiar with any of this?  

We were truly impressed with everything we  learned about mummies when making this video!