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These Are the World’s Oldest Mummies

Season 52 | 2m 49s

Across southeastern Asia, researchers have identified dozens of mummies that are between 4,000 and 11,00 years old. After scanning the bones with invisible wavelengths of light, they found that almost all the bodies have been exposed to heat, preserved for millennia by smoke from a fire.

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Russel L. Honoré; Eugene Korolev; Polina Sychova; Ken Burns
Thant Myint-U; Werner Herzog; Arundhati Roy
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