Chinchorro fishermen on the Chilean coast were mummifying their dead by about 5000 BC; their mummies predate Egypt's by some two thousand years.
The events
- Chinchorro mummiesc. 5050 BC · Atacama Desert coast, Chile. Fishers of the Chinchorro culture began mummifying their dead around 5000 BC, roughly two millennia before the Egyptians. Bodies were taken apart, reinforced with sticks and reeds, coated in clay and given a mask. Everyone was preserved: the elderly, children, even unborn infants. The mummies became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
- Great Pyramid of Gizac. 2560 BC · Giza. The Great Pyramid, built for Pharaoh Khufu at Giza, rose about 146 metres high. It remained the tallest human-made structure for nearly four millennia and is the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.
More amazing facts
- 3300 BC · 3200 BC Ötzi died in the Alps around 3300 BC, about when writing appeared in Sumerian Uruk.
- 2600 BC · 2560 BC The Peruvian city of Caral, with its stepped pyramids, flourished in the same age as Egypt's pyramids — more than 4,000 years before the Incas.
- 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.
- 2560 BC · 31 BC · 1969 Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
- 2500 BC · 2334 BC Sargon of Akkad boasted that ships from Meluhha moored at his capital.
- 1754 BC · 44 BC · 313 About 1,710 years passed between Hammurabi's laws and Caesar's assassination — nearly as long as separates us from the Edict of Milan of 313.