Chinchorro mummies
c. 5,000 BCENotable
Fishing communities on the coast of northern Chile and southern Peru begin artificially mummifying their dead. These are the oldest known deliberately made mummies, about two thousand years before Egypt's.
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Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Modern humans leave Africa → Humans reach the Americas → Chinchorro mummies
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