Archive Note
From about 7000 to 1500 BCE the Chinchorro of the bone-dry northern Chilean coast made deliberate mummies two thousand years before Egypt. A naturally preserved man from the Arica area carries a row of dots above the lip, a tattoo radiocarbon-dated to roughly 2563 to 1972 BCE, which Aaron Deter-Wolf and colleagues established in 2016 as one of the two oldest scientifically dated tattoos in the world. Two facts stay separate: the Chinchorro made the oldest artificial mummies, but Otzi of the Alps holds the oldest confirmed tattoo. The older framing that placed the Chinchorro tattoo at around six thousand years before present is a refuted radiocarbon misreading.