Hi everybody, welcome to today's episode of Atlas Obscura.

And I wanted to say right up front that today's episode is going to be slightly different

in format, in two ways.

One, we're not talking about a single place today.

We're talking about a category of places or things or objects.

And two, it's going to be a little bit of a looser episode, as you probably already

tell.

A little more improv, I want to say it's like free jazz, but I think it's probably closer

to freshman college comedy.

But here it goes.

Let me start by saying that these objects, and I'm not sure they should be called objects,

but these things, together, they make a kind of argument about humanity.

And the argument they make is that human beings need fundamentally that they need to

honor their dead.

There is possible evidence of intentional ritual burial going back 300,000 years.

And we know that Neanderthals buried their dead at least 130,000 years ago.

Even in chimpanzees, though they don't have death rituals like ours, they still treat

dead bodies with care, grooming, and guarding them long after their death.

Even other animals with complex brains do this, like a crow's, elephants, dolphins, they've

all shown some amount of death awareness and death ritual.

Which brings us to our topic.

Today, I'm taking you on a tour of my favorite communist mummies.

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