When so-called “alt archaeologists” look at the pyramids and tombs of Egypt, they typically focus on one question: How could they possibly build this?
It’s a good question. After all, even today, with our “advanced” technology, we have trouble moving and working with these massive stone structures. So if we can’t do it, how could the ancients?
But the inability to find an immediate answer has led many to propose exotic explanations—advanced machinery, lost high technology, even aliens.
Yet the focus obsesses on pyramids, aliens, electricity, and with technology … but with all the focus on pyramids, they’re ignoring the most important tech of all: mummies.
And that science of mummification came with their religion—a religion that revolved around preparing oneself for the afterlife.
What’s more, a recent discovery of “mummification technology” actually scores a point in favor of one of the alt archaeologists’ favorite theories: a pre-Saharan civilization.
The Standard Narrative: Natural Mummification
For decades, the conventional archaeological view was straightforward.
Early Egyptians, the story went, didn’t intentionally mummify their dead. Instead, bodies were naturally desiccated by the hot, dry desert sand, creating accidental mummies.
The desert tribes observed this natural process and, over time, mimicked it until they mastered the science of mummification.
Artificial mummification—using resins, oils, and complex embalming techniques—didn’t emerge until much later, around 2200 BCE in the late Old Kingdom, with refinements continuing through the Middle Kingdom (2000-1600 BCE).
This narrative was tidy, linear, and comfortable. It positioned mummification as a technology invented and gradually perfected over time, like any other innovation.
Then the evidence changed.
The Evidence that Rewrites History: Mummification Predates Egyptian Civilization
In 2014, a groundbreaking study published in PLOS ONE fundamentally challenged this timeline. Researchers examining linen wrappings from the earliest recorded ancient Egyptian cemeteries at Mostagedda in the Badari region made a startling discovery: complex embalming agents on funeral wrappings dating between 4500 and 3350 BCE.
These weren’t random residues. They contained deliberate mixtures of pine resin, gum, aromatic plant extracts, and natural petroleum—sophisticated compounds designed specifically to preserve flesh.
The implications were staggering.
This evidence pushed back the origin of artificial mummification by approximately 1,500 years. These practices emerged during the Badarian period, which occurred centuries before Egypt unified as a civilization around 3100 BCE.
What’s more: the embalming recipe was the same one used throughout ancient Egypt.
In short:
- The recipe for mummification was invented before Egypt began
- The same recipe was used virtually unchanged for centuries
While archaeologists say that mummification came about through experimentation, the evidence doesn’t show experimentation, it shows transmission.
And, while most people will focus on the tech here, the technology is just an extension of the science and religion of the ancient Egyptians…it represents an unchanged transmission of religious practices and scientific knowledge across millennia.
The Real Mystery: Why We Don’t Know Where It Came From
We have clear evidence of sophisticated mummification practice going back to at least 4500 BCE, yet we have no archaeological record of how this practice developed.
There is no evidence of mummification attempts. No experimental graves showing trial and error. No proto-mummification techniques with increasing complexity. What we have instead is fully-formed ritual practice that appears essentially complete, with no evidence of experimentation.
This represents something profoundly different from technological innovation.
A technology develops through experimentation and failure. We see this clearly in other ancient crafts. But with mummification, we have no way of knowing if it came about through generations of experimentation or from a single individual.
All our evidence suggests it was a transmitted tradition that began before recorded Egyptian history.
The natural question becomes:
- Where did this tradition come from?
- What religious system started this obsession with preservation for the afterlife?
- Were there older societies we’ve yet to identify?
This is where the Green Sahara comes into play.
Between approximately 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, the Sahara was totally different. It was a lush, habitable landscape with lakes, rivers, and vegetation that supported human communities.
Recent genetic analysis of naturally mummified individuals from Libya’s Takarkori rock shelter (dating to over 7,000 years ago, during the Green Sahara period) reveals a long-isolated North African human lineage with distinct cultural practices and genetic continuity.
These populations were sophisticated enough to develop specialized pastoralism and manage complex environmental relationships. Could they have also developed ritualistic practices around death and preservation? Or were they merely the rural inhabitants of a civilization that remains buried under the desert and submerged coastlines?
To me, it’s almost certain that mummification traces back to the Green Sahara.
The Religion Nobody Bothers to Study: Ancient Egypt’s Actual Achievement
Alt archaeologists obsess over how the pyramids were built.
Mainstream archaeologists point to architectural evolution.
But almost everyone misses what actually mattered to ancient Egyptians: their religion.
The pyramids weren’t monuments to engineering prowess. They were monuments to pharaohs with big egos and a religion organized around a single idea: the afterlife was real and required preparation.
These religious foundations appear to have originated centuries or even millennia earlier than Egypt itself, and the evidence for this is clear:
Religious Continuity
The religious beliefs evident in Predynastic burials (before 3100 BCE) show a sophisticated understanding of afterlife beliefs, Ka (life force), and the need for bodily preservation. These weren’t primitive superstitions suddenly formalized by Narmer, they already existed before Egypt was formed.
Burial Practices
Even in the earliest Predynastic graves, bodies were ritually positioned, accompanied by grave goods meant for use in the afterlife, and treated with reverence. This reflects a complete worldview, not experimental funerary innovation.
Tattoos as Religious Expression
Recent analysis of two Predynastic mummies from around 3350-3017 BCE revealed tattoos reflecting religious and cultural themes. This represented participation in a coherent symbolic system that was already old.
Unchanged Transmission
The remarkable consistency of mummification philosophy and the recipe itself remained virtually unchanged from the Badarian period (4500 BCE) through the end of Pharaonic Egypt. That’s over 4,000 years of theological consistency, suggesting these weren’t beliefs invented by one dynasty and refined by another, but rather inherited traditions of profound antiquity.
So when it comes to the ancient Egyptians and their accomplishments, the mainstream and alt archaeologists are both wrong.
Ancient Egyptians didn’t invent mummification or their religion, they inherited it.
And when it comes to pyramids?
Ancient Egyptians didn’t invent those construction methods either.
As buried studies suggest, they were rebuilding over older ruins and rediscovering lost technology.
That doesn’t mean, however, alt archaeologists are right, because aliens definitely didn’t build the pyramids either.
The Problem with Alternative Archaeology: Missing the Forest for the Aliens
Here’s where alternative archaeologists fundamentally misunderstand what they’re looking at. When they see the precision of the Great Pyramid, the sophistication of mummification, or the alignment of temples, they come up with theories about power plants, UFO landing pads, or stargates.
But that totally ignores the Egyptian religion, which, again, was the axis around which daily life revolved.
So when looking at pyramids, “alien pyramid theorists” only look at seemingly impossible construction methods and lost technologies, completely ignore the religious dimension that actually drove everything.
To the ancient Egyptians, religion was everything. Aside from the overwhelming mountain of evidence in favor of pyramids as tombs, their religious beliefs alone make it abundantly clear that the pyramids were tombs…like mummification, just another manifestation of their religion.
What We Should Actually Be Investigating
Instead of arguing about whether aliens built the pyramids (they didn’t), archaeologists should be asking harder questions about the evidence we do have, which shows only the transmission of religious beliefs, the science and practice of mummification, and, quite possibly, architectural knowledge that had been lost and buried.
Instead, we need to ask questions about:
Predynastic Religious Origins
What cultures or peoples developed the core religious beliefs evident in Badarian burial practices?
And where did this sophisticated afterlife theology originate?
Green Sahara Civilizations
What societies existed in the Green Sahara?
How complex were they, and where were they located?
How did knowledge transmit after the Sahara dried up?
Underground Structures
Sites like Karnak show evidence of earlier building phases and potentially older foundations buried beneath later construction.
Rather than dismissing these as insignificant, systematic excavation of pre-dynastic and potentially Green Sahara era layers could reveal earlier expressions of the same religious culture.
Mummification Technology Development
Just how far back does mummification date?
And, since mummification was a religious practice, when did that religion start?
Cultural Continuity Markers
How did religious beliefs transmit unchanged across potentially thousands of years?
What social structures preserved these traditions?
These are genuine archaeological mysteries—not because they’re anomalous, but because they challenge our understanding of how ancient human cultures maintained and transmitted complex belief systems across millennia of environmental and social change.
The Case Isn’t Closed…It’s Barely Even Opened
Alt archaeologists are right.
There’s too much about ancient Egypt that doesn’t add up. The construction feats were astounding, but the hyper-focus on pyramids and lost technology never seems to touch on mummification, a technology that points directly to a buried civilization under the Sahara.
True, the construction techniques used by ancient Egyptians is a mystery.
But that doesn’t mean aliens built the pyramids.
That’s, quite frankly, a conspiracy theory or a psyop that distracts us from the truth:
Ancient Egypt inherited its religion and its science from an older civilization that still lies buried under the sand and sea.
