A cave site in Kenya’s forests reveals the oldest human burial in Africa
A small child buried almost 80,000 years ago in a cave in Kenya shows how ancient humans treated the dead.
theconversation.com
Africa is often referred to as the cradle of humankind – the birthplace of our species, Homo sapiens. There is evidence of the development of early symbolic behaviors such as pigment use and perforated shell ornaments in Africa, but so far most of what we know about the development of complex social behaviors such as burial and mourning has come from Eurasia.
However, the remains of a child buried almost 80,000 years ago under an overhang at Panga ya Saidi cave in Kenya is providing important new details.
Working with a team of researchers from Kenya, Germany, Spain, France, Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we studied the burial. Our results, published in Nature today, reveal valuable insights into human cultural evolution, including how Middle Stone Age populations interacted with the dead.
A child called ‘Mtoto’
Around 78,000 years ago, a small child of 2.5 to 3 years of age was carefully placed on their right side in a shallow pit in a cave near Kenya’s coast. Their legs were raised to their chest in a flexed position, and their body wrapped in a special cloth, perhaps an animal skin.
