Page 98 - Human Evolution News Today

The oldest known burial in Africa is of a 3-year-old child who died around 78,000 years ago, shedding light on how people in the region cared for their dead at that time

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 behaviours such as pigment use and perforated shell ornaments in Africa, but so far most of what we know about the development of complex social behaviours 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 import...

PARIS, May 5 — A child no older than three laid to rest sideways in an earthen grave 78,000 years ago, legs carefully tucked up against its tiny chest, is the earliest known human burial in Africa, researchers reported today. The sunken pit, in a cave complex along the coast of Kenya, was bereft...

Scientists have uncovered “extraordinary” evidence of what is thought to be the oldest deliberate human burial in Africa, dating to 78,000 years ago. The remains of a three-year-old child were unearthed at Panga ya Saidi – a cave on the Kenyan coast, with “astonishingly preserved” bone arrangements. The researchers said their findings, published in the journal Nature, are the earliest known evidence of a ceremonial act of burial by modern humans in Africa and offer new insight into ho...

May 5, 2021 at 11:00 am A child whose lifeless body was carefully placed in an East African cave around 78,300 years ago has made a grand return. Researchers who unearthed the ancient youngster’s remains say that they’ve found the oldest known intentional human burial in Africa. The investigators, who report the discovery in the May 6 Nature, have named the ancient youngster Mtoto, a Swahili word that means “child.” “Mtoto was buried in a sheltered part of a cave that was repeatedly ...

Scientists find Africas oldest human burial, a child from 78,000 years ago CNET 3 hrs ago Leslie Katz © Provided by CNET The trench excavation at the mouth of a Panga ya Saidi cave shows where archaeologists unearthed the ancient childs grave. Mohammad Javad Shoaee A tight cluster of 78,000-year-old bones found at the mouth of a Kenyan cave represent the earliest known formal human burial in Africa and shed light on how our ancient ancestors interacted with the dead.  The ...

The remains of a child roughly age 3 who lived about 78,000 years ago and was found in a burial pit at a cave site in Kenya called Panga ya Saidi, the oldest-known human burial in Africa, are seen in an undated virtual reconstruction. Photo by Jorge Gonzalez/Elena Santos /Handout via REUTERS Article content It is a scene that exudes sadness: a child perhaps 2-1/2 or 3 years old buried in a shallow grave under the sheltered overhang of a cave, head resting on a pillow and the upper part of th...

Finding the Child Grave in the Cave Wasn’t a Straightforward Process A Nature press release states that María Martinón-Torres of CENIEH (National Research Center on Human Evolution), in Burgos, Spain and her colleagues analyzed the remains of the child which came from  Panga ya Saidi,  a cave site on the Kenyan coast. General view of the cave site of Panga ya Saidi. Note trench excavation where the earliest human burial in Africa was unearthed.  (Mohammad Javad Shoaee/ ) Archaeologis...

Max Planck Society New research led by scientists from Griffith University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History reveals that the arrival of Pleistocene humans and their hominin ancestors to uninhabited islands didn’t always lead to widespread extinctions, as is often thought. Published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, the research team examined archaeological and paleontological records of all islands inhabited by humans over the last 2.6 million years,...

Geographical Magazine Geographicals pick of the books: April 2021 Written by  Geographical 2021 Theres something fresh for everyone this April. Read on for our pick of the best new non-fiction reads BOOK OF THE MONTH – UNDER A WHITE SKY: The Nature of the Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert ‘I was struck, and not for the first time, by how much easier it is to ruin an ecosystem than to run one.’ It’s a throwaway sentence, but one which n...