A small grave containing the skeleton of a child is the earliest ever discovery of an intentional burial of
Homo sapiens in Africa. The 3-year-old child, who has been named “Mtoto” (meaning “child” in Swahili), was intentionally buried inside of the Panga ya Saidi cave which is located to the north of Mombasa, Kenya, approximately 78,000 years ago.
The child was carefully placed on their side in a curled up position (similar to a sleeping position) with the head resting on what was believed to have been a type of pillow. Maria Martinón-Torres, who is a paleoanthropologist, the director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIAH) in Burgos, Spain, and who led the team that discovered the burial, described the way in which the child was buried, “Only humans treat the dead with this respect, this care, this tenderness,” adding, “This is some of the earliest evidence that we have in Africa about humans living in the physical and also in the symbolic
Study Reexamines Remains from Spain’s Gran Dolina Cave
BURGOS, SPAIN
Live Sciencereports that the remains known as “The Boy of Gran Dolina” actually belonged to a young girl, based upon microscopic dental analysis which has been used to identify sex in other human species. The remains of 22 individuals, discovered in 1994 in Grand Dolina Cave, which is located in northern Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains, have been identified as
Homo antecessor, a species that lived in Europe between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago. But the remains are highly fragmented, perhaps because they had been cannibalized, and belonged to pre-adolescents, making it difficult to determine their sex. Older children, however, often have some adult teeth. Individual “H1” was thought to be a male who died at about 13 years of age, while individual “H3,” dubbed The Boy of Gran Dolina, was thought to be about 11 years old. Cecilia García-Campos of Spain’s National Center for Research on H
Possible Biomechanics of Hominin Shoulder Studied - Archaeology Magazine archaeology.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archaeology.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
February 18, 2021
Dr. David Green, associate professor of anatomy, co-authored a paper published today in
Their published findings suggest that
Homo antecessor shoulder development was nearly identical to that of
Homo sapiens. The authors concluded that
H. antecessor shoulders were already very similar to modern humans, even during the Lower Pleistocene (~850,000) years ago.
“This is my first foray into a study of “archaic” humans, ancient hominins that are more humanlike than apes, but clearly not what we call “anatomically” modern,” Green explained.
“Studying comparative anatomy helps us understand the form/function relationship between the shape of our bones and how that enables us to move the way we do. Comparative anatomy is integral to studying fossils for helping contextualize the way that this form/function relationship has changed over time. We use these associations to interpret the behavioral attributes of extinct forms (i.e., their “paleo”b