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 Wednesday.
How did human uniqueness first evolve among our ancestors, setting us apart from other animals? That is a question many archaeologists are grappling with by investigating early records of art, language, food preparation, ornaments and symbols. How our ancestors treated and mourned the dead can also offer crucial clues, helping to reveal when we first developed the abstract thinking needed to fully grasp the concept of death.
Now we have discovered a 78,000-year-old human burial at a cave in the tropical coast of eastern Africa, which provides tantalising evidence about our ancestors’ treatment of the dead. Our new study, published in Nature, describes the burial of a 2½ to 3-year-old child, nicknamed “Mtoto” (Swahili for “child”), at the Panga ya Saidi archaeological site in Kenya. It is the earliest known
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IMAGE: General view of the cave site of Panga ya Saidi. Note trench excavation where burial was unearthed view more
Credit: Mohammad Javad Shoaee
Despite being home to the earliest signs of modern human behaviour, early evidence of burials in Africa are scarce and often ambiguous. Therefore, little is known about the origin and development of mortuary practices in the continent of our species birth. A child buried at the mouth of the Panga ya Saidi cave site 78,000 years ago is changing that, revealing how Middle Stone Age populations interacted with the dead.
Panga ya Saidi has been an important site for human origins research since excavations began in 2010 as part of a long-term partnership between archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena, Germany) and the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi).