A cave in Kenya has now been identified as the oldest intentional human burial site in Africa, with luminescence dating showing that the burial took place around 78,300 years ago. Excavation of the Panga ya Saidi cave, located to the north of Mombasa, revealed a grave located under a sheltered overhang, 3 meters (9.8 feet) deep below the present-day cave floor. The discovery was reported in a paper published today in the journal Nature.
“As soon as we first visited Panga ya Saidi, we knew that it was special,” said Professor Nicole Boivin, principal investigator of the original project, in a statement. “The site is truly one of a kind.”
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 the body carefully wrapped in a shroud.
While anatomically modern humans originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago, the excavation of a child’s remains buried at the mouth of a cave on the coast of Kenya 78,000 years ago is teaching scientists how Middle Stone Age populations interacted with their dead.
Ideal reconstruction of Mtoto’s original position at the moment of its discovery at the site. (Photo credit: Martinón-Torres, et al., 2021)
(CN) Archeologists have discovered the oldest human burial in Africa, revealing important information about the origin and development of mortuary practices on the continent where our species originated.
While anatomically modern humans originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago, the excavation of a child’s remains buried at the mouth of the Panga ya Saidi cave site in the tropical upland coast of Kenya 78,000 years ago has a story to tell about how people in the Middle Stone Age interacted with their dead.