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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).
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/
)
Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for the Science of Human History (Jena, Germany) and the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi) began their excavations at Panga ya Saidi in 2010. Professor Nicole Boivin, principal investigator of that project and director of the Department of Archaeology at the MPI for the Science of Human History, explained how special the site is to the discovery of complex social behaviors in early modern humans. According to a CENIEH press release, Professor B
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Mongolia possesses an extraordinary wealth of archaeology. From monumental burials to Buddhist temples, from enigmatic “deer stone” monuments to Genghis Khan’s legendary capital city at Karakorum in the middle of the vast open steppe, there is an astonishing range of archaeological sites. Spread across all 21 of the nation’s provinces or aimags, an area spanning more than 1.5 million square kilometers, they bear witness to thousands of years of human history and culture. And in their diversity of settings, from the forested river valleys of the Altai Mountains to the arid sand dunes of the Gobi, they show the ingenuity our species – our determination and ability to adapt.
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Mongolian Archaeological Project Receives 2 Million Euro Arcadia Grant
A new grant to the Department of Archaeology will support the documentation of thousands of threatened sites and construct an open access database in English, Mongolian and Russian.
Archaeological sites in Mongolia face a range of threats, including climate change and looting.
With funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is launching the Mongolian Archaeological Project: Surveying the Steppes (MAPSS).
Investigators in Mongolia and Germany will use satellite imagery and existing archival material to create a unified, open access database of Mongolian archaeology.