Camera traps are helping researchers get a closer look at pockets of Gabon’s forests that were previously impractical to study. The Central African country has, at 80% by some estimates, the second-largest proportion of forest cover in the world, and only 2.2 million inhabitants. Many of its remote areas are hard to access and […]
The new
research paper , published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications, explains that around 28 people were found buried with “hundreds of valuable metal items.” The authors wrote that the wealth and size of the grave indicated that these remains were not a random section of a community, but rather, that they were “important individuals and their sacrificed retainers .” The paper says that included in this artifact collection were: “486 iron and 26 copper objects, 127 Atlantic marine shells (15 of them being pierced), and 39 pierced carnivore teeth .”
Deceased Elites Who Had Changed Their Appearance In Life
At least 24 adults (over 15 years old) were identified, and the repetition of intentionally removed upper teeth caused “highly visible changes in the facial characteristics,” which the paper explains might have acted “as a strong ethnic marker” or group identity, meaning the people shared common beliefs .