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Oldest Human Burial Yet Discovered: 78,000 Year Old Grave Holds Child
A new study, appearing in Nature on May 5, reports the oldest known modern human burial in Africa. The 2.5 to 3 year old child was buried in a stooped position in a shallow grave directly under the protective rock overhang at the entrance to the cave. The burial in Panga ya Saidi joins the growing number of references to early complex social behavior Homo sapiens .
The Pangy ya Saidi cave on the coast of Kenya. The 78,000-year-old burial of a child was discovered in the pit in the foreground, secured by planks.
Australian researchers help date ancient child’s burial to 78,000 years
By Melissa Coade
Thursday May 6, 2021
Maasai sitting by the ocean on the beach. (Image: Adobe/shangarey)
The earliest known deliberate burial of humans living in Africa has been found in a cave in Kenya, with the discovery of bone fragments of a small child.
The body of a small 2.5-3-year old child, known by researchers as ‘Mtoto’ (‘child’ in Swahili), was buried in the cave near the coast of Kenya, on its side and with legs drawn up to its chest.
The finding at Panga ya Saidi, reported in
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.
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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).