Africa’s Oldest Human Burial

The remains of a Middle Stone Age child were discovered at the mouth of a Kenyan cave. The burial was composed of a cluster of 78,000-year-old bones of a child believed to have been between 2.5 and 3 years old when the child was buried. In addition to the bones, researchers have found historical artifacts such as beads and tools:  

When archaeologists found Mototo's highly decomposed remains, they couldn't immediately identify them as human. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the National Museums of Kenya detail how they came to conclude, through microscopic analysis of the bones and the surrounding soil, that the skeleton in a cave's shallow circular pit belonged to a child who'd intentionally been laid to rest. 
"Deliberate burial of the dead is so far confined to just Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, setting us apart from all other ancient hominins, and any other animal," Nicole Boivin, an archaeological scientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, tells me. "Study of mortuary and burial practices gives us insight into the evolution of our own species, our thoughts, emotions and cosmological beliefs, and what it means to be human."  

Image via CNET 


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