They found the oldest burial site in Africa: Mtoto, a 3-year-old boy was buried there

Africa is the place where our species was born biologically and culturally, but while in Eurasia there is a lot of early evidence of mortuary practices, in Africa there is hardly any evidence. Today, an international study published by Nature describes the oldest burial in Africa, that of Mtoto, a boy buried 78,000 years ago in Kenya.

The funeral is not only the oldest but it is also confirmation that the populations of the Middle Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, began to have funeral rites.

The report, co-directed by the team of the researcher and director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) of Spain, María Martinón Torres, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Human History (Germany) and the National Museums of Kenya, in collaboration with researchers from around 30 institutions around the world, occupies the cover of the journal Nature on Wednesday.

“The boy, about 3 years old, was buried in a cavity that had been dug especially for this. There he was laid in a deliberate and very delicate, almost fetal position, with his head on a support, like a pillow. His body was wrapped in a type of natural shroud made of animal skins or leaves, and later it was covered with earth, ”explained researcher María Martinón Torres.

“Mtoto”, or child in the language swahili, was buried 78,000 years ago on the Kenyan site of Panga ya Saidi, which turned out to be a fundamental enclave for studying the origin of our species and especially its first complex funerary behaviors.

“Mtoto is the oldest evidence that we have of a burial or funeral behavior in Africa” and this is interesting not only as a scientific discovery, but also because “Reveals the complexity of the human mind, which is able to make complex connections with the community beyond the physical world and to interact with those who have passed away.”, underlined the paleoanthropologist.

So far, the only evidence of a burial of similar chronologies in Africa has been that of Border Cave in South Africa, where the remains of another boy buried 74,000 years ago have been found, but its poor documentation has been found. always made the discovery controversial.

However, in Eurasia, there is a wealth of evidence of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis burials. The oldest are those of the sites of Qafzeh and Skhul (H. sapiens) between 90,000 and 130,000 years, and that of Tabun C (Neanderthal), about 120,000 years old, all located in northern Israel.

“Strong and clear evidence for burials in Africa was lacking and this is why Mtoto’s discovery is so interesting”, although, for the scientific community, why no burial has been found in Africa remains a mystery.

“It could be that this type of behavior has developed outside Africa before, or it could just be a bias and more field work has been done in Eurasia than in Africa, or it could be that funeral behavior in Africa is different from that of Eurasia and does not leave any archaeological trace ”, explained the paleoanthropologist.

The fact is that there is still a lot to be done, recognizes the head of CENIEH, “you have to be open to everything and maybe revisit certain sites, like Border Cave, using the most advanced techniques in paleontology, like those used. in Panga ya Saidi ”.

The first bone fragments from the Kenyan site were discovered in 2013 and a few years later a circular cavity was detected located about three meters below the level of the cave floor.. Given the fragility of the bones it contained, the earth was extracted en bloc to study it with different techniques.

The block was excavated manually and virtually, combining microtomography, an X-ray-based technique that allows analysis of the interior of a block without manipulating the original fossil, with particle size and geochemical studies on the composition of the block. soil and the processes it housed.

These techniques discovered that the soil used to fill the cavity was different from the rest of the level where the cavity was found, meaning that it was extracted from the soil elsewhere in the cave, and that it helped to keep the articulated body as found.

In addition, the earth contained some of the chemical remnants generated during bacterial-mediated rotting processes, “another sign that the corpse was deposited immediately after death and with its soft tissues,” adds Martinón Torres.

In parallel, CENIEH researchers carried out the excavation of the sediment block and the microscopic analysis of the child’s bones and teeth.

But Panga ya Saidi is also important to archaeologists, as tools from MSA technology have been found alongside human remains, a fairly advanced type of industry that had also been attributed to other species such as Homo naledi. from South Africa.

“This site contains the first direct association of the use of this industry by Homo sapiens, which for archaeologists is very important proof”, concluded the head of CENIEH.

(With information from EFE)

KEEP READING: