oldest African burial is 78,000 years old
oldest African burial is 78,000 years old 12345
Here is the modeling of the arrangement of the bones of Mtoto in the Panga Ya Saidi burial
Archaeologists called him Mtoto, “child” in Swahili. He was around 3 years old when he died, and his body, found at the Panga Ya Saidi site in Kenya, was buried in a dug grave. It was 78,000 years ago… which makes it the oldest African burial found!

“His bones were discovered in 2017 but it took several years of analysis to reveal that it was indeed a tomb,” relates Francesco d’Errico, prehistorian at the University of Bordeaux. “Two elements argue for this hypothesis: the sediments which surround the child are not the same as those of the archaeological layers of the same level, and almost all the bones remained in their initial position, which would not be the case if the body had been out in the open, at the mercy of predators. » The only post-mortem movement: a tilting of the skull which could be due, according to the researcher, “to the presence of a sort of pillow placed under the head. As it decomposed, it left a void and the skull collapsed.”

Article originally published in October 2021



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