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The remains found in the Panga ya Saidi cave, a well-preserved skull and skeletal fragments, belonged to a two- to three-year-old boy.
Unfortunately, the researchers were unable to determine gender: the bones of boys and girls of this age are practically no different, and no DNA fragments remain.
Eventually the archaeologists decided to name the find Mtoto, a local Swahili language meaning “child.”
According to Max Planck, director of the Institute for Human History and head of the article. The details of the funeral of the author, Professor Nicole Boivin, are beyond question: Before delivering Mototo’s body to earth, someone devoted a great deal of time and energy to properly escorting the boy on the last trip.
“Clearly something has gone well,” Professor Boivin told a BBC correspondent. “It was possible to recreate the burial process in detail from the arrangement of the bones: the child became a caloon or shroud, his head was placed on a kind of pillow and a grave was dug especially for him, I cannot find no depression in the ground … “
The remains of a child have been found in the oldest grave
Although the ancestors of modern man evolved in Africa (as evidenced by many traces of civilization), archaeologists have so far been virtually unable to find burials in the Early or even Middle Paleolithic in Africa (i.e. more than 30-40 a thousand years) .
Therefore, the finding is of particular interest to scientists in this regard.
Caring for the dead as a phenomenon of evolution
Excavations of the nearly one kilometer long ancient Panga ya Saidi caves in eastern Kenya began in 2010, after one of the oldest Stone Age camps was discovered there.
It is now separated from the sea by almost 15 kilometers, but over thousands of years, this distance has also changed as the sea level changes. According to scientists, the primitive people who settled here almost 80,000 years ago did not fish, but instead hunted and gathered.
Artifacts collected over more than 10 years of excavation have shown archaeologists many of the details of the development of the oldest tools. For example, more than 10,000 years passed before our ancestors learned to make not only primitive stone axes, but also smaller instruments and details, for example arrowheads.
The remains of a child have been found in the oldest grave
Two millennia later, the first decorations appeared: necklaces made from eggshells and mollusk shells. And after two more, animal bones were used for this purpose.
However, there have been such finds in Africa before, and here the ancient burial has become a completely unique find. After all, our ancestors differed from other animals in the tradition of honoring deceased loved ones, which Nicole Boivin calls “one of the most characteristic features of man.”
“Only one person treats members of a dead tribe with the same respect as the living,” he says. “And this respect, the concern – even, I would say, the sweetness – with which the child does not lie unevenly in a crib, with a pillow – all this testifies that the person who put him to bed lived not only in the world physical environment that surrounded him, but also in the world of symbols. “
The secret
Strictly speaking, the oldest bones (more precisely, their fragments) were found in excavations in 2013. Two small teeth led scientists to raise the idea that they had found human remains.
The remains of a child have been found in the oldest grave
But only four years later, archaeologists managed to penetrate the remains of Mtoto, on which almost ten feet of earth had accumulated over tens of millennia. It took several more months for the semi-fract bones to strengthen and surface. A version was later confirmed that the skeleton belongs to a child of the Homo Sapiens species.
By the way, even then archaeologists did not fully understand what exactly they found. Only later, after laboratory analysis, were his boldest speculations confirmed: someone carefully placed the already dead boy on his right side to make it appear as if he was asleep, and he lowered the Mtoto wrapped in his arms, apparently to dig a circular tomb. .
A new analysis using computer models at the National Center for the Study of the History of Humanity in Burgos, Spain, confirmed the findings of experts from the Nairobi National Museum. Be that as it may, this is exactly the version that seems most likely to scientists.
The remains of a child have been found in the oldest grave
“Of course, in archeology absolutely nothing can be guaranteed 100%: after all, we cannot go back in time and see the funeral process itself,” explains Professor Boivin. “In the same way, we cannot get inside the head of an old man to understand the reasons for his behavior.”
“But there are some things we can be sure of, and our explanation seems small to say the least.”
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