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Earliest known human burial in Africa uncovered


Still Waters

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Despite being home to the earliest signs of modern human behavior, 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.

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-oldest-human-burial-africa-uncovered.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03457-8

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7 hours ago, Still Waters said:

Despite being home to the earliest signs of modern human behavior, 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.

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-oldest-human-burial-africa-uncovered.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03457-8

Wow, that's a great story and a fantastic discovery. 

Thanks very much for sharing, I really enjoyed it!!

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Sad that this little kid didn't rest in peace after all. We need better ground-penetrating radar for most of these.

Edited by Jon the frog
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I think human pre-history is really exciting. We didn't go around hitting each other in our heads with clubs, saying "ugh ugh" for 200.000-300.000 years, and then all of a sudden started building space ships. So much must have happened during that time period, would be really exciting to get to know more.

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very good article, I learned two things here: luminescence dating for organic samples over 40,000 years old. Interesting!

The other is this: 

Quote

This supports recent archaeological and genetic research suggesting our species didn't evolve from a single population in one region of Africa. Rather, modern human populations living in different parts of Africa looked different to one another and followed different evolutionary trajectories.

Say whaaaaa....? :o Mind blowing. To ME, I mean.

Edited by Earl.Of.Trumps
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