Cremation of the dead is still a custom in many cultures today. But when people first began burning the remains of their dead is unclear. Now archaeologists in Malawi have discovered the remains of a pyre that is around 9,500 years old, including the charred bone fragments of a dead woman who was burned on it. This find is the oldest evidence of cremation in Africa and the oldest evidence of intentional burning of an adult dead person in the world.
Throughout human history, our ancestors have developed a variety of traditions for burying their dead, including cremation. The body of the dead person is usually placed on a rack over a pyre and then burned over the fire. Bone remains and ashes were then either buried on site or buried elsewhere.
However, it is unclear when people first started deliberately burning the dead, as finds of such cremations are rare. The oldest evidence of this so far comes from Alaska. There, the remains of a three-year-old child were found in the relics of an 11,500-year-old pyre. However, most other evidence of cremations dates back to the Neolithic period and is no older than 3,300 years. “Globally, there is little evidence of intentional cremation before the middle Holocene, and this practice appears to be particularly rare among hunter-gatherer cultures,” explain Jessica Cerezo-Román from the University of Oklahoma and her colleagues.
Ashes and bone remains at a Stone Age site
But in the north of Malawi, archaeologists have now discovered such a cremation from the time of Stone Age hunters and gatherers. The site is a rock shelter at the foot of the inselberg Mount Hora, which protrudes prominently from the surrounding landscape. Excavations at this location uncovered traces of Stone Age activity decades ago; people could have visited this place around 21,000 years ago. In recent years, archaeologists have also discovered some human remains there, which indicate that this rock niche was used as a burial site.
As part of new excavations, Cerezo-Román’s team discovered several thick layers of ash underground at one point in the Hora site, which indicate multiple fires and pyres. The researchers found numerous human bone remains in a location of these fire relics that is around 9,500 years old. Further analysis revealed that these heavily charred bone remains all came from one person, an adult female. “The osteological analyzes suggest that this woman’s body was placed on a pyre and burned on site within a few days of her death,” the archaeologists report.
Evidence of complex social traditions
This makes this find the oldest evidence of cremation in Africa and the oldest evidence of the burning of an adult dead person in the world, as Cerezo-Román and her colleagues write. At the same time, this find testifies to the complex social cooperation in these early hunter-gatherer communities. “The cremation of a dead person, as at the Hora site, is a process that required considerable effort and work,” explain the archaeologists. Back then, people had to collect and collect more than 30 kilograms of dead wood and dry grass just for the cremation of the rather petite woman. In addition, the pyre had to reach a temperature of at least 800 degrees and burn for several hours in order to burn a fresh corpse down to the remains of bones.
This suggests that the Stone Age hunters and gatherers in southern Africa also developed complex forms of burial based on intensive cooperation – long before people settled down. “These practices illustrate complex funerary and ritual activities whose origins predate the advent of agriculture,” the team writes. “In doing so, they question common assumptions about community cooperation and culture of remembrance in tropical hunter-gatherer societies.”
Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Specialist article: Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adz9554