A discovery offers a rare insight into ancient rituals. Yale expert: Social roles, more complex than we imagined

A funeral pyre built around 9,500 years ago has been discovered in Africa, providing new insight into the complexity of ancient hunter-gatherer communities, according to The Guardian.

Researchers say the pyre, discovered in a stone shelter at the foot of Mount Hora in northern Malawi, is believed to be the world's oldest containing adult human remains, the oldest confirmed intentional cremation in Africa and the first pyre associated with African hunter-gatherers.

In total, 170 human bone fragments – apparently from an adult woman just under 1.5 meters tall – were discovered in two groups during excavations in 2017 and 2018, along with layers of ash, charcoal and sediment.

However, the woman's skull was missing and cut marks suggest that some bones were separated at the joints and her flesh removed before the body was burned.

“There is no evidence to suggest that he committed any act of violence or cannibalism on the remains,” said Dr. Jessica Cerezo-Roman of the University of Oklahoma, who led the study. Instead, she said the body parts may have been removed as part of a funeral ritual, perhaps to be worn as souvenirs.

Dr. Jessica Thompson, lead author of the study at Yale University, said that while such practices may seem hard to understand, people still keep strands of hair or ashes of relatives to scatter in a meaningful place.

Signs of rituals

The researchers said the stone shelter appears to have been used as a natural monument, with burials occurring between about 16,000 and 8,000 years ago. In addition to complete skeletons, very small collections of bones from different individuals have also been found.

This “supports our hypothesis that some of the missing bones of the cremated woman may have been deliberately removed and taken as souvenirs for preservation or reburial elsewhere,” said study co-author Dr. Ebeth Sawchuk of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

The team also found chips and points from stone carving within the pyre, which may have been added as part of a funerary ritual.

The team also found that the pyre was about the size of a double bed and would have required considerable knowledge, skill and coordination to build and maintain it, while the two groups of bones indicate that the body was moved during cremation.

While it's unclear why the woman received such special treatment, the team found that at least one fire was later lit right above where the pyre had been – presumably as an act of commemoration.

Their social roles, more complex than previously known

In the journal Science Advances, the team notes that the oldest known burial pyre containing human remains was previously discovered in Alaska and dates back to around 11,500 years ago – but it was for a young child.

Indeed, most cremated human remains dating back 8,000 years or more have not been found in a funeral pyre, and before the latest discovery, the earliest confirmed intentional cremations in Africa only appeared about 3,500 years ago, among pastoral Neolithic peoples.

Thompson said the discovery that different individuals deserved different treatment in death “suggests that in life their social roles were far more complex than I ever imagined or stereotypically portrayed for tropical hunter-gatherers, especially such ancient ones.”

Joel Irish, professor of anthropology and archeology at Liverpool John Moores University, who was not involved in this research, welcomed the discovery.

“The fact that it is such an early date and that they would have been nomadic hunter-gatherers makes the discovery even more amazing,” he said. “It is clear that they had advanced belief systems and a high level of social complexity at this early date.”

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