About 9,500 years ago, a community of hunter-gatherers in central Africa cremated a small woman on an open pyre at the base of Mount Hora, a prominent natural landmark in what is now northern Malawi, according to a new study coauthored by Yale paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson. It is the first time this behavior has been documented in African hunter gatherers.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, provides the earliest evidence of intentional cremation in Africa and describes the world's oldest known in situ cremation pyre containing the remains of an adult. While burned human remains have been found (at Lake Mungo, Australia) dating back as far as 40,000 years, cremation pyres - intentionally built structures of combustible fuel - do not appear in the archaeological record until nearly 30,000 years later.
For the new study, an international team of researchers used archaeological, geospatial, forensic, and bio-archaeological methods, including microscopic examination of the pyre sediments and detailed analysis of the human bone fragments, to reconstruct the extraordinary sequence of events surrounding the cremation in unprecedented detail.
Their findings demonstrate that the mortuary and other social behaviors of ancient African foragers were far more complex than previously thought.
