Panga ya Saidi child burial (Mtoto)
Enterramiento del niño de Panga ya Saidi (Mtoto)
- Date
- c. 78 ka · confidence high
- Place
- Panga ya Saidi cave, Kilifi, Kenya
- Credited to
- Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A pit grave holding the body of a child of about 2.5-3 years laid in a flexed position, possibly on a perishable pillow. It is the oldest known human burial in Africa.
Dated by luminescence and radiocarbon (78.3 ± 4.5 ka). Older graves exist outside Africa (Qafzeh and Skhul in the Near East, c. 100 ka), so the record is continental.
What it led to
- evidence of care and ritualised mourning among African sapiens populations
- later ritual burials in East Africa
- the cave as a 78 ka Middle and Later Stone Age sequence in a tropical forest