The oldest cremation site in Africa, dating back 9,500 years, has been found. Until now, the oldest confirmed cremation in Africa appeared only among Neolithic herders 3,500 years ago. This cremation site also set a record as the oldest place in the world where an adult body was burned.
An international team led by Jessica Thompson, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University, said in the journal Science Advances on the 2nd that "on a mountainside in southeastern Africa's Malawi, hunter-gatherers cremated an adult woman on a pyre." This is also the first time a cremation custom has been identified in an African hunter-gatherer society.
◇ evidence of burned remains without the head
Near the Kasitu River in northern Malawi stands Mount Hora, a 110-meter-high rocky mountain. Excavated since the 1950s, the site was identified as a burial ground for hunter-gatherers. Previous research found that people first settled in the area about 21,000 years ago, and it was used as a burial site between 16,000 and 8,000 years ago. All the interred remains were intact.
Through excavations in 2018 and 2018, the team uncovered traces of a queen-size-bed–scale pyre at Hora 1 (HOR-1), a rock hill site on Mount Hora. Radiocarbon dating showed an age of 9,540 to 9,454 years ago. Isotopes are atoms with the same atomic number but different masses. Carbon also has isotopes with masses of 12 and 14. Carbon-14 turns into nitrogen over time. Scientists estimate ages by analyzing the proportion of carbon-14 in organic matter.
The cremation site also yielded 170 fragments of charred bones along with ash, most of them limb bones. The cremated individual was an adult woman, 18 to 60 years old, estimated to be 145 to 155 cm tall. By analyzing heat-induced changes in the bones, the team confirmed the woman was cremated within a few days after death. The cut marks left on the bones were because flesh was removed before cremation, the researchers said. Stone tools and flint, presumed to have been used to remove flesh, were also found at the site.
Elizabeth Sawchuk of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a co-author of the paper, said, "Surprisingly, no teeth or skull fragments were found at the cremation site," adding, "Given that these parts are well preserved even when burned, the head may have been removed before cremation." The team interpreted that, since a custom of preserving parts of the body has been observed in the same area, there was a funerary practice of preserving skulls to remember and venerate ancestors.
◇ maintaining high temperatures during cremation, evidence of an organized society
Humans have long practiced cremation. At Lake Mungo in Australia, the burned remains of a woman from about 40,000 years ago were found. But that site showed a burned-and-buried body, and pyre remains that show an actual cremation setting did not appear until 30,000 years later. The oldest pyre site is from 11,500 years ago at the Xaasaa Na' site in Alaska, United States. In 2010, the charred remains of a 3-year-old child were found in a hearth at the center of a dwelling there.
The researchers said the Malawi cremation site shows that even then, hunter-gatherer societies were organized enough to carry out cremations, which require substantial time and labor. Jessica Cerezo-Román, the paper's lead author and a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, said, "Cremation is a very rare practice among hunter-gatherer societies, past or present," noting that "building a pyre to reduce a body to ash and maintaining the firepower require massive labor and time."
The team explained, "At least 30 kilograms of wood would have been needed to build the pyre," which suggests "a considerable communal effort." Analysis of ash deposits and bone fragments indicated that fuel was continuously added to maintain temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius.
Joel Irish of Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom said of the study, "It is astonishing that hunter-gatherers, who stayed only temporarily at that early time, built a cremation site," adding, "It is clear that hunter-gatherers then already had highly developed belief systems and a high degree of social complexity."
Interestingly, at the Hora 1 site, several large fires occurred on the pyre within 500 years after the woman's cremation. There were no traces of other bodies being burned. The team surmised that a kind of memorial event was held at the cremation site.
Thompson said, "It suggests that people remembered the location of the pyre used for the cremation and recognized its importance," adding, "The fact that only one woman, unlike other interred remains, was cremated indicates there may have been something warranting special treatment."
References
Science Advances(2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz9554
Science(2011), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1201581
World Archaeology(1970), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1970.9979463