Oldest Cremation Pyre Found in Africa Rewrites Our Understanding of Hunter-Gatherer Ritual Behavior
How humans deal with death and the rituals we construct around it are a crucial part of our identity. Funeral practices can date back hundreds of thousands of years, appearing shortly after our ancestors left the trees. Cremation, however, is a different story. Burning the dead requires planning, fuel, and coordinated work, making it a rare and complex practice early in human history.
A new discovery in northern Malawi is reshaping this narrative. Researchers from the United States, Africa and Europe have discovered evidence of a cremation pyre dating back approximately 9,500 years, the first known example of intentional cremation ever discovered in Africa. Published in Scientific advancesThe study suggests that ancient hunter-gatherers practiced more complex ritual behavior than scientists previously thought.
Learn more: Life After Death: What Human Burial Options Will Look Like in a Sustainable Future
Reconstructing a 9,500-year-old cremation
Hora Mountain
Photo courtesy of Jacob Davis
The cremation took place at Hora 1, a site at the base of a granite rock rising hundreds of feet above the surrounding plains. Previous research has shown that people lived there 21,000 years ago and buried their dead around 16,000 to 8,000 years ago. Upon closer inspection, we discovered something else: ashes.
Sediment analysis revealed highly fragmented remains of a single individual. There is no evidence that anyone else was cremated there before or after. The remains belonged to an adult female aged 18 to 60 years old, just under 5 feet tall. Heat damage shows his body was burned shortly after his death, before decomposition began.
One absence stood out. “Surprisingly, there were no fragments of teeth or skull bones in the pyre,” study co-author and bioarchaeologist Elizabeth Sawchuk said in a press release. “As these parts are usually preserved during cremations, we believe the head may have been removed before being burned.”
A rare practice in the history of humanity
Pyre points
Image courtesy of Justin Pargeter
Cremation itself is not new, but intentionally constructed pyres are rare in the archaeological record. Burned human remains appeared as early as 40,000 years ago at Lake Mungo in Australia, but clear evidence of constructed pyres did not appear until much later.
The oldest known in situ pyre dates from approximately 11,500 years ago in Alaska and contains the remains of a young child. In Africa, final cremations were not known until about 3,500 years ago and were associated with Neolithic pastoral herders rather than hunter-gatherers.
Cremation is a real business, typically seen much later in human history, more often in food-producing societies, which tend to have more complex technologies. For mobile hunter-gatherers, the labor and fuel required would have made cremation an impractical choice, making the discovery of Hora 1 particularly unexpected.
A singular woman and a memorable place
The pyre required a significant community effort. Researchers estimate that at least 65 lbs. Materials were gathered to fuel the fire. The stone tools found in the pyre may have been deliberately placed as funerary objects.
“Cremation is very rare among ancient and modern hunter-gatherers, at least in part because pyres require an enormous amount of labor, time and fuel to transform a body into fragmented, charred bones and ashes,” lead author Jessica Cerezo-Román, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, said in the press release.
The importance of the site did not stop with cremation. Large fires were lit there centuries before the event, and 500 years later people returned to light additional fires directly at the top of the pyre. Although no one else was cremated, the place was clearly remembered.
Why this woman received such distinctive treatment remains unknown.
“Why was this woman cremated when other burials at the site were not treated this way?” lead author Jessica Thompson of Yale University said in the release. “There had to be something specific about her that deserved special treatment.”
Learn more: Molecular clock hidden in maggots could transform forensic estimates of time of death
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