A remarkable archaeological discovery in Malawi is reshaping our understanding of ancient African societies. Researchers have unearthed what is believed to be the world's oldest cremation pyre containing adult human remains, dating back an astonishing 9,500 years.
A Monumental Discovery at Mount Hora
The find was made in a rock shelter at the base of Mount Hora in northern Malawi. During excavations in 2017 and 2018, a team led by Dr Jessica Cerezo-Román from the University of Oklahoma uncovered the ancient pyre. It contained 170 individual bone fragments from an adult woman, who stood just under 1.5 metres tall.
The pyre itself was substantial, roughly the size of a modern queen-sized mattress, indicating a significant communal effort to build and maintain the fire. The discovery provides the first confirmed evidence of intentional cremation practices among African hunter-gatherer communities from this era.
Evidence of Complex Funerary Rituals
Intriguing details suggest the cremation was part of an elaborate ritual. The woman's skull was notably absent, and cut marks on the bones indicate that flesh was removed and joints were separated before the body was burned. Researchers emphasise this was not an act of violence or cannibalism.
"Body parts might have been removed as part of a funerary ritual, perhaps to be carried as tokens," explained Dr Cerezo-Román. Dr Jessica Thompson of Yale University, a senior study author, drew a parallel to modern practices, noting how people still keep locks of hair or ashes to scatter in meaningful places.
Further evidence of ritualistic behaviour was found within the pyre's ashes: flakes and sharp points from stone-knapping. These could have been tools used to prepare the body or items deliberately cast into the flames as part of the ceremony.
Redefining Ancient Social Complexity
This discovery challenges long-held stereotypes about early hunter-gatherer groups. Prior to this find, the earliest confirmed intentional cremations in Africa were only about 3,500 years old, associated with later pastoral communities. The global record for the oldest human-remains pyre was in Alaska, dating to 11,500 years ago, but that contained a child.
The rock shelter served as a natural monument, used for burials over an 8,000-year period. The team, including co-author Dr Ebeth Sawchuk from the University of Alberta, hypothesises that missing bones from the cremated woman were deliberately taken as tokens for curation or reburial elsewhere, a practice supported by other small bone collections found at the site.
Dr Thompson stated the varied treatment in death "suggests that in life, they also would have had a lot more complexity to their social roles than I ever imagined." The site later saw at least one fire lit directly over the pyre location, potentially an act of remembrance, though evidence of daily campfires confirms the shelter was also used for ordinary life.
Professor Joel Irish of Liverpool John Moores University, who was not involved in the research, hailed the find. "They clearly had advanced belief systems and a high level of social complexity at this early date," he said. The study, published in Science Advances, firmly places Malawi at the forefront of understanding the sophisticated spiritual world of ancient humans.
