Some readers of this blog may recall posts in
the past about human origins from Africa. I first became aware of the migratory
pathways of early humans and the archaeological and genetic evidence from
participating in a National Geographic test. That test looked at haplotypes and
how modern humans migrated from East Africa to essentially around the world.
The test also estimated the percentage of Neanderthal heritage. Since that
original sample I have been tested at 2 other laboratories. One of them confirmed
the National Geographic analysis and the third test is pending. My original
intent was to highlight the fact that all Homo sapiens are from East
Africa, and that the distinctions we like to consider “race” mean a lot less
than most people think. Genetically human beings from different races are much
more similar than different. If we all
share common ancestors, similarities would seem to be intuitive, but the events
that have occurred since my original post suggest otherwise. Racial and tribal biases have been with her
since prehistoric times and continue in modern societies.
Despite those biases, evidence continues to
flow from Africa. In the may 6 Nature there was a research paper on the
discovery of a 78,000-year-old gravesite in Panga Ya Saidi, Kenya that
contained the body of a 3-year-old child. The body and gravesite had evidence of
burial practices including intentional placement in an excavated grave,
specific positioning of the body, and wrapping of the body in a perishable
material. The authors exhaustively
review the evidence for those conclusions. They and the author doing the
commentary on this article (2) also review the meaning of these rituals.
The editorial first and the commentary by
Louise Humphrey (2) from the Center for Human Evolution Research. Dr. Humphrey
sets the stage in the Middle capstone Age (320,002 30,000 years ago). The
research question is the first evidence of modern human behavior during that
era. Various human innovations were discovered during this timeframe in Africa.
The earliest human fossils were also discovered in Africa during this
timeframe. One of the key indicators of complex behavior is how the dead were
prepared and handled. Anthropologists considered this to be a marker of
increased symbolic capacity and thought. Dr. Humphrey reviews existing fossil
records of mortuary treatments done by humans and provides a map in her paper
(2) where the archaeological sites are mapped ranging from 50 to 780 thousand
years ago. Given the time range the hominid species identified included Homo
sapiens, Homo neanderthalis, and other species of the genus Homo. The critical work of the scientist involved
is to “reconstruct a series of human actions associated with the deposition of
the body”. What does the planning suggest? What meaning can be inferred from
the site? Time and effort involved in the ritual suggest that the treatment is
more meaningful. In the literature reviewed that included a dedicated site,
wrapping the body, and positioning the body. Her conclusion was that the paper
suggested the burial in the main paper was “symbolically significant”.
The research article (1) is a detailed
description of the excavation and analysis of gravesite of a 2.5 to
3.0-year-old child. The researchers named the child Mtoto – a Kiswahili word
for small child. Estimated age of the
gravesite was about 78,000 years ago. There is a detailed drawing of the
preserved skeleton that includes a large portion of the cranium, spine, ribs,
right clavicle, left scapula, left humerus, and proximal femurs. There were 5 teeth present and they were felt
to be consistent with H. sapiens, although some other features were
present suggesting that there may have been regionally distinct populations.
The evidence for placement of the body in a specific location was reviewed. The
skeletal remnants were minimally displaced. The body was in a flexed position.
The body present position was consistent with wrapping. This was
interpreted as “more elaborated involvement of the community in the funerary
rite…”. The evidence for intentional burial included an excavated trench and
settlement patterns consistent with burial.
The authors review the scant evidence for
mortuary practices during this era. They conclude that H. sapiens was probably preserving corpses of the young
members of their groups between 69 and 78 thousand years ago. That is contrasted with burial practices in
Eurasia by Neanderthals and other modern humans dating back 120,000 years. Infant and child burials in the sites were
described as “ubiquitous”. The authors see the lack of mortuary practices
during the middle Stone Age in Africa in general as being inconsistent with
“modern-like conceptions of the afterlife and/or treatment of the dead”. They
do point out that the absence of the behavior is not the same as the lack of
capacity.
This paper was important from a number of
perspectives. Overall, it is apparent that archaeological/paleobiological
evidence of burial practices during the Stone Age is limited. East Africa is
commonly viewed as the cradle of civilization. In 2 of the DNA analyses I have
had done on myself, all my ancestors retraced back to East Africa. The data
about Neanderthals mortuary practices is interesting because in the past
decade, archaeological evidence supports the idea that they were conceptually
more sophisticated than they had previously been given credit for. One of the questions I came away with from
this paper is why so few burial sites or other evidence of mortuary practices
exist in Africa.
The inferences about human cognition based on
mortuary practices are interesting to consider even in modern times. Over the
course of my lifetime, funerals have changed significantly. Embalming and
displaying the body, was fairly typical in the families I have been affiliated
with until the turn-of-the-century. That mortuary practice was primarily grief
focused. There was a religious service that was often a divine explanation of
what had occurred and what was to be expected. Over the years I grew to become
very interested in what the clergy from different faiths would say during the
funeral. Other people would frequently speak with varying degrees of
effectiveness. A common meal or reception would frequently follow the religious
service there is often a separate burial with the graveside religious service
the next day.
In about the year 2000, things seem to change
significantly. I remember attending a funeral and being shocked that the body
had been replaced by a small box of ashes. Cremation suddenly became the rule
rather than the exception. The funeral service was focused on being a
celebration of the deceased’s life rather than strictly grief focused. There
were often photographs and video displays relevant to the deceased person’s
life. The eulogies were also more lighthearted. Jokes or humorous vignettes
about the deceased were more common. I don’t know what lead to these changes
and have not been able to find a good analysis of why it occurred. The
archeological elements of ritual, respect for the dead, the existential balance
of the meaningfulness of their life in contrast to death, and the promise of a
spiritual afterlife is all there. With cremation there is an added element of
remembering the deceased as they were in real life and that theme is more
consistent with a celebration of their life.
All of these elements are fairly implicit and embedded in ritual. An
obituary is written and proofed several times. In the Internet era, it is
posted on several sites and is eventually routed to sites when ancestry
analysis occurs. I have seen direct evidence
that Internet obituaries exist in cyberspace much longer than they could be
viewed in a newspaper. There is no doubt that multiple people have carefully
planned the event.
The most important aspect of the death of an
individual is their impact on the conscious states of others. That is often simplified as a “memory” but it
is more complex than that. For decades the grief process was considered to be a
closed process. The person grieving goes through a number of cognitive-emotional
stages and at some point they reach a stage where there baseline emotions
return and they are left with memories of the individual. In the common
vernacular that was described as closure. In reality, the process is typically more
open ended and the relationship with the deceased lives on. Any one of us who
has lived long enough can recall at will or by association what those relationships
and that person was like, why they are missed, and how they are still affecting
us. The increasing lifespan of modern
humans leaves us all with a lot more time for those thoughts.
An additional consideration is the pattern of
mortality and how it differs from the Stone Age to modern times. The average
age of a person in the Stone age is estimated to be in the 25-35 range but that
is skewed by considerable (45%) infant mortality. Did that have an impact on
mortuary practices and the grief process?
Some experts suggest that more care was taken in attending to deceased infants
and children implying that our ancestors had a selective thought process about
those deaths. Given the time and scant evidence we may never know what our
ancestors were thinking with a high degree of certainty. We do know that in the
Middle Stone Age – our ancestors engaged in rituals that reflected their thoughts
on death in general and that specific person.
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA
References:
1: Martinón-Torres
M, d'Errico F, Santos E, Álvaro Gallo A, Amano N, Archer W, Armitage SJ,
Arsuaga JL, Bermúdez de Castro JM, Blinkhorn J, Crowther A, Douka K, Dubernet
S, Faulkner P, Fernández-Colón P, Kourampas N, González García J, Larreina D,
Le Bourdonnec FX, MacLeod G, Martín-Francés L, Massilani D, Mercader J, Miller
JM, Ndiema E, Notario B, Pitarch Martí A, Prendergast ME, Queffelec A, Rigaud
S, Roberts P, Shoaee MJ, Shipton C, Simpson I, Boivin N, Petraglia MD. Earliest
known human burial in Africa. Nature. 2021 May;593(7857):95-100. doi:
10.1038/s41586-021-03457-8. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33953416.
2: Humphrey
L. Burial of a child during the
Middle Stone Age in Africa. Nature.
2021 May; 593(7857): 39-40.
3: Ponce
de León MS, Bienvenu T, Marom A, Engel S, Tafforeau P, Alatorre Warren JL,
Lordkipanidze D, Kurniawan I, Murti DB, Suriyanto RA, Koesbardiati T,
Zollikofer CPE. The primitive brain of early Homo. Science. 2021
Apr 9;372(6538):165-171. doi: 10.1126/science.aaz0032. PMID: 33833119.
4: Beaudet
A. The enigmatic origins of the human brain. Science. 2021 Apr
9;372(6538):124-125. doi: 10.1126/science.abi4661. PMID: 33833107.
5: Olden
K, White SL. Health-related disparities: influence of environmental factors.
Med Clin North Am. 2005 Jul;89(4):721-38. doi: 10.1016/j.mcna.2005.02.001.
PMID: 15925646.
6: Brotherton
P, Haak W, Templeton J, Brandt G, Soubrier J, Jane Adler C, Richards SM, Der
Sarkissian C, Ganslmeier R, Friederich S, Dresely V, van Oven M, Kenyon R, Van
der Hoek MB, Korlach J, Luong K, Ho SYW, Quintana-Murci L, Behar DM, Meller H,
Alt KW, Cooper A; Genographic Consortium. Neolithic mitochondrial haplogroup H
genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans. Nat Commun. 2013;4:1764. doi:
10.1038/ncomms2656. PMID: 23612305; PMCID: PMC3978205.
7: Fu Q,
Rudan P, Pääbo S, Krause J. Complete mitochondrial genomes reveal neolithic
expansion into Europe. PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e32473. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0032473. Epub 2012 Mar 13. PMID: 22427842; PMCID:
PMC3302788.
Supplementary:
Additional references above are for a more expansive
essay on paleobiology, genetics and the importance recognizing a common
ancestry.
No comments:
Post a Comment