Archaeologists have discovered a large ancient cemetery in Kenya that sheds new light on the area’s early culture.
The Lothagam North Pillar Site containing remains of nearly 600 people was communal cemetery shared by East African first herders that inhabited the region 5,000 years ago. The site, located near Lake Turkana, was used for several centuries and would have served as community hub for region's scattered population, archaeologists believe.
Researchers from Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History discovered the graveyard, described as the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in Eastern Africa.
This kind of monumental architecture has previously been associated with societies governed by strict hierarchies such as ancient Egypt.
"This discovery challenges earlier ideas about monumentality," explained Dr Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook University, part of the research team behind the discovery.
The uncertainties of living on a “moving frontier” of early herding—exacerbated by dramatic environmental shifts—may have spurred people to strengthen social networks that could provide information and assistance. Lothagam North Pillar Site would have served as both an arena for interaction and a tangible reminder of shared identity.
“This group is believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social hierarchy,” the researchers wrote in a statement. “Thus their construction of such a large public project contradicts long-standing narratives about early complex societies, which suggest that a stratified social structure is necessary to enable the construction of large public buildings or monuments.”
Although the team only excavated a small area of the 120 square metre “mortuary cavity”, they found that men, women and children of a variety of ages had been buried closely together over several centuries.
The herders built a platform approximately 98 feet in diameter and excavated a large area in the centre in which they buried their dead. At least 580 people were “densely buried” within the site’s central platform. “Men, women and children of different ages, from infants to the elderly, were all buried in the same area, without any particular burials being singled out with special treatment,” the researchers said.
“Essentially, all individuals were buried with personal ornaments and the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal throughout the cemetery. These factors indicate a relatively egalitarian society without strong social stratification.”
Experts note that ancient monuments have traditionally been regarded as indicators of complex societies with clearly defined social classes. “This discovery challenges earlier ideas about monumentality,” explained Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in a statement.
These findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.