Burnt Bones In Ethiopia Are The Earliest Evidence Of Human Cremation Yet Found – At 100,000 Years Old

The team has been studying the Middle Awash site at Ethiopia’s Afar Rift since the early 1980s. This site, which is in the northeastern part of the country, is a hotspot for well-preserved fossils, including those belonging to Homo sapiens and our close relatives. 

The Middle Awash study area is valuable because it contains over a kilometer of sediment that acts as a record for life in the area from the Miocene (23 to 5.3 million years ago) to the Holocene (11,700 years ago to the present).

According to this latest study, the site contains Homo sapiens bones that were burned at high temperatures. The researchers believe this may be the earliest-known evidence of cremation – if so, it would be the oldest by tens of thousands of years. The bones also show evidence of bite marks, which were likely caused by predators. It seems the remains were then quickly buried.

“Both the molar and the additional surface pieces show evidence of burning at high temperature in the form of extensive cracking, charring, discoloration, and fragmentation”, the team explain in their paper.

Using surface scraping and sieving techniques, the researchers found an additional set of hominid fragments along with two stone flakes suggesting the burned remains were in the same spot.

“In modern forensic settings, alterations of bone and teeth matching those seen on the [these] partial human skeleton would probably be classified as an intentional cremation involving fire intensities exceeding what is observed in most bushfires,” they add.

“If this were the case here, it would be the world’s earliest cremation and a mortuary practice not previously recognized in the Middle Paleolithic”.

However, the team urges caution. They say that there is evidence of intensive burning at the site, presumably from other sources than cremation, so they aren't drawing any firm conclusions until confirmatory evidence is found.

In addition to the burnt remains, the researchers have also added to our understanding of the wider location. In particular, they argue that local hydrological factors – the flood cycles of the ancient Awash River – influenced human life in the region to a greater extent than climate fluctuations.

Over the decades, thousands of stone tools have been collected at the site. These and other artefacts – including obsidian objects – have remained in the nearly undisturbed layers, offering researchers an unusually precise understanding of the spatial relationship between objects and fossils. Together, they suggest early humans repeatedly returned to the area for short periods of time, based on seasonal flooding.

"This research helps us build a comprehensive understanding of how early Homo sapiens interacted with their environment. Our findings suggest that local water-related factors and changes were more decisive than global climate variations," Ferhat Kaya at the University of Oulu, Finland, explained in a statement.

Analysis of over 3,000 animal fossils reveals a diverse ecosystem made of monkeys, rodents and large mammals. Studying these remains help scientists reconstruct how early humans adapted to changing environments in the East African Rift.

This is particularly important as most insights into our origins in Africa come from cave deposits, which offer a skewed picture of early human activity. Well-preserved open-air finds – such as the Middle Awash study site – are extremely rare and therefore invaluable.

The paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.