Physical development 16 19 years old

A child no older than three laid to rest sideways in an earthen grave 78,000 years ago, legs carefully tucked up against its tiny chest, is the earliest known human burial in Africa, researchers reported Wednesday.

The sunken pit, in a cave complex along the coast of Kenya, was bereft of ornaments, offerings or ochre-coloured clay carvings found in the region’s more recent Stone Age graves, they detailed in the journal Nature .

But “Mtoto” — Swahili for “child” — had been wrapped in a shroud with her or his head resting on what was probably a pillow, “indicating that the community may have undertaken some form of funerary rite”, said lead author Maria Martinon-Torres, director of the National Research Centre on Human Evolution, in Burgos, Spain.

The extraordinary find highlights the emergence of both complex social behaviour among Homo sapiens, and cultural differences across populations of modern humans in Africa and beyond.

Fragments of the child’s bones were dug up at the Panga ya Saidi caves in 2013, but it wasn’t until five years later that the shallow, circular grave — three metres below the cave floor — was fully exposed, revealing a tight cluster and decomposed bones.

“At this point, we weren’t sure what we had found,” said Emmanuel Ndiema of the National Museum of Kenya. “The bones were just too delicate to study in the field.”

Archaeologists stabilised and plastered them into a bundle and transported them, first to the museum and then to the research centre in Spain.

“We started uncovering parts of the skull and face,” Martinon-Torres said.

“The articulation of the spine and the ribs was also astonishingly well preserved, even conserving the curvature of the thorax cage.”

Subsequent microscopic analysis and luminescence dating confirmed that Mtoto’s tiny body had been carefully covered with dirt from around the pit, and had rested undisturbed for nearly 80,000 years.

‘Culturally embedded’

Homo sapiens originated in Africa, but little is known about mortuary practices on the continent compared to Europe and the Middle East, where even older human burial sites have been unearthed, including one in Israel thought to be 120,000 years old.

Intriguingly, infant and child burials make up nearly half of all known interments from that time until the end of the Middle Stone Age, about 30,000 years ago.

The same holds for our genetic cousins the Neanderthals, whose ritual burials in Eurasia go back at least a half-a-million years.

“Burials where the body is in a flexed position are very common, it’s difficult to know exactly why,” said Martinon-Torres.

“Some researchers have argued that it is for practical reasons, to put the bodies in a smaller space, but one can also see it as putting the child in a sleeping position,” she continued.

“Being wrapped, while lying in this foetal position, could be somehow a way to transfer some human warmth in such a cold moment.”

The limited number of known early human burial sites in Africa could reflect the relative paucity of archaeological research, experts say.

Or environmental conditions: the ones located so far are bunched in the dry north and temperate southern Africa, climates more favourable to preservation.

Stone Age burial sites often reveal the beginnings of culture, especially when they point to “a departure from purely practical motivations toward a more meaningful treatment of the dead”, noted Louse Humphrey, a researcher at the Centre for Human Evolution at the Natural History Museum in London.

“Such actions include careful placement of the corpse in the grave to achieve a desired body position or orientation, the wrapping or binding of the body for reasons other than to aid transportation, or the deliberate incorporation of items of value in the grave,” she wrote in a commentary, also in Nature .

Mtoto’s final resting place fulfilled the first two of these criteria, and possibly the third.

The new finding, along with a child burial site in South Africa dating back nearly as far, “suggest that a tradition of symbolically significant burials, at least for the very young, might have been culturally embedded in parts of Africa in the later part of the Middle Stone Age,” she wrote.

National Cancer Hospital’s Tân Triều facility under lockdown starting Friday morning. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The health ministry confirmed 40 domestically transmitted COVID-19 infections on Friday evening, including 11 at the National Cancer Hospital (K Hospital) in Hà Nội, 10 of whom were reported earlier in the day .

Seven patients under treatment at the Tân Triều facility of the hospital along with four relatives of patients have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the ministry.

Three facilities of the hospital in Hà Nội, the largest cancer hospital in the country, with about 5,000 people – including staff, patients, carers and service workers – were ordered to quarantine at the hospital early on Friday morning until further notice.

Hà Nội also recorded nine more patients in Thường Tín District – including one-year-old and eight-year-old girls. Two of the nine likely caught the virus from coronavirus-positive Chinese experts at the same hotel during a visit to the central city of Đà Nẵng in late April, and seven of their direct contacts are now positive to the virus.

They are now treated at the Kim Chung facility of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Đông Anh District, Hà Nội, the frontline hospital for treating COVID-19 patients, which was placed under lockdown for two weeks since yesterday after a cluster of cases was reported here.

Hà Nội today reported three more cases at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases , including two medical workers and one relative of a patient, bringing the total cases to 41 (among the 800 present at the hospital when it went under lockdown), in addition to another 39-year-old woman in Hà Đông District who had recently been in the hospital to take care of a patient there.

The northern provinces of Phú Thọ, Nam Định and Hưng Yên respectively recorded one, one and four cases of COVID-19, all connected to the tropical diseases hospital’s cluster.

The central province of Nghệ An also recorded one case connected to the hospital.

Hải Dương, Hà Nam and Điện Biên Provinces each reported one new case related to previously confirmed patients.

Vĩnh Phúc Province posted one new case, a 19-year-old woman originally from Hà Giang Province, from the Sunny Bar outbreak, which is also related to the Chinese expert. Genetic sequencing previously confirmed the patients connected to this outbreak carry the Indian variant of the virus (B.1.617.2), suggesting the strong possibility that the Chinese experts got the virus from the same hotel they were quarantined at (Như Nguyệt 2 in Vĩnh Phúc) after arrival in the country about the same time as other Indian experts who were found positive for the virus.

The central city of Đà Nẵng reported four new cases related to the New Phương Đông (New Oriental) bar in Hải Châu District, and one who is a direct contact of a previously confirmed patient.

Combined with the six imported COVID-19 cases – including two returning Vietnamese arriving in HCM City, two returning Vietnamese in Đà Nẵng, one returning Vietnamese in Quảng Trị, and one Indonesian patient in Bình Thuận, all quarantined upon arrival, Việt Nam’s total caseload has reached 3,137.

A total of 2,560 patients have recovered, and among the patients currently under treatment, 76 have tested negative for the virus.

A total of 42,293 people who have either come into contact with confirmed cases or arrived in the country from overseas are currently in quarantine. — VNS

Live music returned to the birthplace of The Beatles after a long coronavirus-enforced silence on Sunday when the English city of Liverpool hosted a one-off music festival to test whether such events spread the virus.

Around 5,000 people ditched face coverings and social distancing rules in the name of science and music. They attended the outdoor event having tested negative for COVID-19, and promised to get themselves tested again five days after the festival.

Their data will be used by the government’s Events Research Programme to help understand the effect of crowds on the spread of the virus.

But the scientific side of the event was far from the minds of revellers as they danced through the gates of Sefton Park.

“It just feels so good, so amazing – it’s been too long,” said 19-year-old student Meghan Butler.

Melvin Benn, Managing Director of Festival Republic, said he hoped his pilot project would play a key part in getting outdoor events back on the calendar this year.

“Once they get into the show they can party as though it’s 2019,” he said. “You can feel that the burden of the last 12 months, the last 15 months, has just been lifted a little.”

Sunday’s line-up in a purpose-built tent consisted of three acts: local singer-songwriter Zuzu, up-and-coming indie group The Lathums and headliners Blossoms.

Getting to headline the event was an honour, said Blossoms lead singer Tom Ogden: “It’s been 413 days since we were last on stage … It’s been a long time and we’re delighted to be here.”

Lasting less than six hours and with a 10 p.m. curfew, the festival was a far cry from the multi-day hedonism of bigger events like Glastonbury, but those attending said there was nowhere else they’d rather be.

“Let’s enjoy life, let’s get back to normal!” said 25-year old labourer Harry Smith.

($1 = 0.72 pounds)