According to a paper published in the latest issue of Scientific Reports, American archaeologists have found a 10,000-year-old baby girl tomb in a cave in Italy, the oldest known tomb of its kind in Europe. The remains of baby girls are decorated with shell beads and eagle claws, and their funerary rites are highly similar to similar tombs in Alaska, North America.
Geographical schematic of the Alma Veirana Cave, a 14,000-year-old baby girl tomb, was discovered.
Archaeologists from the University of Colorado at Denver reportedly found the baby girl's tomb in The Arma Veirana Cave in the pre-Ligurian Alpine region of Italy in 2017, and archaeologists named the baby girl "Neve." Subsequently, the archaeological team carried out arduous excavation work here.
Arma Veirana, a popular attraction in northwestern Italy, is popular not only by local families but also by looters whose excavations exposed tools from the late Ice Age, first caught the attention of archaeologists in 2015.
Archaeological reports describe the situation of the tomb of Baby Girl Neve.
Archaeologists say Neve was the child of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, and radiocarbon measurements of her gum bones suggested that Neve may have been only 40 to 50 days old when she died and was stressed in her womb, and the team found that her teeth showed signs of temporarily stopping growing 47 and 28 days before birth.
In addition, carbon and nitrogen analysis of the teeth showed that Neve's mom had been eating land food to nourish the little life in her belly during her pregnancy.
Radiocarbon measurements of her gum bones suggested that Neve might have been only 40 to 50 days old when she died.
Meanwhile, by radiocarboning of the wreckage, archaeologists were able to determine that Neve lived about 14,000 years ago.
To the great delight of the archaeologists, the tomb of The Baby Girl Neve was meticulously decorated with not only shell beads and eagle claws, but also four shell pendants, each of which was elaborately crafted.
The tomb of Baby Girl Neve was meticulously decorated, and each ornament was meticulously crafted.
The author, Jamie Hodgkins, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado denver, said that the academic community knows very little about tombs in the upper Paleolithic and early Mesolithic periods, and baby tombs are particularly rare, so the discovery of Neve's tombs fills this gap and allows the academic community to understand the funerary customs of the time.
He said the evolution and development of the way early humans buried the dead, as shown in the archaeological record, had enormous cultural significance, and that funerary practices could illuminate the fabric of past societies. For example, the burial of children indicates that they are considered complete there and can receive a funeral that is treated in the same way as an adult.
According to the author, Caley Orr, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, the Mesolithic period, which followed the end of the last ice age, represented the last period in Europe where hunting and gathering were the main means of livelihood, and therefore a very important period for understanding the prehistory of mankind.
Archaeological excavation site of Arma Veirana Cave.
What is particularly interesting is that Neve's tomb is highly similar to the tomb of a 11,500-year-old baby previously found in the Yang River in Alaska, North America.
Archaeologists say the notion that babies are whole people may have originated in ancestral cultures shared by groups that immigrated to Europe and North America.
Text/Nandu reporter Chen Lin