What the oldest burial of a newborn girl in Europe reveals

The "tomb" provides details about the early Mesolithic period. It was buried in an Italian cave ten thousand years ago, just after the last ice age.

Ten thousand years ago, just after the last ice age, a group of hunter-gatherers buried a baby girl in an Italian cave with a rich selection of their prized beads and charms, and an eagle owl claw. The excavations and analysis of the discovery were published in Nature Scientific Reports and offer valuable information about the early Mesolithic period. Claudine Gravel-Miguel, a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University's (ASU) Institute of Human Origins and coauthor of the paper, performed the analysis of the remains, which include more than 60 perforated shell beads.

What the infant burial reveals

Mortuary practices offer a window into the worldviews and social structure of past societies. The funerary treatment of a child provides important insights into who was considered a person. The newborn girl's "grave," which the team renamed "Snow," reveals that as early as 10,000 years ago in Western Europe, even younger females were recognized as full-fledged members of society and individuals deserving of burial. "The evolution and development of the way early humans buried their dead, as revealed in the archaeological record, has enormous cultural significance," said Jamie Hodgkins, ASU Ph.D. and paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver.

Where is the cave where the newborn girl is buried

Snow was found in the Arma Veirana cave in the Ligurian foothills of northwestern Italy. The research team, which also includes Italian collaborators Fabio Negrino of the University of Genoa and Stefano Benazzi of the University of Bologna, began inspecting the site in 2015 and discovered the remains in 2017. Previous excavations had uncovered artifacts associated with the Neanderthals, who occupied the area 50,000 years ago. The discovery of the girl's burial, which was 40,000 years younger, was therefore a surprise.

The team of scholars had moved deeper into the cave when they began finding perforated shell beads dating to the post-Neanderthal period. A few days later, one of the excavators discovered the fragment of a human skull and later, the whole skeleton of the infant girl who had been buried. Subsequent DNA analysis revealed that the baby girl belonged to a lineage of European women known as haplogroup U5b2b. Haplogroup U5 is the predominant haplogroup in European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and likely originated between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Further analysis showed that she died about 40 to 50 days after birth. The find is particularly important because it sheds light on the cultural customs of ancient humans. Snow was buried with more than 60 perforated shell beads, 4 shell charms and the claw of an eagle owl. The beads required great care to make and maintain, suggesting that the ornaments had been passed down to the girl by members of the group.

It also indicates that even the youngest members of the hunting and gathering group were believed to have individual selves, moral agency and fitness for membership in society. "The Mesolithic is particularly interesting," explained study co-author Carey Orr, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado's School of Medicine. "It followed the end of the Final Ice Age and represents the last period in Europe when hunting and gathering was the main way to make a living. So, it's a really important period for understanding human prehistory."

Also in Italy, Neanderthal man has been discovered, while a secret cave that had remained hidden for 40,000 years has come to light in Gibraltar.

Stefania Bernardini