Does the burial of babies and the decoration of the bodies 27 thousand years ago indicate the beginning of civilization?
Anthropologists working in eastern Australia have uncovered the bodies of three babies who were buried by hunter-gatherers 27,000 years ago. Two of the babies look like twins because they were buried together and their leg bones are the same length. Although babies brought for burial by Neanderthals and modern man have been dated to earlier periods, the newly found bodies are unusual in that they were decorated with ivory beads, red ocher (yellow or red-brown earth used as a pigment) and mammoth bones.
These accompanying decorations make the findings the oldest in the human fossil evidence so far for the decoration and beautification of infant corpses brought for burial. According to the researchers, who published their work in the journal Nature in November 2006, these findings indicate a transition to more modern social behavior among this Stone Age culture.
