The Lothagam North Pillar Site (Image courtesy of Katherine Grillo)
Stone pendants and earrings found in the communal cemetery (Image courtesy of Carla Klehm)
Posted on 08/21/2018 12:34:11 PM PDT by ETL
Archaeologists have uncovered a large ancient cemetery in Kenya that sheds new light on the area’s early culture.
Researchers from Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History discovered the graveyard, described as the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in Eastern Africa. The find at the Lothagam North Pillar Site near Lake Turkana has surprised experts, offering new details of the ancient herders that used the cemetery.
“This group is believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social hierarchy,” the researchers wrote in a statement. “Thus their construction of such a large public project contradicts long-standing narratives about early complex societies, which suggest that a stratified social structure is necessary to enable the construction of large public buildings or monuments.”
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The herders built a platform approximately 98 feet in diameter and excavated a large area in the center in which they buried their dead. At least 580 people were “densely buried” within the site’s central platform. “Men, women and children of different ages, from infants to the elderly, were all buried in the same area, without any particular burials being singled out with special treatment,” the researchers said.
“Essentially, all individuals were buried with personal ornaments and the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal throughout the cemetery. These factors indicate a relatively egalitarian society without strong social stratification.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Stone pendants and earrings found in the communal cemetery (Image courtesy of Carla Klehm)
PinGGG!....................
So basically equally poor people were buried in a mass grave....nice egalitarian society there
People the Fraud’s ancestors once owned are buried there.
Researchers projecting again. Egalitarian society?
There have always been alpha males, who desire acclaim, eat too much, drink too much and desire another mans’ wife.
I think that I remember a Book that talks about it - and what not to do.
Or we can just call it sin, and start the conversation there.
It was 5,000 years ago. If you had a bead or a seed, you were relatively rich.
May well have been the results of warring tribes.
“- - - the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal throughout the cemetery.’
Socialism in early Kenya? If so could this be the genetic trait passed on to our very own obama?
Next they will some how or another figure out this group was homosexual and discover early remnants of crude teleprompters so their leaders could keep their lies straight.
Article doesn't indicate any “public works” evidence but for the large hole of a mass burial. First assumption, based on the offered sparse details, suggests all were buried as part of one event, which may have spanned a few days, a week or so. This is Africa, heat and carrion eaters make short work of exposed bodies thus supporting the tight time frame. Absent evidence of layering, an epidemic seems to be a better starting hypothesis.
“If one hears the sound of hoof beats in Africa, one can expect zebras or buffalo, certainly not horses.”
Location, location, location.
Anthrax...........................
Socialism in early Kenya?
Whether Mr. Odinga [Raila Odinga] has ordered his men to commit murder and arson is unclear. But his own background does not exactly suggest enthusiasm for democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Odinga's father, Oginga Odinga, led the Communist opposition during the Cold War and Raila Odinga was educated in Communist East Germany.
(snip)
In August 2006, Mr. Obama visited Kenya and spoke in support of Mr. Odinga's candidacy at rallies in Nairobi. The Web site Atlas Shrugs has even posted a photograph of the two men side by side. More recently, Mr. Odinga says that Mr. Obama interrupted his campaigning in New Hampshire to have a telephone conversation with his African cousin about the constitutional crisis in Kenya.
What should Americans make of Mr. Obama's Kenyan connection? If he has been putting tribal or family considerations above America's national interest by supporting Mr. Odinga's anti-Western candidacy, it raises serious questions about his judgement.
At the time of his visit in 2006, President Kibaki's spokesman complained that Mr. Obama was behaving like a "stooge" of Mr. Odinga — which was at best undignified for a visiting American senator, and at worst unwarranted interference in the internal politics of another country.
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/kenya-connection/69273/
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Sounds like the result of a plague or a war, a mass casualty event in any case.
“This group is believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social hierarchy,” the researchers wrote in a statement. “Thus their construction of such a large public project contradicts long-standing narratives about early complex societies, which suggest that a stratified social structure is necessary to enable the construction of large public buildings or monuments.”
IOW, the researchers have an agenda, and are not doing science.
The burials appear to be from a homogeneous ruling elite, who memorialized their dead over many generations with ostentatious "bling". Meanwhile, the vast majority of their society were dumped in an unmarked hole somewhere, rotting away to dust, without so much as some grave goods due to their low status.
Thanks Red Badger.
Groups of herders have equal stuff because they all do the same thing-that is still true in some places today-they guard from predators and find pasturage, water and shelter etc for a herd of livestock that they slaughter for food, clothing, etc and at that time, they were probably still semi-nomadic-that isn’t an “egalitarian society”-it is just a group of people who all do the same job and live the same way...
I am always interested in ancient history, even trivial history.
However, the article is long on politically correct conclusions, and thin on facts.
The conclusion that: “This group is believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social hierarchy,” and that this site was somehow built and maintained without any centralized authority, seems very unlikely to me.
What is the date range for the burials? One year? Ten years? A hundred years?
Were they able to determine the cause of death for any of these people?
A 98 foot diameter “platform” does not strike me as a “remarkable graveyard.” 2,000 miles away, during the same time period, the Egyptians, under the centralized control of a Pharaoh, were building the Pyramids.
It seems unlikely that “herders” would carry their dead around for weeks or months, and then bury them at this central site when the weather or the season brought them back to this area.
Did they even have pack animals 5,000 years ago in Kenya?
Great grandfather Ebola in that neck of the woods? That bastard virus has been hiding forever.
Plague or disease
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