[Red Badger]

PinGGG!....................

[Covenantor]

“Egalitarian herder society”....”monumental burial ground”.

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.

[SunkenCiv]

“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.