The origin and evolution of hominin mortuary practices are topics of intense interest and debate. Human burials dated to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) are exceedingly rare in Africa and unknown in East Africa. Here, we describe the partial skeleton of a c. 2.5-3.0 year-old child dating to 78.3 ± 4.1 ka, recovered in the MSA layers of Panga ya Saidi (PYS), a cave site in the tropical upland coast of Kenya. Recent excavations revealed a pit feature containing a child in a flexed position. Geochemical, granulometric and micromorphological analyses of the burial pit content and encasing archaeological layers indicate that the feature was deliberatly excavated. Taphonomical evidence such as the strict articulation or good anatomical association of the skeletal elements and histological evidence of putrefaction support the in-place decomposition of a fresh body. Absent to minimal displacement of the 4 unstable joints during decomposition points to an interment in a filled space (grave earth) making the PYS finding the oldest human burial in Africa. The morphological assessment of the partial skeleton is consistent with its assignment to H. sapiens, although the preservation of some primitive features in the dentition supports increasing evidence for non-gradual accretion of modern traits during the emergence of our species. The PYS burial sheds new light on how MSA populations interacted with the dead.Increasing scrutiny is being placed on the interplay between biological and cultural factors in the evolution of our lineage and the emergence of our species in Africa 1-3 .Mortuary practices are a significant component of our evolution and growing evidence supports an ancient origin for complex behaviours surrounding death 4-6 . Formal burials, defined as the interment of a dead body in an excavated grave, may have been preceded by more elusive practices and only performed by the latest representatives of the genus Homo. Testing this scenario is made difficult, particularly in Africa, by the scarcity of sites with clear and well-dated evidence for the treatment of dead bodies.Panga ya Saidi (PYS) has emerged as one of the key Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) sites of Africa given its excellent preservation of environmental proxies 7,8 , its distinctive sequence of technological innovations and symbolic traits 8,9 , and its preservation of biomolecular information 10,11 . The excavated cave sequence is ~3 metres deep and encompasses 19 layers (Fig. 1). A series of stratigraphically ordered radiocarbon and luminescence ages, when included in a Bayesian model, indicate human occupation from ~78 ka to 500 years ago 8 , representing most of the last five marine isotope stages.

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Esta investigación propone un Índice de Bofedal (IB) para identificar los bofedales, ubicados sobre los 3800 ms.n.m. La propuesta del IB es un resumen de la tesis de maestría de Garcia Dulanto, (2018) y se fundamenta en dos métodos: el primero basado en la clasicación Linear Spectral Unmixing queemplea firmas espectrales seleccionadas de elementos característicos del área de estudio. Se seleccionó firmas espectralmente ideales (endmember, EM) para representar a : bofedales (EM bofedal), rocas (EM roca) y suelo desnudo (EM suelo). El segundo método está basado en los índices o parámetrosbiofísicos NDVI, NDWI y NDII. La combinación en imagen RGB: NDII, NDVI, NDWI muestra los bofedales en el área de estudio en tonos amarillos. Se integran los dos métodos usando la correlación de Pearson entre la fracción del endmember-bofedal y de los bofedales. Se obtiene máxima y mínima correlación con los índices NDWI y NDII. Con estos índices se propone un índice IB = (NDWI - NDII)/(NDWI + NDII) para zonicar de manera directa los bofedales. El IB fue validado mediante las imágenes de alta resolución de Google Earth, obteniendo un acierto de 98.36 %.

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