Fire, Ash and Ancestors: The Oldest Cremation Pyre was Built in Malawi
- Apr 28
- 7 min read
Recent study identifies the world’s oldest cremation pyre and the earliest evidence of cremation in sub-Saharan Africa
I can’t recall how old I was exactly, but I would say probably around 11. I was visiting the grave of my grandmother, watering the flowers and cleaning up the headstone, when, on my way back home, I noticed a young girl, likely seven or so years old. She was also near a grave, and when she saw me, she happily greeted me. This was a tiny graveyard in a German village, and I had never seen anyone besides the occasional old man visiting any of the graves. We began talking, and she showed me her grandmother’s grave, which was topped with a large ledger stone that covered the entire grave. After telling me a bit about it, I showed her my grandmother’s grave. She looked at it for a second and said, ‘My word, your grandmother must have been tiny.’
While her grandmother had been buried in a coffin, mine had been cremated, therefore her ledger stone was only around 1x1m. Though it seemed the girl did not know what cremation was, and thus I explained it in a short and sweet way, explaining my grandmother wasn’t short, she was just cremated.
Cremation is a long and labor-intensive process, or at least it used to be, and to do so successfully, one needs to build a large pyre. In Africa, cremation amongst hunter-gatherers is extremely rare, and so far, not a single reported case exists south of the Sahara, until now. In a recent study by Dr. Jessica Cerezo-Roman and her colleagues, the earliest evidence of intentional cremation in Africa and the oldest in situ pyre in the world has been identified in Malawi. Where exactly was it, and who was it for? Let us find out.
A Cremation at HOR-1
During the mid-Holocene, there is only scant evidence of intentional cremation, regardless of where you look on Earth, and amongst hunter-gatherers, the practice is even rarer. The act of cremation is defined as the deliberate and accelerated transformation of the body through fire and smoke to reduce the remains into calcined bone and ash. Cremation can be done for various reasons, be they religious, hygienic, for expediency’s sake, or ease of transport. Though making a pyre is labor-intensive, not just to construct the initial pyre but to maintain it, which takes many hours.
The earliest evidence we have of a concentration of burnt human remains dates to around ~40,000 years and was found at Lake Mungo, Australia, although the burning is incomplete and there is no associated pyre, and therefore it is not a true cremation. In Africa, some burnt remains have been found in Egypt, dated to ~7500 years ago, though this is not cremation, as only around 75–80% of the bones were actually burnt. The only other potential case of intentional burning is reported from Ethiopia’s Lake Besaka, where excavators reported portions of burned bodies, though the phase is undated, based on geological correlations, it is likely around ~7000 years old. The earliest form of definitive cremation so far in Africa appears only ~3300 years ago in Kenya with the Pastoral Neolithic and early food producers.
That is, until the discovery at HOR-1. Located in the Mzimba District in northern Malawi, the rock shelter is situated at the base of Mount Hora, around 110 m above the Kasitu River Valley. The site contains around 21,000 years of human occupational history, and has been used for mortuary practices since at least around 16,000 and ~8000 years ago.
It was first excavated in 1950 by John Desmond Clarke (1916–2002) and William H.J. Rangeley (1910–1958), who removed around 7 to 8m3 of sediment from the site. At the time, two adult skeletons were recovered, both nearly complete and uncremated.
Ancient DNA and radiocarbon dating indicated these were the remains of one male and one female, dated to 9081 to 8725 cal BP and 8172 to 7875 cal BP, respectively. The site was left alone for a few decades until between 2016 and 2019, when the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project (MALAPP) excavated an additional 7.8m3 of sediment from two squares.
In total, around 46,500 artifacts were plotted using a total station. Additionally, various human remains were recovered, including two nearly complete infant skeletons dated to between 14,000 and 16,000 years old. Additionally, the site yielded four adults and five non-adults, though these were identified based on isolated remains, potentially indicating secondary burial or ritual token-taking in which parts of the body are taken later by the living as keepsakes.
And then there was Hora 3, an adult individual unlike any of the others; this individual was cremated.
Cremated 9500 Years Ago
The location of Hora 3 indicated the remains of a pyre and an adult individual. Radiocarbon dated the individual to 8530± 30 (UGAMS-30618) or around 9540 and 9454 years before present (BP). The researchers determined that the remains had not been moved there from somewhere else, the pyre had been built here, and the cremation had taken place at the same spot. The actual pyre had been built of deadwood, which was identified by evidence of fungus and termite action.
Besides charcoal and human remains, some stone tools were also present. All in all, the archaeologists were able to recover 170 adult bones, the vast majority of which came from the individual’s arms and legs. A few other body parts were also found, including heel bones, a kneecap, part of a vertebra, and four phalanges (toe and finger bones). Interestingly, not a single piece of the crania was recovered.
Now, determining age was difficult, because, well, burnt bones that are almost completely destroyed make it hard to tell much of anything. Add to that that no ancient DNA could be recovered, all we can go off of are osteological analyses, which suggested that the individual was female between 18 and 60 years old (yes, it’s a long range). However, as some of her joints showed evidence of mild joint disease, she was likely in the upper end of that age spectrum. Her delicate bone structure and hip joint surfaces also fell within the range typically seen in African females. In life, she would have been rather short, between 145 and 155 cm tall (between 4.7 and 5.1 feet).
Additionally, by examining the thickness of her arms, it was determined that she did not travel much on foot, at least not compared to other hunter-gatherers from southern Africa. Furthermore, her arms and hands suggested a lifestyle that involved more manual labor.
Based on the color of the bones (black), she would have been burned at a low temperature around 500°C, although some bones had turned grey-white, which suggests these may have burned at somewhat higher temperatures.
The Oldest Pyre in the World
Based on the above evidence, the researchers could reconstruct the timeline of events that occurred just over 9000 years ago. People began inhabiting HOR-1 around 21,000 years ago. By around 16,000 to 14,000 years ago, the site began being used for mortuary rituals, around 10,240 cal. BP, large campfires began being built in the area. As time went on, it was this spot in the shelter where the large campfires had once burned that was chosen for the building of a pyre.
Around 9500 years ago, a community of hunter-gatherers gathered at the site, piling up deadwood, grass, and some leafy plants weighing at least 30kg (~66 pounds). They then placed the recently deceased woman upon the pyre, her head likely already removed. Cutmarks indicate that at least some other parts of her body had also been disarticulated or defleshed. The woman’s remaining limbs may have been bent or curled up (though the position may also have been the result of the fire’s heat).
Today, the body would be cremated in a specialized facility within 2 hours; back then, it took a couple of days, days in which the community had to maintain the fire constantly. As they did so, they seemed to have either thrown in or already placed some stone tools upon the body.
The community stayed until the pyre had burned down and the woman’s body had been reduced to ash. In the centuries that followed, many large fires were lit at that same spot, though no more cremations occurred.
Why the community took the skull is uncertain; it may have been a practice associated with remembrance, social memory, and ancestral veneration.
HOR-1 is the earliest undisputed pyre cremation in the world, and the earliest evidence of intentional cremation in sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrating the complex mortuary practices among ancient African foraging groups.
In a recent study, Dr. Jessica Cerezo-Roman and her colleagues identified the earliest undisputed pyre cremation in the world and the first evidence of intentional cremation in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dated to around 9500 years ago, the cremation took place on Mount Hora in Malawi, where a group of hunter-gatherers gathered at least 30kg of deadwood and plant material to construct a fire for a woman. The community tended the pyre for days as the body burned, placing stone tools with the body. Her head had been removed beforehand, perhaps as a part of ancestral remembrance processes. This discovery challenges previous assumptions about the rarity of cremation among ancient African foragers and pushes back the evidence for this practice in the region by thousands of years.
Why do you think her head was removed, and why do you think they never went back to the site to conduct another cremation?
Reference
Jessica I. Cerezo-Román et al., Earliest evidence for intentional cremation of human remains in Africa.Sci. Adv.12,eadz9554(2026).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adz9554
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