An ancient burial
has been unearthed in Kazakhstan. During excavations of the Koken settlement in
the country’s eastern region, a team of both domestic and international
researchers discovered the remains of two people in a single burial - a
teenager and an adult. The analyses showed that the burial site dates back to
the mid-sixth millennium B.C. The find is truly invaluable as it could be the
earliest known human burial on Kazakhstan’s territory, according to archaeologists.
“There is a very
long history of Stone Age archaeology in Kazakhstan and there’s a lot of
material, but that material consists mostly of stone lithics and what you don’t
find in humans. So, human skeletons are completely absent from the Stone Age
recording Kazakhstan. And so, we were really lucky to uncover this burial. And
now we can say okay who were these people that were leaving behind all these
materials,” Paula Doumani Dupuy, archaeologist and Nazarbayev University
Associate Professor, said.
“The human bones
found in the Koken settlement date back to the Early Neolithic era. This
discovery holds great significance for Kazakh archaeology. Its foremost value
is that human burials from the Stone Age had not been previously uncovered.
According to radiocarbon analysis, these bones are older than many of those
previously discovered. Also, the updated research methodology allows
determining the approximate age of the remains,” Aidyn Zhuniskhanov,
archaeologist and Nazarbayev University Teaching Assistant, said.
