© Mission Beisamoun
The Beisamoun pyre fields, where the cremated burial was discovered, during the crepuscular hours.
The body wasn't simply thrown in a fire, however; whoever arranged the funeral pyre did so with care, archaeologists found by sifting through the body's burnt remains. It appears that the deceased was placed in a seated position, with their knees bent to their chest in a kiln-like pit. Then, a fire was ignited next to or under the deceased.
Until now, the earliest known cremation in the Near East dated to the sixth millennium B.C. Meanwhile, the oldest known human cremation in the world — the so-called "Mungo Lady," whose burned remains were found near Lake Mungo in New South Wales, Australia in 1969 — is much older, dating to about 40,000 years ago, according to a 2003 study in the journal
Nature.
Researchers discovered the extraordinary burial in 2013, while excavating the Neolithic (the last age of the
Stone Age) village of Beisamoun, in the Upper Jordan Valley of northern Israel. The burial pit contained 355 bone fragments, many of which were scorched, said study lead researcher Fanny Bocquentin, an archaeo-anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
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