The burial of the newborn “Snow” may be the oldest of its kind in Europe

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A digital reconstruction of the Arma Veirana cave in Italy, where archaeologists found the remains of a girl buried 10,000 years ago. (Image credit: Team Cisa3)

Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed the first known burial of a female infant in Europe, the tomb of an infant 10,000 years ago. The young girl, who the researchers dubbed “Snow”, was buried with a rich array of grave goods, such as shell beads and pendants.

The discovery sheds light on the cultural beliefs and social status of post-glacial humans in Europe, a period of human prehistory of which recorded burials are extraordinarily rare. The care given to the newborn during her burial suggests that even the smallest members of this ancient society were considered “people,” the researchers say.

Archaeologists discovered the burial in 2017 during excavations in a cave known as Arma Veirana at the foot of the Ligurian Alps of northwestern Italy. Previous excavations in the cave have unearthed artifacts associated with the Neanderthals, who occupied the cave 50,000 years ago. So the discovery of the burial of the child, who was 40,000 years younger, was a surprise.

Related: Back to the Stone Age: 17 Key Milestones in Paleolithic Life

This time period, known as the Mesolithic, occurred at the end of the last great ice age in Europe, before the widespread adoption of agriculture. Humans at the time lived in hunter-gatherer groups and roamed the plains of Europe using skins for clothing and wood and stone for tools.

Diggers unearthed the burial in the deepest recesses of the cave. They had dug near the cave mouth during previous excavations and moved deeper into the cave to learn more about its occupation history and geological strata. The team soon began discovering perforated shell beads dating back to the post-Neanderthal period. A few days later, one of the excavators discovered the fragment of a human skull. As they continued digging, they found a deliberately buried human child.

Study lead researcher Jamie Hodgkins and her daughter join colleagues at the burial site. (Image credit: David Strait)

Subsequent DNA analyzes revealed that the child belonged to a lineage of European women known as haplogroup U5b2b. Haplogroup U5 is the predominant maternal lineage found in European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and probably originated between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago. Other analyzes showed that she died about 40-50 days after birth and that she experienced physiological stress that stopped her growth at two distinct times: 47 days and 28 days before her birth.

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A digital cross-section of the cave that contains the child’s burial. (Image credit: Team Cisa3) Image 2 of 4

A pile of shells was found in the little girl’s burial. (Image credit: Hodgkins, J. et al. Scientific Reports (2021); CC BY 4.0) Image 3 of 4

Archaeologists excavate and document the burial site at Arma Veirana. (Image credit: David Strait) Image 4 of 4

An illustration showing the arrangement of the burial and grave goods. (Image credit: Claudine Gravel-Miguel; Hodgkins, J. et al. Scientific Reports (2021); CC BY 4.0)

The find is particularly important because it highlights the cultural beliefs of those who lived in this little-known period. The child was buried with over 60 perforated shell beads, 4 shell charms and an eagle owl’s claw. The beads required great care in making and maintenance, which suggests that the ornaments were passed down to the child by the members of the group. It also indicates that the younger members of the hunting and gathering group were also invested with personality and thought they had an individual self, moral agency, and eligibility for group membership, the researchers suggested.

“The Mesolithic is particularly interesting,” study co-author Carey Orr, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a statement. “It followed the end of the final ice age and represents the last period in Europe where hunting and gathering were the primary way to earn a living. So, it’s a really important time to understand human prehistory.”

The burial was described in a study published December 14 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Originally published in Live Science.

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