10,000-year-old burials from unknown hunter-gatherer group discovered in Brazil

Archaeologists in Brazil have discovered a large Indigenous cemetery housing over 40 skeletons and thousands of grave goods from as far back as 10,000 years ago. 

The earliest human remains appear to be from a previously unknown ancestral community predating the Sambaquians, coastal hunter-gatherers who historically lived in the area. The finding is the oldest record of humans in the northeastern Maranhão state.

The cemetery, which holds human remains from different periods, was unearthed in São Luís, the capital and largest city in Maranhão, ahead of construction work for a government housing program. The burials were found on Farm Rosane, which subsequently became an urban archaeological site between two busy avenues.

Archaeologists already knew that the São Luís area, also called Upaon-Açu, meaning “big island” in the Tupí-Guaraní Indigenous languages, held traces of prehistoric human activity. For instance, a prehistoric jawbone was discovered at Farm Rosane in the 1970s and other artifacts found in São Luís have dated to 6,000 years ago, Wellington Lage, the lead archaeologist of the recent excavations, told Live Science. The remains were attributed to the Sambaquian peoples. This group relied on marine resources and built shell mounds with leftover food refuse that reached up to 100 feet (30 meters) high.

The latest excavation, which began in June 2019, initially revealed a variety of fragmented ceramics and stone tools. Then, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, archaeologists found the first skeleton about 24 inches (60 centimeters) below the surface.

Since then, the team has found a total of 43 skeletons and around 100,000 artifact fragments from at least four different sediment layers, suggesting the site was occupied by people in at least four distinct periods spanning up to 8,500 years.