5,000-year-old burial ground discovered in Lake Turkana Kenya

Archaeologists have uncovered a 5,000-year-old cemetery on the eastern part of Lake Turkana in Kenya, revealing the inner secrets of a stone pillar site that has always fascinated historians and anthropologists.

Recent excavations have unearthed an ancient cemetery containing whole bodies and disjointed skeletal remains in lake Turkana.

The new findings from the Jarigole site resolve long-standing questions about eastern Africa’s earliest monuments and provide insight into the social lives, and deaths, of the region’s first pastoralists.

The discovery of complete skeletons and also dismembered parts now suggests that this was both a primary and secondary burial site; meaning, it contained remains of individuals who may have been buried elsewhere before their remains were finally interred at the cemetery. According to the archaeologists, “parts of individuals who died elsewhere were routinely mixed into the fill, along with broken pots, beads and other offerings, potentially during and after the phases in which Jarigole was used for primary burial.”

Also recovered in the pottery assemblage is an intriguing phallic bottleneck—the first of its kind to be found in eastern Africa.

Jarigole is one of northern Kenya’s several stone pillar sites, previously considered to be ancient African astronomy sites. The most famous was the Namoratunga site on the western shores of Lake Turkana and Lothagam North, another cemetery site.