The 27 000 year old skeletons of two ice age infants have been found near Krems in northern Austria, the first discovery of its kind in Europe, the Austrian press reported on Saturday.
The perfectly preserved skeletons measuring 40cm had been protected by a mammoth's shoulder-blade bone, under which they had been buried on a sheltered hillside on the banks of the Danube river.
The grave, discovered 5.5m below ground, also contained a necklace of 31 pearls made from mammoth ivory and was located next to an area inhabited by ancient "homo sapiens fossilis", newspapers reported.
"It is the first discovery of a child's grave dating from this period," confirmed the excavation manager, Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, to the daily newspaper Kurier. "They may have been twins, but we have not yet been able to establish that," she told Die Presse.
The age of the skeletons will be analysed by the Institute of Natural Sciences in Vienna, which will also determine the cause of death.
"Homo sapiens fossilis" came out of Asia during the ice age as Neanderthal Man was dying out, and mastered stone and wood, but did not discover metal.
Other news sources have reported it as well but all contain about the same amount of info as the above. For example this from Live Science:
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of two newborns dating back 27,000 years while excavating a hillside in northern Austria, the scientist in charge of the project said Monday.
Last week's find near the Danube River city of Krems is important because the newborns were buried beneath mammoth bones and with a string of 31 beads _ suggesting that the internment involved some sort of ritual, said Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, the project's leader at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
"They could be twins,'' she said. "They have the same (length) limbs and were buried together.''
The burial _ one of the oldest in the region _ is also significant in that the children were not simply disposed of after their deaths, Neugebauer-Maresch said. The burial suggests "they were members of society,'' she said.
Archaeologists are combing the area to see if the infants' mother is nearby, as giving birth to twins in that era would have been extremely difficult and potentially fatal.
Interesting, because the burial was intentional and because of the age of the find.
