LONDON.- A paper launched today (Thursday 27th May) in the journal Nature – Scientific Reports entitled New insights on interpersonal violence in the Late Pleistocene based on the Nile valley cemetery of Jebel Sahaba, reveals the results of new research undertaken on the famous cemetery at Jebel Sahaba in northeast Africa. The paper is authored by researchers from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), the University of Toulouse, the British Museum and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.

Key findings include:

• Confirmation that Jebel Sahaba is the earliest funerary complex in the Nile Valley, new direct radiocarbon dates show it dates to at least 13,400 years ago (the Late Pleistocene).

• A reappraisal of the human remains from the cemetery confirm the injuries sustained were a result of human violence, mainly as a result of projectile weapons including spears and arrows.

• Contrary to previous analysis, the violence is now thought not to be the result of a single event or conflict. Rather the evidence suggests the violence was frequent, extensive and intense, with many skeletons displaying multiple lesions, as well as previously undocumented healed injuries, which are indicative of multiple violent events within a lifetime.

• The research team suggest that severe climatic changes during this period in the Nile Valley may be responsible for territorial and environmental pressures that triggered the level of extensive and indiscriminate violence demonstrated through the human remains.




• Two of the skeletons from Jebel Sahaba, which are of anatomically modern humans, are on display in the Early Egypt gallery at the British Museum, which reopened to the public on the 17 May.

Dr Daniel Antoine, Acting Keeper of the Department of Egypt and Sudan, and Curator of Bioarchaeology at the British Museum said ‘At least 13,400 years old, Jebel Sahaba has now been shown to be the oldest cemetery in the Nile valley and one of the earliest sites displaying extensive interpersonal violence in the world. Competition for resources due to a shift in the climate was most probably responsible for these frequent conflicts.’

Dr Isabelle Crevecoeur, Lead Researcher on the project said ‘Healed and unhealed lesions, some with embedded lithics, were found on over two thirds of the 61 individuals buried at the site, regardless of their age or sex, including young children. Most were probably caused by recurrent episodes of small scale sporadic interpersonal violence such as skirmishes, raids or ambushes.’

Since its discovery and excavation in the 1960s, the Jebel Sahaba cemetery has been a key site in the study of the early drivers of violent behaviour and was considered as one of the oldest sites showing evidence of organized warfare. Early work on this collection, published in 1968 by Prof. F. Wendorf, highlighted the presence of interpersonal violence on the bones of many individuals interred in this burial complex. These findings, however, had been challenged by some researchers, particularly the timing, nature and extent of the violence.

The bones of 61 individuals buried in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery are cared for at the British Museum. Between 2013 – 2019, the authors conducted a systematic macroscopic and microscopic reanalysis of the human remains to fully reevaluate and characterize the nature of the lesions found on the bones. New radiocarbon analyses were also used to confirm the antiquity of the site. Using modern approaches and methods, the research revealed more than a hundred new lesions, both healed and unhealed, on both new and previously identified victims. Some of these lesions showed previously unrecognized lithic flakes – from weapons - still embedded in the bones. The study confirmed that nearly two-thirds (n=41) of the individuals buried in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery have lesions. When you add injuries of traumatic origin, such as fractures, almost all (n=38) of the individuals from Jebel Sahaba with bone injuries show the effects of interpersonal violence. Most trauma (n=25) appears to be the result of projectile weapons and new analyses confirm for the first time the repetitive nature of the violence. Forty percent of the individuals (n=16) with injuries present both healed and unhealed traumas, suggesting that these episodes of violence could be repeated throughout a person's life. The analysis of the anatomical distribution of the lesions at Jebel Sahaba shows that, unlike most archeological examples of the period, the traces of violence are extensive and not restricted to one category of people: women, men as well as children were affected in an indiscriminate manner. The reuse of some of the burials within the cemetery and the presence of healed lesions on several skeletons support the idea of recurrent episodes of small scale sporadic interpersonal violence at the end of the Late Pleistocene, over 13,400 years ago.

By combining the anthropological and archaeological record, the authors are able to reject the long-standing idea of Jebel Sahaba as a ‘war’ cemetery linked to a single armed conflict; rather the evidence indicates the repetition of sporadic episodes of violence. These observations coupled with the results of the demographic analysis of the cemetery suggest that this site bears witness to raids or ambushes on the members of the hunter-fisher-gatherer community buried in this burial complex.

The authors then considered what might explain these series of raids or skirmishes. The Late Pleistocene period, between about 20,000 and 11,000 years ago, is marked by major climatic variations related to the end of the last glacial period and the beginning of the African wet period. The concentration of archaeological sites (not just Jebel Sahaba but also Wadi Halfa) in a limited area of the Nile Valley at this time suggests that this region may have functioned as a refuge for human populations subjected to hydrological fluctuations and monsoonal changes that engendered climatic and environmental constraints. Environmental and population pressures for access to resources are likely to be the source of this rivalry between human groups, which the individuals buried in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery witnessed and experienced.

This work was funded by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société à Toulouse (MSHS-T) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-14-CE31, Big Dry) and carried out by Dr. Crevecoeur (Centre national de la Recherche scientifique), Dr. Dias-Meirinho (Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès) and Prof. Bon (Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès). The direct dating of the Jebel Sahaba individuals was led by Dr. Zazzo (CNRS, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle) and Dr. Daniel Antoine (British Museum).