Panga ya Saidi has been an important site for human origins research since excavations began in 2010 as part of a long-term partnership between archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena, Germany) and the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi). Portions of the child’s bones were first found during excavations at Panga ya Saidi in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the small pit feature containing the bones was fully exposed. They nicknamed the youngster ‘Mtoto,’ meaning ‘child’ in Swahili. Luminescence dating securely places Mtoto’s at 78,000 years ago, making it the oldest known human burial in Africa. burials of Neanderthals and modern humans in Eurasia range back as far as 120,000 years. The Panga ya Saidi burial shows that inhumation of the dead is a cultural practice shared by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
— source Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History | May 5, 2021