30,000-year-old skeleton
found
08may02
news.com.au
CAIRO: The skeleton of a human being who lived more than 30,000 years ago has been
discovered in southern Egypt by Belgian archaeologists, an Egyptian official said.
"Anthropologists have set his, or her, age to be between 30,000 and 33,000 years
ago," Zaki Hawass, director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told
reporters.
It was the oldest skeleton ever found in northern Africa, Hawass said.
A team from the University of Leuven found the skeleton buried in a seated position facing
east, with the head turned upward, the director of the council's excavation department,
Attiya Radwan, told AFP.
It was found in a mountain cavern in Dandara, 550km south of Cairo, along with shards of
pottery from the same period, he added.
The pottery debris could be the oldest in the world after some found in China, going back
35,000 years, he said.
"The study of the skeleton will add a lot to our knowledge of human evolution in
Egypt," he said, adding that the cavern where it was found could be an
"archeological treasure trove".
END OF REPORT
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