Humans used ceremonial sounds at funerals 15000 years ago

Humans ancestors living in modern-day Israel about 15,000 years ago used ceremonial sounds to summon the community together at funerals, much like church bells, scientists have found.

They decorated graves with flowers, held ceremonial meals before their funerals and now a new study shows the Natufians who lived 15,000-11,500 years ago also created massive mortars that were used to pound food at their burial ceremonies.

The pounding sound of these large mortars informed the members of the community that a ceremony was underway.

"The members of the Natufian culture lived during a period of change, and their communal burial and commemorative ceremonies played an important role in enhancing the sense of affiliation and cohesion among the members of the community," said Dr Danny Rosenberg and Professor Dani Nadel, from the Zinman Institute of archaeology, University of Haifa.

The Natufians were among the first humans to abandon the nomadic lifestyle and settle in permanent communities, including the construction of buildings with stone foundations, researchers said. It is even possible that they engaged in initial forms of cultivation. They were also among the first human cultures that established cemeteries - defined areas in wish burial took place over generations, in contrast to the random burial seen in more ancient cultures, they said.

They were the first to pad their graves with flowers and leaves, and researchers from the University of Haifa have recently found evidence of large banquets held by the Natufians during funerals and commemorative ceremonies.

Over the years, numerous tools have been found at Natufian residential and burial sites, but relatively little attention has been paid to one of the most remarkable types of tools: large boulder mortars, some of which are almost a meter high and weigh 100 kilogrammes.

"These are the largest stone artifacts that were hewn during this period in the Middle East, and indeed they are much larger than most of the stone objects that were hewn here in much later periods," Rosenberg said.

"These boulders have been found at Natufian sites in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel, so that they clearly had a regional significance," he said. The researchers argue that the giant boulders can be seen as part of a broader Natufian phenomenon connecting different areas through a single system of ceremonies and beliefs.

Against the background of what is already known about Natufian burial customs, they concluded that the boulders also played a central role in these ceremonies, seeking to reinforce collective cohesion and identity.

The food ground by the boulders played a social or ceremonial role, similar to familiar contemporary functions. The pounding on or in the boulders could be heard at a great distance, and may have served to announce the holding or the beginning of the burial ceremony, thereby informing the members of adjacent communities that an important ceremony was taking place - much like church bells.