The cemetery was built around 5000 years ago near Lake Turkana PNAS

Excavations at eastern Africa’s oldest and biggest cemetery offer a new perspective on the reasons why ancient humans built great monuments.

The Lothagam North Pillar Site is a communal cemetery built around 5000 years ago near Lake Turkana, Kenya, by the region’s first herders. At the site there are 1.5-metre-tall stone pillars, nine stone circles and a vast 700 square metre raised platform mound, together with the remains of at least 580 people.

Researchers usually think such large structures were the work of stable, complex, hierarchical societies with …