Intriguing Possibility: The 33,000 Year Old Red Ochre Stained Human Bones Found In Wales (1823) Might Also Be Evidence Of African Migrations...

To be clear, this is solely my unaided, rank amateur's speculation, but it is known that to this day, in remote tribal villages where the DNA lines run uninterrupted for 135,000 years (in the Nama peoples, according to recent peer-reviewed research). . . red ochre is still used in burial ceremonies. [It adorns the living as well, in many parts of modern day Africa.]

These bone fragments, from a cave in the southern portion of what is now Wales, near the water -- were, at the time of burial perhaps 100 miles inland -- on a grassy plain, before the last Ice Age (~12,000 years ago) shoved the terrain around.

Long thought a woman, because decorative beads were found at the site with the bones, stained in red ochre in 1823, we now know the skeleton was a young male, perhaps in his 20s. . . and his diet was about 15% to 25% fish -- so either he was transported for burial, or he was nomadic, and spent at least part of his life near the ocean -- trekking inland near time of death.

The hunting effects found elsewhere in the cave suggest organized communal hunting by this time. But little else can be known about him. So -- is his burial site at least some evidence that paleolithic African burial rituals (and perhaps, Africans) were in the region by then?

That is a question, as they say, for another day. Onward.

नमस्ते