They Buried Two Children With 13,000 Ivory Beads. Why?

Thirty-four thousand years ago, two children were buried in what is now Russia under roughly thirteen thousand hand-carved ivory beads, a belt of more than two hundred fox teeth, and sixteen mammoth-ivory spears. Nobody knows what the beads were for. But that grave is only one stop on a much older journey.

This episode follows the oldest known burials on Earth across three continents: the hundred-and-twenty-thousand-year-old graves in Israel, the long fight over whether Neanderthals buried their dead, the oldest cremation in Australia, the plastered skulls of Jericho, and the mummies of Chile that were made thousands of years before Egypt's.

Key moments

• 00:00 Two children, thirteen thousand beads
• 00:41 Everyone does something
• 01:16 How to read a grave
• 02:09 Did Neanderthals bury their dead?
• 03:05 The beads were their clothes
• 03:55 The first cremation
• 04:47 Mummies before Egypt
• 05:40 Skulls kept at home
• 06:28 No single origin
• 07:22 Why we bury at all
• 08:16 A mind that will not let go
• 09:00 We still do it

Watch the full video on YouTube

▶ Watch the full video on YouTube

Exploring the strange questions about humans, science, history and the world around us. @TheQuestionArchive