In the Heaning Wood Bone Cave near Great Urswick, Cumbria, in 2023, archaeologists unearthed the remains of the oldest little girl ever found in the north of Britain, at 11,000 years old, El.kz reports citing Interesting Engineering.
Ossick Lass, meaning Urswick girl in the local tongue, was brought to light in a version of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
“It is the first time we have been able to be so specific about the age of a child whose remains are so old and be certain that they are from a female,” says Dr. Rick Peterson in Phys.org.
Aged between 2.5 and 3.5 years old, practically an infant, it turned out that she became the oldest remains ever to be found in northern Britain, which the authors of a new study published Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society determined from DNA analysis.
As jewelry was discovered at the site, archaeologists used it to date the grave and its remains. This baby was laid to rest in the third oldest Mesolithic burial in North West Europe, so she marked the earliest signs of human activity in Britain, after the last Ice Age.
A great destiny for a very small human, in other words.
Earliest signs of human activity in Britain, found
First explored in 1958, as the study explains, the Heaning Wood Bone Cave resembles the never-ending story, as more and more human and animal remains surface over time, and this time, excavators unearthed another Collared Urn shed, lithic artefacts, and five perforated periwinkle shell beads.
The total number of “individual specimens present of human bone” hovers around 423 in number, as per the study. Osteological analysis indicates that at a minimum, eight individuals were present. All the samples were cleaned and processed, and radiocarbon dates revealed that the collection of bones spanned from the Mesolithic, Early Neolithic, and Early Bronze Age.
These very early prehistoric burials in southern England and Wales, because of their northern location, haven’t generally survived due to the glaciers that populated the area during the Ice Age. Previously, Archaeology News reports, the oldest burial dated back 10,000 years, but the Heaning Wood Bone Cave has shown that an even earlier burial exists, and it happens to include a very young child.
A cultural continuity emerged from the study, that people were buried here over time, and care was taken not to disturb other burials, and the practice carried out at this burial site continued across thousands of years. So though the Ice Age propelled mass movement, these traditions stayed the same.
The tiniest person can change history
As the film The Lord of the Rings would suggest, “even the tiniest person can change the course of the future,” as the toddler that was rediscovered might have been the most significant, if not meaningful, find in this exceptional cave in Britain.
“Overall, Heaning Wood and the ‘Ossick Lass’ provide important evidence which extends our knowledge of the human use of caves in Holocene prehistory,” study authors conclude.
“Northern and western England can now be seen to be part of a wider European tradition of the deposition of human remains and associated artefacts in caves in the Early Mesolithic, Early Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.”