What 21,000 years of animal bones in Malawi say about ancient social life
At Hora 1 rock shelter, foragers hunted small animals close to home, a clue to how early communities shared land.
Mzuzu — How did people get along when communities were small and everyone travelled on foot? Did they defend territory, or share? Archaeologists working in northern Malawi have looked for answers in a surprising place: the leftovers of ancient meals.
A mountain full of history
The team excavated Hora 1, a large rock shelter at the foot of a granite peak that rises like a tooth from the woodlands of northern Malawi. Signs of ancient life are everywhere: red rock paintings, quartz stone tools, hearths and burials. The layers held hundreds of thousands of bones. The researchers identified almost 13,000 fragments spanning 21,000 years of human occupation, from the last ice age to the start of farming.
Hunting close to home
Most bones came from small animals: tiny antelopes, hares and monkeys. Large animals such as zebra and wildebeest were rare. Bones from every part of the body were present, which suggests whole animals were hunted nearby and carried back. Chemical traces in the animals' teeth matched the local geology, confirming that people hunted close to home for thousands of years.
Why it matters
Studies of modern foragers show that where food is concentrated and predictable, groups tend to mark out territory; where it is scattered, boundaries are looser. The Hora 1 findings challenge the view that it was mainly coastal environments that encouraged ancient groups to form boundaries, and show how Malawi's own archaeology is helping to rewrite the story of early human social life.
Source: The Conversation, 29 October 2026.
