Burial Remains Of 66 People Found In Indonesian Cave

If there is such a thing as an archaeological lottery, a team of diggers in Indonesia may have won the jackpot. The lucky number? 66.

Professor Truman Simanjuntak, from the Jakarta-based Indonesian National Centre for Archaeology, and his team uncovered the burial remains of 66 people in a cave in Sumatra. The remains are thought to be 3,000 years old.  

Also among the cave finds was early examples of Sumatran rock art.

Simanjuntak offered his thoughts on the number of bodies discovered:

"Sixty-six is very strange," he said in a statement from the University of Wollongong, adding that they have never found such a big quantity of burials.

The remains were uncovered in a limestone cave and are thought to be those of early Austronesian speaking peoples - Indonesia's first farming communities.

Such a large number of burial remains "means that this cave was occupied intensely by humans and they continued to occupy it for a very, very long time," Simanjuntak said.

The cave is through to have functioned as a "workshop" for tool making as well as a burial place, shedding new light on the cultural behaviors of Indonesia's first farming communities.

More of the cave is to be excavated and the researchers are excited at what their continued exploration may bring.

"There are still occupation traces deeper and deeper in the cave, where we have not excavated yet. So it means the cave is very promising," Simanjuntak said,