What is "nataruk"

Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya is the site of an archaeological investigation which has uncovered the 10,000-year-old remains of 27 people. The remains, of adults and six children, show signs of a violent end, having been clubbed or stabbed and left to die without burial. Two of the male remains had stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax.

It is unclear exactly what happened at the site, but the investigators believe it was a massacre, the result of an attack by another group of hunter-gatherers. They believe it is "the earliest scientifically-dated historical evidence of human conflict". A comparable site, Cemetery 117 in Jebel Sahaba, excavated in Sudan in the 1960s, is believed to be of a similar age, and it consists of organized burials within a cemetery.

The excavation, led by Marta Mirazón Lahr as part of the IN-AFRICA Project, began in 2012.