Roughly 27,500 years ago, a teenager suffered fatal injuries from a bear attack in Arene Candide, now part of Liguria, Italy. Community members transported him to a cave, treated his wounds, and remained with him until his death. They then placed his body on red ochre and interred it with perforated shells, deer teeth, ivory pendants, decorated antlers, and a flint blade.
Archaeologists who found the remains in 1942 named him “the Prince” due to the elaborate grave goods. The Arene Candide site served as a dedicated burial location from the Upper Paleolithic period onward, indicating repeated journeys by groups to honor their dead.
Ochre appears in both wound treatment and funerary rites, pointing to continuity in care practices. A later multiple burial at the same location, dated about 15,000 years afterward, contained ochre-stained pebbles deliberately broken, with halves left beside the bodies.
These findings demonstrate that symbolic rituals for processing loss existed deep in prehistory and persisted across millennia.
