The earliest burial site yet discovered is in South Africa, where palaeontologists said Monday that they had discovered the remains of a small-brained distant ancestor of modern humans who was previously believed to be incapable of complex conduct.
In the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO world heritage site close to Johannesburg, researchers led by famous palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger claimed to have found multiple examples of Homo naledi, a tree-climbing Stone Age hominid, buried around 30 metres (100 feet) underground in a cave system
The scientists stated in a series of preprint publications that have not yet undergone peer review but will be published in eLife that these burials are the earliest hominin burials ever documented. They predate evidence of Homo sapiens burials by at least 100,000 years.
The results cast doubt on the conventional wisdom of human evolution, which holds that the growth of larger brains enabled the performance of complex, “meaning-making” acts like burying the dead the oldest burials ever discovered were in the Middle East and Africa, and they were about 100,000 years old. They contained Homo sapiens’ remains.
They were discovered in South Africa by Berger and his colleagues, who have made some contentious claims in the past. They are at least 200,000 years old. Importantly, they also descended from Homo naledi, a prehistoric species that existed at the nexus of apes and modern humans. Homo naledi was around 1.5 metres (five feet) tall and had brains the size of oranges.
The creatures Berger found had previously challenged the idea that our evolutionary route was a straight line by having bent fingers and toes, tool-wielding hands and feet designed for walking.
The “Rising Star” cave system, where the first bones were discovered in 2013, inspired the name “Homo naledi.” During the 2018-starting excavations, the oval-shaped interments in the core of the current study were also discovered there.
At least five people are found in the trenches, which researchers claim provide proof that they were intentionally dug before being filled in to conceal the deaths. The findings, according to the researchers, “show that mortuary practises were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes.”
Brain volume
A “rough hashtag figure” and other geometrical engravings were also discovered on a nearby cave pillar’s seemingly purposefully sanded surfaces. In an interview with AFP, Berger said: “That would mean not only are humans not unique in the development of symbolic practises, but that perhaps we haven’t even invented such behaviours.” In the field of palaeontology, where the 57-year-old has already been accused of lacking scientific rigour and jumping to conclusions, such claims are certain to raise some eyebrows
The University of Missouri’s Carol Ward, an anthropologist who was not engaged in the study, stated that “these findings, if confirmed, would be of considerable potential importance.”
I’m eager to find out how the disposition of the remains rules out any other theories besides intentional burial and to examine the findings once they have undergone peer review.
