Palaeontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest-known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behaviour.
Led by renowned palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said on Monday that they discovered several specimens of hom*o naledi – a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid – buried about 30 metres (100 feet) underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Johannesburg.
“These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of hom*o sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years,” the scientists wrote in a series of yet-to-be-peer-reviewed and preprint papers to be published in eLife.
The findings challenge the current understanding of human evolution, as it is normally held that the development of bigger brains allowed for the performing of complex, “meaning-making” activities such as burying the dead.
The oldest burials previously unearthed, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of hom*o sapiens – and were around 100,000 years old.
Those found in South Africa by the research team led by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, date back to at least 200,000 BC.
“hom*o naledi tells us we’re not that special,” Berger, a United States-born explorer, told AFP news agency. “We ain’t gonna get over that.”
‘Still a lot to uncover’
hom*o naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, had brains about the size of oranges and stood about 1.5m (5 feet) tall.
With curved fingers and toes, tool-wielding hands and feet made for walking, hom*o naledi was discovered in 2013 by Berger, helping upend the notion that our evolutionary path was a straight line.
The species is named after the “Rising Star” cave system where the first bones were found in 2013.
The oval-shaped interments at the centre of the new studies were also found there during excavations started in 2018.
The holes, which researchers say evidence suggest were deliberately dug and then filled in to cover the bodies, contain at least five individuals.
“These discoveries show that mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes,” the researchers said.
The burial site is not the only sign that hom*o naledi was capable of complex emotional and cognitive behaviour, they added.
Berger’s earlier discoveries won the interest of National Geographic, which named him “explorer in residence” and featured his work in television shows and documentaries.
The latest research has not been peer-reviewed yet and some outside scientists think more evidence is needed to challenge what we know about how humans evolved their complex thinking.
“There’s still a lot to uncover,” said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, who was not involved in the research.
The oldest burials previously unearthed, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of hom*o sapiens – and were around 100,000 years old. Those found in South Africa by the research team led by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, date back to at least 200,000 BC.
These remains of Stone Age hominids, who were good at tree-climbing, were found buried around 30 meters (100 feet) underground in a cave system inside the Cradle of Humankind, which is a designated UNESCO world heritage site close to Johannesburg.
Around 78,000 years ago, a small child of 2 1/2–3 years of age was carefully placed on their right side in a shallow pit in a cave near Kenya's coast. Their legs were raised to their chest in a flexed position, and their body wrapped in a special cloth, perhaps an animal skin.
Researchers discovered several specimens of hom*o naledi buried about 30 metres underground in a cave system. The burial dates back to at least 200,000 BC. The researchers say the hom*o naledi was capable of complex emotional and cognitive behaviour despite their brain size.
The remains – known as Omo I – were found in Ethiopia in the late 1960s, and scientists have been attempting to date them precisely ever since, by using the chemical fingerprints of volcanic ash layers found above and below the sediments in which the fossils were found.
GSA's African Burial Ground project began in 1991, when, during pre-construction work for a new federal office building, workers discovered the skeletal remains of the first of more than 400 men, women and children.
Figure 1: Lucy's skeleton. Lucy, a 3.2 million-year old fossil skeleton of a human ancestor, was discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia. The fossil locality at Hadar where the pieces of Lucy's skeleton were discovered is known to scientists as Afar Locality 288 (A.L.
The oldest known evidence for anatomically modern humans (as of 2017) are fossils found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated about 360,000 years old. Anatomically modern human remains of eight individuals dated 300,000 years old, making them the oldest known remains categorized as "modern" (as of 2018).
Ötzi is the oldest man ever found intact. Some Egyptian mummies are older, but their brains and internal organs were removed in the mummification process. Since Ötzi was so well preserved in glacial ice, he has provided scientists and researchers the best specimen to date for a man over 5000 years old.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
Scientists excavating a cave called Hualongdong, located in Anhui province in eastern China, have unearthed remains of 16 individuals that date to around 300,000 years ago. Several fragments belong to the skull of a 12-to-13-year-old juvenile.
The likely "first human", she says, was hom*o erectus. These short, stocky humans were a real stayer in human evolutionary history. Estimates vary, but they're thought to have lived from around 2 million to 100,000 years ago, and were the first humans to walk out of Africa and push into Europe and Asia.
The Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias reached the southern tip of Africa in 1488 and named it the Cape of Good Hope (Portuguese: Cabo da Boa Esperança). The first European settlement in southern Africa was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company at Table Bay, 30 miles (48 km) north of the cape.
The Sudwala Caves in Mpumalanga, South Africa, are set in Precambrian dolomite rock, which was first laid down about 2800 million years ago. The caves themselves formed about 240 million years ago. They are one of the oldest caves in the world.
Early sites along the East African Rift include Lomekwi in the Turkana Basin, Kenya, and Olduvai Gorge farther south in modern-day Tanzania. The earliest hominids were discovered in Ethiopia and titled Ardipithecus ramidus.
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