Paleontologists in South Africa say they have found the world’s oldest known burial site, containing the remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior.
Led by renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, researchers said in 2023 that they had discovered several specimens of Homo naledi – a tree-climbing Stone Age hominid – buried about 30 meters (100 feet) underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Johannesburg.
“These are the earliest internments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence Homo sapiens buried for at least 100,000 years,” the scientists write in a series of preprint papers published in eLife.
The findings challenge the current understanding of human evolution, as it is normally thought that the development of a larger brain allowed for complex, “meaningful” activities such as burying the dead.
The oldest previously discovered tombs, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of Homo sapiens – and they were about 100,000 years old
Those found in South Africa by Berger, whose previous reports have been disputed, and his fellow researchers date back to at least 200,000 BC.
Critically, they also belong Homo naledia primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, which had a brain the size of an orange and was about 1.5 meters (five feet) tall.
With curved toes and tooled feet, hands and feet made for walking, the species Berger discovered had already overturned the notion that our evolutionary path was a straight line.
Homo naledi it is named after the Rising Star cave system where the first remains were found in 2013.
The oval-shaped breaks at the center of the new studies were also found there during excavations launched in 2018.
The holes, which researchers say evidence suggests were deliberately dug and then filled to cover the bodies, contain at least five individuals.
“These findings show that mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other large-brained hominins,” the researchers said.
The burial site is not the only sign of this Homo naledi was capable of complex emotional and cognitive behavior, they added.
Brain size
Carvings forming geometric shapes, including a “rough hashtag figure”, were also found on the apparently deliberately polished surfaces of a nearby cave pillar.
“This means that not only are humans not unique in developing symbolic practices, but they may not have even invented such behaviors,” Berger told AFP in an interview.
Such statements are likely to ruffle some feathers in the world of paleontology, where the 57-year-old has previously faced accusations of a lack of scientific rigor and jumping to conclusions.
Many objected when in 2015 Berger, whose previous discoveries gained support from National Geographicfirst conveyed the idea that Homo naledi was able to do more than the size of the head suggested.
“That was a lot for scientists to take in at the time. We think everything is connected to this big brain,” he said.
“We will show the world that this is not true.”
While they require further analysis, the findings “change our understanding of human evolution,” the researchers wrote.
“Burial, meaning-making, and even ‘art’ may have a much more complex, dynamic, non-human history than we previously thought,” it said. Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, who co-authored the studies.
Carol Ward, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who was not involved in the research, said that “these findings, if confirmed, would have significant potential significance.”
“I look forward to learning how the disposition of the remains rules out possible explanations other than deliberate burial, and to seeing the results once they have been verified by peer review,” she told AFP.
Ward also pointed out that the paper acknowledged that it could not rule out that the markings on the walls could have been made by later hominins.
© Agence France-Presse
An earlier version of this article was published in June 2023.