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The fierce statement implicit whether Homo sapiens was the archetypal taxon to hide its dormant is acold from over.
After a decennary of back-and-forth with skeptics, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his squad are not going to fto their proposal die: that a small-brained taxon called Homo naledi was culturally burying their dormant agelong earlier modern humans were.
Their latest peer-reviewed insubstantial presents a reexamination of a contentious hominin 'burial ground', addressing erstwhile criticisms to reason erstwhile again that the 'cradle of humankind' successful South Africa is location to immoderate of the earliest grounds of funerary practices.
Related: Did This Ancient Species Really Bury Its Dead Before Modern Humans?
The squad lays retired wherefore they deliberation this is the simplest mentation for however the bones of galore H. naledi ended up heavy successful a cave strategy adjacent Johannesburg.
These hominins lived much than 240,000 years ago, portion aboriginal Homo sapiens and our Neanderthal cousins are lone thought to person begun burying their dead immoderate 120,000 years ago.
The assertion that H. naledi had taste burial practices much than 120,000 years earlier our ain benignant is simply a monumental one, truthful it's earthy that different scientists privation the grounds to beryllium ironclad.
A facial reconstruction of Homo naledi. (Cicero Moraes/Arc-Team et al.)The proposal was archetypal enactment guardant by Berger and his squad successful 2015, erstwhile they announced that they had recovered the fossilized remains of astatine slightest 15 individuals of a antecedently chartless hominin, heavy underground successful a cave successful South Africa.
Carvings connected the walls and charcoal fragments had the scientists reasoning this was an intentional burial site. But grounds was circumstantial astatine best, and it caused an eruption of statement implicit what defined a cultural burial, and however champion to beryllium the beingness of one.
In 2023, Berger and his colleagues published a bid of preprints connected their latest excavations. Still, galore scientists were unconvinced, arguing that the charcoal wasn't decently dated, that the burial pits weren't intelligibly defined, and that the engravings connected the partition whitethorn not adjacent beryllium human-made.
A painstaking review of the preprint papers, published successful 2024, added that Berger's and his team's investigation fell acold abbreviated of providing capable grounds that H. naledi had deliberate funerary practices.
Not to beryllium discouraged, Berger and his squad persisted, responding to the revisions.
Their latest work explains that successful astatine slightest 3 locations, the bodies were encased successful sediment soon aft they arrived successful the cave system. This refutes the thought that the bodies fell into the cave and were gradually covered by sediment.
Hundreds of H. naledi fossils were recovered heavy wrong the Rising Star cave system. (Berger et al., eLife, 2015)"The enactment we study present illustrates that neither gravity and resulting sediment slumping, nor downslope question of bodies connected a talus, nor slow, gradual sedimentation, nor immoderate different 'natural' process antecedently hypothesized tin relationship for the presumption and discourse of the H. naledi features," the authors write.
"Here for the archetypal time, we person considered the proposal that Homo naledi was straight progressive successful the burial process of bodies."
Earlier this year, co-author and anthropologist John Hawks addressed critics and explained wherefore the squad had openly published their results earlier peer review. As portion of eLife's process, each reviews are made nationalist and transparent, which Hawks sees arsenic a benefit, not a downside.
"I've been successful paleoanthropology for a agelong time," helium wrote connected his blog. "You can't bash thing absorbing without facing immoderate challenging reviews. What we request to enactment arsenic scientists is for the enactment to beryllium arsenic transparent arsenic possible, from reflection to interpretation. If we tin destruct the civilization of fearfulness astir releasing caller probe and data, that would spell a agelong mode toward making probe much reliable."
No uncertainty determination volition beryllium plentifulness of responses to their newest argument.
The preprint is disposable successful eLife.
