Posted on 06/21/2023 6:51:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Forensic anthropologists working in the famous Rising Star cave system in South Africa have found evidence of ancient human burials that predate the earliest currently known Homo sapiens’ burials by at least 100,000 years.
In their search to understand human origins, the team of forensic anthropologists and explores identified depressions deep in the chambers of the Rising Star cave system. Bodies of Homo naledi adults and several children, estimated to be younger than 13 years of age, were deposited in fetal positions within pits, which suggests intentional burial of the dead. The Homo naledi fossils have been dated to around 226,000–335,000 years old.
Small-brained ancestors
Homo naledi, an extinct human ancestor, were first discovered in 2013 inside the Rising Star cave system 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg. The species is characterized by its small size, most notably a brain roughly a third the size of modern humans. However, the species boasts a number of relatively modern anatomical features that perplex anthropologists to this day.
The skeletal remains are dated to a period when modern humans were just beginning to emerge in Africa. They were discovered in a single, hard-to-reach subsystem within the Rising Star cave system.
The team, which is led by researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), first raised the possibility of intentional burials in 2015. However, many were—and still are—skeptical that a small-brained hominin could engage in such human-like funerary behavior.
Now the latest findings, published in three papers across the pre-print publication bioRxiv, provide strong evidence to the contrary.
Orientation and stratigraphy
While there are multiple lines of evidence supporting intentional burials, the team places focus on two specific elements found in the Dinaledi Feature and the Hill Antechamber Feature—the position of the bodies and the stratigraphy of the cave floors.
Throughout the cave, skeletal remains were recovered from vertical shallow pits that cut through the layers of the cave floor, in opposition to its natural slope. The researchers say the vertical orientation of the remains is reflective of decomposition with matrix support. For example, in the Dinaledi Feature, a portion of ribcage is visible with some ribs oriented near vertical, others broken and collapsing, but all constrained by support along the edge of the pit feature. Additionally, cranial fragments were found near the south end of the pit, also supported by matrix in a vertical arrangement.
In the Hill Antechamber Feature, the research team excavated a minimum of 90 skeletal elements and 51 dental elements. CT scans revealed the remains to be of at least three individuals, including an older juvenile. The youth’s remains appear undisturbed and intact, including 30 teeth in the correct order, two series of partial ribs, a right foot, ankle, and lower limb bones. The team says this pattern of bones is consistent with a body curled up in the fetal position for burial.
Additionally, according to the study, there are differences in the sediment of the pits compared with the surrounding walls and cave floor. The floor of the Hill Antechamber is a steep slope of approximately 30 degrees and composed of orange-red mud clasts, much like the Dinaledi Chamber. The excavation profiles at the east and south edges of the feature show distinct layering of orange-red mud clasts parallel to the chamber floor. But CT data shows these layers are interrupted.
A bowl-shaped concave layer of clasts and sediment-free voids makes up the bottom of the Hill Antechamber, while the south end slopes in the opposite direction as the chamber floor. The older juvenile’s right foot and lower limb is supported by this concave layer. Above the foot is additional sediment infill, separating it from the upper limb and torso material.
“The texture and internal stratigraphy of this sediment infill is not compatible with slow incremental deposition or the percolation of small particles around and into skeletal remains that were once exposed on the antechamber floor. The combination of these lines of evidence indicates that a pit was dug into existing strata, and then a body was placed into it and buried prior to the decomposition of soft tissue,” write the researchers in their paper.
The research team believes these interments, along with other evidence, suggest intentional burials were conducted by H. naledi within the cave system, and mortuary practices are not limited to hominins with large brain sizes.
“The evidence demonstrates that this complex cultural behavior was not a simple function of brain size,” the team concludes. “This raises the possibility that burial or other mortuary behavior may have arisen much earlier than present evidence for them, or that such behaviors evolved convergently in minds different from our own. Understanding such behaviors will require comparative study of all hominin lineages in which they occur.”
George, your dead father is starting to stink, time to dig a hole!
Hogwash. How was the time determined? It took all that time to come to where we are? Where are the bodies, the written history? We are really a stupid race to have taken that long to learn to write, and kill eash other? NONSENSE. Prove it—you can’t.
Agreed. And when a dog poops he “buries” it with debris. Does that make him human?
I tend to agree with you. A human bone retaining it’s form for 300,000 years buried in the ground???? Sounds hokey!
Following the money as always, it sounds like information being made public that might result in some multi million dollar grants to the University and/or the state.
**Agreed. And when a dog poops he “buries” it with debris.**
I have seen cats try to bury it, but dogs, not that I recall.
The smell draws predators and insects.
Modern day humans most certainly can dig up grant money for just about anything!
Homo Neledi
Or as we know them today...
Democrats.
The fossils were dated using electron spin resonance and uranium-thorium on the bones. The fossils are complete, skull, jaw, limbs, etc, of several separate specimens. They are not Homo Sapiens. Did you read it? One of the most significant find in paleo anthropology.
Nonsense.
They also found evidence of writing of some primitive sort on the walls on that cave.
“Agreed. And when a dog poops he “buries” it with debris. Does that make him human?”
Using that thought process it makes one wonder how they missed Biden and Hilly all those years. They’re both dead from the neck up.
wy69
“The fossils were dated using electron spin resonance and uranium-thorium on the bones. The fossils are complete, skull, jaw, limbs, etc, of several separate specimens. They are not Homo Sapiens. Did you read it? One of the most significant find in paleo anthropology.”
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And, Trump colluded with Russia. I read it in the media, and saw it on TV.
Yup. The moon landings were fake. And the earth is flat. Amelia Earhardt is still alive on a desert island. The media told me.
The Earth isn’t that old.
Writing isn’t innate, it requires abstract thinking.
They were fossils, not bones
Bingo!
Time to tidy up the cave a bit...
They would need light to bury their dead inside a cave system.
How did they manage that?
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