Homo Naledi: Mysterious New Human Species Emerges from Heap of Fossils
bones is not the only puzzling aspect of this discovery, however. At
other fossil sites in the Cradle of Humankind, fossils are encased in
sediment and animal bones are found mixed in with the human remains.
The bones of humans and animals alike accumulate in the caves there
through catastrophic events such as falling down a hole in the ground
into an underground cave and getting trapped, or becoming dinner for the
large carnivores that denned in the caves. But the Rising Star bones
are not encased in sediment, nor do any remains of any vertebrate
animals, apart from a few rodents and birds, accompany them. Given the
absence of any evidence to indicate that Homo naledi fell or washed into
the underground chamber or was transported there by a predator, the
discovery team suggests that this small-brained human deliberately
disposed of its dead. Furthermore, the location of the H. naledi bones
in a chamber that appears to have always been lightless and difficult to
access suggests that the humans went to great lengths to deliver the
bodies there, and possibly needed an artificial light source (perhaps a
simple torch) to do so. The behavior is important because it implies
that H. naledi had, as Hawks puts is, “a shared cultural knowledge of
mortality.” - Scientific American
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