Discoveries

June 28, 2023

Early Undertakers

Listen to Today's Edition

Humans and Neanderthals weren’t the only hominids to bury their dead, according to new archaeological findings.

It’s likely another human relative did, too.

Since their discovery at a South African cave in 2013, researchers remain perplexed by some of the capabilities of the Homo naledi, an extinct human relative who lived between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago.

The prehistoric hominid walked upright on two legs, was about five feet tall, and had curved fingers and toes. Their brains were smaller than ours – about one-third in size – but that didn’t stop them from demonstrating complex actions.

For example, researchers found evidence last year that H. naledi could use fire to cook and provide light in dark tunnels in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system – where their remains were first found.

Now, three new papers suggest that they could also bury their dead, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

A research team discovered evidence of funerary practices in the cave: They noticed that the sediment layers were disrupted in a way that suggested early hominids dug and filled them. The researchers found oval-shaped depressions in the bones, surrounded by a layer of mud, indicating that they did not simply sink into the sediment by their own weight.

Researchers also spotted some engravings on cave walls, which suggests that the extinct inhabitants made them.

The team wrote separately that all these hints indicate that being big-brained is not necessary for complex thinking.

However, many scholars remain cautious about the findings, noting a number of discrepancies. The engravings have yet to be dated and the buried H. naledi bones could have ended up in that part of the cave through various means, such as rain or mudflow.

The papers are still being peer-reviewed, but if the findings are confirmed, it could mean that H. naledi burials predated that of the earliest humans by more than 160,000 years.

This story originally appeared in the June 28, 2023 newsletter, A Voice, a Divide.