A team of paleontologists believe they have found evidence of ceremonial burials dating back 240,000 years, long before our species, Homo sapiens, came into existence. I say ceremonial because, according to the scientists, it would not simply be a matter of burying the corpses underground, but of carrying them through a labyrinth of naturally formed tunnels in the limestone rocks of the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The bodies appeared in fetal position and sometimes had a stone tool next to their hand. The walls are engraved with lines whose appearance is vaguely symbolic.
Most shockingly of all, the inhabitants of these caves had a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. The species, called Homo naledi, was already known to scientists and constitutes one of the most puzzling mysteries of human evolution.
The papers on the Rising Star cave system are still under peer review, and scientists such as María Martinón-Torres, director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, Spain, do not believe that the burials have been proven to be deliberate.
That’s the situation as it stands at the moment. But if it is proven that Homo naledi had a little brain and made a lot of art, we will need new theories on the evolution of the human mind. Maybe size doesn’t matter after all.
