PEOPLING × BELIEFS

Small Brains, Deep Chambers

~250,000 years ago

Palaeolithic · Middle Stone Age · MIS 8

While the first Homo sapiens walked North Africa, another human lived several thousand kilometres south: Homo naledi, small-brained, small-bodied, its remains found by the dozen in nearly inaccessible dark chambers of the Rising Star cave. At least fifteen individuals lie in one chamber alone, with almost no other animals. The discoverers argue the dead were carried in and buried deliberately; sceptics reply that the geology has not excluded less startling explanations.

Why it matters

Naledi is the second shock, after Flores, in the modern rewriting of the human family: our species shared its continent of birth with a cousin whose brain was a third the size of ours. If the burial claim survives scrutiny, care for the dead does not require a big brain, and much of what we call symbolic behaviour needs rethinking. Whatever the verdict, the deep chambers hold a genuine mystery, argued out in public, evidence by evidence.

Dating & uncertaintyDisputed

Dating places the fossil-bearing sediments between roughly 414,000 and 236,000 years, and direct dates on teeth, combined with the flowstone above them, narrow the fossils themselves to between about 335,000 and 236,000 years. The dispute is about behaviour: the discovery team argues the articulated skeletons in the deep chambers were deliberately buried, a claim first raised in 2015 and formalised in 2023; critics answer that natural accumulation was excluded too quickly, and the argument is still running.

Sources

1. Dirks et al. (2017), eLife · The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africadoi:10.7554/elife.24231
2. Berger et al. (2023), eLife · Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledidoi:10.7554/elife.89106
3. Val (2016), Journal of Human Evolution · Deliberate body disposal by hominins in the Dinaledi Chamber, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa?doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.02.004
4. Dirks et al. (2015), eLife · Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africadoi:10.7554/elife.09561

Our species’ history as one day

04:57:0819 h 3 min before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day