Another astonishing and deeply humbling discovery just announced by Lee Berger, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand. This Daily Maverick article (one of many to cover the story) presents a great overview of the context and its significance.
Drawing on evidence from the Dinaledi cave system in the Cradle of Humankind (just around the corner from Joburg), Berger yesterday proclaimed the cave to be a burial site for Homo naledi, a non-human relative of ours that he first discovered there in 2013. Until now he and his team have studiously avoided the term ‘burial’, referring instead to the ‘the deliberate disposal of bodies’.
Moreover, engravings on the cave wall at the burial site indicate that naledi used symbols to communicate meaning. Such intentional markings are seen as a deliberate means of recording and communicating information – a major cognitive step in human evolution.
Berger’s announcements (which were made without any caveats, ifs, buts or maybes) are likely to be the source of some debate in the international Palaeo community. What is beyond doubt is the immense palaeoanthropological richness of the Cradle of Humankind, a tiny (50 square km) highveld landscape of kloofs and koppies, less than an hour’s drive from Johannesburg. It is home to by far the most diverse, extensive and complete concentration of hominid fossil sites found in one place, anywhere.
Follow Origin Safaris Africa to experience the excitement and scale of these discoveries on an exclusive open vehicle safari tour of the Greater Cradle Nature Reserve, at the heart of the Cradle of Humankind.
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