Extinct human cousins may have beat us to inventing burial rituals
An entrance to the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg, South Africa. Newly found grave sites and wall engravings have led a team of archeologists to reevaluate the meaning-making capacity of an early human ancestor, Homo naledi. Jeff Miller Since its initial discovery was announced in 2015, an extinct hominid species named Homo naledi (H. naledi) has been making anthropological waves. Now, three new preprint studies published June 5 in the journal eLife and presented at the Richard Leakey Memorial Conference suggest that these human cousins may have buried their dead and carved symbols into cave walls, showing that they were capable of complex behavior despite their smaller brains. [Related: New Species On Human Family Tree Discovered In Ancient...