After all, large brains may not have been the basis of advanced, early hominin intelligence. Homo naledi, a hominid discovered in the Rising Star Caves at the Cradle of Humankind in Africa in 2013, has human-like arms and legs, but a brain one-third the size of a man - a feature researchers previously attributed to it is a distant symbol. Intelligence is less than its relatives Homo sapien. But the claim that large brains make them beautiful species may be debunked now that scientists have made an epic journey through the caverns of a rising star and discovered that species the people who lived there about 335,000 to 236,000 years ago buried the dead and marked them. the grave It was the first non-human species in known history to do so.
Researchers began to postulate that Homo naledi buried the dead during the ongoing excavations in 2018 and in July 2022, these theories were not only proven but expanded as soon as Berger and his team found the bones bones of Homo naledi, painted on the walls above them to show signs that make the people known. rest there. The symbols include triangles, squares and a "hashtag" type of symbol, as in two symbols joined together, Berger said. However, the meaning of these drawings is not clear, researchers will investigate whether there is a "zero chance" that Homo naledi used the same markings as humans or that they were derived from the same race. It is not known whether there was a relationship between Homo naledi and Homo sapiens, which would have existed at the same time around 250,000 years ago. Researchers continue to work on genetics to determine if there is anything similar to humans.
This discovery is "significant" and "shocks and destroys the idea of human uniqueness - that humans are different from animals and unique because of their large brains. Homo naledi has The brain is like a chimpanzee, but it performs burials, a behavior thought to be reserved for humans, Berger said. Scientists have also learned that Homo naledi had fire and the types of animals they ate depended on the location of the bones in the cave and adjacent rooms, Berger said, adding that the researchers did not know anything. behavior of different types before that time. discovery. . They may even have buried the body in the grave.
"Suddenly we went from having just these wonderful anatomy lesson of a species to an entire culture," Berger said. "They looked like they should have lived millions of years ago, but they were actually existing 250,000 to 350,000 years ago, the same time modern humans are evolving," Berger said…was an extraordinary scientific moment, and one that's going to lead to science and exploration and more discoveries over the next decades," Berger said.
