Palaeontologists in South Africa said Monday they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior, reports AFP.
Researchers led by renowned palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, said they discovered several specimens of Homo naledi -- a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid -- buried about 30 metres (100 feet) underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO world heritage near Johannesburg.
"These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of Homo sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years," the scientists wrote in eLife.The findings challenge the current understanding of human evolution, as it is normally held that the development of bigger brains allowed for the performing of complex, "meaning-making" activities such as burying the dead.
The oldest burials previously unearthed, found in the Middle East and Africa, contained the remains of Homo sapiens -- and were around 100,000 years old.
Those found in South Africa by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, and his fellow researchers, date back to at least 200,000 BC.
Critically, they also belong to Homo naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, which had brains about the size of oranges and stood about 1.5 metres (five feet) tall, said the researchers.
Homo naledi is named after the "Rising Star" cave system where the first bones were found in 2013.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
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