Drawings on the wall of the cave. Source : Lee Berger et al.
A team of archaeologists led by Lee Berger published the results of a study of a cave in which they found a burial of people of an extinct archaic species Homo naledi. On the walls of the cave, located in South Africa near Johannesburg, they found drawings in the form of ornaments of intersecting lines. Scientists believe that they were created approximately 335 thousand – 241 thousand years ago.
It was previously believed that Homo naledi were not capable of symbolic activity due to their small brain volume (two to three times smaller than that of modern humans). Finds of symbolic activity – burial and drawings – have so far been attributed only to Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, characterized by a large brain volume.
Scientists emphasize that there were no traces of the presence of modern humans in the Rising Star cave (“Rising Star”), so the drawings could only have been made by Homo naledi. Although primitive, Homo naledi used fire to make and look at drawings, as evidenced by the soot on the cave walls. The images are made on dolomite – a fairly hard material, so the ancient artist spent a lot of work to draw deep lines.
The burial of Homo naledi found in South Africa is older than all known burials of modern humans by at least 100,000 years. The remains are located at a depth of 30 meters in that part of the cave where they could not be brought by predators or washed away by water; the bodies were laid in a fetal position in specially dug pits. All this, as well as the preservation of the bones, suggests that the deceased Homo naledi were buried by relatives. Next to the hand of one of the buried lay an object resembling a tool.
Exploring the Rising Star Cave is very difficult: it stretches almost 100 meters deep, and one of the passages can only be overcome by crawling, since its width does not exceed 25 cm. For the first time, the remains of Homo naledi were found here in 2013.
Homo naledi had small brains, primitive features, and were about 1.5 meters tall.
