Ahhhh, weren't we just talking about discoveries like this the other day? Lots of food for thought here. Wonder what the final conclusion is going to be.
Another thought... whose job is it to lay all the bones out like that to photograph? And what happens when it's time to clean it up and put it away?
A distant human relative once thought to have lived millions of years ago may in fact have wandered the earth much more recently—and lived alongside early Homo sapiens, reports The Washington Post. Remains of Homo naledi were first discovered in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system in 2013. The species had a small brain—the size of a gorilla’s—and an ape-like torso, but walked upright like a modern human and had dexterous wrists and hands that could have made and used tools. Paleoanthropologists initially believed that this hominin emerged some 2 million years ago, based on its unusual mix of modern and primitive characteristics, putting it near the base of the Homo family tree. But tests have revealed that the species was alive between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago—not long before early examples of our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged. Fifteen Homo naledi skeletons were found deep in the cave system, leading some researchers to speculate that the species may have purposely buried its dead, an advanced behavior that so far has been confirmed only among Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The findings suggest human evolution was a complex process, with species diverging and interbreeding—not a linear progression in which human ancestors developed bigger brains and walked more upright over time. John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist who helped lead the Rising Star expedition, says the next step is to “sort the relationship of these different species to each other and also their role in our process of becoming human.”
May 26, 2017 print edition of The Week Magazine.
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