A team led by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger has just announced that it has unearthed the oldest prehistoric graves yet discovered in South Africa, a discovery that would set back the first traces of burial practices by at least 100,000 years.
“These are the oldest hominin burials ever recorded, predating the burials of Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years,” the scientists say in a series of papers that have yet to be peerreviewed before being published in the journal eLife to be published. “These results show that mortuary practices were not limited to Homo sapiens or other largebrained people,” add the scientists, who made the scientific articles available in BioRxiv’s prepublication repository.
The oval tombs, some 30 meters deep, were discovered at the Cradle of Humankind paleontological site northwest of Johannesburg, a UNESCO World Heritage Site full of caves and modern prehuman fossils, our own species.
They contain the bones of Homo naledi, who had a brain the size of an orange and whose discovery in 2013 by worldrenowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger had already challenged certain evolutionary theories.
The oldest tombs discovered to date, particularly in the Middle East and Kenya, date from around 100,000 BC. and contain the remains of Homo sapiens, modern man, our species.
Burials discovered in South Africa are 200,000 to 300,000 years old.
During excavations that began in 2018, Lee Berger’s team also found geometric symbols lines, squares and crosses drawn on the walls of the tombs. “It would mean [outros] People [além de nós ou dos neandertais] Not only are they not the only ones developing symbolic practices, they may not have invented these behaviors,” argues the 57yearold paleoanthropologist, who is supported by the National Geographic Society and whose magazine is now reporting the new findings.
Researchers have linked mastery of fire, engraving, and painting in general to modern humans’ large brain size, typical of CroMagnon.