The news, if true, could shatter conventional wisdom about human evolution: Renowned paleontologist Lee Berger announced today that he has discovered prehistoric burial sites in South Africa at least 100,000 years older than those known to scientists.

In a fetal position, curled up in niches dug at the end of a network of narrow galleries, about thirty meters below the ground, distant relatives of modern humans were found petrified in their graves during excavations that began in 2018. .

The researchers found that the graves were filled with earth that was originally dug to open holes, which they say is evidence that the bodies of these hominids were intentionally buried.

These are the oldest burials ever found, at least 100,000 years older than those of the “wise” man, Homo sapiens, they claim in their paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed for publication in the scientific journal eLife.

The excavations were carried out at the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located northwest of Johannesburg.

The oldest tombs that have been found so far, mostly in the Middle East and Kenya, are about 100,000 years old, and Homo sapiens were buried in them. South African tombs 200,000–300,000 years old. They contain the bones of Homo naledi, an extinct species that was about 1.50 meters tall and had a brain the size of an orange. This species was discovered in 2013 by American naturalized South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and cast doubt on the linear evolution of humans. For scientists, this is still a mystery. Homo naledi (meaning “star” in the local South African language) had features from other primitive species, such as dentition, but legs similar to ours and hands capable of handling tools.

“These findings show that burial practices were not the exclusive preserve of Homo sapiens or other large-brained hominins,” the scientists say.

This theory, contrary to the conventional wisdom that death consciousness and its attendant practices make a person “human”, was formulated by Berger even earlier when he introduced Homo naledi to the world in 2015. many experts questioned the validity of the conclusions of the mentioned American scientist, who is supported by National Geographic.

“At the time, it had gone too far for the scientists,” Berger told AFP. “They were convinced that it was all about the big brain and that it happened very recently, less than 100,000 years ago,” he explained. “We are about to tell the world that this is not true,” he added, going even further. He claims that geometric symbols, squares, triangles or crosses, carefully carved with some kind of sharp instrument, were found in the partitions of the tomb. “This means that humans are not the only ones who developed symbolic practices, but they may not even have been the ones who invented this behavior,” he said.

Carol Ward, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri, noted that “these results, if confirmed, will be of great importance.”

“I look forward to learning how the position of the remains rules out other possible explanations other than intentional burial, and to see the results after our colleagues study them,” he said.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}