The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Created by Our Species

September 23, 2024 3:57 PM

The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Created by Our Species
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (15 comments total)

Critically, they also belong to Homo naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans,

“Primitive?” They were apparently quite advanced for their time, since they’re clocking “firsts” well ahead of us humans. They also had the sense to avoid developing social media or cryptocurrency.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:17 PM on September 23 [20 favorites]

They also had the sense to avoid developing social media

From TFA:

"Engravings forming geometrical shapes, including a "rough hashtag figure", were also found on the apparently purposely smoothed surfaces of a cave pillar nearby.​"

So, it seems social media is older than homo sapiens.
posted by signal at 4:29 PM on September 23 [13 favorites]

("Primitive" is a term of art in biological phylogenetics. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is, and it doesn't mean "unsophisticated" or "crude" or whatever it might mean in a casual sense. It means a trait or lineage is basal or ancestral, in contrast to derived.) better wording often speaks in terms of basal and derived traits rather than primitive and advanced, to avoid this confusion.)
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:43 PM on September 23 [28 favorites]

My understanding is that there has been a fair bit of criticism from the anthropological community w/r/t to the burial claims. Early on, I think the research group released a Netflix documentary before anything was fully peer reviewed, among other things.

The most recent thing in the literature about this was the paper, brooking no nonsense, titled No Sedimentological Evidence for Deliberate Burial by Homo naledi – A Case Study Highlighting the Need for Best Practices in Geochemical Studies Within Archaeology and Paleoanthropology.

Covered in depth on YT here
posted by deadbilly at 5:52 PM on September 23 [8 favorites]

There's a Netflix documentary about this find, Unknown: Cave of Bones, which is worth a watch if only to see the site. I think there's a lot of conjecture involved in their conclusions (the format of the documentary doesn't help), but it's certainly compelling to think of it as a burial site.
posted by yasaman at 5:56 PM on September 23 [3 favorites]

Also, I'm pretty sure it's STILL not peer reviewed.

Or rather, it's never been revised in response to the multiple reviews that had numerous issues with it. The "published" version of the burial paper is a preprint: https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/89106

Note on the right: "Reviewed preprint, not revised"
posted by deadbilly at 6:08 PM on September 23 [4 favorites]

Whether it was deliberate burial is still debated, there was another paper arguing it wasn't just a couple of months ago. Still a fascinating site either way.
posted by tavella at 6:19 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think the problem is that a bunch of this work has been peer reviewed, and the peers are pretty unanimous in saying that the quality of the evidence presented doesn't merit the claims that Berger is making about the site. This isn't my field at all, but the responses from experts sound pretty damning. Gutsick Gibbon, an anthropologist on YouTube, did a really deep dive into the field's responses to Berger's claims a little while back, and it doesn't sound like there's any new analysis or findings that would change much since then. (Note, links are to a total of over 3 hours of video. I don't know of a good text-only similar source, sorry.)

It's too bad, because I certainly am willing to believe it could be possible for an early member of Homo to have engaged in such behavior, and it would be really cool if true. It's the annoying thing about this science-by-press-release approach, it gets people fired up regardless of the quality of the evidence.
posted by biogeo at 7:47 PM on September 23 [10 favorites]

Gutsick Gibbon is an excellent channel. :-)

Does spend a bit too much time & effort on refuting creationists, IMHO. In fairness, she does a very good job on it, and I guess somebody has to do it.

But I just pass on those videos. Don't need to hear the same bogus claims and their debunking endlessly repeated.
posted by Pouteria at 9:47 PM on September 23 [2 favorites]

Rather than step into the controversy of naledi, can I just ask about elephants?
posted by rubatan at 2:08 AM on September 24 [5 favorites]

#deep
posted by HearHere at 2:40 AM on September 24

small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior.

Why are they STILL saying things like this???? We know so much better now. Apes that sre currently alive are capable of complex behavior, for fucks sake.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:33 AM on September 24 [4 favorites]

Short of actually becoming an expert on paleoanthropology, there's no way for an outsider to evaluate claims like this. There is so little consensus about what the evidence indicates, and which finds precede what, that laymen can't have any kind of opinion about this stuff.

I guess, writing that out, I think I know how normal people feel about politics. Though I'd argue that political affairs at least present us with a lot more in the way of evidence, which is a lot more often incontrovertible, than paleoanthropology does.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:05 AM on September 24 [5 favorites]

I will have to await more expert analyses, but I so very much want this to be true! One of my hobbies lately is delving into ancient, ancient history. Gobekli Tepe! Paleontologists are finding evidence of sophisticated behaviour from very early on. The Cave of Bones (allegedly) shows that species before humans were already sophisticated.
posted by SnowRottie at 5:59 PM on September 24

Any more YouTube channel recommendations along the lines of Gutsick Gibbon’s content? I love paleontology to the point that I’ve volunteered in research projects looking into Neanderthal diet. But life took me elsewhere and I’ve been doing other things for years. I’d love to keep up with what’s going on in the field but other than her and Stefan Milo on Nebula, I don’t know who has quality content out there.
posted by antinomia at 4:29 AM on September 25