About three years ago, archaeologist Lee Berger and a number of colleagues published a group of papers claiming that Homo naledi, one of our cousins who lived in southern Africa around 300,000 thousand years go, intentionally buried their dead, and created engravings on the walls of the Rising Star cave system. The articles were accompanied by the slickly produced Netflix special Cave of Bones. The claims made some noise, mainly because naledi is a small-brained member of our extended family. While most archaeologists and paleoanthropologist (I think) had no particular problem with the idea of naledi using their limited brain capacity to bury their dead and carve patterns in rock walls, the press seemed to think it “rewrote human evolution.” After all, we now know that tool use and even funeral behaviour are not unique to humans, much less to modern ones. While there was great public and scientific interest in the site and the data, the reaction of reviewers and of the academic…
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