CREDIT: National Geographic. A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. University of the Witwatersrand, National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation.A new discovery in South Africa has profound implications for everything we know about human heritage, apparently.
Scientists from the University of Witwatersrand, in collaboration with National Geographic, have allegedly discovered a new species of human. The Homo naledi.
They had orange-sized brains, feet like you and me and buried their dead. Meet Homo naledi http://t.co/MdZGkeG2NQ pic.twitter.com/qFVwOesAEG
— NYT Science (@NYTScience) September 11, 2015
Remains of the species were found accidently by amateur cavers two years ago. An expedition then set out to recover the skeletons, expecting to find a single one they were surprised when they uncovered 15 individuals.
And this species seem to display a behaviour long believed to be unique to modern humans – burying their dead in an isolated chamber. The fossils were found in a dark, isolated cave that is extremely difficult to access. After ruling out all other possibilities of how they got there, the team deduced that they were ritualistically buried in the cave.
BREAKING: Scientists in SA have discovered a brand new species of human relative. Meet Homo Naledi! pic.twitter.com/m3iB0kQVhy
— Alex Eliseev (@alexeliseev) September 10, 2015
Hand of Homo naledi showing the curved fingers
http://t.co/w2CW5ehrn4 pic.twitter.com/KqhedXuDcK
— ṑ.ṓ (@alleswatis) September 11, 2015
A selection of age groups were allegedly found, from infants to teens, to young adults and elderly. Homo naledi were fairly tall, with small heads. They also had incredibly human like hands, but their shoulders were able to rotate more than ours, suggesting they were keen climbers.
At the moment scientists don’t know how old the fossils are – or how long the species existed – but they estimate that it’s a minimum of two million years old, if not three.
They’ve also said that Homo naledi could possibly be the base for our genus.
