It's not only the find that is amazing, It's the way the science is being carried out in a open and collaborative way that is so amazing! I hope your group finds many many more sites and expands its reach throughout the content and beyond!
I'm so glad you folks documented this expedition so well. I've been able to experience it vicariously. It's tremendously exciting. Lee Berger may be the happiest man in the world. His attitude is uplifting and his smile is infectious.
Glad we now have a date of 230-330,000 years old. Fairly recent, actually yet still has some Australeopithicus traits. After seeing the diversity among the skulls\bones found in Georgia (Dmanisi) , I am tending to believe that Homo Erectus was quite diverse over time and interbreeding was probably far more common than once thought. I think we need to stop judging intelligence by brain size. Floresiensis, Dmanisi, Naledi, and Sediba all seem to have been quite advanced and had small brain sizes.
It had to be a burial chamber. I absolutely believe that. It isn't hard to believe that they had the capability of respecting the dead and disposing of their deceased ritualistically. Even if was just the fact that: "Oooh, I was just scratching the back of this other thing like me, picking off bugs and now it has stopped moving for many moons now and is starting to stink really bad - so it would be best if we threw him down this hole and got rid of this smelly thing"... The fact that they mastered fire seems hard for me to believe, but who knows? It seems that there is evidence of abundant wildfires from scorched savannas and forests in the late pliocene and early pleistocene - so maybe grabbing a burning log once in awhile wasn't out of the question lol... I really would like to know was what the demography, the lifestyle of these groups were. It's just amazing to think about. What were they eating, what was killing them - what was EATING them? how did they communicate with each other, did they make any kinds of tools or trinkets. What did they think when they saw a shooting star or when they looked at the moon? Well, I Guess we are going to find out more when more is excavated, models are built, fossils are completed. It is really exciting and I wish I could be a part of it!
More probably: the cave was different then and they hid from... something or someone and a pile of them died in there. Or perhaps... captives ?? in a war of tribes ?? A prison and not a cemetery ?? these are possible explanations, too. Will we ever know?
The one possibility that so far no one has mentioned may be the most plausible. While it would be really exciting to have anthropology turned on its head a little to show that burial, ritual or practical and fire being present even at the 900,000 ya mark, I suspect that this may actually be a more resent ritual "reburial". Conceivably, we could have archaic humans that have evolved to that point of ritual burial and symbolism which encounter a collection of early hominin artifacts outside of the Dinaledi cave, had already run across other hominin bones in nearby caves and viewed both as some early ancestor for which they could even have developed more complex symbolic rituals of worship/respect for and sought to lay them to rest in the cave (because to them along with an existing precedent of the others...is where they belonged).
It's not only the find that is amazing, It's the way the science is being carried out in a open and collaborative way that is so amazing!
I hope your group finds many many more sites and expands its reach throughout the content and beyond!
I'm so glad you folks documented this expedition so well. I've been able to experience it vicariously. It's tremendously exciting. Lee Berger may be the happiest man in the world. His attitude is uplifting and his smile is infectious.
I approve of open science. Thank you for including everyone in the research.
Glad we now have a date of 230-330,000 years old. Fairly recent, actually yet still has some Australeopithicus traits. After seeing the diversity among the skulls\bones found in Georgia (Dmanisi) , I am tending to believe that Homo Erectus was quite diverse over time and interbreeding was probably far more common than once thought. I think we need to stop judging intelligence by brain size. Floresiensis, Dmanisi, Naledi, and Sediba all seem to have been quite advanced and had small brain sizes.
Im just "the public" but yeah Open Science! Its long over due.
I wonder if there DNA will show them to be related?
It had to be a burial chamber. I absolutely believe that. It isn't hard to believe that they had the capability of respecting the dead and disposing of their deceased ritualistically. Even if was just the fact that: "Oooh, I was just scratching the back of this other thing like me, picking off bugs and now it has stopped moving for many moons now and is starting to stink really bad - so it would be best if we threw him down this hole and got rid of this smelly thing"...
The fact that they mastered fire seems hard for me to believe, but who knows? It seems that there is evidence of abundant wildfires from scorched savannas and forests in the late pliocene and early pleistocene - so maybe grabbing a burning log once in awhile wasn't out of the question lol...
I really would like to know was what the demography, the lifestyle of these groups were. It's just amazing to think about. What were they eating, what was killing them - what was EATING them? how did they communicate with each other, did they make any kinds of tools or trinkets. What did they think when they saw a shooting star or when they looked at the moon? Well, I Guess we are going to find out more when more is excavated, models are built, fossils are completed. It is really exciting and I wish I could be a part of it!
More probably: the cave was different then and they hid from... something or someone and a pile of them died in there. Or perhaps... captives ?? in a war of tribes ?? A prison and not a cemetery ??
these are possible explanations, too.
Will we ever know?
The one possibility that so far no one has mentioned may be the most plausible. While it would be really exciting to have anthropology turned on its head a little to show that burial, ritual or practical and fire being present even at the 900,000 ya mark, I suspect that this may actually be a more resent ritual "reburial". Conceivably, we could have archaic humans that have evolved to that point of ritual burial and symbolism which encounter a collection of early hominin artifacts outside of the Dinaledi cave, had already run across other hominin bones in nearby caves and viewed both as some early ancestor for which they could even have developed more complex symbolic rituals of worship/respect for and sought to lay them to rest in the cave (because to them along with an existing precedent of the others...is where they belonged).
Cool