Scientists in South Africa say they have discovered the oldest-known burial site in the world “containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behaviour,” world-renowned palaeoanthropologist, Lee Berger, who led the team of researchers, said on Monday.
The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation, and published in the journal, eLife.
It challenges the understanding of human evolution which is normally held that the development of bigger brains allowed for the performing of complex functions.
Berger said the research team uncovered evidence that “members of a mysterious archaic human species buried their dead and carved symbols on cave walls long before the earliest evidence of burials by modern humans.”
“The brains belonging to the extinct species, known as Homo naledi, were around one-third the size of a modern human brain,” he said in a statement while announcing the result of the discovery.
“These revelations could change the understanding of human evolution, because until now, such behaviors only have been associated with larger-brained Homo sapiens and Neanderthals,” he added.
According to the palaeoanthropologist, the team discovered several specimens of Homo naledi, a tree-climbing, Stone Age hominid, buried about 30 metres (100 feet) underground in a cave system within the Cradle of Humankind located in Johannesburg, which has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“These are the most ancient interments yet recorded in the hominin record, earlier than evidence of Homo sapiens interments by at least 100,000 years,” Berger wrote.
Before the discovery, the oldest burials previously unearthed were found in the Middle East which contained the remains of Homo sapiens and were around 100,000 years old.
But the South African find reportedly dates back to at least 200,000 BC.
“These discoveries show that mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes,” Berger said.