Around a decade ago, an astonishing assortment of hominin bones was discovered in the depths of South Africa's Rising Star Cave. Within two years of the discovery, researchers had determined that the bones represented a new species, which they named Homo naledi. Short, stout and small-brained, the species trampled through South Africa between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago and behaved brutishly.
Well, that's what most paleoarchaeologists and paleoanthropologists who read about the discovery assumed. But three pre-print papers from the same team that discovered and described the species are starting to test those behavioral assumptions, asserting that H. naledi individuals buried their dead in caves and carved cave walls.
Posted to the BioRxiv pre-print repository at the beginning of the month, the three papers should appear in the journal eLife pending their peer review. And if their findings stand up to the scrutiny, they may mean that smaller-brained hominins participated in some of the same sophisticated behaviors as bigger-brained hominins.
