A momentous discovery in South Africa might flip our understanding of human historical past on its head. A non-human creature dubbed Homo naledi was found practically a decade in the past — and researchers now consider the creature might have had a head begin on Homo sapiens, or people, in utilizing hearth as a device.
Famend paleoanthropologist Lee Berger drew sharp criticism for hypothesizing Homo naledi was intentionally inserting its lifeless in a darkish, harmful underground chamber within the Rising Star caves simply exterior Johannesburg, South Africa. Some argued it wasn't potential to navigate the advanced chamber with out gentle.
"And the rationale they did not consider it was as a result of Homo naledi, with its tiny little mind simply larger than a chimpanzee, could not have had hearth," Berger informed CBS Information.
The managed use of fireside was supposedly distinctive to people, and for practically 10 years Berger's crew discovered no proof the species used hearth — till Berger misplaced over 50 kilos so he might squeeze by way of the slender corridors himself for the very first time in August.
It was torture all the best way down and he was exhausted when he lastly reached the underside.
"I appeared up. And I noticed the ceiling was black. It was burnt. It was coated in soot. It had been proper above our heads all the time," Berger mentioned of his discovery.
It is plain proof of fireside. The identical day, lead investigator and paleoanthropologist Keneiloe Molopyane was making one other exceptional discover close by: "Items of bone ... burnt bone," she mentioned, which indicated they had been consuming there.
After that, the crew noticed hearth all over the place.
"I believe based mostly on what we're seeing, they don't seem to be simply carrying hearth. I feel they're making it," Berger mentioned. "And it is accomplished a whole lot of hundreds of years, maybe, earlier than possibly people had been doing it."
Berger believes the invention will problem our assumptions about human uniqueness.
"It ought to make us assume deeply about that method we've got positioned ourselves on a pedestal as one thing particular, as a result of Homo naledi is starting to show that it could have occurred many occasions previously," he mentioned.
"One of many causes that people are so dangerous to the surroundings, to this world, is as a result of we expect we've got some possession of it," he mentioned.
For Molopyane, a South African girl, it isn't nearly a groundbreaking discovery.
"For a really very long time, archeology and anthropology, all these discoveries made in Africa, have been made by males, principally," White males, she mentioned. "That's after we begin taking again the narrative as Africans and we get to inform our tales now."
