Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins by Lee Berger and John Hawks tells the increasingly more tangled story of the genius homo. The hominid they discovered, homo naledi, with its primitive features and small brain, should not have been alive when it was, 250,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens were evolving in Africa. But they were, and they also buried their dead in a deep inaccessible cave, and created figurative art on the walls.
The more we discover about the genus homo, the more notions we must jettison. Is it a part of the genus homo’s makeup to bury the dead, and create figurative art? Is it simply an outgrowth of our species? A fascinating question. With this discovery, I lean toward yes.
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