Local research casts doubt on Homo naledi claims

 
JOHANNESBURG - The Homo naledi reveal, exactly a year ago, had all the cliffhangers of a TV drama.

The creature found in a cave at the Cradle of Humankind, west of Johannesburg, was primitive, had knowledge of its own mortality and buried its dead.

But could this neatly packaged story have not taken into account all the facts?

A palaeoanthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand has evidence there might have been another entrance to the cave in which the skeleton was found, and that Homo naledi might have simply been trapped underground.

Professor Francis Thackeray says black spots on the bones are made by lichen, and lichen needs light to grow.

“That meant that maybe there was another opening in addition to the one that Lee Berger argued that Homo naledi had used to carry carcasses through the darkness, through narrow passages, tenuous passages, up and down and into the darkness, and deposited in the chamber... (Video) enca.com