This article is from
Journal of Creation 37(3):93–101, December 2023

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Developments in paleoanthropology no. 4

by Peter Line

Evidence Homo naledi buried their dead, made engravings, and used tools

The previous paper in this series discussed newly found evidence, presented by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, indicating Homo naledi used fire in the Rising Star cave system, South Africa.¹ On 5 June 2023, at the Richard Leakey Memorial Conference at Stony Brook University, Berger announced that he and his team had also discovered evidence suggesting H. naledi buried their dead, made symbolic engravings on cave walls, and used stone tools. The findings were also detailed in three papers made available on the preprint server bioRxiv on the same day.^2-4 These papers, after review, will be published in the online journal eLife. In the paper dealing with evidence for deliberate burial, Berger et al. stated:

“Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete features within the Dinaledi Chamber and the Hill Antechamber. 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.”⁵

In the Hill Antechamber, Berger et al. said that the “combination of these lines of evidence indicates that a pit was dug into existing strata, and then a body was placed into it and buried prior to the decomposition of soft tissue.”⁶ Similar lines evidence were found for the burial in the Dinaledi Chamber, with the skeletal elements exposed within the burial feature said to be “anatomically consistent with H. naledi”⁷ The configuration of the skeletal remains in the Hill Antechamber was said to be consistent with the body (of Individual 1) being in a flexed position when interred.⁸ The authors stated:

“The existence of diverse practices in the placement or interment of individuals within the Rising Star cave system is similar to the diverse practices noted within other sites of multiple burials of H. sapiens including Qafzeh Cave and Skhūl Cave.”⁹

According to Berger et al., the evidence suggested that “diverse mortuary practices may have been conducted by H. naledi within the cave system”, and that “mortuary practices were not limited to H. sapiens or other hominins with large brain sizes.”¹⁰ They pointed out that some “authors have argued that mortuary behavior is unlikely for H. naledi, due to its small brain size”, but that the “evidence demonstrates that this complex cultural behavior was not a simple function of brain size.”¹¹

A single stone artifact was discovered in the Hill Antechamber burial feature, said to be “in close contact with the articulated hand and wrist material”¹² This artifact (figure 1), called the Hill Antechamber Artifact 1 (HAA1), is described as having striations visible on the surface “that appear to be use wear or erosional marks”¹³ In the accompanying Berger et al. paper on rock engravings, the artifact is described as a tool-shaped rock that resembles “tools from other contexts of more recent age in southern Africa, such as a silcrete tool with abstract ochre designs on it that was recovered from Blombos Cave”¹⁴

Image: Berger et al., eLife / CC BY 4.0

The engravings (figure 2), said to be on a natural pillar (dolomitic walls) forming “the entrance and exit of a passage connecting the Hill Antechamber with the Dinaledi Chamber”, are described as mostly linear makings, with many of them intersecting “to form geometric patterns such as squares, triangles, crosses, and X’s, while some are isolated lines.”¹⁵ According to the authors there is no evidence of modern cavers altering the cave walls in such a manner in the Rising Star system, and that

Image: Berger et al., eLife / CC BY 4.0

“It is unlikely that any other hominin population made these engravings. No physical or cultural evidence of any other hominin population occurs within this part of the cave system, and there is no evidence that recent humans or earlier hominins ever entered any adjacent area of the cave until surveys by human cave explorers during the last 40 years.”¹⁶

Berger et al. believe that H. naledi is “the most likely creator of these engravings”, and that this “has implications for the evolution of biological intelligence among hominins and the association with [sic] encephalization with cognitive complexity.”¹⁷ In the third bioRxiv paper, dealing with the evolutionary implications of the above findings, Fuentes et al. stated:

“Fire use, mortuary behavior, and the evidence of engravings attributed to H. naledi falsify the hypothesis that only a large-brained hominin was capable of cognitively complex cultural, possibly symbolic, behavior.”¹⁸

The reaction by evolutionists to these latest announced findings about H. naledi has been mixed. Writing in New Scientist, Alison George quotes one researcher (Emma Pomeroy) as saying, “It is premature to conclude that symbolic markings were made by small-brained hominins, specifically H. naledi”.¹⁹ Another expert (Paul Pettitt) was unconvinced that a deliberate burial had been demonstrated by the Berger team, while Chris Stringer found the evidence impressive.¹⁹ Petraglia et al. question the evidence supporting burial, the association of the rock art with H. naledi, and suggest that the stone artifact “may actually be a natural rock and not culturally modified.”²⁰

However, one suspects that the main objection to the burial evidence is that, in the words of Petraglia et al., it “implies intentional burial wasn’t limited to our species or other big-brained hominins”, and so “would force us to rethink the role of brain size in advanced ‘meaning-making’ cognition”.²⁰ That they doubt the rock art was made by H. naledi seems also to be influenced by the implications it has, as indicated in their statement, as follows:

“This claim has major implications. To date, rock art has only reliably been linked to Homo sapiens and, in rarer cases, some of our large-brained ancestors. Similar to deliberate burial, producing rock art has major implications for the cognitive abilities of a species. It denotes a capacity for representation, and the creation and communication of meaning via abstract symbols.”²⁰

Clive Finlayson, of the Gibraltar National Museum, is quoted by Ann Gibbons as saying, “It’s not about brain size but how the brain is structured”²¹ He is said to believe the rock art etchings were most likely the work of H. naledi as no remains of “big-brained humans have been found in the cave.”²¹

Brain size and intelligence

The findings announced by the Berger team are both sensational and controversial. As indicated above, one of the main objections that some evolutionists have in accepting the findings that, in the Rising Star cave system, H. naledi used fire, made rock art, and buried their dead, appears to be its small brain size. This is because it conflicts with their current theories on the relationship between brain size and intelligence in supposed hominins.

Evolutionary theory concludes that Homo erectus people (in this case H. naledi) had smaller brains because they were not as evolved as modern humans, making them ‘apemen’ of less intelligence. Evolutionists suggest it may have been selection pressures for some form of intelligent behaviour that drove the brain expansion in supposed hominins like H. erectus. This ‘intelligence’ could have been making more sophisticated tools for hunting, being better at forming alliances through social interaction, being more efficient at communicating with language, being better at thinking with symbols, etc. According to paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall:

“Brain tissue is metabolically expensive, so there must have been some very considerable advantage to larger brains. Presumably the dividend was received in terms of greater ‘intelligence,’ although precisely what this might have meant in terms of abilities or context remains unclear.”²²

Apart from making the unproven assumption that evolution has occurred, such theories also presume that more brain tissue equals more intelligence. This seems to run counter to what is written in a popular anatomy and physiology textbook:

“Brain size varies considerably among individuals. The brains of males are, on average, about 10 percent larger than those of females, due to differences in average body size. No correlation exists between brain size and intelligence. Individuals with the smallest brains (750 mL) and the largest brains (2,100 mL) are functionally normal.”²³

As an example, consider the following statement by Harry Shapiro:

“Although Anatole France is said to have had a cranial capacity of only a little over 1,100 c.c. and Von Hindenburg, more than 1,800 c.c., it would certainly not be the general judgment that Anatole France was the less intelligent.”²⁴

To illustrate the last point, Anatole France won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature, and so having a brain size within the H. erectus range did not appear to disadvantage him. In his biological anthropology textbook, John Relethford suggested that “there might have been a strong relationship between relative brain size and intelligence in early human evolution that is no longer in effect.”²⁵ What happened to the evolutionist’s motto ‘the present is the key to the past’? Claims that, despite there being no relationship between brain size and intelligence now, somehow there was in the past, sounds like special pleading.

To put all this in perspective, a huge variation in brain size exists in modern humans without any noticeable correlation between brain size and intelligence. However, we are to believe that within the genus Homo, during the period of alleged human evolution, there was supposedly selective value for intelligence in what amounts to an increase, on average, of a few pinheads of brain tissue per generation.²⁶ Rather, if there is no significant link between brain size and intelligence, then brain size increase would have no selective value in any alleged environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Without any significant selective value, large brain size could not have been a result of evolution even if evolution were possible (which it is not), particularly considering the high metabolic energy costs of big brains.

The small brain size is likely also the main reason some non-evolutionists object to accepting H. naledi as being human. They would likewise reject the evidence presented by Berger, as no non-human would create art, bury their dead, or use fire. Brain size, as indicated by cranial capacity, is examined further below.

Cranial capacity

The mean cranial capacity of H. naledi is 545 cc, obtained from three specimens (DH 1—560 cc; DH 3—465 cc; LES 1—610 cc), with a range of 465 to 610 cc.²⁷ The mean cranial capacity of the Dmanisi, Georgia, H. erectus specimens (D 2280—730 cc; D 2282—650 cc; D 2700—601 cc; D 3444—641 cc; D 4500—546 cc) is 633.6 cc, with a range of 546 to 730 cc.²⁸ The adult H. erectus DAN5/P1 cranium from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia, with a cranial capacity of 598 cc, is the smallest of any adult H. erectus specimen from Africa.²⁹ The DAN5/P1 cranium was found in direct association with both Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools.³⁰

Another small H. erectus cranium (DNH 134) was reported on in 2020.³¹ The juvenile DNH 134 was discovered in the Drimolen Main Quarry in South Africa and dated at between an alleged 1.95 to 2.04 Ma (million years ago).³² According to Herries et al. “DNH 134 represents the oldest fossil with affinities to H. erectus in the world”.³³ The cranial capacity of DNH 134 was estimated at 538 cc, and, assuming an age at death between 2 and 3 years, the authors estimated that the DNH 134 individual could have reached an adult cranial capacity between 588 and 661 cc according to a human model.³⁴

There are convincing arguments that the adult SK 847 cranium from Swartkrans, South Africa, is H. erectus, rather than the Homo habilis category it is often classified in.³⁵ On the status of SK 847, paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke stated, in 1985, that “the erectus-like morphology of the frontal bone (which is not seen in any of the H. habilis crania) plus the remarkable overall similarity to 3733 [classified as H. erectus] convinces me that 847 must now be classified as an early H. erectus.”³⁶ On the brain size of SK 847, due to the incompleteness of the specimen, which has most of its neurocranium missing, any estimate of its cranial capacity would be very inaccurate, although it is likely to be very small.³⁷

The allocation of DNH 134 to H. erectus raises the question of whether the specimens allocated to H. naledi should also be subsumed into this category. This is especially so given that the Rising Star cave system, where the H. naledi fossils were found, is only about 800 m from Swartkrans,³⁸ where the erectus-like SK 847 specimen was discovered, and 7–8 km from the Drimolen site,³⁹ where DNH 134 was found. The closeness of the three sites to each other, and their commonality of small brain size, suggest there is a connection between the specimens (ignoring their evolutionary assigned ages).

As for cranial capacity, Tobias reported a mean of 1,345 cc for modern humans (n = 1,000s; range: 800–2,100 cc).⁴⁰ However, it stated that this was for males (whether this was a print error I do not know). Beals et al. reported that the cranial capacity of 122 recent ethnic groups yielded means of 1,272 cc and 1,427 cc for females and males, respectively, with a sex-combined mean of 1,349 cc (range: 1,070–1,651 cc).⁴¹ Molnar gives the mean cranial capacity for ‘modern man’ as 1,345 cc, with a range of approximately 700–2,200 cc.⁴² According to Molnar, “These individuals with larger or smaller cranial capacities are normally functioning and intellectually competent individuals; in fact, there are many persons with 700 to 800 cubic centimeters.”⁴²

The smallest cranial capacity that I am aware of, from a modern human (Daniel Lyon, a man of 1.55 m height and 65.8 kg weight) with ‘normal’ intelligence, was about 660 cc or 694 cc, depending on the method used to estimate it.⁴³ The mean of 677 cc is perhaps the best estimate. However, only a miniscule number of cranial capacities of individuals have been measured/estimated compared to the billions of ‘modern’ humans that have lived, or currently live. Hence, it is difficult to know what exactly the lower limit of cranial capacity for ‘normal’ intelligence is. Statistically speaking, it seems reasonable to suggest that there would be modern humans with ‘normal’ intelligence that have (or had) cranial capacities in the H. naledi range.

Crania classified as H. erectus have on average smaller cranial capacities compared to modern humans, although there is a certain amount of circular reasoning in this, as crania tend to be excluded from the H. erectus category if their brain size is considered too large.⁴⁴ Including only crania evolutionists would typically assign to H. erectus, I calculated the mean cranial capacity of 50 H. erectus crania to be about 926 cc (range: 546–1,260 cc).⁴⁵ In theory, H. naledi could just be a population of H. erectus-type humans with small brains. However, the situation may not have been that simple, as discussed below.

Cretinism and Homo naledi

I have discussed the H. naledi finds in much more detail elsewhere.^46,47 To recap in a nutshell, my interpretation of H. naledi is that it likely consisted of H. erectus-type ‘robust’ humans (descendants of Adam and Eve), some of whom suffered from a developmental pathology called ‘cretinism’. This could possibly explain some of the odd morphological features present in some of the fossil specimens, including the small brain size. From a creationist viewpoint, all specimens genuinely belonging to H. erectus should ultimately be reclassified as H. sapiens if H. erectus individuals were fully human, i.e. descendants of Adam and Eve.

Some evolutionist experts have postulated that the bones of the Indonesian Homo floresiensis represent cretinism in humans.⁴⁸ The cranial capacity of 426 cc, for the LB 1 H. floresiensis specimen,⁴⁹ is smaller than any of the published values for H. naledi. Cretinism has major developmental effects, causing bony deformities, mental retardation, and more, and is caused by iodine deficiency in the unborn. It is common in areas with low environmental iodine, where there is also a high incidence of adult goitre (thyroid enlargement, thus neck swelling, from insufficient iodine).⁵⁰ The ‘Cradle of Humankind’ area, where the naledi fossils were found, is located on or near the fringes of what was, prior to iodine supplementation, a narrow ‘goitre belt’, or region in which this deficiency disease was very common. The belt ran 500 km across South Africa’s Transvaal from Zeerust to Nelspruit.⁵¹ This regional history increases the likelihood of cretinism in these fossils. Only a small percentage of the population in a ‘goitre’ region were usually affected by cretinism.

Cretinism (congenital hypothyroidism) “can reduce brain size by approximately 50%”,⁵² and so would be one possible explanation for the low cranial capacity observed in the H. naledi crania, as well as some of the other small H. erectus crania. To me, the evidence for burials in the Rising Star cave system appears convincing. As humans only go to the trouble of burying other humans (not apes), this indicates that the buried H. naledi remains were those of humans.

What is not clear is whether the H. naledi remains, in the Rising Star cave system, represent both pathological and non-pathological members of the population, if indeed some had suffered from cretinism. It could be that only pathological humans were buried in the remote cave system. Perhaps that was the very reason they were given a burial in such a remote place. Regardless, it is likely that any burial practice was done by healthier members of the population, the latter perhaps also having larger brain sizes, although this can only be speculation. However, if the evidence indicating H. naledi buried their dead, used fire, made symbolic engravings, and used stone tools, is confirmed, then H. naledi individuals were fully human, whether they had small or large brains.

Modern humans in Laos earlier than thought

On 5 June 2023, a study on recently discovered Homo sapiens bone fragments was published, titled “Early presence of H. sapiens in Southeast Asia by 86–68 kyr at Tam Pà Ling, Northern Laos”⁵³ That modern humans may have been in Southeast Asia between 68 and 86 thousand years ago (ka) is said to be “considerably further back than the previous estimates of around 50,000 years”⁵⁴ The modern human bone fragments in question were recently discovered frontal (TPL 6; figure 3) and tibial (TPL 7) fragments found in the deepest layers of the Tam Pà Ling (TPL) cave site.⁵³ Previous discoveries in the cave were said, by Freidline et al., to have identified H. sapiens there by supposedly at least 46 ka.⁵³ According to Jude Coleman:

Image: Friedline et al., Nature Communications / CC BY 4.0

“The shape of the Tam Pà Ling fossils further complicates the story. Although they are from H. sapiens, the youngest bone—the 46,000-year-old skull fragment—has a mixture of characteristics of both archaic and modern humans, whereas the oldest fossils have more-modern features. For example, the older skull fragment lacks the pronounced brow bone associated with more-archaic humans that is observed to some degree in the younger fossil.”⁵⁵

Coleman further writes, “That is counter-intuitive, Shackelford [co-author of study] says, and suggests the older fossils might not have evolved from local populations, but rather represent groups of early modern humans that migrated through the area.”⁵⁵ What it does suggest is that the so-called ‘archaic’ humans and ‘modern’ humans were interbreeding with each other. This appears to have been a common occurrence. In their overview of the fossil evidence, Cartmill and Smith stated that “in southern and northern Africa, East Asia, Australasia, and Europe, early modern populations retained a few morphological characteristics that evidently derived from local archaic peoples.”⁵⁶ This indicates that ‘modern’ humans and ‘robust’ (‘archaic’) humans interbred, and so had to be of the same biological species. Not only do evolutionary explanations add nothing, rather they obscure the truth of human history. As for the dating, Freidline et al. throw doubt on fossils predating 50 ka from Chinese sites, stating:

“A recent attempt to verify the dating of several of these sites by Sun et al. … presented a number of issues including inaccurate radiocarbon estimations, misattribution to Homo of a sampled tooth, potential contamination in genetic analyses and incorrect provenience”⁵⁷

To be sure, the Sun et al. paper does not inspire confidence in the dating of Chinese sites when it reports the following:

“Some paleoanthropologists have argued that fossil discoveries from Huanglong, Zhiren, Luna, and Fuyan caves in southern China indicate one or more prior dispersals, perhaps as early as ca. 120 ka. We investigated the age of the human remains from three of these localities and two additional early AMH sites (Yangjiapo and Sanyou caves, Hubei) by combining ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis with a multimethod geological dating strategy. Although U–Th dating of capping flowstones suggested they lie within the range ca. 168 to 70 ka, analyses of aDNA and direct AMS ¹⁴C dating on human teeth from Fuyan and Yangjiapo caves showed they derive from the Holocene. OSL dating of sediments and AMS ¹⁴C analysis of mammal teeth and charcoal also demonstrated major discrepancies from the flowstone ages; the difference between them being an order of magnitude or more at most of these localities.”⁵⁸

Freidline et al. appear to have had their own dating issues, with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) samples producing a similar age when taken from different sediment depths.⁵⁹ Suggesting that “the age of the deepest layers are underestimated due to the saturation limits of quartz OSL dating that occurs at 3–4m”, they then used another dating technique (pIR- IRSL⁶⁰) in the deeper layers as “an independent age control”.⁵⁹ Using more than one dating technique also makes it easier to cherry-pick data. I have no confidence in the ages obtained using any of these dating techniques as, apart from all the discrepancies, they also make invalid assumptions. Coverage of the problems, flawed assumptions, unknowns, and unreliability of age-dating methods is available elsewhere.^61,62 I suspect the most interesting dates are the ones we do not see because they are not published.

Stone artefacts by monkeys

A study by Proffitt et al., published 10 March 2023, reported on the lithic assemblage associated with foraging behaviour of wild long-tailed macaque monkeys in Thailand, said to result “in a landscape-wide record of flaked stone material, almost indistinguishable from early hominin flaked pieces and flakes.”⁶³ According to the authors:

“It is now clear that the production of unintentional conchoidal sharp-edged flakes can result from tool-assisted foraging in nonhominin primates. Comparisons with Plio-Pleistocene lithic assemblages, dating from 3.3 to 1.56 million years ago, show that flakes produced by macaques fall within the technological range of artifacts made by early hominins. In the absence of behavioral observations, the assemblage produced by monkeys would likely be identified as anthropogenic in origin and interpreted as evidence of intentional tool production.”⁶³

Commenting on the find in Science, Morell wrote:

“Nevertheless, the study serves as a caution to archaeologists, says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist and stone tool expert at the Smithsonian Institution. ‘As tiny and unintentional as these flakes may be, they are similar to those from early archaeological sites. That means we have to find a way to factor [them] out at Oldowan sites.’”⁶⁴

Discussing the find in Scientific American, Zorich stated:

“Their analysis revealed a surprising fact: The flakes that the macaques unintentionally produced looked a lot like the oldest stone tools that were intentionally made by hominins: Lomekwian and Oldowan stone tool assemblages, which were discovered at sites dating between 3.3 million and 1.5 million years ago. ‘If we would take the kind of assemblage that we find with the macaques and we would drop them somewhere in East Africa, everybody would think they were definitely made by early hominins,’ Luncz [co-author of study] says.”⁶⁵

Previously (in 2016), the research group had reported on wild bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil, said to have been observed deliberately breaking stones, “unintentionally producing recurrent, conchoidally fractured, sharp-edged flakes and cores that have the characteristics and morphology of intentionally produced hominin tools.”⁶⁶ As reported by Callaway in Nature, to Proffitt’s (first author) eye, many of the stone pieces broken off by the capuchins “resembled the kind of sharp ‘flakes’ first recovered by Leakey in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in the 1930s”, supposedly dating from about 2.5 to 1.7 Ma.⁶⁷ Callaway further stated:

“About half of the flakes made by the capuchins bore the hallmarks of Oldowan tools called choppers, says Proffitt. One set of flakes seemed to have been broken off of the same hammer stone in succession, ‘something that’s only ever been associated with humans’, says Proffit [sic]. Yet he emphasizes that the monkeys make the tools unintentionally and ‘at no point do they use these flakes. They’re just hitting stones together’.”⁶⁷

If Oldowan-like tools can be produced unintentionally this easily, it makes one wonder whether some (not all) of the so-called Oldowan tools were simply accidental by-products of stone breakage, and not necessarily by human hands. While the above unintentional ‘tools’ were produced by monkeys, it is possible that extinct apish primates, like the australopithecines (which includes most specimens attributed to H. habilis), had similar rock-breaking practices, resulting in unintentional ‘tools’. This suggests caution against reading too much into simple Oldowan-type tools found in geological strata associated with australopithecine fossils. The tools may have been unintentional by-products of breaking stones, whether by them or some other primate (e.g. monkeys). Neither can it be ruled out that catastrophic flows during Flood runoff also produced such Oldowan-type ‘tools’ in gravel. If the tools really look like they could not have been unintentionally produced, then this would indicate they were made by humans.

Neanderthal news

The creationist belief that Neanderthals were fully human, descendants of Adam and Eve, has already been vindicated.⁶⁸ For that reason it seems less necessary to cover Neanderthal news. However, they should not be ignored either, so here are, in brief, some recent items of interest on Neanderthals. The 6 January 2023 front-page headline of Newsweek was titled “How We Became Human”, and, in the feature article, author Adam Piore stated:

“These and other finds, together with advanced technology that’s become available to paleontologists within the last decade, have smashed the popular conception of Neanderthals as hairy, primitive, knuckle-dragging cavemen who carried clubs and spoke in grunts. Neanderthals, we now know, were likely more intelligent, sophisticated and complicated than previously believed.”⁶⁹

Piore quoted ancient DNA expert Svante Pääbo as saying that “I would tend to think that Neanderthals individually may have been as smart as us,” but that he believed modern humans were better at former bigger societies, leading to things like more innovations, although he admitted this was only speculation.⁷⁰ Piore also stated that Pääbo found it “hard to imagine that between 70,000 or 100,000 years ago, a new mutation spread that suddenly made everybody ‘smarter.’”⁷¹ Such ‘smart’ mutations are popular in some evolutionary circles. For example, in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens: A brief history of humankind it was called the “Tree of Knowledge mutation”⁷² I critiqued such ‘magic bullet’ mutations in my review of Harari’s book.⁷³

A study (published 1 February 2023) of the skeletal remains of straight-tusked elephants, the largest terrestrial mammals of the alleged Pleistocene epoch, excavated from deposits supposedly 125 ka, were said to show “that hunting of elephants weighing up to 13 metric tons was part of the cultural repertoire of Last Interglacial Neanderthals there”⁷⁴ In Science, Andrew Curry commented on the find, as follows:

“The degree of organization required to carry out the butchery—and the sheer quantity of food it provided—suggests Neanderthals could form much larger social groups than previously thought.”⁷⁵

Regarding the above finding, Curry quoted archaeologist Gary Haynes as saying, “This lets us imagine Neanderthals as more like modern humans rather than as humanoid brutes, as they once were interpreted.”⁷⁵

On 21 June 2023 Marquet et al. published a study of Neanderthal engravings (figure 4) on a cave wall at La Roche-Cotard, France, made supposedly at least 57 ka.⁷⁶ According to the authors, typical Mousterian lithics were found in the cave, these said to be uniquely attributed to Homo neanderthalensis in Western Europe.⁷⁷ They concluded that the cave engravings were “unambiguous examples of Neanderthal abstract design.”⁷⁷ Writing in New Scientist, Marshall commented on the engravings (made on tuff, a soft rock), said to be “some of the oldest known examples of Neanderthal art and are possibly the very oldest”:

Image: Marguet et al., PLoS ONE / CC BY 4.0

“These include a great many lines traced by fingers: often straight lines, but sometimes also circles or ovals. Some seem to be arranged in larger patterns. One panel has a cluster of more than 100 dots. A subgroup of the engravings was made with tools like flint, antler and wood rather than with fingertips.”⁷⁸

Marquet et al. describe the finger tracings at La Roche-Cotard as clearly intentional, but that “it is not possible for us to establish if they represent symbolic thinking”⁷⁹ The authors concluded their discussion of the study with the following sentence:

“In terms of culture, we now have a better understanding of the plurality of Neanderthal activities, attesting to elaborate and organized social behaviours that show no obvious differences from those of their contemporaries, Anatomically Modern Humans, south of the Mediterranean.”⁸⁰

A study by Schmidt et al., published 22 May 2023, addressed how birch tar (a glue) was made by Neanderthals. They said it was the “oldest synthetic substance made by early humans”, with the earliest such artefacts associated with Neanderthals.⁸¹ As described by Jackson, birch tar “was used as an adhesive backing to connect stone to bone and wood in tools and weapons, with the added benefit of being water-resistant and resistant to organic decomposition.”⁸² From their study, Schmidt et al. stated:

“… we found that Neanderthals did not use the simplest method to make tar. Rather, they distilled tar in an intentionally created underground environment that restricted oxygen flow and remained invisible during the process. This degree of complexity is unlikely to have been invented spontaneously. Our results suggest that Neanderthals invented or developed this process based on previous simpler methods and constitute one of the clearest indicators of cumulative cultural evolution in the European Middle Palaeolithic.”⁸¹

At the end of his article reporting on the above study, Jackson wrote:

“The evidence for cognitively complex Neanderthals has only increased in recent years, as archaeological evidence reveals many of the technological firsts thought to be modern human inventions were already in use among Neanderthals. At this point, it may benefit anyone who prefers thinking of human intelligence as an exceptional uniqueness to concede that Neanderthals were humans too.”⁸²

Homo naledi update

On 12 July 2023, just after I had finished a draft of this article, the peer review and assessment by eLife, as well as response by the Berger team, were published on the eLife site.^83-85 The peer review was generally negative. A few technical issues were brought up, particularly regarding the burials, which the authors addressed in their response, but there was nothing refuting the main findings. I got the impression that it was the implications of the findings that were the bigger problem. For example, on the rock engraving paper, Reviewer 1 commented:

“This is a big claim. If it proves to be true, it has the potential to be paradigm-shifting as the identification of intentional engraved marks, made by a small-brained distant human cousin 200,000+ years ago in South Africa, would completely change our understanding of where, when and who made the first graphic marks. Twenty years ago, this claim would probably have been dismissed out of hand as being too far-fetched to be taken seriously”⁸⁴

Hence, the two main issues appear to be the small brain of H. naledi and the unknown date of the rock engravings. I addressed the small brain earlier in this article. The alleged geological age of the H. naledi fossils and, by association, the age of the engravings, is something I do not accept. The reviewers had problems with the latter. For example, on the Fuentes et al. contexts and evolutionary implications paper, Reviewer 1 commented:

“The author of the engravings needs to be demonstrated as a particular hominin species (H. naledi in this case), and the activity of engraving needs to have taken place ~241–335 kya. After reading the manuscript on the engravings, however, what is clear is that the scratches could as easily have been made by a modern-day farmer 50 years ago, as H. naledi~335 kya. Berger and colleagues do not present any evidence to the contrary, they simply describe their narrative as the most parsimonious scenario.”⁸⁵

I see the most parsimonious scenario as being that H. naledi individuals made the engravings on the rock walls in the Rising Star cave system. However, I believe it occurred much more recently than suggested by the Berger team.

Conclusions

Evidence suggesting H. naledi buried their dead, made symbolic engravings on cave walls, and used stone tools was greeted with mixed reaction by evolutionists. A main objection appears to be the small brain size of H. naledi. H. naledi likely consisted of H. erectus-type humans (descendants of Adam and Eve), some of whom suffered from a developmental pathology called ‘cretinism’.

A study reporting that modern humans were in Laos earlier than thought suggests that so-called ‘archaic’ humans and ‘modern’ humans were interbreeding.

If Oldowan-like tools could be produced unintentionally by monkeys, perhaps some of the so-called Oldowan tools were simply accidental by-products of stone breakage.

As more studies on Neanderthals are done, the more sophisticated they appear to have been.