Homo naledi buried dead and carved symbols more than 100,000 years ago

[beschizza]

Originally published at: Homo naledi buried dead and carved symbols more than 100,000 years ago | Boing Boing

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[nick_warr]

Bet they weren’t too pale either…

[chenille]

Not in South Africa, no. Only in the north can you get away with low melanin skin. But I doubt anyone would expect otherwise, even white supremacists…I mean these are still tasks a lot simpler than modern Homo sapiens all do regardless of skin color.

[Brainspore]

@beschizza

The symbols include deeply carved hashtag-like cross-hatchings and other geometric shapes.

#RestInPower
#NadeliLife

[Otherbrother]

@chenille

I mean these are still tasks a lot simpler than modern Homo sapiens all do

Don’t knock the abilities of our ancestors or overestimate our own abilities. If you asked modern homo-sapians to carve symbols in a cave wall that would last hundreds of thousands of years or to dig a hole big enough to bury a body, many would not be able to do it without the advantage of modern tools like chisels and shovels. And hardly anyone is capable of building those tools from scratch these days.

[chenille]

Oh, I for sure mean what our cultures are able to do, not what one guy with no tools could do. Especially not if he’s from an industrialized culture where that kind of knowledge has become specialized. Teamwork is always what makes Homo impressive.

[nick_warr]

You should have seen how the Gammons here flipped out when they did a reconstruction of the oldest human skull found, and he was much closer to a northern african in pigment than european.

My comment was more about how any sort of accomplishment by our ancestors, if they were non white, always gets diminished. Aliens helping the egyptians, all that BS. It definitely could have been phrased better though!