[HN Gopher] Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago
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Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago
Author : tdaltonc
Score : 130 points
Date : 2023-06-15 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.biorxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.biorxiv.org)
| womitt wrote:
| Could be some kind of map
| lovemenot wrote:
| If so, it must be a symbolic map like the London Underground.
| Since geography doesn't have so many straight lines.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Lee Berger's announcement video on the find - it's long-ish, but
| it's very very interesting if you're into this stuff.
|
| https://youtu.be/fFbgQhY4Yxw
|
| Something very evocative is the resemblance to Neanderthal cave
| engravings (@16:45 in the video) - that same theme of cross
| hatching, with multiple length verticals. As Lee points out,
| ascribing meaning to these things is going to be pretty much
| impossible, but it's very evocative. Could it be a family
| portrait? A warning? The 300k BC version of a Biohazard sigil? A
| Homo Sapiens band, hunting them into the depths of the earth? Who
| knows.
| POiNTx wrote:
| Longer video with better resolution of the images and video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4WsgMUtJTU
| jrumbut wrote:
| I found it interesting that they appear to interact with these
| fossils that look a little like parasites on the rocks.
|
| Obviously this is pure imagination but I wonder if that was why
| they felt the need to scratch the rock or create lines to block
| it from spreading.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Interesting theory!
| dekhn wrote:
| "Scientists have finally decoded the meaning of the homo naledi
| engravings... they say the best translation is: 'This place is
| not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated
| here... nothing valued is here.'"
|
| (IE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
| term_nuclear_waste_warnin... version of your 300K BC biohazard
| sigil)
| [deleted]
| iskander wrote:
| Lots of cross-hatch patterns!
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Are we only calling Homo Sapiens human? Some how I got the idea
| that all of Homo was human.
| neovialogistics wrote:
| According to an archeologist I know the preferred terminology
| for non-sapiens sapiens members of Homo is "Archaic Humans".
| wsgeorge wrote:
| I had the opposite idea: colloquially, "human" is us, homo
| sapiens, and hominid would be our ancestors and closest
| relations.
| [deleted]
| escape_goat wrote:
| There was a shift in how the word 'hominid' was used around
| the 1990s, largely due to the introduction of genetic
| classification if I understand correctly. Hominids (humans
| and close ancestors) used to be considered distinct from
| Pongoids, which were basically all other great apes including
| chimpanzees and bonobos. That taxonomy was retired, and all
| great apes are now considered hominids.
| mcguire wrote:
| The Homoninid family tree has gotten fairly confusing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Changes_in_taxonomy_and_te...
|
| You will often see mention of Hominin (Homo and Pan
| (chimpanzees), I think) as well, where you would have once
| heard Hominid.
| mkl wrote:
| Hominin doesn't include chimpanzees, but all members of the
| human tree after the split from chimpanzees:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
| akiselev wrote:
| The news is that _homo naledi_ did these things at the same time
| as humans despite a much smaller brain size, contradicting the
| social brain hypothesis somewhat. Their cranial capacity was
| 465-610 cubic cm compared to about 1,300 for humans [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi
|
| Edit: this was a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36345824 and dang moved it
| (??)
| jl6 wrote:
| They're not terribly sophisticated markings, or obviously
| social. Even if brain size correlates exactly with capability,
| doing these at ~40% brain size seems quite plausible.
| Kaijo wrote:
| You took the trouble to italicize the binomial, but didn't
| capitalize the generic name, whereas the OP's title failed to
| not capitalize the species epithet.
| irrational wrote:
| If humans were around at the same time as homo naledi, how do
| they know that it was homo naledi? Couldn't a random human just
| wander in one afternoon and make the marks?
| ethanbond wrote:
| From just scrubbing through the video it seems like there's
| none of the usual evidence they were done by humans in the
| cave, I guess like random other trinkets or items? The cave
| is super super small, and if I understood correctly it was
| also a burial ground for Homo naledi.
| akiselev wrote:
| They can't know that for certain! See Lee Berger's
| announcement video [1] for a discussion. Paraphrasing the
| slide: There is no evidence of *homo
| sapiens* use or presence beyond the light zone of the cavern
| system Cultural context: there are *homo nadeli*
| graves in the cave system with the drawings Access to
| the cavern system has not changed and would have been much
| easier for the smaller *homo nadeli* (Lee Berger had to lose
| 55 pounds to fit into the caves) The burials and
| drawings were made over a long period of time, implying an
| ongoing settlement The evidence for *homo nadeli*
| burials meets or exceeds that accepted for ancient *homo
| sapiens* burials
|
| That last bit is the most interesting one. Since there are
| almost no fluvial or geological changes in the cavern system
| over hundreds of thousands of years, the graves of the _homo
| nadeli_ are much better preserved than ancient _homo sapien_
| graves. By comparing the layers of dirt in the grave and the
| rest of the cave system, they can determine to a high degree
| of certainty that it was in fact a purposeful burial instead
| of a random "body in a hole".
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/fFbgQhY4Yxw?t=1058
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Now I'm picturing two cave dwelling fellows in front of a
| fire knapping flint and shooting the shit, and one goes "hold
| on, what about cave paintings... as a service!"
| borissk wrote:
| Are you being a racist towards homo naledi? They were humans,
| just like you and me :)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| What is interesting is how thoroughly Homo sapiens sapiens
| displaced all other hominids.
|
| It seemed in the past, intelligence was more of a gentle curve.
| Now, you have Homo sapiens sapiens with planes, rockets, global
| communications, rockets, satellites, and then every other
| species. The most sophisticated modern non-human primate doesn't
| seem to rise to the level of intelligence and sophistication ago
| even early hominids.
| dheera wrote:
| I wonder how society would behave if those homonids were still
| around today.
|
| A lot of society norms are based on our intelligence levels being
| remarkably approximately equal across all of our species. What if
| there existed a bunch of beings on Earth that were somewhere in-
| between a human and a monkey in intelligence, cognitive, and
| language abilities?
|
| Would they go to school and be a part of the economy and job
| market, but with some kind of "no hominid left behind" program?
| Or would they be pets and get free food and rent in return for
| being cute? Or would they have their own hamlets and kingdoms and
| fight with our high-tech cities and countries?
| mkl wrote:
| Harry Turtledove's book of short stories _A Different Flesh_ is
| based on this idea, though with homo erectus, not homo naledi:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Flesh
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Frankly, they'd either be exterminated, or slaves.
|
| Extermination is likely because humans generally don't like
| competition. Just look at all the other apex
| predators/megafauna that have disappeared (or practically so)
| when humans showed up.
|
| Otherwise, humanity's extensive history of slavery of anything
| we can de-humanize would apply to any survivors.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Not sure why you think dehumanization was a prerequisite for
| slavery.
| og_kalu wrote:
| Dehumanization is a prerequisite for slavery. It just
| doesn't have to be grounded in "race"
| fb03 wrote:
| aka minimum wage employment
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I can see the argument that it's definitionally impossible
| to enslave someone without dehumanizing them, if you
| believe that certain inalienable freedoms are part of being
| human, and thus you cannot take them away from someone
| without dehumanizing them.
|
| But if by "dehumanization" you really mean "racist," then
| yes indeed, slavery was originally based more on generic
| power imbalances (prisoners of war, or offspring of
| existing slaves) than any racial component. The racist
| aspect of slavery only became prominent with the emergence
| of colonialism and exposure of Europeans to "the new
| world." I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that
| the ancients felt worthy of mentioning - after all, Rome
| was an empire spanning many disparate races and cultures.
| Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry any
| social implications"). I'd be curious to read more about it
| though.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_ancient_R
| oman_...
| wsgeorge wrote:
| > I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that the
| ancients felt worthy of mentioning
|
| > Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry
| any social implications")
|
| When I read this comment (before your edit), I was a bit
| surprised, since ethnicity and "blood/familial" relations
| were absolutely huge in ancient Rome.
|
| I generally use a definition of race that's much broader
| than skin tone, and I see it as interchangeable with
| loosely defined ethnicity and cultural background.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Oh they definitely had enslavement from birth. But
| generally the original reason for enslaving the
| parents/grandparents was because they were a prisoner of
| war, or ended up on the wrong end of some power imbalance
| - it's unlikely they were enslaved for any reason
| directly related to their physical attributes like skin
| tone.
|
| (I guess you could argue that an empire that invaded
| another culture/nation/territory and then enslaved its
| people was effectively enslaving them based on something
| akin to "race," but that argument is slightly weakened by
| the fact that the Roman army didn't only conquer
| "barbarians" but also went to war against their
| contemporary civilizational peers, often driven by
| familial disputes between emperors.)
|
| So while enslaving someone from birth is undoubtedly bad,
| I'm not sure it's fair to characterize it as enslavement
| based on racial attributes, if the slave's ancestor was
| originally enslaved for reasons unrelated to race. Like,
| I guess you could call it racism if you squint, but only
| in the sense that skin color (or whatever other physical
| attributes you might associate with race) is an inherited
| characteristic, which seems like self-referential
| reasoning.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Ah yeah, thinking about it a little more carefully, I see
| your point, especially on the topic of slavery.
|
| Although the ancient Romans were absolutely big on
| ethnic/racial discrimination, the specific institution of
| slavery was not based on this. And their strong sense of
| the rule of law allowed for more civic forms of
| discrimination. For example, Germanic peoples weren't
| enslaved because they were non-Italian. They were just
| denied citizenship and its privileges, etc.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Not quite the same but we do actually have populations of
| people with significantly reduced capacities, such as those
| with Down's Syndrome. I'm not sure how it is everywhere but in
| Western Europe there's generally quite a bit of effort put in
| by families, carers, charities and businesses to give them a
| sense of life in society.
| neovialogistics wrote:
| If you're interested in alternate history and have a login for
| alternatehistory.com, there's an incomplete but moderately good
| write-up of exactly this.
|
| https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/age-of-near-e...
| booleandilemma wrote:
| If I know anything about humans, we'd probably try to have sex
| with them.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Or eat them. Or both.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Can they just be doodles? Sometimes I just draw crosshatch lines
| and stuff especially when I was in college.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Potentially but like... that's very very hard rock, so those
| would be some very effortful doodles.
|
| Maybe they had more boring classes than we do today though
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| stOneskull wrote:
| maybe they're tripping
| antidaily wrote:
| Non-Human Hominids... or, as I like to call them, Ohio State
| fans.
| p0pcult wrote:
| [dead]
| greatpostman wrote:
| The big secret:
|
| "Homo sapiens" are hybrid combinations of different species that
| have long disappeared. "Non human hominids" are frequently groups
| that mixed with Homo sapiens. Large variances in human
| populations come from different hybrid compositions
| shrubble wrote:
| Are you referring to those with Denisovan vs those with
| Neanderthal vs those with neither?
| greatpostman wrote:
| There's other unidentified populations. They just can't find
| bones to isolate the dna
| revicon wrote:
| The statement "Large variances in human populations come from
| different hybrid compositions" seems a particularly provocative
| statement. Is there a source where this comes from?
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| I'm not sure what part specifically you take issue with, but
| this provides some relevant citations: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_...
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| I don't see how. Many of us have Neanderthal DNA. Objective
| facts are only considered (falsely) provocative if the
| provoked has an axe to grind, or a pursuit other than
| objective truth.
| r13a wrote:
| I definitely see how this statement is provocative when
| overwhelming scientific consensus underlines a very low
| variance in human population that is NOT explained by
| variance in traces of non-homo sapiens DNA.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are no large differences between human populations
| though: that is the provocative part of the statement.
| hexator wrote:
| You imply that it's a significant percentage though, which
| is highly debatable.
| willmeyers wrote:
| Cool! No expert, but I love this kind of stuff. Some form of
| early territoriality? Those marks don't look distinguished enough
| to be symbolic.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| I wonder if it could be Homo Naledi counting something.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| If we look at the origins of major groups of animals, the first
| dinosaurs or at earliest stages of bird evolution, we see often
| see multiple related groups evolving convergently due to similar
| pressures. My favorite example of this is that powered flight may
| have been acquired _three or more_ times in closely related but
| distinct groups of theropod dinosaurs.
|
| When we think of the other branches of the Human family tree, we
| often think of them as sort of diverging from our ancestors and
| then freezing unchanged. However, it would not at all be
| surprising if the pressures which so aggressively favored
| increased intelligence in our ancestors also applied to all our
| "cousins".
| mjhay wrote:
| In light of recent news, this is an extremely misleading choice
| of title, given that the orginal was "241,000 to 335,000 Years
| Old Rock Engravings Made by Homo naledi in the Rising Star Cave
| system, South Africa".
|
| It's not news that non- homo sapien sapiens had things like art,
| music, an mortuary practices.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the title to be more precise. Submitted title
| was "Engravings Made by Non-Human Hominids ~300K Years Ago".
| og_kalu wrote:
| Non homo sapiens sapiens can still be humans. Neanderthals are
| considered humans.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Maybe that's how they got edges on their tools?
| akiselev wrote:
| There's little evidence of ground stone tools until _very_
| recently [1], like tens of thousands of years ago. It wasn 't
| until agriculture that the technology became widespread.
|
| Knapping [2] - which has been around for over 3 million years
| at this point - is much more predictable and efficient than
| grinding while requiring less intuitive knowledge of the
| materials. Paleolithic people just didn't have the resources to
| experiment with enough materials to figure out hardness, grain
| size, etc. for proper grinding.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_stone
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_reduction
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| If you look at the video some of the patterns are very regular
| and geometric, not what I'd expect for a regular sharpening of
| a tool. It's possible they sharpened tools artfully but then
| that's just a different way of creating the inscriptions.
|
| https://youtu.be/fFbgQhY4Yxw?t=769
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