Graves, I think, will be the the key to a lot of future paleolithic discoveries. They're basically intentional time capsules. A meaningful amount of archeologi

Graves, I think, will be the the key to a lot of future paleolithic discoveries. They're basically intentional time capsules. A meaningful amount of archeological knowledge about vikings (for example) comes from graves. Gobekli Tepeh, the most significant evidence of early neolithic (and maybe late paleolithic) "high civilization" only survived because the whole complex was intentionally buried... Not many gravesites dating to before the late paleolithic have been discovered. I think they exist though. Mesolithic Neanderthals made graves. More shockingly, Homo Naledi were found in a gravesite. These humans were small brained & semi-arboreal. They were contemporary to early Sapiens but are thought to have split from our ancestral line at a very early stage. The site really seems like a grave, but archeologists are still hedging bets. Large brain humans like Sapiens and neanderthals were thought to have "invented" mortuary practices pretty late-in-the-game. The oldest known sapien grave is in Israel, dating to just 100kya^. Homo Naledi mortuary practice seems far fetched. But, it's very hard to think of an alternative theory for the naledi site. Everything about it says gravesite. If such distant human relatives made graves, and I think they did, then other humans probably did too. They're out their. ^The bones were also painted with ocre, like the French site.