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Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago
- iskander 3y agoLots of cross-hatch patterns!
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoLee 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 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jrumbut 3y agoI 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 3y agoInteresting theory!
- dekhn 3y ago"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_warning_messages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin... version of your 300K BC biohazard sigil)
- POiNTx 3y agoLonger video with better resolution of the images and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4WsgMUtJTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4WsgMUtJTU
- sys32768 3y agoMaybe that's how they got edges on their tools?
- akiselev 3y agoThere'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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_stone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_reduction
- NegativeLatency 3y agoIf 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 https://youtu.be/fFbgQhY4Yxw?t=769
- pbj1968 3y agoThat’s exactly what it looks like to me, too.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoAre we only calling Homo Sapiens human? Some how I got the idea that all of Homo was human.
- wsgeorge 3y agoI had the opposite idea: colloquially, "human" is us, homo sapiens, and hominid would be our ancestors and closest relations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- escape_goat 3y agoThere 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 3y agoThe Homoninid family tree has gotten fairly confusing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Changes_in_taxonomy_and_terminology 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 3y agoHominin doesn't include chimpanzees, but all members of the human tree after the split from chimpanzees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
- mcguire 3y agoThanks! I couldn't remember the details and was trying to reconstruct it from the bio-Latin. :-)
- womitt 3y agoCould be some kind of map
- lovemenot 3y agoIf so, it must be a symbolic map like the London Underground. Since geography doesn't have so many straight lines.
- tdaltonc 3y agoDiscovered more than a century ago, many cave paintings are being reinterpreted game calendars. Recording which animals can be found where and when. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/an-upper-palaeolithic-protowriting-system-and-phenological-calendar/6F2AD8A705888F2226FE857840B4FE19 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeolog...
- polishdude20 3y agoCan they just be doodles? Sometimes I just draw crosshatch lines and stuff especially when I was in college.
- ethanbond 3y agoPotentially 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 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- stOneskull 3y agomaybe they're tripping
- zikduruqe 3y agoStoned Apes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory
- greatpostman 3y agoThe 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
- revicon 3y agoThe statement "Large variances in human populations come from different hybrid compositions" seems a particularly provocative statement. Is there a source where this comes from?
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoI 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 3y agoI 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.
- hexator 3y agoYou imply that it's a significant percentage though, which is highly debatable.
- tsimionescu 3y agoThere are no large differences between human populations though: that is the provocative part of the statement.
- hackinthebochs 3y agoI'm not sure what part specifically you take issue with, but this provides some relevant citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_...
- mjhay 3y agoIn 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.
- famouswaffles 3y agoNon homo sapiens sapiens can still be humans. Neanderthals are considered humans.
- dang 3y agoOk, we've changed the title to be more precise. Submitted title was "Engravings Made by Non-Human Hominids ~300K Years Ago".
- akiselev 3y agoThe 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi Edit: this was a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36345824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36345824 and dang moved it (??)
- irrational 3y agoIf 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?
- EamonnMR 3y agoNow 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!"
- akiselev 3y agoThat’s probably why they’re extinct. They couldn’t find seed investors.
- borissk 3y agoAre you being a racist towards homo naledi? They were humans, just like you and me :)
- ethanbond 3y agoFrom 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 3y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoWhat 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 3y agoI 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?
- AceJohnny2 3y agoFrankly, 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 3y agoNot sure why you think dehumanization was a prerequisite for slavery.
- fb03 3y agoaka minimum wage employment
- TechBro8615 3y agoI 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_Roman_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_ancient_Roman_...
- antidaily 3y ago[flagged]
- p0pcult 3y ago[dead]
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoIf 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".
- lynguist 3y agoThat’s exactly right - I want to give another example: Squamates want to develop a legless body. Snakes have emerges, but there are also legless geckos, legless lizards etc, etc. The thing is that normally the change happens in the speciesation first and then these traits are used for something distinctive - dinosaurs grew feathers first, and then used them for flight. Humans grew intelligence first, and then used it for civilization. The resource has to be already there to be used. The resource will not be developed by evolution. The lungfish already had limbs and joints (while living purely aquatically), thus it could use it to walk outside the water.
- willmeyers 3y agoCool! 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 3y agoI wonder if it could be Homo Naledi counting something.
- betocmn 3y agoA Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective: 7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives). Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago) Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago) Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago) Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million years ago) Kenyanthropus platyops (~3.5 million years ago) Australopithecus africanus (~3.3-2.1 million years ago) Paranthropus aethiopicus (~2.7-2.3 million years ago) Australopithecus garhi (~2.5 million years ago) Paranthropus robustus (~2-1.2 million years ago) Homo habilis (~2.1-1.5 million years ago) Homo rudolfensis (~1.9 million years ago) Homo ergaster/Homo erectus (~1.9 million years ago - ~143,000 years ago) Paranthropus boisei (~1.7-1.1 million years ago) Homo heidelbergensis (~700,000-300,000 years ago) Homo naledi (~335,000-236,000 years ago) Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) (~400,000-40,000 years ago) Denisovans (around 300,000-50,000 years ago) Homo sapiens (modern humans) (~300,000 years ago to present)
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoThank you! Always good to see our family tree when talking about the extremely recent transition to sapiens
- akiselev 3y agoIn addition, a timeline of culture & technology: Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago) Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago) Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one) First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago) First archaic humans living in colder climates like Atapuerca, Spain (~800,000 years ago) First wooden spears denoting a change in hunting tech (~400,000 years ago) Widespread control of fire (~400,000 years ago) ==> First homo sapiens <== (~300,000 years ago) First neanderthals arrive in Europe (~230,000-150,000 years ago) First use of ochre pigment for symbolic purposes (~190,000 years ago) Body lice genetically diverge from head lice due to clothing (~170,000 years ago) Mousterian industry - points, scrapers, denticulates, notches, and awls (~300,000-40,000 years ago) First time eating seafood at Pinnacle Point (~150,000 years ago) Humans start collecting and using shell beads (~130,000 years ago) First heat treated material - silcrete (~110,000 years ago) First compound adhesive leads to tar-hafted tools (~100,000 years ago) First bed (~77,000 years ago) First bow and arrow in Sibudu (~72,000–60,000 years ago) Arrival in Australia (and thus first boat?) (~70,000-65,000 years ago) First musical instrument (flute) (~60,000 years ago) First burial ritual at Shanidar Cave (~60,000 years ago but controversial) First sewing needle (~45,000 years ago) Aurignacian industry - true homo sapien tools like microlithics, blades, projectile points, pressure flaking, split-base bone points (~43,000-26,000 years ago) Gravettian industry - Bow and arrow, harpoons, and darts come into their own (~33,000-22,000 years ago) Solutrean & Magdalenian industry - flint tools, cave art, etc. (~22,000-12,000 years ago) Disclaimer: "First [...]" means "oldest surviving evidence of [...]". I tried my best to select a realistic middle ground age but each one has error bars of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years and there's a lot of overlap in industries. This list is so incomplete it's not even funny :)
- thegabriele 3y agoWhat kind of language did they have? The signs could be just signpost for a location "look for the rocks with the straight incisions"...but they would need some way to comunicate that to each others.
- tdaltonc 3y agoBees can communicate a kind of "map" to other bees, but they don't have anything like a proper language. I'm not aware of anyone teaching rodents to learn from maps, but I'd bet they could.
- psiops 3y agoIt seems likely to me that meaning-making, like consciousness, is on a sliding scale across all life. So trying to find the first homonids that "had it" seems futile.