netflix searches for the cradle of humanity and what it means to be us
New discoveries in South Africa may redefine human history according to a new Netflix documentary, but critics are far from impressed by the evidence.
One of the greatest misconceptions about human evolution can be directly attributed to Rudolph Zallinger’s iconic image The March of Progress, showing what looks like a direct ascension from a chimpanzee walking on its knuckles to an upright human with a spear in hand bounding along. It’s been used in countless textbooks, parodied, and paid homage to in so many pieces of art and media, it boggles the mind. But it’s also a drastic oversimplification of what happened. Humans did not rise from apes. We also didn’t advance in a linear fashion because no organism in biology does. No, we’re one of at least 21 different species of what could be considered humans.
Our species simply managed to survive and either outbreed or outhunt other humans like the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and when we couldn’t, we interbred with them and kept going. We also didn’t have a single common ancestor with apes. It’s almost certain that we had at least four if we look back 3.8 million years. In short, our story is far messier and more complicated than you were probably taught, and we’re only now starting to appreciate the full implications of what we found about our planet’s recent history. It seems almost certain that some species of upright, mostly hairless ape was meant to dominate this planet. We’re just lucky it was us.
Now, knowing all this, we’re faced with an important question. If we were not the only humans, when did humanity, or at least something that we would recognize as even remotely like us evolve? A new Netflix documentary Unknown: Cave of Bones eagerly dives into this debate and purports to have an answer. The species in question is the South African Homo naledi which was burying its dead in the rugged Rising Star cave system sometime between 350,000 and 250,000 years ago. (Incidentally, the name of the species translates to “star man” as “naledi” means star in Sotho, and they were found in the aforementioned cave system in 2013.)
did we find humanity’s first necropolis?
On the surface, the claim seems solid. There are hundreds of bone fragments through the cave system’s chambers, numerous bone fragments show no injury and excellent preservation, there’s at least one stone tool, what look like markings on walls, and one body seemed to be in an oval hole with dirt piled over it. Combine these findings with the fact that the system does not appear to have been flooded, or home to bones of a large predator using it as a den, and on the surface, it sure as hell looks like a primeval necropolis for our evolutionary siblings. If all of this is correct, it would push the date of the first hominid funerals in Israel’s Qafzeh Cave back by at least 160,000 years.
But the scientific team who star in the documentary go even further than that. Seizing on the stone tool and the hashmarks on the cave walls, they posit that Homo naledi is even more like us because they probably believed in an afterlife and had funerary rites not dissimilar from those we would find in hunter-gatherer tribes of our own past. This would mean that the first human graves and religions were started by spindly, 150 cm tall bipeds with a brain anatomically similar to ours but only the size of an orange. It’s at this point that we need to start raising some red flags because these are some very big narrative leaps to make based on bones of just 15 individuals and one hole.
Much of the academic work underpinning Cave of Bones came in a series of splashy, shocking preprints. But now, as the documentary is out, peer reviews have started to pour in and many are appalled at major assumptions being so casually made, and find flaws in how the evidence was interpreted. It’s important to note that there’s no active malice by fabulists, unlike in Netflix’s last take on human origins by Graham Hancock. The researchers simply got overly excited about their admittedly fascinating findings, and let their imaginations run away from them. Unfortunately, the result is still rushed, bad science being trumpeted across the world as settled fact.
when reality intrudes on hopes and dreams
First and foremost, we need to start with the cave. According to the research team, it has to be a necropolis because it’s so inaccessible and challenging, so Homo naledi would have no reason to come there except keeping the bodies of its comrades safe from predators after death. But they also acknowledge that there had been cave-ins and 350,000 years is a long time over which the system could change significantly, meaning that it’s entirely possible it was far more accessible in the primeval past. An alternative passage was possible and fewer choke points between the dark chambers absolutely cannot be ruled out.
Secondly, there’s the question of the bodies. Normally, if a body is buried, you would see the full skeleton more or less in the same place. But this is not what we see in the Rising Star cave. Most of the fragments are scattered, and the two that look like they may have been burials also raise questions. One body in an oval depression could be natural, once is an accident after all. The other purported burial of a naledi boy with a stone tool is not in an oval depression, which would be inconsistent with the idea of an established funerary process with rites that involved tools being given to the dead. Of all the other fragments, none seem to exhibit having undergone much care.
Third, and finally, we need to consider the stone tool, the hashmarks, and what looked like the remains of a cooking fire. None of the three have been dated to place them at the time the naledi were actively living around the cave system, nor do we have other signs of naledi tools, art, or fires. Sure, what we currently know about them is what we found in one cave and there could well be art, tools, and cooking pits waiting for us to uncover. But until we do, we can’t simply assume that they’re not from other hominid species, or even our direct ancestors using the cave. After all, our species is 300,000 years old. We would have overlapped with the naledi’s chronology.
why the search for our origins will never end
After a critical review, all we have are a lot of big claims but very little proof. In a way, it seems almost reasonable for the researchers to get carried away as much as they did. Homo naledi were, after all, quite similar to us in many ways, and it’s tempting to see a few signs of what could be interpreted as typical human activities and start spinning a mental yarn about the burials and funerals of our evolutionary cousins. As one of the researchers says in the documentary “they were like us, but not quite,” and you could see his brain starring to churn to figure out just how like us they may have been, trying to fit as many pieces as possible to tell the story he thought the cave told him.
This is what we do. We ask questions and tell stories. That’s true even in science, with the only difference that we have to keep retelling and editing the story until we’re sure that we can give someone all the same evidence and methods, and they can come up with the same story. In this case, the researchers knew that other hominids buried the dead. We have proof of Neanderthals and Denisovans burying their dead with stone tools, having wakes, and carving markings and art into walls. Why couldn’t the naledi? It’s possible that they did as well, and there’s ironclad evidence waiting for us in other caves but we just haven’t found it yet. And maybe we never will.
Unfortunately, the story of our origins will always have gaps in it because the universe doesn’t preserve evidence for us to discover everything that’s ever happened. This is why it’s so tempting to stretch what we have uncovered to explain just a little bit more, and why the focus is on funerary rites. Refusing to leave a dead fellow human to the elements, scavengers, and decay is to do them one final kindness without expecting anything in return. That level of empathy is a sign of high intelligence. Of culture. Of a belief in something bigger than oneself. Of humanity. When we treat each other with dignity and respect, we are practicing what makes us, us.
so, what is a human anyway?
But is that all that it takes to be human? We don’t know, which is why we keep looking, keep digging, and keep asking, even if we’ll never have the complete answer. Because this is also a part of what makes us who we are. We aren’t satisfied not knowing who we are or where we came from, with simply accepting what the universe throws at us. We may have forgotten it over the last few generations, but we are natural scientists, explorers, engineers, and artists, just like our ancestors who started out hunting in the savannas of the Mediterranean, and ended up expanding to every corner of the world while inventing electricity, spaceflight, and genetic engineering.
And we’ll keep asking questions, looking for answers, and telling stories about where it all began. We already know it began in a cave, over a fire where we cooked meats and flatbreads, told each other stories about the hunt, oddities we’ve seen or heard, and made up wild theories about things that would end up becoming our gods and demons to chiefs and shamans who became our kings and priests. It was a past we sometimes want to escape to, but also know that we can never stay because the call of ever newer frontiers will pull us forward, no matter if some of us decide they want to turn back. Why? Because humans always answer the call of the unknown.