[imagesource: Wits University]

In 2015, the Cradle of Humankind became the centre of the scientific world, with findings by the likes of Professor Lee Berger shedding new light on the history of the human race.

Berger made it onto TIME Magazine‘s 2016 list of 100 most influential people in the world for his role in the discovery of Homo naledi, and over the years the Rising Star cave system has continued to deliver remarkable findings.

Last week, Berger gave the public a glimpse inside Rising Star cave, where the first partial skull of the Homo naledi child named Letimela was found.

News24 has that video:

Here’s more via SciTechDaily:

Describing the skull and its context in two separate papers in the Open Access journal, PaleoAnthropology, the team of 21 researchers from Wits University and thirteen other universities announced the discovery of parts of the skull and teeth of the child that died almost 250,000 years ago when it was approximately four to six years old.

Image: Wits University

Almost 2000 individual fragments of more than two dozen individuals at all life stages of Homo naledi have been recovered since the Rising Star cave system was discovered in 2013.

John Hawks, a biological anthropologist, says the volume of what has been discovered makes the cave system “the richest site for fossil hominins on the continent of Africa”.

Leti is named after the Setswana word “letimela” meaning “the lost one”.

It’s hoped that the skull will reveal more about Homo naledi’s growth and development.

As Live Science points out, there’s still much about the cave system and the remains that remain a mystery:

The only way in is a 39-foot (12 meters) vertical fracture known as “The Chute,” and geologists and spelunkers have so far found no evidence of alternative entrances into the passageways….

The area is barely navigable for experienced spelunkers with modern equipment … [and] there is no evidence that animals carried the H. naledi bones into the cave — there are no gnaw marks or evidence of predation. The bones also appear to have been placed in the cave, not washed in, as they were not found mixed with sediment or other debris.

Image: Wits University

 That leaves open the possibility that more than 240,000 years ago, human ancestors with orange-size brains deliberately entered a dark, maze-like cave, perhaps through a vertical chute that narrows to 7 inches (18 cm) in places, and placed their dead inside.

We may never fully and definitively understand how these remains ended up exactly where they did.

Then again, who knows what else researchers will find in the cave system.

To finish, here’s the official announcement video from Wits University, titled ‘A child of darkness’:

[sources:scitechdaily&livescience]