New species of human may have shared our caves – and beds
As fire light flickered on the back of the cave, a group of people
ate deer, porcupine and otter. Then a man solemnly took a large bone
off the fire, broke it in half and sucked the bone marrow out. He then
carefully painted the broken bone with red clay and buried it in the
cave.
He observed this ritual because this bone belonged to another
human species. One they shared not only the forest with, but also their
beds.
This is the remarkable – though so far tentative – picture emerging
from controversial discoveries from two caves in south-west China. If
true, some think it could overturn our understanding of what it means to
be human.
Among the discoveries appears to be a primitive human species, which most closely resembles the earliest human species, Homo habilis and Homo erectus.
But while these lived about 2 million years ago, this new species
lived just 14,000 years ago, says Darren Curnoe of the University of New
South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who lead the team behind the
discoveries. This would make it the most recent human species to have
gone extinct.
“If true, this would be rather spectacular and it would make the finds of truly global importance,” says Michael Petraglia at the University of Oxford, who wasn’t involved in the discoveries.
The work is excellent, he says, but is likely to leave many in the field unconvinced.
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