At Associated Press, Melanie Lidman reports that findings at Tinshemet Cave in central Israel add to our understanding of what people living one hundred thousand years ago might have thought about “spirituality and the afterlife”:
The skeletons were discovered in pits and carefully arranged in a fetal position, which is known as a burial position, said [Yossi] Zaidner. Many were found with objects, such as basalt pebbles, animal remains or fragments of ochre, a reddish pigment made from iron-rich rocks.
These objects, some sourced from hundreds of kilometers (miles) away, had no known practical use for daily life, so experts believe they were part of rituals meant to honor the dead.
“A 100,000-year-old burial site in Israel is changing what we know about early humans,” July 24, 2025
A Group Culture Around Death
It’s not clear, based on full skeletons from the site, whether the inhabitants were Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, or a hybrid population. What’s clear is a group culture around death:
A key discovery were the remains of five early humans, including two full skeletons and three isolated skulls with other bones and teeth. Also of note were more than 500 differently sized fragments of red and orange ochre, a pigment created by heating iron-rich stones to a certain temperature — evidence that early humans had the means to create decorative objects.
“Here we see a really complex set of behaviors, not related to just food and surviving,” Zaidner said.
“Changing what we know”
From the open access paper:
Viewed from the perspective of other key regional sites of this period, our findings indicate consolidation of a uniform behavioural set in the Levantine mid-MP, consisting of similar lithic technology, an increased reliance on large-game hunting and a range of socially elaborated behaviours, comprising intentional human burial and the use of ochre in burial contexts. We suggest that the development of this behavioural uniformity is due to intensified inter-population interactions and admixture between Homo groups ~130–80 ka.
Zaidner, Y., Prévost, M., Shahack-Gross, R. et al. Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioural uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000–80,000 years ago. Nat Hum Behav 9, 886–901 (2025).
Contrary to stereotype, the Neanderthals don’t seem less developed than the others.
Controversy Over Much Older Burials
But some claim Homo naledi have been burying their dead from 335,000 to 245,000 years ago. On Wednesday, Colin Barras noted in New Scientist that the controversy over whether Naledi buried their dead — once a topic of attempted censorship — has broken out again:
Some people will tell you that Homo naledi was a small-brained hominin with some big thoughts. Two years ago, a team led by Lee Berger at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, concluded that H. naledi — a species that lived around 335,000 to 245,000 years ago and had a brain about one-third the size of yours — invented a complex ritual that involved burying its dead in a deep and difficult-to-access cave chamber.
This idea didn’t go down well: all four of the anonymous researchers asked to assess its merit were sceptical. But Berger and his colleagues were undeterred. Earlier this year, they published an updated version of their study, offering a deeper dive into the evidence they had gathered from the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The approach paid off: two of the original reviewers agreed to reassess the science — and one was won over. “You rarely see that in peer review,” says John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a member of Berger’s team.
Many other researchers, however, are still wary. “I’m just not convinced by any of it,” says Paul Pettitt at Durham University, UK. To appreciate why, it is necessary to explore how other ancient hominins interacted with the dead. Doing so can help us figure out which species carried out burials, how ancient the practice is and what it says about the minds and motivations of those doing it. Considering this also reveals why, if H. naledi really did bury its dead, that would fundamentally challenge our understanding of early hominin cognition and behaviour.
“What were ancient humans thinking when they began to bury their dead?, July 23, 2025
A Tiny Brain
Barras acknowledges that the main source of controversy over whether the Naledi site is a burial ground is Naledi’s tiny brain:
The biggest stumbling block is the size of H. naledi’s brain, which, at an average of 513 cubic centimetres, was tiny. For a start, it raises doubts about whether individuals really were aware of their own mortality, inventing elaborate funerary rituals to come to terms with this revelation. There is also no evidence yet that the species cared for its sick, a potential sign that group members were valued as individuals whose deaths were mourned. And although youngsters are overrepresented in the Rising Star cave – potentially consistent with Pettitt’s “bad death” idea – the chamber in which the bones were found doesn’t seem to be an easy-to-visit location that would allow the living to maintain a connection with the dead. “It’s quite anomalous, but also fascinating,” says [Mary] Stiner.
“Bury their dead?”
Curiously, in The Immortal Mind (Worthy, June 3, 2025), neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and I recount many cases of people with very deficient brains having normal lives. With Homo naledi –— as with Neanderthal man — a little less certainty about inferiority might come in handy one day.
Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.