The "Cradle of Humankind" is a site that has produced a large number of hominin fossils, located about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa.
Part of it are the Malmani Dolomites and, in the Bloubank river valley, the Rising Star Cave.
[The Rising Star Cave, photographed by Robert Clark]
For my post I will focus on one of the chambers of this cave system, the one called Dinaledi chamber, meaning "chamber of stars" in the Sotho language.
80 meters from the entrance and 30 meters below surface, gaining access to it means squeezing in tiny passages and a 12 meters fall.
There, a large number of hominin remains were found (dating around 250.000 years ago), some on the surface, some during an excavation, has well as remains of birds and rodents.
The positioning of the bones and the lack of remains of any animals other than birds and rodents, paired with the absence of signs of the bones being transported by water and proof of the bodies being there soon before death, is evidence of a possible burial site.
There never was a passage to get to the chamber directly from surface so it being a place where the homini fell is not an option.
The distinct lack of remains of animals from the same period and of surface modifications by vertebrates suggests that they could not reach the chamber.
For comparison, another example of a considerable number of hominin remains from almost the same era is from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, but there is definitive proof of it not being a burial site.
There are remains of carnivorous animals, evidence of the bones being moved by water, bone breakage explainable both by falls and by animals feeding on them.
The most common hypothesis for the Dinaledi chamber is that the bodies of the dead had been carried there or dropped into the chamber from the entrance, making it one of the earliest (if not the earliest) examples of deliberate disposal of the dead.
I think it's particularly fascinating and important in our spiritual path to spend time researching and reading about death and the disposal of the dead, as death, remembrance, grief and mourning always had great spiritual significance.
Ritual and afterlife are a big part of spirituality and we are constantly confronted with death in our lives.
Learning to know more about it can be fascinating and eye opening.
Sadly we don't know the reasons or possible rituals behind the disposal of the dead in a dark part of a very difficult to reach cave system in the mountains of South Africa, done by the homo naledi, 250.000 years ago, but it can hopefully spark the conversation between ourselves about our innate need to create a sort of relationship with death.
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