For Those Of Us Who Don't Think Sasquatch Is Genus Homo...

[Guest DWA]

I'm thinking, if this was a deliberate removal/placement of corpses in the cave, it would probably start as just a basic survival instinct, yes. Keeping predators out of the are would be the impetus.

 

This is the very sort of thing that can be driven by genetics:  an individual's wiring helps it "come up with this idea" which turns out to have significant survival value.

 

So far, there is no evidence of any grave goods. This would seem a basic requirement if  this internment was a spiritual practice.  I'll be anxious to see if any such turns up.

 

Well, if you're "small-brained" as H.naledi seems to be, you might not see grave goods because whatever genetic tweak made "sentiment" and symbolism or  tool use coincide hadn't happened yet.

 

A larger point that could be made on the topic of a lack of BF remains. The idea that a putative BF is "clever" enough to hide its dead from prying H.sapiens has always seemed implausible to me. The idea of it being just a survival adaptation that is now hard-wired is much more plausible. If the BF evolved alongside mega-fauna like cave bears and saber-toothed cats, it would have been a smart move.  (Of course, if you co-exist with cave bears, you'll want to be very careful in which cave you go to stash your dead!)

 

I'd always considered that the likely motivation for sasquatch would be saving erstwhile buddies to eat on a rainy day.  Many animals - mountain lions to insects - bury carcasses for that reason.  But the "antiseptic" or anti-predator motivation is worth considering...although the apparent solitary and nomadic nature of sasquatch might make these not as likely, to me.

 

 

O.K., here's another theory. The cave site was actually a predator's larder. Chilled to 58 degrees for later enjoyment? 

Well, much would depend on how difficult that larder was to get into and out of.  Dating not apparently being such an easy thing to figure out yet, we don't know how old this is.  But if it was then anything near as hard to get in or out of as now, I'd consider that unlikely.  Then there's this, from one article I've read and a person presumably having seen a lot more of this than me:  If all one can find at a site is one kind of thing...humans did it.  A predator larder will frequently have more than one prey species; predator dung; maybe scavenger evidence; etc.  And as Berger said:  these are the healthiest dead individuals one is likely to find.  No evidence of predator munching crunching or manipulation has yet been reported.

 

The fact that different age classes were found together may suggest a catastrophic one off event rather than mass burial.

 

I might then expect to find something other than the bodies, e.g., some evidence of material culture...or of the catastrophe itself, e.g., dramatic trauma injuries to bone, fallen rock, etc.  This appears to have been a pretty stable environment ...although something like an underground outgassing of toxic fumes can't, I suppose, be ruled out.

 

Was this cave a cave when the corpses were originally placed there? I would think that some kind of geologic shifting/changing has taken place during the thousands of years they have lain there.

This is the problematic question that might be easier to answer when the site is dated.  But caves tend to be very very stable landforms.  That's why those cool formations one finds in them happen.

Edited September 15, 2015 by DWA

[WSA]

"Food" for thought indeed, Dmaker....

 

Assuming (a big assumption) the configuration of the cave remained relatively unchanged in the estimated one million or so years since the individuals died, you can't overlook the comparisons one could draw between the womb/birth canal and the characteristics of this cave. Maybe too obvious, but we monkeys are not too subtle, as a habit.

[norseman]

I don't know Norseman, I wouldn't think you'd ever want to avoid bivvying next to a bunch of festering corpses. Disposing of your dead certainly doesn't increase your chances of a predator or scavenger coming around, and most likely reduces those.  This presumes of course the troupe IS a sedentary one, and not one of nomadic hunter/gatherer/scavengers. 

 

There may also be a basic adaptation/understanding at work to just avoid pestilence. This is thought to be the evolutionary basis for our own "gag" reflex on smelling putrefied substances.  

 

It does make me wonder though why the easiest and best method wouldn't be to just trot grandma down to the nearest river and give her a Viking funeral of sorts. 

O.K., here's another theory. The cave site was actually a predator's larder. Chilled to 58 degrees for later enjoyment? 

 

They are butchering animals at camp, no refrigeration, they are going to the bathroom in the open, females are ovulating without modern supplies, offspring are being  born......plenty of scent there for a predator to come calling. A couple of rotting family members isn't going to add much.

[WSA]

You might be right about that, if they are staying put for any period of time. Early N. American observers of Indians believed they moved camp periodically not only because game became scarce, but also because the stench became overpowering!

[JDL]

Burying the dead probably originated for two reasons. 

 

1.  Most species are repelled by the stench of their own dead unless driven to the point of cannibalism.

 

2.  Leaving your own dead around to be consumed by scavenging predators could condition those predators to hang around.

 

Of course, more than a few predators are known to bury uneaten portions of kills.  Knowing where Aunt Ug's carcass is when food gets scarce might be handy.

[Guest DWA]

I pick unnumbered alternative after 2.  Of course, I might not toss Future Food down a ditch I'll need jumars and ropes and helmets to access.

 

They're gonna need to keep looking and looking and thinking and thinking about this.  Should be very interesting.

[WSA]

As for probable cause of death (I'm going to guess Professor Plum, in the cave with a...)

 

My money is on collective death by misadventure. Mere speculation, but I would wonder if a CO2 or methane sink didn't do-in our subjects here. Not sure that is testable in fossilized remains either.

 

Perhaps a savannah burn that cornered them all in there without oxygen even? Maybe.  

 

Obviously it was something lethal that left no obvious physical trauma to the skeletons, and didn't happen where their bones could have been gnawed on by scavengers. (Where is THAT ever likely to happen above ground in Africa, I'm thinking)

 

A pathogen that felled them all where they were, inside the cave? That seems unlikely.

[SWWASAS]

Burial in soil unless it is sand pretty much requires tools. Before mankind became agrarian and tilled soil, digging tools were not needed or made so cave burial, cremation to ash, or rocky cairns, would have been internment choices and that is observed in archeological finds. If BF does not use or have fire, carry or make tools, then the only likely way for them to intern dead is special caves or rock cairns to prevent scavengers from tearing their dead apart. Forest soil is a mass of root systems and digging without good tools is very difficult. I have seen artificial looking rock stacks on boulder fields. One seemed to,have a delicately balanced rock stack that looked like a bird at the head of the rectangular 4 x 12 foot cairn. Interestingly if a grave the feet were on the East side and the bird looking thing was on the West as does some human cultures. BF are often sighted in and around old rock quarries. Is that because that is a handy place to get burial rocks all in one place? And after internment do they return to pay respects and care for the location? One abandoned rock quarry i have investigated has a rectangular pile nearby. The rocks that comprise the quarry rocks are grey basalt. The pile is a red rock not found close by. Why would that be there?

So I would think that if BF inture their dead caves, lava tubes, or rock cairns would be the likely places.

Edited September 15, 2015 by SWWASASQUATCHPROJECT

[JDL]

Actually I think the cave did flood while they were sheltering in the mouth of it.  Looking at the cross-section, it is plausible that they got washed down into the first vault, then floated up and spilled over into the second vault.  If they were simply dropped in, they would have been at the base of the drop, but the clustered fossils were actually further back.

[Drew]

I can think of Hyenas being a good enough reason to hide your dead people.  And vultures.  Lions are actually one of the most prolific scavengers.  Preferring to dine on something that something else killed, rather than kill it themselves.

[WSA]

I've been looking forward to the latest edition of N.G., and it arrived this week, with the cover story about H. naledi's discovery. It fleshes out the story of the discovery a little more, and has some additional photos of the cave and crew, but not a whole lot more than what was in the press packet.  What is clear is how up in the air the timeline is.  The discovery team though doesn't see a downside to whatever date is attached to it. Whether they are 1.5 million or 24 thousand years old, the critter is something we're going to have to assimilate into the current model. 

 

What is also interesting is the resistance in the larger scientific community to the evidence that these hominids deliberately interred their dead. Dr. Leakey has stated there must be a another entrance to the cave, they just haven't found it yet...the implication being the remains were deposited there by natural processes and not deliberately. The absence of any other plant and animal matter, evidence of predation, or any alluvial deposits, seems to not matter in the face of the belief early hominids just didn't do things like deliberately remove their dead. THAT idea is significant to anyone who wants to argue BF couldn't, or don't, dispose of their kind in places hard to detect. Here's one hominid in our family tree that apparently did. What's so hard to accept about that?   

[Guest DWA]

^^^Answer:  the very same thing that has people yelling that sasquatch are human despite compelling evidence to the contrary:  a belief that Only Humans.

 

Only Humans nothing.  One Only Humans thing after another has been shot down in recent decades (including the belief that we "mate for life" ...something that by nature we most decidedly do not).  We are like other primates.  One would expect that the more we find out about other primates, and other animals in general, the less Only Humans we will have. 

 

Denial is one of the biggest research tools in the sciences.  The overwhelming evidence is that the bones got there by deliberate action of the kind we associate with humans.  (I think it was a major driver in the Homo decision, personally; everything else pretty much says "australopithecine" to me).  As someone put it:  if there is only one kind of thing there...humans did it.  But again...something else might, too; we just haven't found, and named, something other than Homo yet that does.  One should keep an open mind.  But that mind should be changed only by evidence; and there is a paucity of that going on right now.

 

It was a very scientific stroke to go ahead with the announcement without a date.  Berger is right:  whenever this lived it is a major find.  The dating hooraw maintains the outmoded insistence on pegging something's position in "the human lineage," which actually probably looks a whole lot more like a pot of spaghetti than like a tree with branches, and here is major proof of that.  What gets me, more than anything else, is how *puzzled* scientists are.  Everything I read:  what?  You weren't expecting this...?

[SWWASAS]

I came into BF research thinking that BF probably was just a tribe of some kind of  large different humans because Native Americans consider them that.    But Native Americans (I dislike that term because it is hardly accurate) had no large apes to use as a frame of reference so were hardly in the position to make that sort of judgment.         But several encounters later, I  no longer think that about BF.    I don't know what they are but there behaviors certainly are closer to large ape behaviors than they are to human.       Vocalizations,   chest slapping,   hitting things with sticks,   lack of physical constructed tools,   and the extraordinary reclusive nature seem more indicative of gorillas and large apes than humans.      Humans throughout their history have been very territorial.     Wander into someone else's territory and you can expect to be confronted or attacked.     BF reclusiveness is just the opposite and not at all like human behavior encountering others of the same species.    Just that fact is enough for me to think them not some sort of human variant.    

[WSA]

I'm thinking if I saw a H. naledi, I wouldn't know what I was seeing...ape, human, or some of both. Maybe our labels don't matter at all, and might be a hindrance to understanding BF too.

[Guest DWA]

What I like to say to the people who harp on the fossil record is, it's got a lot of potential antecedents, a lot of animals that if you saw one tomorrow you'd say you saw a sasquatch.

 

In fact, contrary to what deniers think about this specifically, there has never been an animal the existence of which the fossil record has telegraphed *more* than this one prior to final confirmation by the society.

Edited October 4, 2015 by DWA