The skull of a small child belonging to the Homo naledi human species was found from the Rising Star cave in South Africa in 2015. The team that made the discovery has named the child Leti after the Setswana word “letimela”, meaning “the lost one”.
- Now an international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, has revealed the first partial skull of a Homo naledi child.
- Leti’s skull was found in a narrow fissure that is almost impossible to access. For that reason, the research team argues that the skull was placed there deliberately, as a form of funerary practice.
- The researchers said it is evidence that hominins have been performing funerary rights for hundreds of thousands of years – even hominins with brains much smaller than ours.
- The researchers have also revealed that remains are only about 250,000 years old, meaning H. naledi existed at the same time as our species and other big-brained hominins like the Neanderthals – yet they retained features from species that lived millions of years earlier.
GS TIMES IAS PRELIMS 2022 CURRENT AFFAIRS BASICS DAILY ONLINE TEST SERIES: HINDI AND ENGLISH
CLICK HERE DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS QUIZ FOR STATE CIVIL SERVICES
