Louisiana State University: A Child Of Darkness

Press release from Louisiana State University:

November 04, 2021

The team of 21 researchers from the University of Witwatersrand, or Wits University,
including Brophy, who is also an honorary research affiliate there, announced the
discovery of parts of the skull and teeth of the child who died nearly 250,000 years
ago at about four to six years of age. 

“This is the first partial skull of a child of Homo naledi yet recovered and this begins to give us insight into all stages of life of this
remarkable species,” said Brophy, who led the study on the skull and dentition.

The child was found in an extremely remote passage of the Rising Star Cave System,
some 39 feet beyond the Dinaledi Chamber, the original site of discovery of the first
Homo naledi remains that were revealed to the world in 2015.  

“Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever discovered,” said
Professor Lee Berger, project leader and director of the Centre for Exploration of
the Deep Human Journey at Wits University and an Explorer at Large for the National
Geographic Society. “It is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously
we thought only modern humans were in Africa. Its very presence at that time and in
this place complexifies our understanding of who did what first concerning the invention
of complex stone tool cultures and even ritual practices.”

Nearly 2,000 individual fragments of more than two dozen individuals at all life stages
of Homo naledi have been recovered since the Rising Star cave system was discovered in 2013.

“This makes this the richest site for fossil hominins on the continent of Africa and
makes naledi one of the best-known ancient hominin species ever discovered,” said
John Hawks, a biological anthropologist and lead author of a previous study on the
fossil skeleton of a male naledi nicknamed “Neo” that was also found at the Rising
Star cave.

The skull of the child presented in the current study was recovered during further
work in the cramped spaces of the cave in 2017. The child’s skull was found alone,
and no remains of its body have been recovered. The team have named the child “Leti”
(pronounced Let-e) after the Setswana word “letimela” meaning “the lost one.” Leti’s
skull consists of 28 skull fragments and six teeth and when reconstructed shows the
frontal orbits, and top of the skull with some dentition. 

“All of the teeth we recovered are from the same individual. We can tell this individual
is a child because we recovered both deciduous, or baby, teeth as well as some permanent
teeth. In addition, the cranial fragments are similar to a child’s in that they have
not fused together yet like an adult. We now have a total number of five young juveniles
in the Rising Star cave system which is a lot to have of one species in the hominin
record,” Brophy said.

It has yet to be established how old Leti’s remains are. However, other fossils of
Homo naledi were found in the nearby Dinaledi Chamber and dated between 335,000 to 241,000 years
ago. 

Leti’s remains were discovered in a tight passage that measures only 5 inches wide
and 31 inches long located just beyond an area named the “Chaos Chamber.” 

Marina Elliott, one of the original “Underground Astronauts” in the first Rising Star
expedition that first uncovered Homo naledi and the leader of the excavation team that recovered Leti described the challenge
of excavating Leti as “very difficult.” 

“This was one of the more challenging sites with hominin fossils we have had to get
to in the Rising Star system,” Elliott said.

With no signs of carnivore damage or damage made by scavenging, and no evidence of
the skull having been washed into the narrow passage, the team does not know how Leti’s
skull came to rest, alone, in such a remote and inaccessible part of the system. The
authors hypothesize that it is likely other members of its species were involved in
the skull reaching such a difficult place.  

“The discovery of a single skull of a child, in such a remote location within the
cave system adds mystery as to how these many remains came to be in these remote,
dark spaces of the Rising Star Cave system,” Berger said. “It is just another riddle
among many that surround this fascinating extinct human relative.”

This press release was produced by Louisiana State University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.