Left speechless by meeting our long-lost cousin, H naledi

SOMETHING phenomenal happened in South Africa this week. And it was a welcome respite from the drudgery of everyday life and the ills that plague our society.

Yes, we know that hardened criminals played their hand yet again and showed us that they have no compunction about chasing police detectives in broad daylight, pumping bullets into them and making off with their guns and important trial documents. It was horrific.

There are words to explain the viciousness of this act and the trauma it has caused.

But we must take a moment to live again and reflect on the splendour of the historic discovery of a new species of our human relatives.

The discovery of Homo naledi at the Cradle of Humankind — widely recognised as the place from which all of humankind originated — represents something entirely new to science and takes us closer to an understanding of human lineage.

The collaboration in this historic find is praiseworthy. A team of more than 50 scientists, led by renowned University of the Witwatersrand palaeoanthropologist Professor Lee Berger, plus Professor Paul Dirks, the dean of the College of Science, Technology and Engineering at James Cook University in Australia, worked for more than two years to bring these fossils to the surface and analyse them.

The chamber leading to the cave is so narrow that Berger and his team invited the tiniest scientists and cavers who would fit through the passage.

And in the end a discovery was made that puts South Africa firmly on the map.

One scientist from the UK told me that it is unusual in the science community for researchers to be so open about their work and share it so generously.

Different scientists from all over the world identified different parts of the bones to arrive at ground-breaking findings.

Homo naledi— naledi means star in Sotho and Tswana — is a blend of primitive and human, reflecting some human-like features, yet with its own distinct ones.

Its teeth, jaw, feet and upright posture place it in the human genus Homo. Researchers say the feet are “virtually indistinguishable from those of modern humans”.

Yet Homo naledi has hands that suggest tool-using capabilities. The fingers are curved and this indicates that these ancestors could grip hard surfaces and possibly climb.

What has bowled the world over is the remarkable realisation that this species may have practised a form of behaviour previously thought to be unique to humans.

They buried their dead and so the remains were found alone, packed neatly, from infants to elderly individuals, in a chamber that had not been opened since. This is incredible. They were not massacred, they did not drown, there were no signs that they lived in that cave. But it seems it represents their last resting place and they were deliberately placed there.

The hairs on my arms stood up and I was left speechless as I looked at the well-preserved bones and wondered what other secrets the chamber held.

Not even comments made by ANC MP Dr Mathole Motshekga that these findings were an attempt to paint Africans as baboons could dim the significance of this discovery. Motshekga asserted that all that was uncovered was the bones of monkeys and that scientists must do their research.

In response, Berger reminded him that baboons and monkeys are primates and this species is not. Berger also said the fossils were not about the origins of Africans but the origins of all humans.

Whatever the debates emanating from this finding, it is clear that it is a superb achievement and a humbling realisation of the magnitude of life. If managed correctly, it will enrich our heritage and lead to more scholarly outputs.