Child of darkness: Homo naledi child and Leti brought to light
MEET Leti, an about 4-to-6-year-old Homo naledi child that died almost 250 000 years ago, whose partial skull was discovered in the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.
An international team of researchers, led by director of the Centre for Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at Wits University and Explorer at Large for the National Geographic Society, Professor Lee Berger, made an announcement yesterday of the discovery of Leti, the skull and teeth of the child.
Leti is named after the Setswana word “letimela” – meaning “the lost one” – and the remains were discovered in September 2017.
Berger explained that the scientists and explorers continued exploring the Rising Star cave system by the Dinaledi chamber, the original site of discovery of the first Homo naledi remains that were revealed to the world in 2015, and beyond it into tight spaces that were only about 10 to 20cm wide.
“In that space, they found on this tiny little ledge, sitting 80cm above the cave floor, in a passageway that is about 15cm wide, on a small shelf of forming limestone, they found small fragments. What it clearly was, was a part of a skull and some teeth,” the researcher said.
In this deep, dark and remote passage, the scientists and explorers discovered the skull of a Homo naledi child who was around 4 to 6 years old.
“It is the rarest of the type of early hominid fossil we’ve found, a fossil of a child. Child bones are delicate, fragile and don’t preserve. If adult hominids are the rarest sought-after objects on the planet, the fossils of children are even rarer than that,” Berger said.
The child’s skull was discovered alone and Berger said there were no other parts of the body and no signs of scavenging or signs that it was moved by strong forces of water.
“This leaves us with one of the greatest mysteries: Is this the continuation of the behaviour that we have seen and hypothesised for Homo naledi?
“We can see no other reason for this small child’s skull, being in the extraordinarily difficult-to-reach and dangerous position, that it got there without the assistance of another member of its species. It was like it was potentially placed there,” he said.
The Centre for Exploration team published research yesterday, in two papers in the Open Access journal Paleo-Anthropology on the anatomy of the little Leti skull. The research looks into the growth, development and understanding of how Homo naledi grew, with the rare fossils of children.
The first paper, of which Professor Juliet Brophy of Wits and Louisiana State University is lead author, describes the skull, while the second paper, of which Dr Marina Elliott is the lead author, describes the context of the area and circumstances in which the skull was discovered.
“It leaves us with a mystery of why little Leti was left in this deep, dark place. Hopefully as we continue to explore, we may reach a point where we can confidently say that we have found a non-human species of an ancient human relative that practises ritualised mortuary practices in the deep aspects of the Rising Star Cave,” Berger said.