But the existence of culture in the hominins that preceded (and sometimes overlapped with) us isn’t really such an extraordinary claim anymore. That’s partly thanks to the evidence from other species like Neanderthals and partly thanks to other evidence at Rising Star that suggest that Homo naledi used fire, something that our species and Neanderthals were also doing by this point in prehistory. They even left behind engravings on the rock, which Berger, Hawks, and their colleagues described in a 2023 paper.
Those engravings in Rising Star stayed on Berger’s mind for months afterward. “Those symbols weren’t meant for us. Whatever they’re meant for, it certainly wasn’t for a Homo sapiens,” he says. “They were meant either for them to come back to, their descendants to come back to, or some other purpose, but they weren’t meant for us.”
Moments after discovery, Lee Berger holds a photographic scale next to a crosshatched engraving in the passage between the Hill Antechamber burial chamber and the Dinaledi Burial Chamber known as Panel A.
Credit:
Mathabela Tsikoane/National Geographic
Making first contact
“This is our first contact with a—and I think it’s important to repeat this—a non-human species. Their brains are not human brains,” says Berger. And he’s deeply concerned about how humanity navigates that first contact.
Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically, anatomically, and cognitively very much like us. So much so that some anthropologists argue that we shouldn’t consider them separate species at all. And no other hominin species, meaning none of the Australopithecines and not even Homo erectus, have presented us with such clear evidence that they tended to their dead and etched art or symbols on the cave walls nearby. In other words, Homo naledi might have thought and felt in ways that we have to recognize as on a level with our own cognition.
Homo naledi’s protein results, with their grave implications (not sorry), prompted Berger and his team to pause their excavations in the cave system, although analysis in the lab continues. He hopes the protein study will prompt anthropologists and Homo sapiens in general to seriously think about the ethics of digging up the graves of an intelligent and cultured but non-human species.
“It certainly will mean we have to stop digging hominins like dinosaurs,” Berger says. “I think that we have the responsibility to be respectful, but we also have a responsibility to also be real. This is more like a Star Trek episode, you know? I know what we do if it’s a human culture, but it isn’t one.” The first step, he points out, is understanding more about Homo naledi and their culture, which will require more excavation and more lab work.
Cell, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.05.044 (About DOIs).
