Friday, March 9, 2018

Anthropology Blog- Why the Rising Star Cave

The remains of the homo-naledi have always been there. If that is the case why are we just now finding these remains? What were the remains doing in the Rising Star cave in the first place? My favorite part of exploring scientific discoveries is that at first usually no one can agree on what has happened, everyone has a different theory about what happened and while science is all about making guesses it still feels good to get it right on the first try. When the first remains were found one of the first questions was what were they doing in a cave. At first it was plausible that maybe they lived there or were stuck. Neither of those hypotheses fit because who could possibly squish into that small of an area on their own and the choose to stay there all condensed, that theory quickly was tossed out which is when the theory of being stuck came into play. The h.naledi could have fell in and became stuck, was unable to free themselves and died from starvation and the harsh elements. This theory work for quite a while that is until two years later when more remains were found on another side of the rising star cave. That many people could not have all fallen in at the same time and all been stuck, it could have happened but it was completely unreasonable. More theories arose maybe the h.naledi were already dead and the was a flood or natural disaster that pushed all of their remains into those cave openings, no evidence of that. There is still no consensus as to why the remains were in that cave but a general belief is that the Rising Star cave could have been where dead bodies were put. The cave had small openings, open enough to dispose of a body and hopefully not have to deal with it again.

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