Scholars argue that the practice of ceremonially burying the dead occurred after Homo sapiens left Africa northward and began interacting with Neanderthals in Asia and Europe. Barzilai adds that once Neanderthals disappeared from the Levant around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens burials disappear too – as if they no longer need to set boundaries or claim territories once their competition is gone.

However, most of our knowledge about archaic humans in Africa comes from very few sites, Barker warns: there could be many more yet to be discovered. In 2023, for example, researchers have suggested that an older human relative called Homo naledi may have used a South African cave as a cemetery about 100,000 years before most human and Neanderthal burials. But who finds has sparked its own controversy.

“You have to be careful when plotting trends from two or three points on a continental map,” Barker says of Been and Barzilai’s new study, adding that the number of overlapping sites between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are relatively few in number.

The circumstances of the death could also skew the results. Most nomadic hominids from this period would likely have disappeared into the landscape, with only a few dying in caves. “So what we find are these tiny episodes,” says Barker.

While it is tempting to view knowledge as a kind of progression, it is also possible that, given the vast time scales, these practices were not truly continuous, Barker explains: “Knowledge appears to have been acquired and lost, and acquired and lost. »