What really makes us human?

“The creation of a new human species is always controversial…”

Lee Berger

Practicing surgery often takes you to the extremes of human experience, the edges of humanity. It raises the issue of what actually makes us human in the first place. Is it social interaction? Use of tools? Manipulation of fire? What about burying your dead with reference to an afterlife? There is an amazing Netflix documentary, Cave of Bones, which addresses this question. It deals with 2013 discoveries in the Rising Star Cave, located in South Africa. A new hominid species has been identified via a major collection of bones deep in this underground cave. Homo naledi lived contemporaneously with early Homo sapiens. They walked upright, lived in family groups, used tools and used fire, despite their remarkably small cranial capacity. None of this is controversial. This is a new species. However, the suggestion that there is evidence that they buried their dead in this cave is a stretch too far for many in the scientific community. It would mean the Naledi developed mortuary practices hundreds of thousands of years before Sapiens, potentially becoming the first humans. #worthalook #letsmakelemonade