The study of the underground landscape enters a new phase with evidence of charcoal and burned animal bone in deep chambers.
7 DEC 2022 — 6 MIN READ
This week my colleague Lee Berger gave a Carnegie Science lecture on the future of exploration. He recounted some of the outcomes of our team's fieldwork in the Rising Star cave system this year, including his own perilous journey into the Dinaledi subsystem of the cave. There are some exciting finds from this fieldwork that the team is still working on. One thing that Lee was able to share is that we now have abundant evidence of ancient fires within deep chambers of the cave system where we also have evidence of Homo naledi bones.
The team identified charcoal, burned bone, or other evidence of fire in at least four chambers, widespread from each other in deep parts of the system. Some of this evidence is from excavations led by Dr. Keneiloe Molopyane in the Dragon's Back Chamber, including concentrations of well-preserved charcoal, ash, and discolored clay that appear to be small hearths. The excavations also turned up many fragments of animal bone. The Dragon's Back Chamber is immediately adjacent to the Dinaledi subsystem of the cave, and these excavations are into sediment at a similar depth as the situation of H. naledi fossil material in Dinaledi.
In addition to Dragon's Back, in two other deep chambers our exploration has encountered concentrations of charcoal. Both of these situations are areas where our team has not previously focused any investigations, and one of the chambers has burned animal bone on the cave floor with charcoal.
Besides the charcoal evidence, Lee identified surfaces with discoloration consistent with soot. Some of this evidence occurs within the Dinaledi Chamber above skeletal remains of
Homo naledi.
More:
https://johnhawks.net/weblog/ancient-fire-use-rising-star/
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