Every Homo naledi we know of is female, and the implications are fascinating
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/every-homo-naledi-we-know-of-is-female-and-the-implications-are-fascinating/Open linkView original on slrpnk.nethttps://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/every-homo-naledi-we-know-of-is-female-and-the-implications-are-fascinating/Open linkView original on slrpnk.net
Very interesting article. And I agree with the authors conclusion: a collection of just female corpses is not random. So grave site it is. And the final question is something I hadn't considered yet: how do we treat a non-human cultures remains? Scientifically its important to analyse it, but I understand that at a certain point it becomes grave robbery.
I mean...
They're more likely to be hybrids instead of a real species. They have dental traces of both near sapian cousins and only found in waaaaaay more ancestral cousins.
With hybrids it's actually kind of common for males to abort before birth. Something about the mothers immune reaction to the y chromosome or something, I'm going off memory.
But it could also explain why that group of hybrids lived alone.
A hypothetical reason for why human/neanderthal hybrids tended to be born to human mothers, was neanderthals developed faster. So to a neanderthal mother, a hybrid appeared to have developmental delays mentally while also being a weakling and never lived to reach its intellectual peak.
Meanwhile a hybrid raised among humans would develop physically faster and always be stronger, but also develop mentally faster, even if not peaking as high.
It's possible that Naledi may have only been capable of reproducing females from one or both origin species. Or even been a neutral (possibly sterile) group between the two origin species where hybrids (always female) were abandoned to be raised but what may have been outcasts.
Like, we honestly can't even say they're a unique species and we've been off by a lot more before.
I feel like 10,000 years is a pretty safe line...
Is there any evidence that Neanderthals were less intelligent than humans at their peak? I was under the impression that recent research has basically completely nullified the idea that Neanderthals were less intelligent, and the current belief is that they're just as intelligent as humans. Is there newer research that I'm not aware of that contrasts this line of thinking?
Why they extinct?
My understanding was that they went extinct because they needed more calories to stay alive (due to their strength) and also they stayed together in smaller groups of ~10-20 people, compared to humans' ~100 people groups.
When Neanderthals came into contact with humans, they were either absorbed into or outcompeted by human groups
That's never stopped archaeologists before for human cultures either