If you found this interesting, then consider subscribing. Lots more videos on the stone age to come! I'm always trying to improve my videos and I only use academic sources. ru-vid.com/show-UCZ9jWH_8tJ-Nmaj8dSQdEYA?
One question is the time period of the disposition. Over a long time period or a short one ? Mostly at certain times ? Why so few bodies if it was a just general action for all the dead ? So many questions.
Yup very good questions. With regards to the site in Ethiopia I think they came from the same layer so presumably deposited in a small period of time. As for the sima in Spain it seems that this was going on for a much longer period of time. That's my understanding of the sites anyhow.
You'd think so. Perhaps Chimpanzee mother's are so possessive because at any moment their child might be eaten by an alpha male having a temper tantrum.
Maybe it's to stop the alpha male trying to shag her right away. I mean, who would wanna shag _that_ nasty thing? It could be hypothesised that it serves a biological function. The males generally won't try to mate with females with kids, because giving birth and raising kids takes a certain amount of time to recover from. Even in Humans, if a woman is breastfeeding, she tends to be infertile (but not always! So don't trust that as a contraceptive, kids!). But she needs time to recover from giving birth, heal, and her body chemistry to reset and be ready for reproduction again - to come into 'season'. For Humans it's about six months. So maybe she's not even really thinking about it. Maybe she doesn't even feel grief. Maybe it's just biological programming telling her to carry the dead baby around until she's in season again.
It's funny that you say that. In another account of death amongst chimpanzees I read, the males basically reacted in a sex frenzy. For some reason, every male in this group mated with one specific female, like 14 males all in all. This female was not the mother of the dead baby but nonetheless, interesting response to death lol.
The cause of death could have a strong effect on how bodies were disposed of. Maybe they ate their dead opponents but handled their own dead differently?
I wonder if Bonobos have been recorded doing similar things. They have fairly recently started hunting with spears. Something Chimpanzees don't do. It reminds me of the cave in South Africa filled with Homo Naladi. Quick question,. Would those early hominids have the ability to use the plant Chimpanzee fire to light their way into the depths of that cave?
project Odysseus is the best cross channel collaboration since the band TwentyTen teamed up like 6-8 years ago. This is one of my favorite collaborations of all time =3
I've worked in Search and Rescue, that includes body recovery, after several floods. I promise you that it is perfectly natural for groups of bodies to settle together. They usually orient themselves just as these individuals found as the waters retract and the pool dries. This looks very familiar to me.
I think you may well be correct. You apply the most logical solutions to illogical problems. I saw the cave of the bones and have collected tools from early hominids since the 1980s. I do confess that I am more of a historian of the Medieval world than an anthropologist. Still, I fed my mind by sitting in on lectures from Dr. Spencer while he was at UT and shared my own pictures of myself with SAN people. I was too young and dumb to realize how hugely important they would become twenty years later with the Genome Project. I like your videos very much and if I could ask you one question, it would be this: How come we have so many images of the different kinds of hominids and scarcely any of extinct primates? What did the first Orang look like? What about the mountain gorilla? Where are their ancestors? Am I missing something?
I think that just reflects our selfish nature in a way. I'm sure there are fossils of extinct primates out there I just haven't looked into it. I'm certain it attracts less research dollars than human related projects.
@@StefanMilo Stephan, your videos are amazing. There are many other videos out there from those who mean well, but frankly talk 'over the heads' of most students. You have a wonderful gift of taking complex themes and making them relative for people watching. We need more people like you. I began my university study in Genetics in London. I wanted to study human origins and the future of cloning. But I was an American stoner kid who played baseball, liked to chase girls, and nearly aced the SAT and ACT. The culture shock and my inability to adapt nearly cost me everything. I failed Organic Chemistry. I absolutely had no idea what to do. One course I had was in Pandemics and when we got to the middle ages, my professor came alive with passion. How was I to know that the Black Death of 1348-50 would bring out so much passion for the history and culture of Europe? I survived only because I changed my course of study to Medieval History. But I never lost my love for Anthropology, both physical and cultural. I took whatever opportunity I had to travel. And although I was far more naive then, I did get to visit the SAN people and other indigenous tribes in Africa. I support Survival International - and although I am not always so convinced that their views are correct, I believe their intentions are in the right places. Here is a link to a story of humanity that I wrote, and is continuing to grow and evolve with every new discovery. Like you, my love of human origins compliments the other areas of my background. This is still waiting to be edited for publication, so if there is a grammatical or syntax error within, forgive me! www.robertbluestein.com/single-post/2017/02/10/First-Contact---Neanderthals-Meet-Homo-Sapiens-Part-III
In addition to Stefan's explanation, anything that goes on in a tropical forest is less likely to leave fossils which probably makes researching orangutan evolution challenging
I’ve asked that question about many different supposedly ancient species? You will always hear one animal evolved from this ancient animal? Ok so where are the different variations in between? You see pictures of what a manatee for example evolved from? We know what they look like now? What were they at the halfway point? The experts may be correct? I believe in evolution but I have questions? Lol!
when humans draw lines and then start shouting at each other, it is very reminiscent of two opposing troops of chimps are hooting and screaming at each other xD
I'm no fan of the flash flood theory either to be honest. A flood so powerful it can wipe out whole groups of animals but leaves them intact nice and neatly next to each other. I'm not convinced.
If the flies were so bothersome to the chimpanzees that they would continue to swat them away would it be safe to say the act of burial of the dead in a more advanced early primate hint at some empathy for the deceased to keep the pests off their friend?
You're Uni experience studying history sounds similar to mine. 11 years later and a Masters degree down Im training yo be a History/Humanities teacher in Secondary. Keep up the good work dude, I've been recommending your videos to students across all Humanities subjects (yesterday your Shanidar I case to someone in an R.E lesson on eutenasia when talking about care and compassion
"I don't know who will find this video interesting but I certainly do" I think this is the key to great youtube channels like this. Just cracking on with whatever you find interesting in the hope that others out there will also be into it. I've only recently found this channel but I'm mega into it.
Your thuroughly rational presentation considering multiple possibilities without leaning bias is scientific and easy to listen to. Leading the topic with the chimpanzee behavioral model is so appropriate. Thank for your good work.
Yeah, nothing against the video, but I didnt want to know any of this. Now I'm just creeped out by our cousins haha But for real Stefan, great video. Your subjects are always unique and interesting, although I can start seeing a type ;)
Interesting, I haven't before no. I just looked it up though, that would make a great video topic. Thanks for watching my humble little vids Tecto, I always appreciate it.
This video brought some interesting thought in my mind. We discovered a lots fossil of the species's between us homo sapiens and the last common ancestors of Chimps and us. But what about the species leading to Chimps? Can the study of our own evolution ever be complete without a complementary study of Chimp evolution?
So what happened after apes spend hours with the corps? did they just leave the corpse, where it was dropped or did they perform some sort of covering the corps?
They just left it where it was. The biologists returned a couple of days later and an animal (probably the leopard) had come and eaten half of it. There was another description in the book of a young chimpanzee dying and it's mother carefully placed it into a thick bush. Did she do that deliberately to hide/cover the body? It's hard to say.
Was looking to see if someone asked *this*. Am glad Stefan saw yours @Lord Hapu, and answered. @Oliver Smith suggestion is appreciated too. Wouldn't make it sense in a dangerous environment where your own king isn't that many!?
Wouldn't it be dangerous to leave a body near the living space of the group, where it would attract predators? Could early hominins have started depositing bodies somewhere safer and eventually developed rituals around that practice?
This is absolutely fascinating. I've been watching a few of your videos on and off over the past few weeks, and I'm careful who I subscribe to, because I don't want to unsubscribe later if the rest of the channel doesn't jive (shout out to Survive the Jive) but damn, bro, every video you do is so well-constructed and easy to watch and listen to. No harsh jump cuts, no blaring sound effects, just respectful educated delivery of academic considerations in the field. You earned yourself a permanent subscriber, man. Also, the video you did about spears where you stabbed the squirrel toy, that was funny lmao. Keep this up, dude, this slow and steady thing is how you earn forever fans.
Morbid Curiosity? One could go on…. Fascination. Being riveted. Fixation? And a potental... For Ritual? For Philosophy? For the Birth of the Tragedy! And yet again the tension and the catharsis, sexual frenzy in the case of chimps. Potential for a group-ritual? Of course Natural Selection reigns supreme; also in case of the carcasses on the chimps back, and the possibility of cannibalism in case of hominids; which would not surprise me; such cases were never rare in human history right up to the last century. As long as behavioral trait is not detrimental to survival it will probably flourish if it satisfies some needs; which in our specific case may have a lot to do with the emergence of a sense of self-identity and a theory of mind.
Ants place their dead in the trash pile and there is a lot of fuss over how this is done. Regular trash is just dumped, including other dead insect parts. But dead ants are moved over and over. Also ant will groom sick or dead ants for hours to try to revive them, only giving up when there is no response for a long time.
Ants are known to carry their dead away from the nest to a designated “graveyard,” even taking time to find the right spot for the deceased. Perhaps early hominids did something similar, carefully finding a spot away from wherever they were camping to place their dead.
It's a sound logic for survivability. Many ants become infected with a cordyceps fungus, and the colony will remove them to prevent contagion. I imagine early hominids could have had a similar process.
If I remember correctly, there is a tribe that cuts the meat off the bones of their dead and bury both. I far as I remember they did dig the bones up and cleaned them 10 years afterwards before reburying them again...
@@MsHyphyone because he has a favorite hypothesis, you assume he is on drugs? I would more suspect you of mirroring, accusing another of doing what you actually do.
I wish a working scientist such as you when talking about ideas of this nature would refrain from saying "there are several theories about this...." when they are clearly hypotheses. By the way, I am a layman and even I know the difference. Interesting video(s) nonetheless.
I suspect mothers of a few mammal species will carry their dead young with them until their milk dries up. The need to nurse playing a part in the behavior.
This video probably wasn't the best to watch while cooking! Haha I mean cannibalism was in the title, Shannon!! Haha. Good job. Very interesting! Sad about them carrying the dead on their backs. We all grieve in different ways. Some people wear ashes around their necks in jewelry. So ccoouullddd be similar?
I'm sure the reasoning behind those behaviors is really similar. I don't want to ruin your tea time too much but the brothers and sisters of these dead babies often continue to play with them as well. Poor chimps!
@@StefanMilo Dia de los Muertos, during which the dead are given offerings (ofrendas), treated to their favorite foods, and invited to a party. Death is but the beginning. Et cetera.
@@StefanMilo wow, I was totally unaware of that part, about the siblings playing with the dead sibling! I knew about the mother carrying around the dead baby for extended periods, but never knew the siblings also interacted with them! That's fascinating!
I don't think it's too far of a stretch to call that ritualized behavior. Initially, they might just have wanted to put them somewhere far away from where they lived so that no one had to smell a decomposing body. Ritual comes from practicality.
The cache makes perfect sense... if hominids haven't figured out burial yet, dropping the bodies in a pit used for nothing else protects the bodies from large predators (don't want to attract cave lions), isolates the stink-putrefaction-flies-maggots, and the containment would allow individuals to visit and "pay their respects" if that was a thing then. There are probably a lot of other great reasons for doing the cache not occurring to me at the moment.
On a tangentially relate topic, I've actually been wondering lately - what did ancient and medieval people think of rotting corpses? Surely seeing a lively person turn into a decaying corpse must have been quite shocking - how did they rationalise this?
What makes you think they kept people around until they rotted? In the Middle Ages, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all buried their dead -- and since embalming was not a thing, pretty quickly. Some of the explanations for stories of vampires hinge on people being unfamiliar with how a body decays after rigor mortis. The Romans tended to cremate their dead.
@@christosvoskresye Yeah, I'm sure they did. But they were aware of what happened to a body when it wasn't buried or cremated. What did they think caused the rotting?
@@christosvoskresye accidents happen, and someone who died out by him or herself couldn't be buried until found. They could come to visit the person, and find them dead and bloated, so it could easily have been a known fact what happened to a body after the person died and wasn't buried right away. Accidents, disease, even murder, would not be unheard of, all of which could easily result in an unburied body days after death.
Could these groups of dead hominins be a result of war? A kind of micro-genocide and mass grave(without the digging). Two clans meet and fight it out, the losing group gets gathered in a group and systematically slaughtered. Personally I feel it could be some kind of early cemetery, but, then why would they eat them at that one site...
Interesting. Using chimps as a comparative example: Though female chimps are often stolen from other tribes, I find it hard to accept that male chimps would "surrender" and not fight to the death, and instead simply give up. Perhaps they are pummeled into submission and marched to their execution site; doesn't really make sense, but who really knows. Groups of male chimps also partake in premeditated murder of males from other tribes. In any case, your war hypothesis is fascinating. I agree that one group likely used it as a form of cemetery The fact that two different hominids did different things with the bodies does not necessarily mean that all hominids tribes always acted instinctively or ritualized similarly. If the latter, perhaps different cultural traditions form w/disparate groups, as often found with chimps and bonobos today. Some ideas are transferred through generations, demonstrating that not all behavior is inertly innate. They can learn!
I was thinking along those lines, possibly anthropomorphizing when I imagine that the losers may have been ritually eaten, but family is not eaten (or vice versa).
Some tribal people until recently ate their dead relatives as a means to keep their spirit alive forever. I don't think early humans were that different from us. Even dogs are smarter than most people realise. I got my first dog when she was 4 years old. She'd never seen a TV until the day she came to live with me. A nature show was on, some deer running. She went up to the TVset and looked behind it. Not finding the deer behind the TV she looked at the windows and barked. This is exactly how tribal people react on watching TV for the first time (except for the barking). The main difference is language. We can exchange ideas and explain things to each other, dogs can't. We know now Neanderthals could speak, so IMO they likely had developed some kind of religion as well, to explain their place in the universe.
I think the pit with 28 bodies says retaliation or warfare. Dropping in bodies with deliberately broken bones over a long period of time speaks of something specific that set these people apart. If they were all put in at relatively the same time it speaks to either a violent death inflicted on a group like war or perhaps they were criminals on some way. What makes the most sense to me is a territorial conflict. The broken bones speaks to these people being the losers.
Final example suggests some sort of convergence between latrine habit and burial habit. Smell perhaps? A cave site concentrates the smell during decomposition, but otherwise restricts it from spreading in every direction per winds.
I wonder if these cave burials may also be distantly remembered in the early myths about the underworld being the land of the dead. Like styx and all that jazz.
One question I have, which I am sure people have tried to answer, is whether animals realize death is permanent and irreversible. For example, a friend of mine has a basset hound and had a cat who recently passed away. She found the cat half in and half out of a little cubbyhole, with the basset hound lying next to the body, seemingly guarding it. Over the next few days, the hound would return to the cubbyhole and bark. To me this sounds as though the dog is trying to draw my friends attention to the fact that the cat (with which he had been on good terms and had known for a decade) was missing, in the expectation that she could somehow make everything right again.
@@twirlipofthemists3201 I'm talking about nature, not the supernatural. The basset hound probably has no real conception of death, which he has seen only once before (another cat), and I'm not really sure how much he saw of that instance. I suspect that "what death is" has to be learned through observation, rather than being an instinctive knowledge. (Knowing when it is safe to eat a prey animal probably is at least partly instinctive, but such animals were probably only considered food, not "alive" in the same sense as the actual (or even potential) members of one's own pack.) Very likely he thinks my friend could solve the problem of the absent cat much as she solves the problem of the empty food bowl -- he doesn't know how, exactly, but it works, so he has no reason to do more than draw her attention to the problem. I suspect if the hound were to come across the cat walking around today just as if nothing had happened, he would not be surprised, much less alarmed -- he would just run up as if to say, "Hey! Long time no see!"
The chimps living in the wild, on the other hand, have probably seen a lot of death. Come to think of it, my dad's dogs apparently go into mourning when they see a visitor leave with suitcases. They have learned that the suitcase means the visitor will not be back for a long time.
Omg a group of chimps mourning their deceased friend and showing their respect by revering the body, even having moments of silence in her honorand grooming her...i can't think of anything more pitiful and fascinating at the same time 😣😢
To me the most likely way to express what early burial meant was they were trying to hide the body from predators the same as they would have done when the being was alive. Anything most abstract may be missing the main point.
Sima de Las Huesos - maybe the tribe ate bananas at the edge of the pit, and 28 members slipped on the peels? That would explain the group's migrating from the region, and perhaps their eventual extinction as well.
Just a reflection: If flash floods, bogs or other natural causes can lead to multiple bodies ending up in a small area like that, we should also see such sites but with non-hominid species like deer or baboons or whatever. If we don't see sites like that in any other species than hominids It would certainly give more weight to the idea that other hominids put them there.
I have given most of my pet dogs 'surface burials'. I had fifty dogs over time and don't recall burying any in the ground, although three I enclosed in sand-filled stone mounds.
In many places, that could be construed as illegal, as well as unsafe. I must assume you are rural, or have access to land that is rural. I am rural, too, but have always buried pets if they passed at home, and cremated pets that passed at the vet. I never really wanted to draw in predators that would smell the carcass, or even scavengers, which often carry dangerous germs here, to have them anywhere close to my remaining pets OR livestock.
I assume that one day we will be scanning the brains of the chimps or whales for that matter during such occasions; when the technology has become more advanced and thereby discover the causal or non-causal correlations between neurology and the emotions of grief and mourning; as well as its relation to self-awareness and development of the senses related to empathy.
I'll be 64 in July, and hominid evolution, and pre-history generally, have fascinated me ever since my older sister bought me my first dinosaur book for Christmas in 1965. I love your videos, Stefan. I find them both intetesting and quite relaxing! Weighing up a combination of archaeological; paleontological; genetic, current human behavioural; and current ape behavioural evidence; is both fiendishly tricky, and wonderfully enjoyable and fulfilling, all at the same time. Love it. Keep the videos coming Stefan, and thanks so much! Nigel, Scotland
How come there is rarely a mention of virulent disease......sick individuals kept together, nursed, fed by the group, then wham! Death....leave em be where they fell so to speak, move to another camp, fresh water bedding and leave the bad juju in its place....just making a small point...✌️
Hmmm, well if you deliberately break the bones and chuck the bodies down into a cave, then when they rise again as zombies they can't come chasing after you. ...Joking! (OR AM I?)
Even US cemetaries are more spacious than UK ones. 😂 ours are like our houses. Small and everyone cheek by jowl. (There's a phrase from the graveyard of English. Ive never used it before in all my 76 years. Must be getting old)
Why didn't you cover the spectacular finds of Homo Naledi? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi Not that what you covered wasn't interesting, but H. Naledi is an absolutely clear example of ritual burial (or entombment) in a pre-human species.
Amazing about the Elite Chimpanzees grooming dead that they would not have done in life. Hard to put into words but it just seems so self-aware. Like they are capable of contextualizing life, and it's so easy to imagine how this behavior could eventually resemble ceremony.
You started the video with a description of chimp behavior with recently deceased member of the troupe. But their behavior was limited to a relatively brief mourning period. They did not display any burial/caching behavior. But, early Homo seem to have some sort way of grouping the dead. I don’t see direct link between mourning and burial. The are other species who exhibit mourning behavior that is associated with the close inter-personal behavior among the group, such as elephants for instance. The “burial” behavior of early Homo-whatever seems to take on an entirely different purpose. The speculations that you explained are all possible, I guess. It would be nice to know if the burials occurred over time, or the skeletal remains were deposited all at the same time. Periodic burials would suggest a pattern of “ritual” and one single event could have numerous possibilities of which we can only speculate. Perhaps these were singular events that were part of the evolution of Homo behavior that eventually led to the highly ritualistic behavior we see today which is highly differentiated by culture and location. We’ll have to wait for further information, or continue with our speculations.
People often make the mistake of thinking Chimps and Afarensis were behaviorally and mentally similar and I argue that is wrong. From what I have read and deduced. Afarensis was far "smarter" and more clever than a modern Chimp. If a modern Chimp can scroll through instagram on a smartphone, recognize itself in pictures and videos and specifically seek out videos and pictures of itself and other members of its species, Afarensis would probably, with enough time to watch a human using a smartphone, eventually learn to take pictures and video of themselves and others. I have zero doubt about that. I'm willing to bet if you had an Afarensis pet and you showed it or it observed you long enough using the device, it could learn to actually take videos and selfies when it desires to do so and fully understand the process of "point and click" to take a selfie or video. As far as I'm aware, a Chimp hasn't figured that out yet.
I always include cultural relativity with my thoughts. What is repulsive to "us", maybe perfectly acceptable in other cultures such as cannibalism. Probably more ritualistic, than nutrition.
If nothing else... Throughout history, we've had this back and forth on whether having bodies away from the group is good or bad. I'm not sure if our early ancestors would know that it could carry disease. In fact, whenever cannibalism comes up, my first thought is "uh oh, prion disease". But I have no doubt they knew when someone was dead at the very least
Context is everything obviously! If a community disposed of their dead by repeatedly putting them in a pit then okay that could be seen as ritualistic, whereas cannibalism could be shear desperation, not ritual! The word ‘ritual’ can sometimes seem a catch all word to explain anything that’s basically unexplainable!
I do think that the cases that you've shown shows definite evidence of ritualised behaviour. As does the chimpanzee reaccounting. As to the question of why the multiple Homo primates were found close together, theories I've come up with is that : they could have all partaken in the consumption of a food containing a pathogen, and stayed with the sick and ill for safety, care, compassion, love , sentimentality, familial bonds, until they all had died; perhaps the troop was attacked by an opposing troop, and the victors dragged all of the slain to one spot, for assessment, for the purpose of laying a trap, for no particular reason and just on impulse; that the dead individuals were dragged to one spot by a surviving member of the group, out of confusion, so that the dead brethren could help to help with the taking care of a tragic situation, a confusing situation, that the survivor/s didn't have the social authority or knowledge and experience to deal with the tragedy and needed mentoring or moral support, even though the authority figure/s were already dead. The possibilities are endless. For example the example of cannibalism may have been an exiled and rogue ex-member of the group that was eking out an existence on the fringes of the troop territory and hunger got the better of him/her, and they were proficient with the local cutlery. Life, and death I'm sure, is stranger than fiction, as they say. Great episode. Thanks
Interesting question. Is there just one definition for "ritualistic" behavior? Does the behavior have to involve a deity or some spiritual dynamic, or simply a repeated behavior implying emotional social bonding that occurred with a combined sense of loss and mourning? Sounds to me like arranging bodies would be a sign of mourning, but I'm not sure I'd call it a ritual.
Love your narrative style Stefano. It is so smooth and has a soothing quality. Damn good videos.. it's difficult to point out my favourite one..because i like them all !!
I’m pretty curious about why there were at least 15 Homo Naledi in the Rising Star cave system and nothing else. Apparently Dr. Berger has been teasing recently that they made some major discovery about it recently. I hope it’s how they got in there.
A random, thought. Once homo sapiens settle in one place, rather than liovcing a nomadic lifestile, then if (reduction absurdum) they did not bury their dead, there would soon be an insufferable stink. Peer group pressure would surely demand it or the far removal of the body.
I think it's quite possible that naledi and other species buried their dead or confined them to a special place/pit/cave/hole just to avoid the flies, the stench, and the carnivores/scavengers that would be a threat. Who wants a bunch of hyenas storming our living quarters when we can just dump a corpse in a pit or hidden chamber?
Would it be dumb/stupid/silly to think that the mother chimpanzee's standing within the group(as a mother) would be higher if she had an offspring? and this could be the reason for holding on to the dead body of your child??
Please excuse my comment 2 years late. I think it's plausible that early hominids might deposit their dead in one place reserved for that purpose. Such places evolving over the millennia into graveyards. As for the cut marks on skeletal remains, that in itself does not unequivocally indicate cannibalism. It could be a burial practice of a particular clan to de-flesh the bones as part of some ritual. I point to the photo showing cut marks on a skull where very little flesh could be obtained to eat. I should think that a cannibal would concentrate on the legs and arms where large masses of muscle could be obtained.
Has anyone considered that the 13 may have been a tribe or family group that have been infected by a disease/virus? and died all huddled together. One trying to comfort the other? Sounds plausible to moi.
