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In 2015, two years after commencing intensive excavations in caves near Johannesburg, South Africa, known as the Rising Star Caves, American paleoanthropologist Lee Rogers Berger and his team of speleologists and archaeologists revealed the discovery of a new hominin species to the world, subsequently christened Homo Naledi.
Who Is Homo Naledi?
In the Rising Star caves, located in the archaeological site designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site known as the “Cradle of Humanity,” the paleoanthropologist and his team discovered over 1700 fossils. Remarkably, these findings were made in an underground cavity of the aforementioned caves, called the “Dinaledi Chamber,” the access to which involved navigating a narrow, difficult-to-navigate, vertical drop of around 30 meters. The fossils in question belonged to about twenty individuals of all ages, including newborns. The most intriguing revelation was the evidence of some form of burial scattered across the floor, with these burials yielding the various fossils. This led Lee Rogers Berger and his team to question the anthropological identity of these beings, who they initially believed lived about two million years ago. This intriguing practice of burial, anthropologically taught as an exclusive trait of Homo Sapiens, the only being imbued with spirituality and prone to beliefs in life after death, inevitably raised questions about the profound nature of humanity.
In any case, in 2017, after numerous analyses conducted through various methodologies and in different laboratories, it was revealed that Homo Naledi lived between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. Hence, Homo Naledi could have indeed coexisted with Homo Sapiens. Although they share certain characteristics, such as dentition, mandibles, skull morphology (an almost complete skull was discovered among the fossils found), the shape of the hands, etc., it should be noted that the small endocranial volume reveals a much smaller brain volume, a detail that distinctly separates, or rather starkly distinguishes Homo Naledi from Homo Sapiens, with the brain being the cornerstone of species survival and the advent of civilization. Regardless, the recently released (as of July 17, 2023) documentary film “Into the Unknown: The Bone Cave” by American director Marc Manucci is definitely worth viewing for further information about the excavations, the study of the fossils, and most importantly, the differentiation between us and Homo Naledi.
On the Matter of Our Brain Size…
Recent studies, carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge in England, the University of Tübingen in Germany, Dartmouth and Boston Universities in the United States of America, and by researchers at the California Museum of Natural History, have established the correlation between human body size, specifically the human brain, and climate. Consequently, after defining regional climates on Earth over the past million years, the researchers released findings showing that humans who lived in cold climates were taller and heavier, whereas those living in warmer climates were shorter and slender. The same applies to the human brain, which has shrunk by approximately 10% in 3000 years, decreasing from 1500 to 1350 cm3, as the Earth’s average temperatures began to rise and, quite alarmingly, have continued to do so in recent decades. However, the researchers assert that climate change cannot be solely blamed for this reduction: the increasing complexity of human life, significant social, intellectual, cognitive, and technological challenges, increasingly industrial diets, high stress levels, etc., are equally responsible.
Nevertheless, if the shrinkage of the human brain were to continue, it could lead us to question our goal of perpetuating humanity. Could this be a harbinger of the march towards de-civilization? And what if Homo Sapiens, despite everything that brilliantly illustrates our evolution, regresses and eventually becomes extinct like Homo Naledi, consumed by unbearable heat and paralyzed by a progressively diminishing brain, perhaps increasingly incapable of lucidity, of consciousness?
On the Matter of the Lebanese Brain…
It’s been almost five years since the economic crisis began. Nearly four years since the aborted White Revolution. Almost three years since the double explosion at the port of Beirut and the near-total destruction of our capital. Almost a year without a President of the Republic. And the list goes on. The stress threshold at multiple levels in Lebanon today is untenable. This is without considering the impact of global warming and other factors mentioned earlier that align all Lebanese with the rest of humanity in a shared fate. What about our brains? Their inevitable shrinkage?
The brains of the so-called authorities of the country, usurping and criminal authorities, are undoubtedly those of confirmed fools. But what about the people? If we were to go back to the beginning of this article to find the Homo Naledi of 300,000 years ago and his burial customs, which qualify him as “spiritual” according to researchers, it must be acknowledged that we Lebanese are indeed on the path to losing our spirit, merely by considering the number of very young children, recently born, left lifeless in public dumpsters, under bridges, prey to starving beasts. Perhaps we are losing the memory of our spiritual customs due to the shrinkage of our brains ravaged by violence and trauma? Consumed by an internal fire of destruction much like the fire currently ravaging many forests worldwide?
What about the Lebanese brain in light of all our fellow citizens who choose to drown their moral misery in alcohol, substances, endless nights of music and trance, fatal high speeds on highways, etc., instead of pausing and pondering on how to rewrite Lebanon’s future? Or in light of collective resignation and morbid passivity in the face of the collapse of all our institutions? Maybe it’s too late? Perhaps the brain of Homo Naledi, despite its small size, is, after all, more developed than that of Homo Libanus, thus inevitably doomed to extinction. Extinction, perhaps, much earlier than expected…
A word to the wise is sufficient! That is, assuming we Lebanese still possess any discernment whatsoever.