The documentary felt a bit staged & had that modern anti-mainstream academia vibe (i.e. our findings are so revolutionary they rewrite history and so we wish they weren’t so revolutionary because we will not be taken serious and will become the enemy of mainstream science).
That said, unless the site is somehow staged or wildly misinterpreted, I think there is more evidence of potential use of fire than:
"We can imagine h. naledi has fire since other early humans did".
Even without finding evidence of fire in the cave, assuming the body was intentionally placed (big assumption) light would have been required to access that part of the cave.
The only alternatives I can think of are the species had more sensitive optics than modern human enabling them to see in a dark cave, or much more likely the body wasn’t placed there as part of a burial ritual but died down there.
Part of the problem is, if the evidence pointed to the later, they give off the vibe they would have created another spectacular narrative like this was evidence of an early legal system where someone was tried of a crime and sentenced to confinement in the cave, the “tool” and scratches in the cave wall being the first evidence of an attempted jail escape, demonstrating early hominids desire to be “free” just like modern humans.
That said, unless the site is somehow staged or wildly misinterpreted, I think there is more evidence of potential use of fire than:
"We can imagine h. naledi has fire since other early humans did".
Even without finding evidence of fire in the cave, assuming the body was intentionally placed (big assumption) light would have been required to access that part of the cave.
The only alternatives I can think of are the species had more sensitive optics than modern human enabling them to see in a dark cave, or much more likely the body wasn’t placed there as part of a burial ritual but died down there.
Part of the problem is, if the evidence pointed to the later, they give off the vibe they would have created another spectacular narrative like this was evidence of an early legal system where someone was tried of a crime and sentenced to confinement in the cave, the “tool” and scratches in the cave wall being the first evidence of an attempted jail escape, demonstrating early hominids desire to be “free” just like modern humans.