“…philosophical questions are better answered from scientific knowledge than from ignorance or dogma”. Juan Luis Arsuaga

Death comes and the stardust that we were returns to the environment. We are the only animal aware of their final destiny, a feeling that leads us to believe in a “beyond” (This world is the road to the other, wrote Jorge Manrique), to invent religious myths, to pose philosophical disquisitions (according to Heidegger, death is the main event of human existence) or to capture it in artistic productions (The Triumph of Death, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder).

Natural death, the one that comes from within, is also a problem of science, but not the one caused, for example, by the bite of the “saber-tooth” that broke the throat of some australopithecine or that of the Motecan warrior in Cortazar’s story The Night Face Up.

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Human evolution has gone through progressive phases of increasing complexity, starting with the acquisition of bipedal posture, through the increase in brain size, the development of tools, articulate language, and the mastery of fire. These advances catalyzed the emergence of symbolic thought and the concept of death acquired new dimensions.

Part of what defines us as humans is burial rites. This behavior was thought to be exclusive to Homo sapiens. In Israel, tombs have been found that are between 120,000 and 90,000 years old. On this behavior, the specialist María Martinon-Torres comments that “the performance of ritual acts, gestures that have no practical purpose, show the mental and social complexity of a species that maintains links with others even when they have already died”.

It was later demonstrated that Neanderthals also practiced burial rites. Evidence of burials of individuals of different ages has been found at various archaeological sites in Europe and Asia; for example, 41,000 years ago a Neanderthal family in La Ferrassie, France, buried their two-year-old son.

Commenting on this discovery, paleoanthropologist Antoine Balzeau noted: “The origin of funerary practices has important implications for the emergence of so-called modern cognitive abilities and behaviors”.

In the Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain) was found in 1998, together with 30 human fossils, a beautiful axe (Excalibur) of red quartzite (a stone that is not available in the surroundings of the Sierra) carved with great refinement, considered part of a funeral rite of about 400,000 years ago. The beautiful grave goods show that the human group that made it (Homo heilderbergensis) had a culture of death.

It is assumed that Excalibur was intentionally placed among the corpses deposited at the bottom of the so-called Sima de los Huesos at a depth of 13 meters when, at some point, someone threw it there: Was it a tribute to the deceased? Was it carved specifically for that occasion? Did it belong to one of the dead?

Other findings at Atapuerca show that some 800,000 years ago, members of the Homo antecedent species cannibalized about 10 infants of both sexes. It seems that the massacre was not the result of gastronomic needs, but had another type of cultural motivation.

The bones of the cannibalized had cuts made with stone tools and intentional fractures, a ritual that was held for hundreds of thousands of years, and somehow this act contributed to the cohesion of the social group, specialized in the hunting of bison, a practice that implies a complex social and technical organization. In some way, this act contributed to the cohesion of the social group, which specialized in bison hunting, a practice that implies a complex social and technical organization. Did the anthropophagi seek to appropriate the self of their victims?

In 2014, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger described a new species of hominin, Homo naledi, from the fossil remains of 15 individuals of different ages discovered in the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg. They had a relatively small brain volume, 500 cubic centimeters, a height of about 1.50 meters, and an average weight of 45 kilograms. The anatomy of their hands and thorax indicates that they could climb to the treetops and were not adapted to travel long distances. Homo naledi existed approximately 300,000 years ago, that is, it lived with the earliest representatives of Homo sapiens.

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The fossil remains were found at the bottom of a cave at a depth of 40 meters, and to reach them you have to go through narrow tunnels about 25 centimeters wide. What is interesting is that the bones do not seem to have been deposited there accidentally, dragged by a water current, or carried by an animal (the bones show no signs of predation).

Initially, it was proposed that Homo naledi intentionally placed the dead at the bottom of the cave, a hypothesis that was rejected on the grounds that this could not be the behavior of a species whose brain was scarcely larger than that of a chimpanzee.

Christopher Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London, was one such critic, but in the light of the evidence has had to change his mind: “I might have been one of those people skeptical of the idea that a small-brained creature like Homo naledi could go into the cave to dispose of its dead.” He added: “But I have to say, from what I’ve seen so far, that yes, it does change my view of the balance of probabilities”.

At Rising Star, there are remains of adults and children in fetal position, carefully buried in pits that were excavated and covered with earth. One of the adults had a tool-shaped rock next to his right hand.

Recently it has been found that Homo naledi engraved geometric symbols on the walls of burial caves. On this, Dr. Berger noted, “These recent findings suggest intentional burial, symbol use, and meaning-making activities by Homo naledi. It seems a foregone conclusion that in combination they indicate that this species of small-brained ancient human relatives performed complex death-related practices”.

The burials occurred 100,000 years before those of Homo sapiens. These findings seem to indicate that there is no need for a large brain to elaborate complex behaviors. Perhaps the main aspect is neural connections.

The mystery of death has a history well before the great civilizations of antiquity: Greece, Babylon, and Egypt. Science and reason must be the basis to face with stoicism the instant in which all the contradictions of human existence cease to be.

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