Hominin Skeletal Part Abundances and Claims of Deliberate Disposal of Corpses in the Middle Pleistocene
Hominin skeletal part abundances and claims of deliberate disposal of corpses in the Middle Pleistocene Charles P. Egelanda,1, Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigob,c, Travis Rayne Pickeringd,e,f, Colin G. Menterg, and Jason L. Heatone,f,h aDepartment of Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27412; bDepartment of Prehistory, Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain; cInstituto de Evolución en África, University of Alcalá de Henares, 28010 Madrid, Spain; dDepartment of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706; eEvolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa; fPlio-Pleistocene Palaeontology Section, Department of Vertebrates, Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (Transvaal Museum), 0001 Pretoria, South Africa; gDepartment of Biology, University of Florence, 50122 Florence, Italy; and hDepartment of Biology, Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, AL 35254 Edited by David J. Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, and approved March 2, 2018 (received for review November 3, 2017) Humans are set apart from other organisms by the realization of recesses of caves, and both are interpreted as having formed their own mortality. Thus, determining the prehistoric emergence solely (or nearly solely) through the deliberate disposal of of this capacity is of significant interest to understanding the corpses by other hominins (7, 8). If that interpretation is correct, uniqueness of the human animal. Tracing that capacity chrono- the possibility of mortuary ritual—and all that implies for emer- logically is possible through archaeological investigations that gent mortality salience in the human lineage—can be traced to at focus on physical markers that reflect “mortality salience.” Among least approximately 300–600 kiloannum (ka).
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