CRADLE OF THE GRAVES

hen the skeletal remains of more than a dozen hominins were first uncovered in the Dinaledi chamber of South Africa’s Rising Star cave system in 2013, researchers believed they had discovered a species that lived around two million years ago. The species, which scholars named , shared characteristics with early hominins such as Lucy (), including a wide-flaring pelvis, apelike shoulders adapted for remains in 2017 determined that these hominins actually lived between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago—at least a million and a half years later than initial estimates—a period when modern humans also lived on the African continent.