Unknown Cave of Bones Review: Part of the four-part docuseries event that tells breathtaking stories of adventure and exploration in awe-inspiring uncharted territories, Cave of Bones follows a group of scientists examining clues from 100,000 years ago and shed more light on evolution.
It is directed by Mark Mannucci and produced along with Laura Jespersen & Sherene Kingma. It has a runtime of about 1 hour and 34 minutes and features a cast of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists including John Hawke, Dr Keneiloe Molopyane, Lee Berger, Matthew Berger, Agustin Fuentes, Maropeng Mpete and others.
Unknown Cave of Bones Review
The documentary film reveals that in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind, Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger has found the world’s oldest graveyard – and it’s not human. If Lee and his team can prove that this ancient, small-brained, ape-like creature practised complex burial rituals – it will change everything we know about hominid evolution and the origins of belief.
In the Rising Star Cave, fossils of an extinct species were found in the Dinaledi chamber first in 2013. The remains from at least 15 bodies were extracted and were said to belong to Homo Naledi, which could have existed more than 200,000 years ago. While the bone structure looks quite similar to a human body but the scientist emphasises that they are not one.
On putting the fossils together, they realised that the key difference was the brain size and the facial structure that was similar to that of apes. However, what actually intrigued Lee and his team was to identify if these new species were closer to Sapiens or not, considering how the bodies were found in a grave-like structure. They hypothesised that the Dinaledi Chamber held a special meaning to the Homo Naledi, in terms of dead burials. Because reaching there is definitely no easy task, then why were so many dead bodies buried at the same location.
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Even the scientists who crawled into the caves to reach the sites were called underground astronauts due to the difficulties one has to face. Keeping this in mind, the mortuary behaviour of burying the dead led to other discoveries that make us realise how we have evolved over time.
The documentary explores how the scientists found proof of using fire and making tools out of stones while analysing the caves. This was a remarkable discovery and joins the links in Hominid evolution that we were not aware of. Overall, it’s an interesting film that shows that there’s so much history that lies untouched and every new discovery makes us realise how the world has been constantly changing, yet there are some things that are strikingly similar.
Rating: 4/5
Unknown Cave of Bones is currently streaming on Netflix.
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