Enigma Man a Stone Age Mystery Page #6

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This is probably a really special place

for the people who were occupying the cave

and coming here performing ceremonies,

putting large fires.

They were cremating

probably their relatives,

maybe people who are

important in their group.

And then later their bones were cut

and painted with red ochre,

so they had special value to them.

Until now, modern humans are thought

to be the only species

that have made skull cups

and painted the bones of their dead.

That's one of the fascinating aspects

of the archaeology of Maludong

is there are a number

of different forms of what we would call

modern human behavior that

appear to have been practiced

by another species.

These were intelligent compassionate people

who perform special rituals for their dead.

They mourned to their dead.

They might even have had a

concept of the afterlife.

These people, whatever species it was.

They were not that different to us

and that tells us we are not unique.

But there is an alternative explanation

for what happened inside the Red Deer Cave.

The fossils reveal yet another twist

in this unfolding mystery.

There is more than one

Hominid on this table.

More than one Hominid for sure.

What he actually said

was pretty remarkable.

He actually suggested that we may have

three different species in the fossils.

Us, modern humans and then two brand new

previously unknown archaic species.

This would be one of the

only sites that's known

in the world where you got

three distinct groups

using the same place.

The other conclusion that

can explain this mix

is that it was actually modern humans

engaging in the modern human behavior

with the remains of the

Red Deer Cave people.

Why were modern humans doing this?

What was the relationship

with Red Deer Cave people?

Was it a close one and were they honoring

the dead Red Deer Cave people

or were they driving them to extinction

and purposely killing them.

It is an incredible story no matter

which hypothesis we ultimately accept.

We may never fully understand

what actually happened inside this cave.

All we really know is that

the Red Deer Cave people

were once here and now they are gone.

For me one of the profound implications

of the Red Deer Cave people

is that here's a group of

humans that are us, they're almost us.

They share some characteristics with us.

It forces us to rethink the

space that we've created

for ourselves as humans the way

we've identified ourselves,

the way we think, we interact

with the world is narrowing.

So, it forces us to rethink the concept,

the very basic idea of what

it means to be a human.

It's important philosophically

because it challenges

the concepts that we apply to ourselves,

the way we define ourselves,

the way we think about our place in nature.

I think it alters that.

Hi.

Hello.

Darren, hi.

Hello, Darren.

Wow.

I'm Craig. How are you?

I'm very fine, absolutely stud.

You're real.

I know.

My Red Deer Cave person, you're real.

An amazing thing to see,

the bones feel like come to life,

flesh real in front of me.

There's this new evidence from

China of a distinct group,

probably a new species

living in the landscape,

sharing the landscape

with people just like us.

When you discover new

species, you decide the name

and one of the names that we've

talked about were proposed

with Chinese colleagues is Homo mituanas.

And mituan is actually Chinese

for enigma or great puzzle.

Mystery.

So we think of you as our enigma man.

Enigma man.

We are only just starting to piece together

this story of millions of

years of our evolution

from fragments of bones and stones.

Every culture has creation

or origin stories.

What's different here is

that we're weaving a story,

a narrative from scientific evidence.

Everybody cares about where they came from

and the place of humans

in the natural world,

where we fit in the Cosmos.

This is the ultimate story for us.

In the 21st century, our sense of ourselves

as a superior species still informs so much

about how we relate to the world around us.

It was simple when it was

just the Neanderthals

because we could demonize

them or make them out

to be primitive cavemen, dumb

and we were the smart ones,

we got out of Africa,

we conquered them but it's

not that simple anymore

because there are Denisovans,

there are the Red Deer Cave people.

There's the hobbit.

Suddenly, we're not this

incredibly smart group

that was destined to take over the world.

It's not like that.

The Red Deer Cave people may be

the closest members of

our diverse human family

to have walked amongst us.

For most of the 7 1/2 million years

that we've been evolving,

we've shared the landscape

with other human like creatures.

We competed with them for resources.

We occasionally had sex with them.

Today, that's not the case.

We find ourselves alone but

yet the Red Deer Cave people

show that just 11,000 years

ago we weren't alone.

Why is that the case?

This is the ultimate question for us.

Why are we alone today?

Perhaps the greatest

legacy of our long gone

ancient relatives is how they

remind us of our incredibly

good fortune to be here at all.

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