TerravelSouth Africa · Africa
Rising Star Cave
A South African cave that rewrote human history, revealing an entirely unknown ancestor hidden in stone.
Nestled in the Malmani dolomites near Swartkrans, Rising Star Cave has drawn explorers since the 1960s. Yet its greatest secret lay dormant until 2013, when fossils emerged from the depths of this Cradle of Humankind site, waiting for science to catch up.
In 2015, researchers announced the discovery: Homo naledi, a previously unknown hominin species. This gracile ancestor, neither fully human nor ape, challenged everything we thought we knew about the branches of our family tree, proving that evolution wrote stranger stories than we imagined.
The fossils of Homo naledi were found just 800 meters from Swartkrans, yet this entirely unknown human ancestor had escaped detection until modern explorers ventured into Rising Star's deepest chambers.
Test yourself
Which African cave revealed a completely unknown hominin species in 2015, hidden just 800 meters from an already-famous archaeological site?
Rising Star Cave in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind is where Homo naledi fossils were discovered in 2013 and announced in 2015, a species unknown to science despite its proximity to the well-studied Swartkrans site.
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