Homo naledi, the mosaic of archaic and modern human, whose discovery two years ago was published in the journal Elife was touted to be around 3 million years old. New dating evidence places Homo naledi in the 300,000 to 200,000 time period where they could have have overlapped with early examples of our own kind, Homo sapiens.
“They’re the age of Neanderthals in Europe, they’re the age of Denisovans in Asia, they’re the age of early modern humans in Africa. They’re part of this diversity in the world that’s there as our species was originating…
…”We have no idea what else is out there in Africa for us to find – for me that’s the big message. If this lineage, which looks like it originated two million years ago was still hanging around 200,000 years ago, then maybe that’s not the end of it. We haven’t found the last [Homo naledi], we’ve found one.”
Below are some of anatomical comparisons of modern people with Homo naledi which hark back to features of earlier, archaic humans. Features seen some two million years ago or more.