Homo naledi Tooth Proteins Show No Male Marker in 20 Individuals, Leaving a Female-Only Burial or a Lost Gene
Nature World News | 12.11.2026 16:39
None of the 20 Homo naledi individuals sampled from South Africa's Rising Star cave system carried a protein marker linked to the male Y chromosome. The finding comes from the largest analysis of ancient proteins ever done for an extinct human relative, published in Cell. It leaves two very different explanations on the table: a burial site used only for females, or a population in which the male marker had simply disappeared.
