Oval burials found in South Africa predate Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years. They contain bones of Homo naledi, distant cousins of man, with brains the size of an orange.
Researchers generally associate the mastery of fire, engraving or painting, with the large size of the brain of modern man, as typically in Cro-Magnon man. During the excavations, geometric symbols, lines, squares and crosses, traced on the walls of the tombs, were found.