A comprehensive review of recent fossil discoveries has prompted the paleoanthropology community to formally ask why our ancient ancestors could not simply perish on a flat, easily accessible savanna.
The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Nature, reveal a statistically significant correlation between major evolutionary breakthroughs and locations requiring researchers to army-crawl through 60 meters of unventilated bedrock. According to the Leakey Foundation, the sheer volume of Pleistocene remains wedged into unnavigable subterranean choke points has severely strained the global supply of graduate students willing to be lowered headfirst into the dark by their ankles.
The fossil record points to a mechanism of mortality in which Homo naledi bypassed thousands of perfectly good meadows entirely just to expire at the bottom of a seven-inch subterranean rock chute.
Other experts cautioned that the findings require further replication before concluding that ancient hominids died in caves solely out of spite for future academics. Dr. Sarah Jenkins, an evolutionary biologist unassociated with the paper, noted that the sample remains heavily biased by modern humans' profound reluctance to wedge their own ribcages into active sinkholes. Jenkins emphasized that a true behavioral model of early human mortality will require funding field expeditions to locations that do not induce immediate, crushing claustrophobia, provided any bones can actually be found there.
Yet looking at the newly recovered skull fragments, one cannot help but feel a profound, staggering awe at the sheer biomechanical will required for a primitive ape to drag its failing body deep into a lightless labyrinth. At press time, an international research team was preparing to blindly drop a high-resolution scanner down a jagged vertical shaft in South Africa after a local spelunker reported seeing what looked like a moderately important pelvis.