‘Sadly, There Was Nothing We Could Do,’ Scientists Say


JOHANNESBURG—Lamenting that there was nothing they could possibly do, tearful anthropologists announced at a press conference Thursday that they had discovered the bodies of 15 deceased human ancestors 100,000 years too late. “Not too long ago, these early people were alive and going about their normal daily lives, but sadly, by the time we scaled down the narrow 90-meter chute leading into the cave, they’d already been dead for at least 10,000 decades,” said visibly upset University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger, bemoaning the fact that they could have saved the group of human predecessors if they had just reached the Rising Star cave system during the Pleistocene epoch. “We briefly considered resuscitation when we found their bodies, but after a cursory examination we knew that they were already gone. If we found them a hundred millennia sooner, this tragedy might have been prevented.” At press time, Berger reportedly slammed his fist on the lectern and began to sob.