They said it is also possible that the bodies were dropped down a chute and fell slowly due to irregularity and narrowness of the path down, or a soft mud cushion to land on. In both scenarios, the morticians would have required artificial light to navigate the cave; and the site was used repeatedly for burials as the bodies were not all deposited at the same time. In 2016, palaeoanthropologist Aurore Val countered that such preservation may have been due to mummification rather than careful burial, and the absence of long bone heads is reminiscent of predation, and she believes that discounting natural forces such as flooding for depositing the bodies is unjustified. Further, there is evidence of damage done by beetles, beetle larvae, and snails (which facilitate decomposition); but, the chamber does not present ideal conditions for snails, nor does it contain snail shells, which would indicate decomposition actually initiated before deposition in the chamber. Nonetheless, in 2017, Dirks, Berger, and colleagues reaffirmed that there is no evidence of water flow into the cave, and that it is more likely that these "H. naledi" were buried in the chamber. They also said it is possible that they were buried by contemporary "Homo", such as the ancestors of modern humans, rather than other "H. naledi", but, nonetheless, that the cultural behaviour of funerary practises is not impossible for "H. naledi", and burial in the chamber may have been done to remove decaying bodies from a settlement, prevent scavengers, or due to social bonding and grief. In 2018, anthropologist Charles Egeland and colleagues echoed Val's sentiments, and stated that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that human species had developed a concept of the afterlife so early in time. They also said that the preservation of the Dinaledi individuals is similar to those of baboon carcasses which accumulate in caves (either by natural death of cave-dwelling baboons or by a leopard dragging in carcasses).