Very brave of these 2 to put their name on their skepticism. Gutsick did as well and I’m here for it.

@MossyMozart

5 ай бұрын

@jackwardrop4994 - For those who are interested, that referenced channel is "Gutsick Gibbon".

@ED-sn3fn

2 ай бұрын

Really I thought their arguments were pretty much trash.. Other than the carbon dating.

@usergiodmsilva1983PT

Ай бұрын

Me too!

@garymaidman625

Ай бұрын

​@@ED-sn3fnyou think that their paper is poorly cited isn't a good point to bring up? Or that the sources they cite are mostly their own? That's a pretty big red flag. There are a lot of red flags. I believe they made some pretty good points and zero trash points.

I saw the Netflix documentary and got annoyed by the narrative that I felt it forced on the viewer. I am no archeologist, just a lowly mechanic with a general interest in science. So I searched for a critique of the narrative presented by Berger et al. The only one I could find was on this channel and it was eye opening (there has been a few others later on). You did a great breakdown of the scientific paper and this later talk with guests was also informative , so I salute you. Lee Berger is a likable guy and the find is astonishing, but he really seems to be chasing clout.

@FlintDibble

10 ай бұрын

Thanks!

@user-eb7es8fu8m

10 ай бұрын

@@FlintDibble It’s sad to see scientists like Lee Berger and Avi Loeb create narratives and turn into clout chasers, because of social media. Even though it creates interest , I think as a whole it creates more downsides like conspiracy theories. And then there’s con artist like Graham Hancock… Resources like yourself, World of antiquity and others need more exposure.

@bigcountry5520

7 ай бұрын

Dude, you're more important than these scientists... These scientists don't produce anything, they just use other people's money to form opinions on things that are pretty much irrelevant.

@eudyptes5046

6 ай бұрын

I'm a biologist and I can tell you that in science you find all kinds of people, like in any other profession. One of these is the snake oil salesman and Lee Berker strikes me as such. He's a very good speaker, he talks fast, fluent and confident and this is very convincing to some people. I don't find him likable at all but these kind of people often get very far in their fields. It's good that credible scientists call him out.

@garymaidman625

Ай бұрын

​@@eudyptes5046I agree with your summary of Lee Berger. This isn't the first high profile discovered he has made, and credit where credit is due, the discovery of a new species is amazing, but the way he does things is irresponsible.

The best part about Bergers Netflix show was that it was watched. Its a great subject that is user friendly. But, even amature fans like me know Lee Berger has always been a newshound.

@user-qt1qw1dy5b

4 ай бұрын

South Africa, right.

It's disappointing to realize how many problems there are with what's been presented to the public. I'm really grateful to have seen this discussion though so I understand better.

@SamtheIrishexan

6 ай бұрын

Yup they need to share the UFO's with the rest of us. Just saying.

@BlueBonnie764

6 ай бұрын

I am saddened by this 'evidence'. I hope they, with Lee, will relent. Put your money where your mouth is, like the rest of us. 🦖

@betsyb2256

Ай бұрын

It was a bone pit. Bones have snail marks they leave when they eat flesh. Snails cannot survive in that pit deep in the back, very back of that cave. It's clear scavengers have a history of taking kills to caves. A natural flood washed the various bones to the back of the cave. The so called cave art is nothing but scratching that's a common phenomenon found when dolomite is etched by WATER. Berger has always been questionable. Doesn't stand up to peer review. End of story.

I've been a archaeologist for 30 years, and there are some seriously big flaws with this discovery. The head archaeologist could not convert Centimeters to millimetres. The tools they used were not standard for this form of excavation. And were only used to make it look more impressive. No radiocarbon dating of charcoal or bones. No isotopic findings from the teeth. No recreations of the morphology and skull . Guessing that the art work was done by by these hominids. But could just as well been created by later hominids. But of course he was the one who had to find these artworks after all ! Didn't mention that the cave had been visited before, pegs from earlier explorers were found on the floor. He reminds me of Zahi Hawass in many ways.

@Redandranger

Ай бұрын

If you've been any sort of a scientist for 30 yrs and you think it showed the head archeologist couldn't convert centimeters to millimeters, you've wasted 30 yrs. The point was that certain measurements were being made in CM while others in MM as numbers were being transcribed. Good lord.

Thank you for such a thorough and understandable exposition of the different issues relating to this case. As a layperson who is very interested in these subjects I found the initial news fascinating, but the interest waned off the more I learned about the methodological problems and the timing of public announcements, press releases and so on.

12:35 - cave markings (scratches, or weathering) 15:00 17:20 - supposed tool (found near hand of naledi, not IN the hand) 27:40 - Cave Bear skeleton 29:22 - Australopithecus skeleton 46:00 - hyena remains

I was so confused (after watching the documentary) how Lee first discovered the wall "etchings" and yet no previous archaeologist to enter that chamber had ever noticed them? One of the previous archaeologists HAD to have seen those hashes, and I hope that person will eventually step forward and speak up.

@robbee23

8 ай бұрын

The previous archeologists didn't report seeing the etchings publicly. They were being paid to excavate.

@user-qt1qw1dy5b

4 ай бұрын

Why? are archaeologists super-human?

@adelefreeman1100

3 ай бұрын

Has sediment DNA been done on the block ?

@RulgertGhostalker

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, like how long did it take to get the H. on Neanderthalensis ? but Naledi gets the H. almost as if by default ? ...I would say H ? Naledi ...I don't think we are there yet with this. the big picture is strewn with just so many failed attempts at bipedal evolution, as an extremely messy littering from the trees .... Sima de los Huesos is H ? antesessor, likely an african overshoot Gibraltar crosser....same complete mess as Naledi, but dramatically separated in time................where H.Neanderthalensis -- > Did What Makes Sense < --- Under Population Overshoot Conditions, ( had fewer off spring ) I would put the H on Neanderthalensis, and more tend to lump Naledi in with Antecessor.

@noahwallick89

2 ай бұрын

Recently watched the doc, super interesting. I'm an archaeologist, and I also thought something was fishy. Typically even when you're getting paid to do an excavation job, you're pretty observant of surroundings. Weird.

Awesome podcast, I personally love getting hear about the methods you use to arrive at conclusions. I never knew how much thought went into the small details of a site. Fascinating content, cannot wait to hear more discussions.

@FlintDibble

10 ай бұрын

Great to hear, thanks!

@BassGoBomb

9 ай бұрын

And to think that they are just scratching the surface of the processes and proofs that scientists go through even before publishing to seek scientific consesus. Or, you could read a book (or worse, let some one else read the book and then interpret it for you) and then tell every one else they are wrong because one has PROOF .. (Sorry, couldn't resist - N.B. 'One' not 'You'...:-)...) .. Even if one has NO IDEA as to scintific proofs and the time and effort that scientists go through to check, double check their work... Very, very occassionally scientists don't follow 'due process' then ..'this' happens. Which OK because this is yet another check on some one's work .. debate is good ... bigotry is not.

"I want to believe in UFOs, but all I see are balloons and birds." - Mick West, hobbyist

Thank you Mr. Dibble for lightening this up again and again and hosting this talk. And thanks to the two guest for their braveness not to hide but to attend to their duty as scientists for staying grounded and question things that are questionable. For me as a non scientific observer it is that, what i expect from scientists in their field. To work carfully on revealing the facts and not to make a discovery like this into a misleading pop enterprise on base of unbased assumptions. Your former yt review and this podcast made me feel confirmed in my growing doubts about the so far "official" narrative how these individuals got in this place, just because in this narrative it all fits to well on first sight. But there are so many possibilities of what could have happened, that it appeared to me as a non archelogist but someone with decades of interest in this field quite "suspicious" how fast this one solution was and is presented. Thank you and your guests once more. I'm sure your father would be proud of your courage to speak up. Because there is a lot to be questioned. You folks lift up my believe in true science out there. Best wishes from Germany.

Last week I watched Berger in a KZread interview say that anthropology/archaeology has an "unhealthy obsession" with dating and at that point I resolved to stop assuming honesty in the mistakes on his part. He is actively and maliciously distorting data to promote his own fame and fantastic speculations. Netflix I understand, because they have no ethics whatsoever, but if NatGeo doesn't revoke their little bestowed magic explorer title he loves to cite, I'll have to put them in the same bucket of blatantly promoting of misinformation, which sucks.

@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking

10 ай бұрын

National Geographic has been gutted by Disney - who now owns them... I think I read an article about how they don't have any full-time editors on staff anymore. It's unfortunately the end of an era.

@lyle1157

10 ай бұрын

@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking That's awful and neatly explains the massive decline in scholarly quality. I have a old NatGeo article by Jane Goodall framed in my room! To think how far they're fallen is pretty disheartening

@Jolene8

10 ай бұрын

@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking Archeological journalism. There are more "infotainment" types getting involved, with who knows what type of intentions. I honestly get a lot of pleasure reading the articles and whatever back and forth, between the scientific peers who challenge, correct or interested, content creators that make real use of those articles. Interfering this way does not bode well for *real science.*

@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking

10 ай бұрын

@@lyle1157 yeah. sad, isn't it?

@judithvorster2515

9 ай бұрын

I lost all respect for NatGeo when they ran a 'reality programme' in Cape Town, where they encouraged babboons to break into a house for food. They had cameras setup in the house. The entire point was to encourage the babboons to circumvent the increasingly complex measures put in place to keep them out. Never mind all the Cape Town residents that now has to cope with these babboons, and never mind the consequences to the babboons that now could nit be kept out of people's homes

I think a lot of us in the profession felt this as well. There just seemed to be leaps of assumptions without much backgrounding. Watching the filmed stuff, I really was waiting through the whole thing for the radiocarbon dating for the fire evidence...and it never arriving was a real red flag for me.

One of the other things I didn't like about the Netflix doc is they didn't give a shout out to the 2 cavers who discovered the fossils

As I watched some videos on Homo naledi by the discovery team, I didn't like the justification they gave for disliking the peer review system. It smelled fishy to me, and even more now after watching this video.

I’m just a paleoanthropologyphile so I really don’t know what to think about whether Naledi buried their dead or not. It’s hard to imagine them lugging bodies down there with chimp brains, but also hard to find any other explanation for the presence of multiple bodies in fetal positions in graves. However, I do know that the documentary was so damn bad that I was almost embarrassed for watching it. Lee Berger tried to get ahead of any criticism of his burial claims by stating in multiple lectures that there’d be criticism, and kind of mocking the would-be critics. He definitely seems to believe these are graves. It would suck to see paleoanthropology corrupted by society’s obsession with fame. My last thought is that Berger needs to ditch the Indiana Jones hat.

@kyledexheimer6548

9 ай бұрын

Did you listen to the part about baboons and other animals who die in caves? What about the fact that the passage might not have been as restricted at the time of nadeli?

@gustaf3811

9 ай бұрын

@@kyledexheimer6548 Thats the problem with their theory, there is really no evidence that it was the only passage way to enter the Naledi chamber even though they admitt that the parts of the caves had collapsed. Yet stick to the assumption that this was the only way to get there. Thats just not good science and it really makes the discoveries have a less of an impact when it looks like it was done a group of enthusiasts rather than scientists.

@ingloriousbetch4302

7 ай бұрын

I hope he doesn't go as far into outer space as Graham Hancock does for notoriety.

@eudyptes5046

6 ай бұрын

What fetal positions, the skeletons are mostly incomplete and disarticulated?

Very good discussion. I haven't watched the Netflix documentary (because I'm generally more wary of those than say a Nova documentary), but it sounds like some real liberties were taken with these grandiose hypotheses that cannot be at this time supported as well as they could be. I've read Lee Berger's pop-sci book on Homo nailed "Almost Human" in which I think he laid out some interesting information about the discovery and potential theories, but in the book, I felt like he made sure to hedge more that a lot of his hypotheses about intentional burials and any rock art were as yet unsupported. You have to be very careful when disseminating information to the public because once it's out there and if it's exciting and new enough, it's hard to backtrack. I've seen this done in many science disciplines. Like both of your guests said, just the discovery of Homo nailed itself is exciting, and I feel like, if presented properly, could be enough to get the public interested in paleoanthropology.

@snieves4

7 ай бұрын

Its a well produced presentation. It presents some interesting ideas. I was excited about it. Now hearing the controversy i wish theyd put disclaimers that much of whats shown is still being analyzed in the scientific community.

@SpinningSandwich

7 ай бұрын

It's definitely possible to very publicly have information backtracked, but the downside for the authors is that it will read like a scandal. In many ways it already is, although I'm not sure any of the hypotheses have been outright ruled out yet.

@Redandranger

Ай бұрын

@@snieves4 Controversy --- the only thing scientists love more than making a discovery is blowing up someone else's. Yep.

It is inconcievable to me that Naledi could or would attempt to navigate the cave without light.

@kenfalloon3186

10 ай бұрын

That would suggest that naledi had control of fire which only sapiens and neanderthal's have been shown to have. That's important.

@seanbeadles7421

9 ай бұрын

@@kenfalloon3186there’s very strong implications that erectus/ergaster had faculties over fire by about 1MYA but no direct evidence to confirm it.

@KathyPrendergast-cu5ci

9 ай бұрын

@@kenfalloon3186 Aren’t Homo Erectus also believed to have been able to use fire? Re. the use of caves, perhaps some hominid species that didn’t use fire used them only at night for safety from predators, so didn’t need light in them as they only slept there. Some kind of natural event like an earthquake could have trapped a large number of them in a cave and caused their deaths.

@francissantos7448

9 ай бұрын

Blind people can navigate really well without the use of light. People with great vision in poor light may be a great side research.

@francissantos7448

9 ай бұрын

@@garyallen8824 oh wow!! That's very interesting. Neanderthals painted in caves too. Or at least used caves one way or another.

Good discussion of some of the issues with this discovery. Looking forward to more videos.

Very interesting discussion . Thank you

Frankly, I think some juveniles went too deep in the cave and fell into that pit. The exit was in the ceiling somewhere in the pitch black dark. Their screams for help were followed down the hole and to the same fate.

The more I hear, the less confidence I have in any of Dr. Berger's conclusions. I was excited about Homo naledi at first, but now I'm thinking it's almost all hype.

@MossyMozart

5 ай бұрын

@jamesduncan3673 - Apparently there IS a new Home member, but methods and conclusions are what is in question.

It seems like Mr. Berger is emerging as a bit of a P.T. Barnum of paleoanthroology :)

As a member of the general public, thank you all, for the generous sharing of knowledge by the panel. You've all, given me a so much better understanding of this issue, and of the science as well.

@FlintDibble

2 ай бұрын

Thanks!

The documentary was great for excitement. They should have clarified that these were theories needed more investigation.

@michellerenner6880

10 ай бұрын

they did. He’s always said things need much more research

@kaudsiz

10 ай бұрын

Hypotheses, not theories

@michellerenner6880

10 ай бұрын

@@kaudsiz I think they are closer to theories than to hypotheses.

@adamh.2791

9 ай бұрын

They did literally multiple times during the doc. These scientists are just jealous that they aren’t making discoveries, or have never made one of any significance. It’s easy to tear apart someone else’s good work and the literal rockstar of paleoanthropology right now. They reek of jealousy.

@ED-sn3fn

2 ай бұрын

They did..

This is excellent. Fabulous, smart, knowledgeable experts, all.

Thank you for this video. I am currently reading “Cave of Bones” and I was having trouble with the conclusions drawn before the evidence was gathered and examined.

Thank you! Great discussion here. I’m not in the sciences but really enjoy scientific discussions. I just finished listening to the audio book of Cave of Bones and really enjoyed Berger’s tale and his personal reading of it. I also watched the documentary previously too. It was all very inspiring but, as a member of the non-scientific public I really needed to hear these challenges to Berger and his team’s claims. I am slightly deflated but looking forward to further analysis of these discoveries. It is dangerous to cast out to the public in such a big way revolutionary claims with out all the evidence. Cheers!

I've seen that same etched pattern on dolomite stone in local streams. Very unique looking and very hard and durable.

Documentaries like those do a great disservice to real archeology. Thank you for critiquing this from a scientific background. Why do the mass media think that they need to screw real science so badly? What you guys are doing is way more interesting IMO.

I loved this discussion. Thank you.

@FlintDibble

9 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

The conversation, and the cool personalities involved, outshone the documentary itself. Even though I'm not an archaeology expert (like at all), this Netflix film made some audacious claims that had my skepticism radar buzzing from the get-go. Sadly, documentaries of this nature tend to be more entertainment than education, leaving much to be desired in terms of genuine knowledge. Thank you for making this video.

This is a great interesting conversation about this mysterious finding.

I'm reminded of the Leakeys always finding the 'first' or 'oldest.' And using National Geographic to publicize their finds and themselves. I was young and reading the NG articles as they came out, and had no reason to question any of it.

@seanbeadles7421

9 ай бұрын

Oh god don’t forget Donald Johansson who thinks every hominin since like Lucy is a dead end and he figured out human evolution 40 years ago

@user-ks3ol3lw3b

9 ай бұрын

@@seanbeadles7421 Yeah - they all have delusions of grandeur. Sometimes a bone is just another bone.

Fascinating discussion. I sort of want to watch the Netflix show now, but if it pisses me off the whole time I'll have no one to blame but myself. When I was in the 4th grade in 1976 I was looking through a dictionary and saw the word, 'pithecanthropus.' For the definition it just said "Java man." I had no idea what that meant, so I looked into it and found out Java is an island and pithecanthropus is an extinct"missing link" type hominid, very controversial, and I'm pretty sure pithecanthropus isn't a thing anymore; oh, and cro magnon man was still a thingback then , and I think they're gone too now, yes? (Brontosaurus was a dinosaur, and then it wasn't, and now (as of like 10 or 15 years ago?) it is again, right?) If our species isn't fighting to just to stay extant in 50 years and Idiocracy doesn't completely come true, I wonder what our understanding of Naledi will be like 500 years from now...

Thank you for the reviews of the Homo Naledi funerary presentation. It is part of the scientific process. I hope to hear the counter arguments. Homo Naledi is such a fascinating discovery.

I’ve worked in science communication for the last thirty years. I’ve worked for all major broadcasters, Discovery, Nat Geo, BBC. I created the hit series MythBusters. All I can say is that it is getting harder and harder to produce science programming of any kind let alone something with any accuracy. Audiences just aren’t engaged with the truth and preprinting makes the whole situation more confusing. I didn’t watch the Netflix documentary because I knew what it would portray based on last years press conferences. Sadly they are going down the US cable story telling route with this one.

@MossyMozart

5 ай бұрын

@peterrees6346 - Thank you for your insight.

I'm just a member of the public. Other than cataloging bones and giving names to supposed new hominid or hominin species idk. I did see the doc only because Netflix had nothing else on. Dr.Berger seems to be such an empathetic person and human being. I liked the fact it wasn't all dried out by paperwork and the public could just see it as it happened. Did they bury their dead,did they make artwork? I'm not a paleoanthropologist I have no idea how we could know what any of these millions of year old bones did while they were alive or how it effects my life one way or the other. Just seems like Dr.Berger has a vivid imagination on what would've been happening so long ago. How we have any way of really knowing any of the claims. I dont know. I have cancelled Netflix at any rate. Ok thanks .

I appreciate the correct use of nomenclature in the title

A real insight for us amateurs. Thank you Flint for putting this together (and Dr Hodgkins and Leader of course!)

Thank you

Outstanding conversation. Thank you all three. Cogent arguments strongly in favor of doing the science right, come what may. From my somewhat jaded perspective, I think the real story will be to see the extent to which dissenting voices are suppressed in the coming year. Hopefully not. R

Thanks!

@FlintDibble

5 ай бұрын

😊

Claims are very weak. Thank you.

Thanks for this discussion. The whole episode sounds like History Channel level exploitation was at work.

How many charlatans get to make millions off average people's gullibility before they start asking tough questions.

This is all very interesting and there are very good points that need to be studied. I think ground penetrating radar and other tech should be used to look for more entrances, more passages and more bones. More study if the cave structure might answer some questions. I'm super grateful for the people who are brave enough to go down in those caves to explore and collect the bones. There's no chance I'm going down there, and I'm skinny enough. But that's not on my list of stuff to do. I heard something about possible H Naledi bones found in Kenya. I hope we hear more about those bones and what they are, it would be awesome if they're H Naledi.

You wonder if Berger wanted something to be remembered by. He will be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons.

I liked the animations - because it made me think they weren’t trying to nail down anything and just used as a place-holder.

I often marvel at how people differentiate between stuff like butchery marks and natural marks. I know people have done a lot of research/experimental archaeology but experience is also key. Same with art esp scratches in rock is very difficult. Often its like ink blot tests. Wishful thinking is a dangerous thing.

Those same type of lines in there can be found in Australia

Its good to have an open mind and discover possibilities and make discoveries but leaps and bounds and discoveries must be speculated and proven and debated!

Ah, came here for the Homo Naledi debate 8 months ago, and now Dibble is a JRE superstar! 😂

I agree with every point discussed here, especially regarding the lack of proper sed/strat context. I would add a lack of doing basic petrography to define a paragenetic sequence which would aid in relative dating and address the potential effect of diagenesis. The earlier pub mentioned in the video on the cave sed/strat did this. The only maybe useful(?) comment I have is about the "tool". The scans show very good morphological detail. From my sed/strat "bias" I noticed what lookes like a fabric trend for the "striations". If you look at the three images in Figure 12 above and below the arrows, you can see fairly consistent 2D linear-looking features in the same or similar orientation to the "striations". Flowstones, stalactites, and stalacmites form by sequential layers of mineral accretion. We know from other papers that flowstones, and reworked clasts of flowstones are an important part of the sed/strat story in this chamber and the cave as a whole. We don't know what the rock-type of the "tool" is, jumping to a claim that this rock is a tool is a big stretch

If they’re at the bottom of what was a pit at the time of their deposit, the bones, then perhaps they were living in the cave. but many of them fell into that pot and the other survivors couldn’t get them back out? I just had that thought. It could have been the case, but I don’t know. Fascinating site, though! I am always intrigued by this site!

Has anyone explored or proposed the idea that the fall of the “Dragon’s Back” feature might have trapped Naledi in this cave and led to this looking like a cemetery population and burial?

Valids points here, and i'm hightly sceptical to this founds there in south Africa. Not to say that when i hear "Netflix-documentary", i have an alarm bell ringing for sure. We need much more further diggings, founds and prouves to give serious explanations. Great job done with this video, and thanks to all !

@FlintDibble

10 ай бұрын

Thanks

I have read all the comments below, and no one has mentioned that they thought it may be, that they put their dead down into the cave because they did not want their kin to be eaten by wild animals, which could mean their brain was evolving over time. Most species, not all, but the majority, do evolve on this planet. When we look at the word "buried" in our day and age, we think about a funeral, a caset, so the word "buried" might not be the best word to use in this situation. The word "hide" would probably be a better choice. They were hiding their kin from wild animals so that they would not be eaten by them. Did Homo Naledi eat meat? Even if that meat was leftover from other predators kills? Just watching predators kill and eat, in their environment, they would know that they would also be eaten in the same way. They may have witnessed this happening. So hiding their kin from these predators is how they kept that from happening. I have watched Lee's documentary many times now, and this thought of "hiding" always comes to mind. Rewatch Lee's documentary and let me know if you think they may have been hiding their kin, rather than burying them. Thanks for listening.

@Butchinthewaikato

10 ай бұрын

It is not possible to know people's motives. For all we know, this may have been some sort of "death cult", and these people crawled into this chamber to die, believing that they would find immortality or some such.

@timforest6785

10 ай бұрын

Good point. Same thought I had. Badgers ´bury´ their dead kin in their burrow by blocking the entrance of the chamber where it died. Good way to keep the place tidy. And why should you want to attract unwanting guests by putting the body outside? I think what we are seeing is the birth of burials!

@francissantos7448

9 ай бұрын

"Hiding" is a very interesting concept. There are animals that hide ( or cache) their food for the future. Or hide it from their own.

If you're interested in archaeology -- I mean, actual archaeology -- this piece is sooo much more exciting than the Netflix piece. I learnt more from this piece than I have from several documentaries and much reading.

This was a much more nuanced (and accurate) criticism of the recent naledi preprints than the other youtube video floating around. I think it's fairly obvious the papers were rushed out to have something technically published before the documentary, which I assume has more to do with Hollywood scheduling processes than anything to do with scientific negligence. That said, I've read both the peer reviews and author response, and while there were many valid criticisms (and a few that ignored context of the site) there was also declared intent to address those requests in the final versions of the papers. Is this not true? Did the authors abandon them in a half-baked state, or are the preprints more like the outlines they had to rush out before their media deadline? It would be very telling to know who had control of the media deadline, which was surely set well in advance of release date. I'd guess they intended it to conclude with Berger finally making it into the cave himself, set a release schedule based on that, and his (for now possible, not definite) discoveries were unexpected and demanded additional rushed preprints prior to the documentary release, which diluted their efforts. On the less generous end, Berger is also the guy who authorized the actual bones, not replicas, to go on a rocket joy ride for "publicity." It seems likely he'd be just as reckless in allowing the lighting of fires in the actual research site. I'd almost say Berger should recuse himself from the next round of papers, but I'm sure that won't happen. An independent team could ask to review the evidence themselves to test not just the findings but the claims of open access research.

Here"s my theory. A Naledi troop living/sheltering in the cave attacked by another group of Hominid using fire. In the ensuing fight all the full-grown Naledi males defending the troop are killed, dragged way, chopped up and eaten. The rest are all driven back into cave by fire/smoke, and in trying to escape came to slowly perish in the deep dark recesses of the cave. This scenario covers many of the facts to date, and reminds me of a comment Berger made years ago that the site reminded him of a grave yard ..the site containing only young or very old skeletons

One point I thought of while watching the netflix “documentary” is: did they have fire or did they have amazing night vision like some animals also have? So, for a Homosapien, we feel scared in a dark cave but the Homo naledi could see much better in the dark cave? Who even really knows what the heck was going on back some 300 thousand years or more ago ? They will examine our remains some day and think a corpse in front of a game console was doing some amazing spiritual ritual but it was just a kid playing grand theft auto part 7 when the world ended.

@francissantos7448

9 ай бұрын

I came into the same hypothesis. A human ancestor with night vision. Or are more active at night. How to prove that? I have poor night vision than most people. Maybe there are people who have good vision in poor light. H Naledi may have a culture which values their blind members and really really value them. Stuff for movies.

@jeffmacdonald9863

9 ай бұрын

@@francissantos7448 Not even animals with the best night vision can see anything deep in a cave. You need to be able to navigate by feel or smell or echolocation or something. Even the best night vision needs some light. Deep in a cave, there's absolutely nothing to work with, unless you bring artificial light sources with you.

@francissantos7448

9 ай бұрын

@@jeffmacdonald9863 "navigate by feel" you're into something here. Thanks for the insight. Blind people are experts at memorizing routes using a cane to trace their routes. A map could be memorized in low light from the entrance in incremental stages. Just light your fire at new areas to explore. H Naledi was probably a cave explorer extraordinaire. The hatchmarks may not be art but landmarks. Cheers.

@angrydoggy9170

Ай бұрын

Modern humans are worried about the dark. Ancient hominids wouldn’t necessarily have that issue. It gets very dark outside as well if you don’t have any artificial light source. Crawling into a dark cave wouldn’t be that different from being outside. Some modern monkeys also go into pitch dark caves to sleep.

Thanks for a thoughtful and restrained discussion. It's unfortunate that they have not been able to extract usable DNA but they should be able to extract useful information from the teeth. 1. Protein in dental enamel could help, much like how the procedure showed Homo antecessor was a "side group" though elaborate theories were developed based on inadequate data. 2. Teeth can be used to provide an absolute date of an individual. Having that information makes it possible to determine if the young/adolescent is compatible with the Homo lineage.

Is there a possibility of genetic sequencing on Homo neledi to compare to the recent sequencing of Paranthropus robustus? How about Lucy? Is genetic sequencing from tooth enamel the next level of paleotechnology?

Netflix shows on science will probably not get made with the same hedges required for a scientific paper.

Could the "tool" found just be a piece of rock used as a tool by Homo naledi without being altered by them? That could be another possibility, right? I mean, does a rock or other medium used as a tool necessarily have to be deliberately altered to be considered a "tool"?

@richb2229

9 ай бұрын

It was called a tool shaped stone in the paper. So they didn’t come right out and say it’s a tool. There are other similar tools from other sites so it could have been made or just a well shaped rock used to scrape things. I am sure there is a team working on it as we speak and that many papers will be written about it. Also, if it is a tool I am sure many more will be found and n the future.

I dont think its necessarily wrong to go public with your hypothesis, as long as its proposed as one and there is no obscurity. I think we should go public with our hypothesis because it may give others an idea that can improve it, like you guys!

Science publication is in a really bad place as it is, with premature publishing and a refusal to publish negative findings. Netflix itself is perhaps not to blame, though the documentary should more properly probably not have been about Homo naledi but about the archaeologists (and that's, in substance, pretty much what it was). What is more troubling is the shenanigans about the reviews, the papers themselves and how they tied in with Netflix. That really didn't look very good.

Finding an object in the hand of a skeleton led them to the declaration that naledi believed in an afterlife. I cannot take those people seriously if this is what passes for science.

@seanbeadles7421

9 ай бұрын

I mean, equally strong claims are made about Shanidar cave and some flowers buried with Shanidar 4. We just accept it more because they’re Neanderthals

Lee Burger has undermined the credibility of his fascinating work by his premature publication of speculative findings. There are experts in the fields of human burials, cave markings and use of fire. When such experts are allowed full access to the cave and removed material I will listen again to the reports of Naledi.

@brokenrulerlabs

10 ай бұрын

Closed minded because your experts did not go first? Really?

@mangohead27

3 ай бұрын

Lee Burger came across as very unprofessional in the Netflix film. Even a layman such as myself could see that.

Propaganda, sales? Enjoyed this discussion!👍🏼

What about the striking similarity between Homo naledi's crosshatch engravings and the Neanderthal crosshatch engravings in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar? Why are the Neanderthal engravings not considered natural dolomite weathering as well but rather accepted as proof of art? You don't mention that.

What if we took detailed pictures and 3d scans of as many humans and closely related extant species as possible while they are alive. Then after death, do the same thing with their skulls. Then we train an AI on all that information, and let the AI reconstruct what a species looked like on any newly discovered skulls. You would think that would be at least more accurate than an artist making a guess.

I am very excited about all these possible discoveries. But very skeptical that all of them are valid. All by itself the cave of bones with the H. naledi fossils is an extraordinary discovery. It needed no embellishment (if that's what happened). Meanwhile , now I have to work hard to be just as skeptical of the skeptics as I now am of the secondary discoveries, until it gets settled.

Berger did say in the film, "We just don't know." Did you just miss that?

could be that Naledi excavated the caves themselves

Being that testing and data is incomplete is there any chance that they all died from CO poisioning from the fires?

“Bob was here” Dr George Leader 😂 et Mark hoc fecit

You all are discussing all this, and people are reading it, and commenting on it… creating debate. THAT is the point of Lee Berger’s enthusiasm and over sharing and possibly jumping the gun on some of it. He wants it discussed, and debated. If he didn’t, he would be quiet and secretive like so many other people in the field no one has ever heard of 🤷‍♂️😁

@freandwhickquest

9 ай бұрын

i wonder why many of Lee Berger fans act like the ancient aliEns enthusiasts? the idea that ''old fashioned secretive scientists keep their secret behind closed doors'' and ''heroic scientists like Lee expose the secrets for the common people'' is not very different from conspiracy theorist populist cranks.

It is less likely that the remains would be articulated if it were prey.

cool vid

@FlintDibble

10 ай бұрын

Thanks

Something I find amusing is when people who think they know everything aka the believers in pseudo archaeology, believe that archaeology is it's own discipline. It's not. Archaeology is a blanket term. It's a multi-disciplinary field. It's one of the main reasons why there are teams of archaeologists at any given site. These people also believe that once a site is excavated, it's done and onto the next one. Nope, not how it works. Any given site undergoes excavation and analysis for decades. That's not even an exaggeration. There is so much information to unpack and analyse at any given site, that it takes a long time, sometimes generations.

Thinking back now on the Netflix film, it really reminds me of the Ancient Aliens crowd. "Could it be....?" (and then you get portals to other dimension and what have you), where there are much easier explanations.

Long before i saw this video and because the entrance to the cave is so hard to navigate the falling boulder making it harder to get into the cave makes sense. Dragging a dead body down there the way the entrance is now would have bin very hard.

Super interesting controversy, critical thinking at its finest

a lie can travel round the world before the truth can put on it's trousers ... onwards and upwards ...

Lee Berger and Avi Loeb need to do a collab on ancient asteroid aliens.

Is it possible Naledi dropped/placed their dead into the hole where post box opening was and sediment drift towards the lower part of the cave or flood events from the adjacent river moved the remains into the lower parts of the cave? Stopping only when the entrance became blocked with fill?

Here's what I don't get. Just the existence of these creatures, primates (or even hominids) from the stated time period is an amazing discovery. Why these attempts to inflate the significance beyond that? And done so poorly?

You said the claims were inadequate. They should have claimed more? Did you mean that the claims were inadequately supported by evidence?

I can't believe nobody has hypothesized that Naledi simply crawled into the cave, got lost without a light source, and unable to get out, simply died there.

@MossyMozart

5 ай бұрын

@jps101574 - Supposedly, they did not all go in there at once. As this video states, it was over decades.

@jps101574

5 ай бұрын

@@MossyMozart I would guess that these events happened many times over the centuries.

I am writing from South Africa…political pressure??

The critiques are necessary. Seems Berger wanted publicity early. Make this fabulous discovery open to everyone. Some of the evidence, bones, skulls, etc Will hold up. More people talking about it is Good. 😊😊😊😊😊

It’s not true that you need a tool “tougher” than the rock you’re engraving. Minerals of equal hardness can abrade each other.

There is nothing wrong with applying "The 10th Man " principle to all scientific claims. If solid, the claims, whatever they might be, should withstand the application of this "rule" in the search for accuracy. You also have to be brave to be that "10th man".

I felt the Netflix doc focused too much on the archeologists and not the archeology

I, of course, share concern with the front end work. the beauty of science, when it's done by people who just want to know what reality is, is the focus on accuracy of the collected data; though not knowing what the developed picture is going to look like, but that, if done to scientific protocol, that it will be a glimpse of The Reality

More accurate would be Australopithecus Naledi!

What I got from the video is, "What if..." I did not get Lee trying to foist his thoughts on the viewer. He says more testing is necessary. Why do you feel it necessary to jump in and criticize what is a great find no matter how you see it?

@AlanTov

9 ай бұрын

Because it was awful science.

Homo naledi did not make art.The rock art claim at Rising Star Cave is undated. To imply to Homo naledi requires a firm date. Feels like a self-promotion scam.