Almost Human: How New Discoveries from South Africa Change Our View of Human Origins
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- Human evolution was once thought to be a straight march of progress, but both ancient DNA and new fossil discoveries are showing how unexpected populations have contributed to our origins in surprising ways. The recent discovery of a huge trove of fossil bones in the Rising Star cave system of South Africa has identified a new ancestral form of human, Homo naledi, that surprised scientists around the world in many ways. The ongoing research on these ancient creatures has shown that they may have deliberately placed their dead inside a deep, remote chamber, casting new light on the origins of human sociality. John Hawks, PhD, Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses new discoveries made by the scientific team that help to place Homo naledi in an unexpected place in our origins.
The Center for Genetic Medicine Silverstein Lecture Series was established by the Herman M. and Bea L. Silverstein Medical Research Fund for Genetic Medicine to bring advances in genetics research and medicine to the general public.
Recorded on: March 9, 2017
I never tire of hearing a presentation on this amazing discovery and it will keep giving for years and years.
Crawling through the narrow passage would freak me out! 😂
Amazing. And John Hawks is an incredibly good communicator 👍🏾
I can remember doing a similar crawl through a cave back in the Uk when a teenager but a lot closer to the surface . It was wet and muddy and we had old carbine lamps . There was a very narrow entrance that flooded after heavy rain which it did on the two days I went down , so you had to take a deep breath and go for it . I eventually decided that getting cold and wet and covered in mud in a confined space was not for me and tried kayaking after that !
That sounds terrifying n exciting at the same time. Amazing adventure.
I am glad you made it back out alive.
As I am 195 cm tall, spelunking has never held much attraction. If it doesn't have a ticket booth, electric lighting, paved paths and stairs I don't enter. 😅
In the latest papers published it turns out there is soot on the ceilings and they have found at least three hearths with charcoal in them deep in the Rising Star cave system.
How thrilling. From the brave cavers who took extreme risks to discover a miraculous trove of hominin fossils to the equally brave female paleoanthropologists who excavated and helped explain them...a new member of our genus! There is much we may never know about our distant lineage...but we know measurably more now!
I always enjoy Hawks talks.
old very old.
thankyou for sharing this 🙂
the speaker communicates well..
a talk, at this date, 5 years and 7 months old. is there nothing new under the sun?
Lee Berger has some interesting vids in YT. Some 'newer' stuff. Hope you find something there . Have fun on your journey
Thanks for comment. No dislikes anymore. I'm gone. Audio socks too
Knowing that our ancestors at some point came out of the trees by necessity and became more and more upright, clearly naledi used their archaic arm and shoulder anatomy to climb easily in these caves. Then looking at the dichotomy of those features, juxtaposing their archaic with their more modern human characteristics, clearly there was interbreeding with early more modern humans that led to the skull, leg, foot and other traits being chosen for adaptivity. So imho the naledi are an excellent example of what an in-between species would be like, which is special since we have little direct sample to examine besides them. Erectus and habilus are obviously key in our development, but naledi gives us an idea what the 'blank areas' in the search thus far might have been like. In that respect the combo of both archaic and more modern human features are the ideal representation we needed to get a clearer picture. And with such abundant samples across age and gender, wow... Regardless of their relationship to us, we can see a species that exemplifies how evolution does its thing.
Absolutely fascinating and very exciting
Maybe it was a method of concealing the deceased from predators before inhumation was thought of. Perhaps their relatives dragged them in and then blocked the entrance.
Why don't they just widen the opening a fraction with a portable rock saw? Or a chisel and hammer?
Anything H.naledi, John Hawks, and Lee Berger, is a recipe for an amazing adventure.
Thx, always looking for more . Will ck them out.
Why would they crawl into the cave? In darkness? Something doesn’t add up. I think a geologist needs to study and document the geological history of the cave and surrounding area before the anthropologists, palaeontologists and archaeologists come up with their theories.
They did investigate the cave’s history and ruled out options how the bones could have gotten there.
7 (seven) Considerations for two simple questions. Whereas (1) THAT, in a rare event, several fossils were found gathered in the same place; (2) THAT, these fossils are of individuals with ages ranging from months (infant) to mature age; (3) THAT these individuals appear to have died at the same time; (4) THAT there are no traces of food or hunting utensils/tools - nor of routine use of fire, although the place is very dark; (5) THAT the site is difficult to access even for small individuals, being difficult to go down to the lower chambers of the cave; (6) that exit from the site must be via the entry point; (7) that transporting adult corpses through the narrow labyrinth would be especially trying. I ASK: Wouldn't these individuals belong to a group (complete family, with adults, young people and children) that, in a hurry, sought refuge in the depths of the cave when fleeing from a pursuer who, in turn, had the means to understand the situation and set up guard for days or weeks, until it kills the refugees with thirst and hunger? Could the stalker be sapiens?
They did find charcoal and burnt animal bones.
@@mm4853 What they actually found is generating a lot of academic discussion, as it seems that they jumped to some "conclusions".
Did these caves geologically form AFTER the bones were deposited? In other words, was the landscape totally different in the time of the hominids? Or did the hominids actually climb into these caves?
I think the Cave came before the Man
@@clairerobsin was V
@KK Design Services -- I like your question. After watching many of these shows and wondering how and why ancient hominids got into such tight places, I believe in some cases, the landscape changed radically and bodies/bones wound up in caves.
@@kathleenmckenzie6261 That's my suspicion too. Or perhaps the bones were deposited there by floods. One has to wonder why so many would have died in such tight, difficult to reach places. Not to mention they would have been in pitch black darkness. And if they had any means to light them with fire, filled with smoke. It's all deeply mysterious.
@@kkdesignservices183 lost or as yet undiscovered entrance?? has the area ever been subject to geological activity? if not, then how could the surface become part of a cave system?
Excellent lecture. I would suggest that the larger members of this population would not be represented here, due the size of the cave. The largest ones, if there were, would not fit into the tunnels.
this is better than Netflix, more educational. I think some sort of animals (possible snake like) had hurt those beings and dragged them into the cave remote area to store food..it's just that simple?? Some of them may not die when they hunt and store them there..
Early on I was curious about the body size and the ability of the homo naledi people to fit inside the deeper chambers of the Rising Star Cave complex, which you did cover. Thank you for that. I'm also curious about the possible reasons these people had to ventured so far into the cave, especially considering the difficulty involved. Perhaps it was to escape larger predators that couldn't fit that far into the cave? Perhaps it was a safe place to keep scavengers away from the deceased? Apparently, you did not find evidence of soot on the cave ceilings, so how did they navigate in complete darkness and what did they do once inside? Did you find evidence of food consumption (smaller bones, seed pods, etc.)? It's possible they knew to consume bones for the calcium. Maybe we need a new branch of science called paleopsychology (my neologism) to address some of these issues? Safe to say, some of them, at the least, were not claustrophobic. Excellent presentation thank you.
This was a grave. Apparently, the ancient undertaker of the day, was tasked with dragging the body through that ridiculously small cave, most likely to keep it from larger animals. Im sure the flies found their way in.
I'd say they were more "nocturnal" back in the day, among other things.
Possibly see a more expanded color spectrum.
Nuclear Fallout
the evidence of curiosity, finding use, and possibly protection. mammals have lived underground before
Misleading. The main heading says: 1 year ago. This is from 2017-seven years old.
I wonder why the explorers didn't widen the tunnel into the cave so that more people could get in?
We came from being created. The question is how we got created. Since no physical thing can ever make or direct itself, the cause cannot be physical. That is the science.
Amazing.... thanks for posting this for me all to see.
Watched all of it 1:06:47
@Minuteman would fit
Did you know that Stick Man existed long before the invention of the pencil?
@Greg Monks -- now that you mention it . . . . . .
@@kathleenmckenzie6261 I know, right? Pop culture has ancient roots. Hooda thunkit?
I don't believe Naledi shuld be classifed as 'Homo". I elieve they were Australopithecines. Other than similar teeth and being bipedal, what makes them a member of our genus?
Where is the rest of it? The presentation seems to need a part 2.
How did those "Humans" get down the cave?Just wondering!
H Zoonka, caves go through changes along the millennia, it might be that the entry used by these prehistoric individuals has collapsed or has been filled with sediments, while new entries have appeared which may be difficult to go through.
I think the adaptation to moving between ever smaller and farther apart islands of forest occurred first. King legged, sweaty and free handed, the stage was then set for logistical efficiency to provide the next big adaptation. And that relied on circuitry. Next was another firmware upgrade of the frontal lobe. Grasping a greater number of relationships exponentiated planning and trade as game changing advantages.
i am rarely if ever exposed to such eloquent mumbling.
Relying not on reason, but “good form”, to elevate yourself above another, you miss the mark capitally - as that was unattended from the start.
I can think of a more simple way for them to get there than "They put them there", which implies a high level of cognition, wouldn't they have had some form of tools on them by the way, if they were that smart? I think It's a "funnel trap". They were living in and around the cave, something in the cave was a source of food or shelter, etc. and once in a while they would get lost and end up going in the wrong direction until they gave up and died. Rather than assuming high intelligence in an animal with that small of a brain, it makes more sense to assume they were trapped by an oddly shaped cave. At best this might imply curiosity. Furthermore, the odd geography of the cave assured they would get so far down that they weren't prey to anything and this helped preserve them as well.
I can think of one other possibility. They where put there by Humans or forced to flee down into the cave by humans who lit fires forcing them to flee and die. Or they were fleeing from forest fires without humans involved at all. But if the date comes back as contemporary to humans then it still makes more sense that if it was ritualistic, that it was humans who put them there.
Those are two possibilities right off the top of my head that make more sense than the assumption that they were putting their dead way back in there.
I was just wondering if the photograph of the vice president of South Africa was taken before or after chants or songs calling for the death of white farmers?
Why dont they just did the hole bigger?
chimps are our closest living relatives.. they are the true prehumans.. therefore homo sapiens and neandrathals are pre chimps..
we are homo sapien sapiens not homo sapiens
johnny lloddte, chimpanzees are rather para-humans, we have a common ancestor, however our lineages have diverged and we are in "parallel" lines. As for the taxonomic name it is not always stable, and has gone through changes, some of which have been wide ranging.
what? We split from chimps 6 million years ago. However we are about as related to them, that we are these guys. Homo Naledi. Naledi couldn't make it. Chimps did.
@@antonijaume8498 we are in parallel lines but they branched off at an earlier stage of development, thus remained apes
It's pretty well certain that, if they didn't kill each other, they enjoyed sex too much not to have cross sex.
Even today it's not unknown for men to have sex even with animals such as sheep and cows, nevermind those closer to our kind.
Men? Nah man...women too
so what's your point?
oh that's what went wrong, nat geo was there.
well, I guess I have some angst with the one nat geo heroin addict production dude, going to the tribes with a load of crap, but like he's some self proclaimed authority.
it's not funny.
It’s nice to hear a real scientist speak of “female” team members who are naturally smaller than men. I believe this scientist because he isn’t stuck on woke jargon.
Taking 30 minutes to accomplish what Usain Bolt can do in 9 seconds is basically what living with chronic fatigue is like...
Mumbo Jumbo
Thanks to archeologists, we now know WW3 will be among the Neanderthals who will be defeated by the Denisovans.
@Sonar Bangla: No, actually WW4 will be the Neanderthals and Denisovans, AFTER our much more technically advanced, wiser and brilliantly educated contemporary civilizations have wiped out each other in WW3.
@@kathleenmckenzie6261 You are not at all 'wise', there will be no 'wipeout'.
@@sonarbangla8711 Didn't say I, personally, am wise and I wish I could have your confidence.
I can barely hear this
fix your audio
He can do without the story of the two cavers, the narrow passages, etc. This has been retold elebenty billion times already.
Fine, but forget about messing with DNA. It's a foolish thing