The Homo naledi Controversy! With Jamie Hodgkins and George Leader
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- Опубліковано 14 сер 2023
- Thanks to Dr. Jamie Hodgkins and Dr. George Leader for a productive conversation. Thanks to Dr. Jason Heaton and Dr. Travis Pickering for getting in touch about the Misgrot Cave parallel. Thanks to Andy Herries for sharing photos. Thanks to Jonida Martini for video editing, visual design, and help with the captions.
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See here for my earlier public peer review of the Homo naledi burial paper: • Homo Naledi Burial? A ...
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The papers being discussed. You can read the papers here as well as the reviews and editor comments. Note that the reviewers were unanimous in the types of issues they raised.
Berger et al. 2023a. "241,000 to 335,000 Years Old Rock Engravings Made by Homo naledi in the Rising Star Cave system, South Africa." elifesciences.org/reviewed-pr...
Berger, L. et al. 2023b. "Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi." elifesciences.org/reviewed-pr...
Fuentes et al. 2023. "Burials and engravings in a small-brained hominin, Homo naledi, from the late Pleistocene: contexts and evolutionary implications." elifesciences.org/reviewed-pr...
Press release by Lee Berger announcing these three papers: • Lee Berger Announcemen...
For an in-depth dive into the peer reviews, see Gutsick Gibbon's video: • A Deep Dive into the S...
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Additional Bibliography and Citations
Al-Malabeh. "Al-Fahda Cave (Jordan): the longest lava cave yet reported from the Arabian Plate." www.researchgate.net/publicat...
Berger et al. 2015. "Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa." eLife. elifesciences.org/articles/09560
Berger, L. 2022. "The Future of Exploration in the Greatest Age of Exploration - Dr. Lee R. Berger." • The Future of Explorat...
Bruxelles et al. 2019. "A multiscale stratigraphic investigation of the context of StW 573 ‘Little Foot’ and Member 2, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa." www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Débenath and Dibble 1995. Handbook of Paleolithic Typology: Volume One, Lower and Middle Paleolithic of Europe.
Dirks et al. 2015. "Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa." eLife. elifesciences.org/articles/09561
Egeland et al. 2018. "Hominin skeletal part abundances and claims of deliberate disposal of corpses in the Middle Pleistocene." PNAS. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
Harcourt-Smith et al. 2015. The Foot of Homo naledi. Nature Communications. www.nature.com/articles/ncomm...
Kivell et al. 2015. "The hand of Homo naledi." Nature Communications. www.nature.com/articles/ncomm...
Nel et al. 2021. "Taphonomic Study of a Modern Baboon Sleeping Site
at Misgrot, South Africa: Implications for Large-Bodied Primate Taphonomy in Karstic Deposits." Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology. link.springer.com/article/10....
Robbins et al. 2021. "Providing context to the Homo naledi fossils: Constraints from flowstones on the age of sediment deposits in Rising Star Cave, South Africa." Chemical Geology. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Robu 2016. "The assessment of the internal architecture of an MIS 3 cave bear bone assemblage. Case study: Urşilor Cave, Western Carpathians, Romania." www.sciencedirect.com/science...
(keywords: Homo naledi burial, archaeology, Paleolithic, pleistocene, human evolution, behavior, hominid, hominin, taphonomy, geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, formation processes, Dinaledi, Rising Star Cave, eLife, peer review, Netflix Unknown: Cave of Bones)
Very brave of these 2 to put their name on their skepticism. Gutsick did as well and I’m here for it.
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.
The documentary was great for excitement. They should have clarified that these were theories needed more investigation.
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.
Last week I watched Berger in a UA-cam 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.
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.
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.
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.
It seems like Mr. Berger is emerging as a bit of a P.T. Barnum of paleoanthroology :)
"I want to believe in UFOs, but all I see are balloons and birds." - Mick West, hobbyist
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.
I've been a archaeologist for 30 years, and there are some seriously big flaws with this discovery.
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.
12:35
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
It is inconcievable to me that Naledi could or would attempt to navigate the cave without light.
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.
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.
The more I hear, the less confidence I have in any of Dr. Berger's conclusions.
Very interesting discussion . Thank you