This week PBS will have a show about the Rising Star excavation on Nova. The show is about the discovery of a large collection of bones from a new species of Homo in an almost completely inaccessible cave in South Africa. It should be an interesting show.
Bill Gill
Sounds good, Bill. I succeeded in finding the video, but when I tried to play it, I got: "We're sorry, but this video is not available in your region due to right restrictions."
You can't win 'em all, I suppose!
Well, I wish you had managed. If you ever get a chance to see it I strongly recommend it. I just got through watching it and it was a good show.
They started out with the discovery. Lee Berger, the paleoanthropologist in charge was approached by somebody he knew who asked if Lee would like to hire him to look for fossils. Lee bought him a motorcycle and said go ask among your caver friends. He got in touch with some others. 2 of them went down a cave they had visited previously. While they were there they discovered a new shaft they hadn't been to yet. The wormed (just about literally) there way down and came to a cave where they found a lot of bones. They took pictures and brought them back. When the first one saw the pictures and videos (they had GoPros) he immediately took them to Lee and Lee went wild. There were definitely hominin bones down there. Well, long story short, they put together a really quick expedition. Lee recruited people to go down via social media. He needed very slender people, so he got mostly women. One place they had to go through was about 7 1/2 inches (19 cm) wide. Some of his people were very small and all were thin.
Anyway they expected a skeleton. They found around 1700 fragments of skeletons, at least 12 individuals. They also got a skull fragment that was more homo than pythecanthropus.
One of the major problems brought back from the expedition was that there were no animal bones in the cave. Well there was one owl. Which raises the question about how did at least 12 people wind up in that very inaccessible cave. The strongest hypothesis they could come up with was that they were deposited there by others. Considering the primitive skeletons that really flies in the face of what everybody has thought about deliberate burials of members of Genus Homo. They don't have a good date yet, that is still in work. It is unlikely to be less than a couple of million years.
Bill Gill
I'll keep a lookout for it. Eventually it may turn up here as a DVD.
"MEDIA BRIEFING: New fossil find unveiled in Maropeng, Johannesburg":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiiOJ4Y9ZLoThis is 102min video which inc a great deal of ceremony. If you want to get down to the bones (!) of the matter, see 40min-70min, and the Q&A from 80min onward.
Now this report really gets strange. From Phys.Org
South Africa's new human ancestor sparks racial rowSome people in South Africa say that the Homo naledi report is racist and denigrates Africans. Some people come up with weird ideas about science.
Bill Gill
Yes, Bill, I suppose that was inevitable. The negative sentiment on these issues is hardly confined to certain paranoid individuals in South Africa, nor to creationists. There was a discussion, on this forum, regarding the very well substantiated understanding that chimps and humans share a common ancestor who walked the Earth/swung through trees about 6 million yrs ago. It raised some hackles even on this 'science' forum, that human beings are classified as apes. It seemed to be fine that we shared a common origin with all other life on earth as, most likely, the very same RNA-like molecule; fine that we are classifies as animals; fine that we are classified as mammals, fine that we are classified as primates; but no way was it going to be accepted that we are APES!. I wonder how much the view (and sentiment) of the objectors differs from that of the people currently raising cain over this new discovery.
A thought just occurred to me about the presence of all those bodies in the cave. How did they get there? I don't mean why they are there, whether they were buried or died there. I mean how did they physically get there. The cavern where they were found is fairly deep in a cave system. Which means that it is dark in there. The excavation was well lighted by artificial light. When they got in there they didn't have led flashlights. Based on their physical structure they were probably before Homo Habilis, so that pushes them back anyhow a couple of million years. But they didn't get in there without some kind of light and torches seems the most probable, at least to me. So there are implications for when Homo first gained control of fire. As I recall the oldest confirmed use of fire was around 800,000 years ago.
Bill Gill
Interesting point, Bill. I've never taken note of any dates regrading controlled use of fire, but according to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans"Based on the feeding time comparison between human and nonhuman primates (4.7% versus predicted 48% of daily activity), researchers have inferred that this is due to an evolutionary consequence of food processing dating back to 1.9 million years ago. This may imply control of fire as early as 1.9 million years ago by the Homo genus".
That's simply reasonable speculation, of course, as opposed to more substantial evidence. In the case of homo neladi discovery, the evidence does appear to be incontrovertible.
An interesting link from John Hawks. He was involved in the Rising Star excavations. He has found an infographic about the excavation.
Infographic: Homo naledi and the underground astronauts. In his article the infographic is a bit small, but he provides a link to a full size version of it.
Bill Gill
Unless H. naledi indulged in cave exploration, how would they have known about the Dinaledi Cavern in the first place?
It has been suggested that the “difficulty of access would seem to rule out formal burial”, and that “attempted escape from some catastrophic surface event” might be a possibility. On the other hand, the deposition of the remains indicates that it took place over a long period.
It seems that the “Dragon’s Back” may be a block that dropped from the roof. Has anyone considered that 1-2 ma access might have been different?
Could it be that the difference in access was more than would have resulted from the slumping of the Dragon’s Back?
This is one of the things that has bothered me too. On the Nova program they said they didn't think it had changed much since the bodies got there. But as you say, how did they find the place and move the bodies in there if they were burying them? There wouldn't seem to be much to be gotten from exploring the caves, especially for people who were subsistence survivors. You don't find much food in the depths of a cave system. I can't help but agree with you that there must have been a much easier way to get in there at that time.
Bill Gill
An attractive theory, but the available evidence suggests to me the term 'might have' rather than 'must have'; but, as in all things, what one is inclined to believe depends upon a personal assessment of the probabilities.
You could be right there. So change it to Might Have.
And getting off onto a side track. How about the cave art in Europe? What led people to go exploring back into those caves. As I said there isn't much food in a cave. Now 20,000 to 30,000 years ago they definitely had control of fire, so that isn't a problem, but there is still the question of why they went back in there. I propose a simple explanation. Teenagers. All over the world I expect you see examples of places where kids paint things like "Go Buffs" and "John + Marsh" on the sides of water towers and highway bridges. Places that are difficult to get to. So I can see the family sitting around the fire in the cave on a cold winter day. But the teenagers would start getting bored so they would dare each other to go exploring in the depths of the caves. Then when they got way back in there they would mark the place to show how brave they were. Voila! First thing you know cave paining is all the rage.
Bill Gill
So I can see the family sitting around the fire in the cave on a cold winter day. But the teenagers would start getting bored so they would dare each other to go exploring in the depths of the caves. Then when they got way back in there they would mark the place to show how brave they were. Voila! First thing you know cave paining is all the rage.
I'm glad you said that because for my previous post I originally included the same scenario re homo naledi teenagers exploring their cave. Heaven knows what their mother would have said
Well, what did your mother say? I expect they said pretty much the same thing then as they do now. Heck, I have been to the beach and seen a family arrive. The kids headed straight to the water while the mother was trying to tell them to be careful. I expect that that's what happened when H. naledi found a beach for the first time.
Bill Gill
So there are implications for when Homo first gained control of fire
I imagine the team will be looking for particles of soot on the walls/roof. It will be very informative if they find it, but raise all kinds of questions if they don't.
The H. naledi find will raise more questions than just about fire. It is like a lot of scientific discoveries. It will undoubtedly raise a lot more question than it will solve. Who were they, where did they come from, where do they fit into the human family tree (or bush).
Bill Gill