Two additional points 1. This supposed "grave" "pit" is too small: only 50cm x 25 cm. An adult Homo naledi is more than 140 cm tall (and this individual was an adult). The small size just doesn't work for a primary burial with in situ decomposition, unless bones were intentionally broken to twist the body or the body was butchered into pieces. I state this point vaguely, but wanted to make it more explicit how the sizes just don't work with the stated interpretations. 2. I mention the bibliography problems, but they're really not good. The main paper has 37 co-authors but only 32 cited sources. Half of these are self-citations to the team's papers about the site. And, as pointed out, some of those self-citations are just wrong. This is a problem for a scientific paper with such strongly stated claims. Let alone the aggressive courting for media attention, where they state this to be definitive. It misrepresents the scientific process and the messy context in which archaeological interpretations are made.
Like I already said, we have nothing to compare these burials with in the archaeological record, so we cannot state that the "ritual process" followed by Homo naledi to bury their dead is a "problem". It would be a problem if it didn't follow a pre-established pre-human burial pattern, which is not the case.
@@annemarielara1962 I could have swore the main paper that Flint was critiquing was one of the papers that had been part of the "prerelease" before peer review had been done?
@annemarielara1962 it hasn't been peer reviewed yet. And my point is only that they haven't finished excavating the concentration of bones nor documenting it. The evidence they've presented so far is not convincing in trying to decisively prove this is a pit dug by Homo naledi as a grave for a single adult Homo naledi. Which is what they claim it is. We will see if they make any edits on the basis of peer review, whether mine or others. But they will need to continue to study it, if they want to convincingly prove this is the earliest hominid burial know, earlier by over 100,000 years. Because it isn't clearly proven yet.
I have just watched Gutsick Gibbon's analysis of the reviews, not only of this paper, but the other two as well. The concerns that both of you expressed when the preprints were published have definitely played out.
Thank you. I watched the Netflix documentary on this. It was clear the researchers, particularly the lead, became emotionally entangled with their findings. Completely understandable given the weight of the implications. I imagine it will take years of research and further excavation to fully understand the true relevance and importance of this discovery. You look quite a lot like your dad by the way. I'm sure he would be proud.
Brilliant! Not only is it a great tribute to your Dad's work, but it's a perfect example of what happens behind the scenes in peer review publishing. I'm here in Italy, so I'll raise a glass of grappa to Harold Dibble. Here's to a thousand views!
Great review and critique. You are the best on youtube addressing this issue. I first saw your video with George Leader and Jamie and wanted to hear your review. This "discovery" was rushed to the media to feed their egos and a few others. It will be interesting to see how this goes. Your dad would be proud!
Fantastic. One of the best things about the internet is people like you Flint, who are willing to share your expertise. Great job showing all of the qualities necessary for good science: curiosity, intelligence, open-mindedness, skepticism, logic, and most important... demanding evidence commensurate with the claims. Well-done. Given the implications, I'm very disappointed in Berger's team for making such grand claims on limited evidence.
I do not to this research field at all, but must say that this peer review analysis is an excellent tutorial on how not to write a paper. This may be even useful to the authors.
This is bitter sweet. I watched the Netflix documentary when it came out and woke my mom up at midnight to tell her what they said they found. We were both excited by the prospect of an actual burial by Homo Naledi. I am sorry to see that there is no real scientific corroboration of their claims. But I am glad I saw your review because I want to see real history, not some drummed up fantasy. Though it's late, I raised a glass to your pops, I know he is smiling down on your achievements, and especially this review.
Thank you so much! It's very exciting to see a peer review in real time! How would you characterize the difference between human and (for example) elephant burials? You describe emotions, but how do we know that elephants aren't experiencing grief while burying their dead?
it's less about emotion, which we can't judge, and more about the more complex behavior/the complex steps taken to do a burial that implies a level of symbolism and ritual (hence why it's been the focus of so much argument because that then has knock-on impacts on discussions of cognition, culture, communication, and more)
Also I should link to this Twitter thread where I write about this topic in a bit more depth: twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1138102486420676608?t=APJrVbBUph9fAxEm7HEWhA&s=19
@@FlintDibble Okay, I've finished the video. Just a lay person, I don't have enough background to really assess your arguments vs their arguments. Watching some TH-cam videos that Prof Berger has appeared in about the discovery, he's oddly *more* cautious about what he found in many of those than he is in the title / abstract. On the one hand, I understand why you say it's lazy to rely on the peer reviewers to tell them what to test given the current compensation structure. But at a more holistic level, it seems like science as an enterprise could work really well if the group that has the privilege of characterizing the find isn't always the group that is also privileged in choosing which tests to run and what theories are most promising.
@serpounce5699 In the end, it's the larger community of scholars and the consensus they reach that will determine how these new finds and patterns are interpreted. It's just that the scholars to make the initial finding, gets first go at it when they present the material and study. Nobody controls scientific interpretation I haven't seen his public presentations, but they're also irrelevant to reviewing a specific paper where the conclusions were written as definitive
@FlintDibble Hi Flint, I'm sorry about your Dad. It's wonderful to see your pride in his achievements and your grief for him on his DOD, so publically expressed. Maybe those little hominins felt the same way about their dad as they laid him to rest in their underground mortuary temple. I have a question about why it is so important for archeologists to distinguish interment in a dug grave in an underground cave and interment on top of the floor of an underground cave. My common sense view would be there is no conceptual, religious, anthropological difference between the two. Both are burials. The degree of humanness is the same surely? The underground Roman catacombs are full of bodies that have not touched soil. No one would seriously contend those bodies were not buried or that those undertaking such rituals were not less "human" by displaying less grief and compassion for their mothers, fathers, daughters sons. Could you help me understand the fuss please. Thankyou for your video. I was enthralled by your sincerity and enthusiasm for your topic. Regards Peter King
Thanks, Peter. I responded to it because that was what the authors were trying to prove. I think it's because a burial is one sort of physical evidence for complex funerary behavior. There are others... but burial, rather than simple abandonment of a body, is one way to demonstrate ritual or belief or at least complex behavior around death It's impossible to prove or disprove grief or emotion with a long extinct human cousin. So, instead wr need physical clues as a proxy, and burial would be one of them, if proven
I was listening to this while cooking dinner so didn't actually see any of the images until half way thru. I used to be an academic in psychology and worked as an associate editor on two journals for a few years. I had a question about the way the scale is represented across images. I used to be pernickity about things like keys being consistent across images. I found the inconsistent representation of the scale across images strange. To me, that is a red flag. Where the unaltered photos released? Putting a giant black box, with only the 5cm scale inside, across a good chunk of an image - so that it obscures a good proportion of the image & interferes with understand the image - a bit sus. Then a slimmer black box with the scale appears in the middle of an image. Then other images have the scale tucked in the corner of the images without a black box (so doesn't obscure ths images). Is there a reason to have black rectangles obscuring some images? Or just sloppy?
Just to get this straight: The team pre-published, pushed their papers to the media and got (the contract for) a Netflix documentary -- without any peer review!? Is that very common in any scientific discipline?
So, are real peer reviews always conducted publicly on TH-cam ? Also, do they tend to be tinged with personal biases, or are they impartial ? I've never seen one on TH-cam before by you or anyone else, so I am curious how they are normally presented. Is this your 1st public peer review ? I'm looking forward to seeing more of them from you in the future.
Nope not usual on youtube. But peer reviews do always embed the experience and perspective of the reviewer, that's why there are typically several. Lots of colleagues, including several of the actual peer reviewers of the paper, the editor of the journal, and one of the authors praised the video, so I might do more
I watched Lee Burgers announce the other day and I was thinking it all sounded great but I’d like to get another prospective. I was a bit dubious about the art. And I thought I had heard somewhere, years ago, that there was evidence ppl had been in the chamber. Still love Lee and the Rising Star Gang but I’m going to withhold final judgement. Thanks for making this video.
The evidence of people prior to the team being down there is mentioned in the original 2015 papers and in their 2017 popular book "Almost Human." They identify one person by name in the current batch of papers.
Great video Flint. Thanks for walking us through the evidence. I was wondering, couldnt the dying individual also have dug down a little bit to make a bedding to disturb that lorm layer? My dog often digs down and clears away rocks and debris before bedding down. It also doesn’t seem like it’s deep enough to be a proper burial. Seems inconclusive for sure.
Burials and rock engravings are tangible evidence of purposeful behaviours and suggest higher cognitive functions, but we can only imagine what other behaviours are lost to time. How do we deal with the extra-ordinary circumstances of the Rising Star caves? Specifically, the effort and danger involved in taking the dead into this cave system? Is it fair to say that a likely motivation was to protect the bodies from scavengers? We have some preconceptions of what a burial means, but they may well be meaningless to these early hominins. Could they have carried bodies into these caves and returned to the surface without any light at all? We do have evidence of fire use from Qesem Cave in Israel some 200,000-400,000 years ago.
Well, there's good evidence in the Robbins et al. 2021 paper I cited that the cave systems have changed a lot in the last 200k years since homo naledi used them. Good evidence for easier access, and more research needs to be done. But I don't see the rock engraving or burial as proven, so it's too early to discuss cognitive function nor even behavior (with no tools identified or really much of all other than skeletal material)
Lee claimed in one of his presentations that there was good evidence of fires having been made in the cave in the chamber where the remains were found.
@@gavinmcewen5896 the fire evidence hasn't been published. It needs dates to demonstrate its not more recent since they document more recent entry into the chamber in Dirks et al. 2015
@FlintDibble, excellent. Thank you from a fellow researcher! You are very coherent concerning the manner in which peer review is to be done. One question: now that the Netflix documentary is out, how do you reckon the Synchrotron scan affect the grave goods case? They seem convinced. Thanks in advance
Hah, thanks. It hasn't. Nothing on that tool shaped rock is actually tool shaped. They don't demonstrate the hallmark criteria for an anthropogenically modified stone tool such as a bulb of percussion, retouch, etc. Until they demonstrate explicit criteria for it being a tool, It's just a piece of dolomite, of which there are many in a cave made of dolomite. It's fortuitously near an anatomically intact hand. They never state how near and only show 2d images from their 3d scans. So very unclear and ambiguous
Lee Berger is first and foremost a fame hunter. He's a cowboy who cuts corners and makes huge leaps. I think he's doing serious damage to the site and the field of paleoanthropology. I'm weary of people who discover too many things. I'm glad to see this peer review.
There is nothing wrong with being a fame hunter as long as it is done responsibly. As a former scientist myself in the field of physics, now a corporate engineer, we need to separate "popular science" from "actual science". "Actual science" doesn't care about the media. "Actual science" can take 100 years to reach the threshold of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. W/r to "popular science" It is ok to do "science marketing" to get the public excited about research in your field, as long as you're mindful not to misrepresent facts. Science is not perfect. Invest more dollars - get better results. Clearly, the scientists, in this case, have good faith intentions, and they want to do more science in this area. How do you suppose they will fund their future expeditions? "Marketing" is a must! That's exactly what they are doing here.
Being at work, the strongest thing I had to toast with was coffee. But it was black and strong. And I'm in Kentucky so it's easy to imagine that there may or may not have been a bit of bourbon in it.
Very interesting video. Is it your position that the several sites showing evidence for neanderthal burial are also inadequate? That's the impression I got from a few lines in the video but you may have just been referring to some specific cases.
" Dismissals of Neanderthals as greatly inferior to our own ancestors - in day-to-day living and thinking, as well as in creating art - have been quite common over the years. For anthropologists and archaeologists who have steadily worked to overturn the myth of these hominins as brutish and stupid, the Spanish art is a particularly meaningful pointer towards Neanderthal cognitive and culture sophistication. Neanderthals haven't just been dismissed, they have also been recruited for use as epithets on the basis of their perceived shortcomings. As science writer Carl Zimmer put it when reporting last week on the art discovery for The New York Times, "It's long been an insult to be called a Neanderthal." This practice has continued even quite recently, as we see in one media story after another. Historical explanations can be found for why Neanderthals, early on, were portrayed in stereotyped terms: In 1911, a French anatomist, through a series of misconceptions (and preconceptions), mis-reconstructed a male Neanderthal skeleton from the site of La Chappelle aux Saints in France as shambling and stooped. This male looked downright dim. For decades, the image - now representing Neanderthals everywhere - stuck."
While I agree it’s a little unbecoming to use the word Neanderthal as an insult, we shouldn’t react too much in the other direction and start talking about their ‘sophistication’ either, especially as their is really no other way to think about this is other than anthrocentrically. I think they should - like any other creature - be respected on their own terms, and not by comparing them to humans, cognitively or otherwise. There are strong evolutionary reasons to believe for example that the language faculty (which is believed by many cognitive scientists to be the defining feature of modern humans) is highly unlikely to have evolved in any non human species.
Many thanks for doing this review. I believe much of what has been said about H. naledi is greatly far-fetched and unsupported by evidence. Your review has been an eye opener as to what are we really facing here. Cheers to you and to Harold.
Thanks so much, Ana! Yeah, and I could have said more too... I meant to highlight more the problem of a 0.5×0.25cm "grave" for an adult hominid of a species that is 1.4+m in height Another time or for someone else to find other flaws!
I know absolutely nothing about forensic archaeology- but the Netflix show brought me here, because, even as as an utter layman, I found so much of that documentary far fetched. There are so many ways the bones could have ended up there, but it seemed to me they decided the one they liked the most, and ran headlong with it. I didn’t grow up with archaeologists but I did grow up religious people, and I know what it looks like when someone becomes deeply emotionally attached to an idea they so want to be true. And that’s the vibe I got from the head guy leading this excavation. I was floored by the idea that they thought a tool was placed in the hand of an individual, therefore they believed in an afterlife. WHHATT??? Maybe that tool was very just personal to that individual, so important, it’s part of who they are so it’s included in the burial. Or it’s just a rock that slid kinda near his hand. It just sucks this is what gets the Netflix documentaries and not science that’s far more grounded.
Berger says in his book that his group had known about another section of the cave system containing more hominid fossils that was much more easily accessible, but they kept it quiet while the H. naledi story was being formulated. Then later, in 2017, Berger’s group published a paper detailing the presence of at least three more H. naledi fossils in this other section in what is now called the Lesedi Chamber. Since the original 2015 eLife publication, numerous research papers describing anatomical analyses of the bone assemblage have been published, mostly by members of Berger’s team. They keep showing that H. naledi is nothing more than a suspicious hodgepodge of ape-like bones (Australopithecus) and a few human-like bones. These papers reported on analyses of skulls, pelvic remains, leg bones, hands, and feet and give the same original confusing anatomical mosaic story. One of the few critical papers published outside Berger’s group contradicted the claims that H. naledi had flat, human-like feet. Another problem concerns Berger’s contention that the bones were intentionally buried. Not only were the extremely young (by evolutionary standards) dates a severe problem for the embattled H. naledi, but the ridiculous story originally put forth by Berger and his team for the bones being intentionally and ritually buried has been just as troubling. The companion paper to the original 2015 publication describing the geology at the site stated: "The fossils are contained in mostly unconsolidated muddy sediment with clear evidence of a mixed taphonomic signature indicative of repeated cycles of reworking and more than one episode of primary deposition." So, not only were the fossils completely disarticulated and jumbled up in a muddy deposit, they were also intermixed with various bird and rodent bones. Even more suspicious is Berger’s careful storytelling to support his claim that the H. naledi fossils were purposefully buried while at the same time he hid the Lesedi Chamber discovery. If his story were true, then the Lesedi Chamber would have been a more logical location for the original participants to bury their dead since it is much more easily accessible and would not have required the super-gymnastic athletic ability needed to enter the Dinaledi Chamber. Also, why are we not being told what types of fossils were buried in the Dragon’s Back Chamber directly above it? Is it because it contains the same hodgepodge of fossil debris as the Dinaledi Chamber below it? This would prove they were all deposited during a cave flooding event.
Thank you very much for this video. I have been following this story and it's great to get other perspectives. I was wondering, why is burial seen as indicating ritual behaviour? Could it not have been just for practical reasons? Such as getting rid of the body to prevent the spread of disease? I understand that they wouldn't have understood disease as such - but they might have known from experience that proximity to dead things could lead to illness? Or maybe it was to prevent the smell attracting predators, or nuisances like pests and rodents?
Lots of argument on this topic. But in this case for sure, that wouldn't have been needed as there's no sign Homo naledi was living this deep in the cave. The evidence in fact excludes it, since basically the only finds are Homo naledi bones. No food scraps, no artifacts For more on why burial matters, I cover it in this Twitter thread: twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1138102486420676608?t=APJrVbBUph9fAxEm7HEWhA&s=19
Possibly helpful here to be clear in the definition of "ritual" here. While the common use of ritual naturally conjures up some relationship to religious ceremony, I'm pretty sure Lee made it very clear in one of his stage presentations that when he used the term ritual he was simply using the term in regards to the burials having been a repeated or followed process. In light of that I did think "ritual" was a poor choice of words, because for most people it is going to conjure up more than that. Possibly this was a very deliberate word choice though to do just that, for the value of hype - Get the hype of the perceived claim, without actual having directly made the claim. ?
Your question is somewhat circular. Burial is defied as ritualistic. It’s not just moving a dead body from where it dropped dead to another spot, as that behavior is seen all over the animal kingdom, and you’re right that there’s a strong argument for an adaptive explanation in leveraging a disgust/aversion response. Burial requires at least the clear roots of abstract and metaphorical thinking, and if you look at what Berger is actually saying (he uses the phrase “meaning-making” a ton) you’ll see that he agrees with this requirement. Also, proximity to a dead body being super dangerous is also not always the norm outside the very dense, often enclosed human environments of the Neolithic and onwards. A dead body in the sun-baked savannah is going to be quickly scavenged and what’s left subject to decomposition, so generally less of a critical issue than a dead body in a closed hut in an agrarian village already struggling with a high burden of infectious disease.
Thank you, Flint, for your academic work and for your genuine interest in public outreach. I toasted one to your dad, belatedly. Sorry for the earlier insensitive autocorrect.
You even look like your dad - and obviously he told you well. 😃Yes he absolutely would be very proud! My dad died a few days ago ... can relate. Watching your videos helps me to cope. Thanks!
For those that aren't aware of what breccia is, it's a type of rock that is a matrix of rock fragments held together by a cement. There's no size limitation, the rock fragments can be millimetres wide or can be kilometres wide.
It looks that those Homo Naledi in desperation were forced to retreat all the way in that cave, by being chased with no way out. Their means to lit fire, which for them was the only possibility to see, were exhausted and they got trapped for the rest of their lives. It happened also in our modern time. It's hard to accept that in their extreme primitive state they explored deep caves to bury their dead, when that could be done much easier outside.
This is my theory as well. Isn’t it more likely that this group of people were fleeing a large predator or group of predators that couldn’t fit into these caves? Everyone played a waiting game and the naledi lost. The predator could have been a larger sized hominid.
Lots of scientists post preprints for different reasons. The journal they submitted to requires it as part of the process. One hopes teams take critiques and improve from them. That's the idea
Gustick Gibbon referenced you and Chris Stringer also which is amazing so here I am. Your video is 1 and 1/2 hours so I will produce a time stamp and put it on physics forums, an excellent science site that has been discussing the finds and the papers for a couple of months. I know you have titled the video itself but I will put in the comments at pf so they can jump to points. Nice tribute to your father, i raised my glass at that point.
A few reasons. A key one thats not published well yet is that there are Homo naledi skeletal remains are also found in other,more accessible chambers of the cave system What has been published in depth is that the demographic pattern for the group of naledi that has been studied does not match what one would exp3ct for such a catastrophe That said, I'm sure that hypothesis is still being considered even if it seems not to match the evidence New homo naledi video later today about the latest published paper
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. So the remains were not so much buried by others as the trapped Naledi curled up somewhere to die. 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
They haven't seemed to prove (granted haven't read the paper) that this (all of these remains) was not the result of one event. I'm finding it hard to believe they returned repeatedly, dragging their dead through that maze just to put them in the bottom of the cave.
Lee mentioned somewhere either in the Netflix documentary or a podcast that they found bodies buried at different layers on top of each other. Essentially they went back later to bury another body at a different date *theoretically.
@@joshuaburch4908perturbation of the layers by flooding, slumping, or other geologic processes is a much better explanation for this, especially given how mixed up the actual bones are.
Good review. Late to the party because this is nowhere near my field. I am no academic peer of the authors. I appreciate very much your exposure of the process that is peer review, given that it is a foundational element of the scientific process. If more laypersons understood this then we might have an easier time explaining why scientists tend to use qualifiers like 'may have', and how this is different from 'just guessing'. Having said I am not the authors peer, I immediately reacted quite strongly to the tone of the abstract. Far too definitive. My academic background is software engineering, a far more absolute field than paleoarchelogy, and I'd not have dared assert fact as they did. It will never be possible to take the stance their abstract does, you cannot know these things. You can investigate the possibility, but the vibe i get is that they had an answer they wanted, which they then sought after to the detriment of other avenues of inquiry. They could turn out to be correct in their theory, but that doesnt make this paper good science
It’s not important that we find truth….it’s important that we question the current form of what is accepted as truth. This…and only this…is science. Good work.
The discovery is amazing I’m glad the field is getting it’s do publicity in world press it’s got people talking and will help get funding for future research
Is there a sense in the academic community that the paper was going for glory above all? It seems like they decided in advance that they had made a groundbreaking discovery and assumed that the red carpet would be rolled out for them, regardless of whether they had dotted their Is and crossed their Ts. They rushed out a low quality paper missing key evidence and tried to abuse a new publishing tactic, knowing that science news might run with their "discovery" before proper peer review? It's annoying because it seems like the cave could well have provided the necessary evidence if it was done properly. At least, the mystery of this cave could have been narrowed. Thanks for any answers, I'm a layperson but I found this all very interesting 🤔🎉
@@FlintDibble True enough, but if the "not clearly a tool" was found clutched in the hand it would seem to indicate some significance. That's a very human thing to do to place memorabilia in with the deceased.
@couerl not true either. It's made of dolomite, which is what the walls of the cave are made from. Many clasts of the same type of rock found in the Rising Star caves as reported in Dirks et al. 2015, the first report on the geology
Even though you have experience with burial contexts, like you yourself admit, you don't have experience with Paleolithic burial contexts, Geology or, I infer, Paleoanthropology. So to ensure rigour, shouldn't this be peer-reviewed by a Paleolithic Archaeologist? I mean, you don't really have direct experience with ancient human burials to fall back on or even for comparison purposes. In fact, no one has ever seen a "pre-human" burial until now, so can you really claim to know what it should or shouldn't look like (in reference to your Point 1)?
Thanks for watching. Just to clarify, I have plenty of experience excavating in 5 diffferent Paleolithic caves and rock shelters, and mentioned Fontechevade was my first excavation ever. I'm sure Paleolithic archaeologists will be reviewing it. But the team defines it as a burial (a dug grave and infilled sediment), so being a Paleolithic archaeologist or not isn't an essential requirement for reviewing such a paper
@@FlintDibble Thanks for your reply. However, as I mentioned, since this is the first ever potential pre-human burial and we have nothing to compare it with, I don't understand how you can venture to say that the grave pit is "too small", by way of a constraint or obstacle to calling these pits burials. Too small compared to what? Lee Berger said that they had also found children and even a foetus, not only adults. Also, with regard to the abstract etchings, I recommend ancient cave art specialist Genevieve Von Petzinger's peer review interview on World of Paleoanthropology, if you haven't already seen it.
Skeletal articulation: If a group practices excarnation and buries the bones afterwards, then the skeleton is likely to be disarticulated. Disarticulation on its own perhaps doesn't really point either way.
An interesting critique. I found a number of the claims of intentional burial questionable and which should have been given a more nuanced view as to certitude. Human burials are, of course, complex. I presume they are claiming a primary burial, not a disarticulated secondary internment. 1) I don't see evidence or the specimen being fully or almost fully articulated in Feature 1. While articulation is not necessarily a proof of primary interment, as a naturally deceased was individual, without post-mortem disturbance would also be articulated...it would be something highly expected in a primary burial. The feature plan shows lower appendage long bones are in positions that are clearly not in a position that would be expected in an undisturbed burial. (eg. the proximal femur and the distal tibia are adjacent but with shafts at about 70 degree angle to one another. Some other long bones that appear to be tibial or femoral shafts are at 90 degrees to the identifiable femur. It may be possi ki 2) The site of the zone of burial is near the surface (8cm =3inches) and one might expect that after 130,000 years that naturally accumulating cave soil would develop sufficiently enough to produce that much sedimentary cover. One might get a good estimate of cave soil accumulation in the chamber by looking at the stratigraphy between datable speleothems. I suspect that the original corpse would be on the surface. 3) The discoloration of the soil vs. surrounding soil could simply be the diagenesis of soil infill into the cavities, or chemical, insect or bacterial activity distinct from the surrounding soil. It may not be the result of excavation of a pit and covering the corpse back over. The small size of the pit and shallowness of overburden (8cm) doesn't allow one to really assess the pit as being excavated vs. Cadaver diagenesis. Their points 1, 4 and 5 can be explained by cadaver diagenesis (taphonomic processes). Feature 3 may, indeed, show better evidence of articulation. But the location directly under the 30 meter drop which is where access and egress occurs is odd. Hominins would have to trod upon the burial when they entered and exited. Also, as noted, below the shafts mound of debris from the overhanging passage, which contains the skeleton, is found. In fact the skeleton appears to angling along the surface of the mound These characteristics suggest a fall or dropping of the body from above, as suggested from some remaíns from Atapuerca Cave.
Whether they buried their dead or merely placed them inside that chamber, it's still a series of actions which, at their heart, aren't a whole lot different than funeral rites practiced today. In fact, it took a considerable amount of time and effort just getting the bodies to, what these creatures must have considered a very special place. You ask me this has "ritual" written all over it. There's no telling if they contemplated some type of after life but intentional or not, these little guys built a freakin' time machine for their dead who now live once again.
Lots of scholars don't think the evidence demonstrates they placed them in that chamber. Future video will cover some of the parallels and problems with that point
I've only been reading about human evolution for a few weeks, so I'm clearly no expert. From what I understand, the amount of fossil-evidence found is unprecedented in paleoanthropology. I totally get the critiques you make, I think they're valid, and the team has been jumping to conclusions on some things. I just wish there were more videos presenting the evidence found, in a manner designed to get the evidence out to the public.
I'm thinking maybe something happened above ground and they decided to go underground. Maybe they couldn't get back above ground and couldn't survive down there with the little food or water they had.
You studied horses and dogs?... The State Museum of Prehistory Halle has a Bronze Age grave of a baby who has been buried together with a horse and a puppy. That should be right up your alley. ^ ^
The team showed very little objectivity or decernment and seem to have presented the evidence in such a way to support their desired conclusions. Really the Netflix movie I watched on this may just as well have been a Graham Hancock production.
A few days ago, May 2023, "Gutsick Gibbon" went over a recent paper that evaluated the close morphism of these Naledis.by comparing their teeth to a number of primates including several groups of Sapiens. ---------------- There's no definitive answer, but as Ms Erika puts it in the title of her episode "The Homo naledi Situation Somehow got Even Weirder". Evolved for very low variation = EXTREME monomorphic folks? Close members of one family? Extreme inbreeding? All the individuals are the same sex? (I would like to add - two sets of sextuplets? .^_^. )
I have found early pre human tools all over Florida but not one arrow head. I think we are dealing with meteor strikes here. All the Mayan structures were found destroyed. Like a bomb went off. When a meteor hits northern and south hemisphere, more often it is bounced off earth by the atmosphere. This won’t happen in equator regions. Meteors have to explain the disappearance of early humans in Florida.
I personally think H. Naledi didn't bury their dead in holes in the floor of the cave. I think they just chucked the corpse down the chute and called it a day. That would explain the mound found at the bottom of the landing area. As the bodies decayed and the cave got wet and then dried again, it pulled the bones down the slope, scattering them all over the floor. Maybe there was some depressions that bodies slid into while they were still wet and slimy, leading it to look like it was purposeful burial.
We all should know archeology is an art/science. Human interpretation of data is subject to MISINTERPRETATION. Your pointing out improper language in the report and questionable or not fully substantiated claims is SCIENCE!! Thanks for your insight. Language has meaning in these claims.
It’s so clear that these little Naledi guys were running around the savanna and fell into an indiscernible hole, died, then rain, mud over thousands and thousands of years alternately disturbed and buried them. Jeez, think Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming! No people in there, but plenty of running mammals fell and fossilized. 😊Thank you for this video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
it's pretty typical popsci hype but I bet they'll get enough funding to finish their excavations right? If you move it from a science journal to a humanities publication you could go with "Earliest signs of religious behavior found in Homo Nalendi "caves are hungry for corpses" ritual
I think this video is well-intentioned but has the potential to cause harm to 'actual science'. Why not deliver a more positive message such as "the early research is promising, but more research is needed to confirm'. Actual science' is not done on TH-cam - it is done by the experts in the field, obviously. Popular science is the marketing arm of actual science. It is OK to let the imagination run in popular science as long as it is done in good faith. So why cast a shadow on the author's research when all they were doing was trying to market their idea in good faith. They even said that more research needs to be done in this area.
I watch your peer review on the Homo Naledi Burial. I am interested, as a lay person, in archeology and paleontology. I was looking forward to watching your review. The first half of your assessment on the burial site seemed flippant and snide. I was truly disappointed at the attitude and apparent disrespect you have for your colleagues. Can a true scientific review come from a person that admits they are not an expert in that particular field of study? I did watch the entire video, however finding your viewpoint credible was difficult. My thoughts kept going to sour grapes. I would like to listen to your scientific peer review without the attitude. Thank you for your contribution.
Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry you thought I sounded snide or had an attitude, as that was not my goal. I focused on giving it it a factual review, which is why the video was so long. One note: I am an expert in the field and qualified to peer review this article. I have all the necessary credentials (a PhD in archaeology, peer reviewed publications in scientific journals) and experience as I laid out in my video. I've excavated Paleolithic contexts at several sites, I've studied and published burials, and I specialize in studying bones and teeth.
You say that claim has not been persuasively proven. Well, existence of so many kinds of Gods too have not been persuasively proven but believers don't mind it and scientists never try to attack that despite the idea of divine creation going against organic evolution. However, a small piece of belief that H naledi may have buried their dead seems very disturbing as it challenges several belief.
I am critiquing a scientific paper that has nothing to do with religion or gods or even belief, but rather evidence and the conclusions one can draw from it
A collection of several remains in one place can never meet the archaeological definition of a burial site. This is, by definition, a repository of remains - nothing else. Dig more, get the job done before you make fantastic claims.
Peer reviews are not objective. A reviewer is supposed to express their opinion of a piece grounded in their experience and knowledge. It's why when you submit a paper to a journal you have the right as an author to ask the editor not to send it to rivals. Also why you aren't allowed to suggest they send it to friends. But all reviews are opinionated and critical. The goal is to use the experience and opinions to improve the piece
@FlintDibble "Friends and rivals"? Are we talking about High School? I assumed we are talking about professional opinions. I come from the physical sciences. I understand peer reviews. I'm disappointed by what I've seen in the paleoanthropologist community around the Homo Naledi issue. Everybody's credibility is diminished.
@carlkaufman2429 hahaha, really? It's pretty standard when submitting to science journals such as those run by Elsevier to include suggested peer reviewers as well as people who you'd like not to review the paper You think hard sciences don't have rivalry? Scientists are people. And science is competitive. Better to be honest about these things than pretend they don't exist That said, I clearly explain my biases in the video (hint, I don't know the team). And my points in the video stick to evidence in the paper. If you don't watch or have questions about substance, then let me get back to my work
@FlintDibble So, you're objective when you get down to the substance, but first you engaged in petty ridicule because everybody does it. Got it. I have a crazy idea. Demonstrate the high standards that we should expect from all professionals, even if they don't. BTW I have been watching a lot of paleoanthropology TH-cam lectures and interviews. I don't see a lot of ridicule.
It seems kind of obvious that creatures with such small brains would not be capable of such intelligent behavior. Has there ever been a precident for anything similar?
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Two additional points
1. This supposed "grave" "pit" is too small: only 50cm x 25 cm. An adult Homo naledi is more than 140 cm tall (and this individual was an adult). The small size just doesn't work for a primary burial with in situ decomposition, unless bones were intentionally broken to twist the body or the body was butchered into pieces. I state this point vaguely, but wanted to make it more explicit how the sizes just don't work with the stated interpretations.
2. I mention the bibliography problems, but they're really not good. The main paper has 37 co-authors but only 32 cited sources. Half of these are self-citations to the team's papers about the site. And, as pointed out, some of those self-citations are just wrong. This is a problem for a scientific paper with such strongly stated claims. Let alone the aggressive courting for media attention, where they state this to be definitive. It misrepresents the scientific process and the messy context in which archaeological interpretations are made.
Thank you for doing this in an accessible way. You've made this critique pretty easy to digest.
Like I already said, we have nothing to compare these burials with in the archaeological record, so we cannot state that the "ritual process" followed by Homo naledi to bury their dead is a "problem". It would be a problem if it didn't follow a pre-established pre-human burial pattern, which is not the case.
@@annemarielara1962 I could have swore the main paper that Flint was critiquing was one of the papers that had been part of the "prerelease" before peer review had been done?
@annemarielara1962 it hasn't been peer reviewed yet.
And my point is only that they haven't finished excavating the concentration of bones nor documenting it. The evidence they've presented so far is not convincing in trying to decisively prove this is a pit dug by Homo naledi as a grave for a single adult Homo naledi. Which is what they claim it is.
We will see if they make any edits on the basis of peer review, whether mine or others. But they will need to continue to study it, if they want to convincingly prove this is the earliest hominid burial know, earlier by over 100,000 years. Because it isn't clearly proven yet.
Some adults are really short....
I have just watched Gutsick Gibbon's analysis of the reviews, not only of this paper, but the other two as well. The concerns that both of you expressed when the preprints were published have definitely played out.
Thank you. I watched the Netflix documentary on this. It was clear the researchers, particularly the lead, became emotionally entangled with their findings. Completely understandable given the weight of the implications. I imagine it will take years of research and further excavation to fully understand the true relevance and importance of this discovery.
You look quite a lot like your dad by the way. I'm sure he would be proud.
The G.H.Netflix docu ?
Brilliant! Not only is it a great tribute to your Dad's work, but it's a perfect example of what happens behind the scenes in peer review publishing. I'm here in Italy, so I'll raise a glass of grappa to Harold Dibble. Here's to a thousand views!
Great review and critique. You are the best on youtube addressing this issue. I first saw your video with George Leader and Jamie and wanted to hear your review. This "discovery" was rushed to the media to feed their egos and a few others. It will be interesting to see how this goes. Your dad would be proud!
Don’t you think they were ‘lazy’ and submitted pre print papers only because they wanted to sensationalize their work for Netflix and book sales?
Fantastic. One of the best things about the internet is people like you Flint, who are willing to share your expertise. Great job showing all of the qualities necessary for good science: curiosity, intelligence, open-mindedness, skepticism, logic, and most important... demanding evidence commensurate with the claims. Well-done. Given the implications, I'm very disappointed in Berger's team for making such grand claims on limited evidence.
Thanks!
I do not to this research field at all, but must say that this peer review analysis is an excellent tutorial on how not to write a paper. This may be even useful to the authors.
This is bitter sweet. I watched the Netflix documentary when it came out and woke my mom up at midnight to tell her what they said they found. We were both excited by the prospect of an actual burial by Homo Naledi. I am sorry to see that there is no real scientific corroboration of their claims. But I am glad I saw your review because I want to see real history, not some drummed up fantasy. Though it's late, I raised a glass to your pops, I know he is smiling down on your achievements, and especially this review.
Thank you so much! It's very exciting to see a peer review in real time! How would you characterize the difference between human and (for example) elephant burials? You describe emotions, but how do we know that elephants aren't experiencing grief while burying their dead?
Sorry for the loss of your father. It's clear what a deep influence he had on you.
it's less about emotion, which we can't judge, and more about the more complex behavior/the complex steps taken to do a burial that implies a level of symbolism and ritual (hence why it's been the focus of so much argument because that then has knock-on impacts on discussions of cognition, culture, communication, and more)
Also I should link to this Twitter thread where I write about this topic in a bit more depth: twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1138102486420676608?t=APJrVbBUph9fAxEm7HEWhA&s=19
@@FlintDibble Okay, I've finished the video. Just a lay person, I don't have enough background to really assess your arguments vs their arguments.
Watching some TH-cam videos that Prof Berger has appeared in about the discovery, he's oddly *more* cautious about what he found in many of those than he is in the title / abstract.
On the one hand, I understand why you say it's lazy to rely on the peer reviewers to tell them what to test given the current compensation structure. But at a more holistic level, it seems like science as an enterprise could work really well if the group that has the privilege of characterizing the find isn't always the group that is also privileged in choosing which tests to run and what theories are most promising.
@serpounce5699
In the end, it's the larger community of scholars and the consensus they reach that will determine how these new finds and patterns are interpreted. It's just that the scholars to make the initial finding, gets first go at it when they present the material and study. Nobody controls scientific interpretation
I haven't seen his public presentations, but they're also irrelevant to reviewing a specific paper where the conclusions were written as definitive
Interesting, I guess I'll have to wait and see. Thank you for giving a separate perspective.
Kind of hoping for a follow up video now that the Netflix doc is out!
Next week hopefully
Great breakdown and very thorough. I’m sure your father would be proud ❤️
Can you do an update after watching the documentary?
Planning on it
@FlintDibble
Hi Flint,
I'm sorry about your Dad. It's wonderful to see your pride in his achievements and your grief for him on his DOD, so publically expressed. Maybe those little hominins felt the same way about their dad as they laid him to rest in their underground mortuary temple.
I have a question about why it is so important for archeologists to distinguish interment in a dug grave in an underground cave and interment on top of the floor of an underground cave. My common sense view would be there is no conceptual, religious, anthropological difference between the two. Both are burials. The degree of humanness is the same surely?
The underground Roman catacombs are full of bodies that have not touched soil. No one would seriously contend those bodies were not buried or that those undertaking such rituals were not less "human" by displaying less grief and compassion for their mothers, fathers, daughters sons.
Could you help me understand the fuss please.
Thankyou for your video. I was enthralled by your sincerity and enthusiasm for your topic.
Regards
Peter King
Thanks, Peter. I responded to it because that was what the authors were trying to prove. I think it's because a burial is one sort of physical evidence for complex funerary behavior. There are others... but burial, rather than simple abandonment of a body, is one way to demonstrate ritual or belief or at least complex behavior around death
It's impossible to prove or disprove grief or emotion with a long extinct human cousin. So, instead wr need physical clues as a proxy, and burial would be one of them, if proven
I agree that the disposal of remains was what was done here. Clearly deliberate. Done by beings who didn't build tombs or dig graves.
Agree with your point about burials not having to be dug. Naledi might have been happy to find a ready-made hole!
I really enjoyed your presentation. I think you did your dad proud.
I was listening to this while cooking dinner so didn't actually see any of the images until half way thru.
I used to be an academic in psychology and worked as an associate editor on two journals for a few years. I had a question about the way the scale is represented across images. I used to be pernickity about things like keys being consistent across images. I found the inconsistent representation of the scale across images strange. To me, that is a red flag. Where the unaltered photos released? Putting a giant black box, with only the 5cm scale inside, across a good chunk of an image - so that it obscures a good proportion of the image & interferes with understand the image - a bit sus. Then a slimmer black box with the scale appears in the middle of an image. Then other images have the scale tucked in the corner of the images without a black box (so doesn't obscure ths images). Is there a reason to have black rectangles obscuring some images? Or just sloppy?
The more I look at the XRF data the more I question what they think they are saying with it.
Just to get this straight: The team pre-published, pushed their papers to the media and got (the contract for) a Netflix documentary -- without any peer review!? Is that very common in any scientific discipline?
it is in the age of mass-consumption
So, are real peer reviews always conducted publicly on TH-cam ? Also, do they tend to be tinged with personal biases, or are they impartial ? I've never seen one on TH-cam before by you or anyone else, so I am curious how they are normally presented. Is this your 1st public peer review ? I'm looking forward to seeing more of them from you in the future.
Nope not usual on youtube. But peer reviews do always embed the experience and perspective of the reviewer, that's why there are typically several.
Lots of colleagues, including several of the actual peer reviewers of the paper, the editor of the journal, and one of the authors praised the video, so I might do more
Great questions!
I watched Lee Burgers announce the other day and I was thinking it all sounded great but I’d like to get another prospective. I was a bit dubious about the art. And I thought I had heard somewhere, years ago, that there was evidence ppl had been in the chamber. Still love Lee and the Rising Star Gang but I’m going to withhold final judgement. Thanks for making this video.
The evidence of people prior to the team being down there is mentioned in the original 2015 papers and in their 2017 popular book "Almost Human." They identify one person by name in the current batch of papers.
Great to see a proper critique of the paper, instead of the usual 'Hancock acceptance' because it fits the bias. Well done.
Great video Flint. Thanks for walking us through the evidence. I was wondering, couldnt the dying individual also have dug down a little bit to make a bedding to disturb that lorm layer? My dog often digs down and clears away rocks and debris before bedding down. It also doesn’t seem like it’s deep enough to be a proper burial. Seems inconclusive for sure.
Sure but it's all inconclusive. We gotta take what we have evidence for
Burials and rock engravings are tangible evidence of purposeful behaviours and suggest higher cognitive functions, but we can only imagine what other behaviours are lost to time.
How do we deal with the extra-ordinary circumstances of the Rising Star caves? Specifically, the effort and danger involved in taking the dead into this cave system? Is it fair to say that a likely motivation was to protect the bodies from scavengers? We have some preconceptions of what a burial means, but they may well be meaningless to these early hominins.
Could they have carried bodies into these caves and returned to the surface without any light at all? We do have evidence of fire use from Qesem Cave in Israel some 200,000-400,000 years ago.
Well, there's good evidence in the Robbins et al. 2021 paper I cited that the cave systems have changed a lot in the last 200k years since homo naledi used them.
Good evidence for easier access, and more research needs to be done.
But I don't see the rock engraving or burial as proven, so it's too early to discuss cognitive function nor even behavior (with no tools identified or really much of all other than skeletal material)
Lee claimed in one of his presentations that there was good evidence of fires having been made in the cave in the chamber where the remains were found.
Lots of evidence for fire use in rising star
@@gavinmcewen5896 the fire evidence hasn't been published. It needs dates to demonstrate its not more recent since they document more recent entry into the chamber in Dirks et al. 2015
@@UltrEgoVegeta not published nor is it dated. Could be more recent
@FlintDibble, excellent. Thank you from a fellow researcher! You are very coherent concerning the manner in which peer review is to be done. One question: now that the Netflix documentary is out, how do you reckon the Synchrotron scan affect the grave goods case? They seem convinced. Thanks in advance
Hah, thanks. It hasn't. Nothing on that tool shaped rock is actually tool shaped. They don't demonstrate the hallmark criteria for an anthropogenically modified stone tool such as a bulb of percussion, retouch, etc. Until they demonstrate explicit criteria for it being a tool, It's just a piece of dolomite, of which there are many in a cave made of dolomite. It's fortuitously near an anatomically intact hand. They never state how near and only show 2d images from their 3d scans. So very unclear and ambiguous
Lee Berger is first and foremost a fame hunter. He's a cowboy who cuts corners and makes huge leaps. I think he's doing serious damage to the site and the field of paleoanthropology. I'm weary of people who discover too many things. I'm glad to see this peer review.
There is nothing wrong with being a fame hunter as long as it is done responsibly. As a former scientist myself in the field of physics, now a corporate engineer, we need to separate "popular science" from "actual science". "Actual science" doesn't care about the media. "Actual science" can take 100 years to reach the threshold of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. W/r to "popular science" It is ok to do "science marketing" to get the public excited about research in your field, as long as you're mindful not to misrepresent facts. Science is not perfect. Invest more dollars - get better results. Clearly, the scientists, in this case, have good faith intentions, and they want to do more science in this area. How do you suppose they will fund their future expeditions? "Marketing" is a must! That's exactly what they are doing here.
Being at work, the strongest thing I had to toast with was coffee. But it was black and strong. And I'm in Kentucky so it's easy to imagine that there may or may not have been a bit of bourbon in it.
Very interesting video. Is it your position that the several sites showing evidence for neanderthal burial are also inadequate? That's the impression I got from a few lines in the video but you may have just been referring to some specific cases.
I have a Twitter thread on the topic: twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1138102486420676608?t=gQW1UsjCz1X6zqS64M9SFg&s=19
@@FlintDibble Thanks!
Been looking forward to this.
Thanks Flintos! Cheers to you and Harold 🍻🎉
thanks!
Man, this is dripping with sarcasm. “Right?” Right.
" Dismissals of Neanderthals as greatly inferior to our own ancestors - in day-to-day living and thinking, as well as in creating art - have been quite common over the years. For anthropologists and archaeologists who have steadily worked to overturn the myth of these hominins as brutish and stupid, the Spanish art is a particularly meaningful pointer towards Neanderthal cognitive and culture sophistication.
Neanderthals haven't just been dismissed, they have also been recruited for use as epithets on the basis of their perceived shortcomings. As science writer Carl Zimmer put it when reporting last week on the art discovery for The New York Times, "It's long been an insult to be called a Neanderthal." This practice has continued even quite recently, as we see in one media story after another.
Historical explanations can be found for why Neanderthals, early on, were portrayed in stereotyped terms: In 1911, a French anatomist, through a series of misconceptions (and preconceptions), mis-reconstructed a male Neanderthal skeleton from the site of La Chappelle aux Saints in France as shambling and stooped. This male looked downright dim. For decades, the image - now representing Neanderthals everywhere - stuck."
While I agree it’s a little unbecoming to use the word Neanderthal as an insult, we shouldn’t react too much in the other direction and start talking about their ‘sophistication’ either, especially as their is really no other way to think about this is other than anthrocentrically. I think they should - like any other creature - be respected on their own terms, and not by comparing them to humans, cognitively or otherwise. There are strong evolutionary reasons to believe for example that the language faculty (which is believed by many cognitive scientists to be the defining feature of modern humans) is highly unlikely to have evolved in any non human species.
Many thanks for doing this review. I believe much of what has been said about H. naledi is greatly far-fetched and unsupported by evidence. Your review has been an eye opener as to what are we really facing here. Cheers to you and to Harold.
Thanks so much, Ana! Yeah, and I could have said more too... I meant to highlight more the problem of a 0.5×0.25cm "grave" for an adult hominid of a species that is 1.4+m in height
Another time or for someone else to find other flaws!
I know absolutely nothing about forensic archaeology- but the Netflix show brought me here, because, even as as an utter layman, I found so much of that documentary far fetched. There are so many ways the bones could have ended up there, but it seemed to me they decided the one they liked the most, and ran headlong with it. I didn’t grow up with archaeologists but I did grow up religious people, and I know what it looks like when someone becomes deeply emotionally attached to an idea they so want to be true. And that’s the vibe I got from the head guy leading this excavation. I was floored by the idea that they thought a tool was placed in the hand of an individual, therefore they believed in an afterlife. WHHATT??? Maybe that tool was very just personal to that individual, so important, it’s part of who they are so it’s included in the burial. Or it’s just a rock that slid kinda near his hand. It just sucks this is what gets the Netflix documentaries and not science that’s far more grounded.
Cheers to you and Harold!
Cheers Harold, had to stop then restart the critique to find the good stuff
Berger says in his book that his group had known about another section of the cave system containing more hominid fossils that was much more easily accessible, but they kept it quiet while the H. naledi story was being formulated. Then later, in 2017, Berger’s group published a paper detailing the presence of at least three more H. naledi fossils in this other section in what is now called the Lesedi Chamber.
Since the original 2015 eLife publication, numerous research papers describing anatomical analyses of the bone assemblage have been published, mostly by members of Berger’s team. They keep showing that H. naledi is nothing more than a suspicious hodgepodge of ape-like bones (Australopithecus) and a few human-like bones. These papers reported on analyses of skulls, pelvic remains, leg bones, hands, and feet and give the same original confusing anatomical mosaic story. One of the few critical papers published outside Berger’s group contradicted the claims that H. naledi had flat, human-like feet.
Another problem concerns Berger’s contention that the bones were intentionally buried. Not only were the extremely young (by evolutionary standards) dates a severe problem for the embattled H. naledi, but the ridiculous story originally put forth by Berger and his team for the bones being intentionally and ritually buried has been just as troubling. The companion paper to the original 2015 publication describing the geology at the site stated:
"The fossils are contained in mostly unconsolidated muddy sediment with clear evidence of a mixed taphonomic signature indicative of repeated cycles of reworking and more than one episode of primary deposition."
So, not only were the fossils completely disarticulated and jumbled up in a muddy deposit, they were also intermixed with various bird and rodent bones.
Even more suspicious is Berger’s careful storytelling to support his claim that the H. naledi fossils were purposefully buried while at the same time he hid the Lesedi Chamber discovery. If his story were true, then the Lesedi Chamber would have been a more logical location for the original participants to bury their dead since it is much more easily accessible and would not have required the super-gymnastic athletic ability needed to enter the Dinaledi Chamber. Also, why are we not being told what types of fossils were buried in the Dragon’s Back Chamber directly above it? Is it because it contains the same hodgepodge of fossil debris as the Dinaledi Chamber below it? This would prove they were all deposited during a cave flooding event.
Thank you very much for this video. I have been following this story and it's great to get other perspectives.
I was wondering, why is burial seen as indicating ritual behaviour? Could it not have been just for practical reasons? Such as getting rid of the body to prevent the spread of disease? I understand that they wouldn't have understood disease as such - but they might have known from experience that proximity to dead things could lead to illness?
Or maybe it was to prevent the smell attracting predators, or nuisances like pests and rodents?
Lots of argument on this topic. But in this case for sure, that wouldn't have been needed as there's no sign Homo naledi was living this deep in the cave. The evidence in fact excludes it, since basically the only finds are Homo naledi bones. No food scraps, no artifacts
For more on why burial matters, I cover it in this Twitter thread: twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1138102486420676608?t=APJrVbBUph9fAxEm7HEWhA&s=19
Possibly helpful here to be clear in the definition of "ritual" here. While the common use of ritual naturally conjures up some relationship to religious ceremony, I'm pretty sure Lee made it very clear in one of his stage presentations that when he used the term ritual he was simply using the term in regards to the burials having been a repeated or followed process. In light of that I did think "ritual" was a poor choice of words, because for most people it is going to conjure up more than that. Possibly this was a very deliberate word choice though to do just that, for the value of hype - Get the hype of the perceived claim, without actual having directly made the claim. ?
Your question is somewhat circular. Burial is defied as ritualistic. It’s not just moving a dead body from where it dropped dead to another spot, as that behavior is seen all over the animal kingdom, and you’re right that there’s a strong argument for an adaptive explanation in leveraging a disgust/aversion response. Burial requires at least the clear roots of abstract and metaphorical thinking, and if you look at what Berger is actually saying (he uses the phrase “meaning-making” a ton) you’ll see that he agrees with this requirement. Also, proximity to a dead body being super dangerous is also not always the norm outside the very dense, often enclosed human environments of the Neolithic and onwards. A dead body in the sun-baked savannah is going to be quickly scavenged and what’s left subject to decomposition, so generally less of a critical issue than a dead body in a closed hut in an agrarian village already struggling with a high burden of infectious disease.
Thank you, Flint, for your academic work and for your genuine interest in public outreach. I toasted one to your dad, belatedly. Sorry for the earlier insensitive autocorrect.
You even look like your dad - and obviously he told you well. 😃Yes he absolutely would be very proud! My dad died a few days ago ... can relate. Watching your videos helps me to cope. Thanks!
WAY too many ads. Thats unfortunate..... I am trying to garner every piece of information i can about this subject.
Hey Cus', Glad to find you here !
For those that aren't aware of what breccia is, it's a type of rock that is a matrix of rock fragments held together by a cement. There's no size limitation, the rock fragments can be millimetres wide or can be kilometres wide.
It looks that those Homo Naledi in desperation were forced to retreat all the way in that cave, by being chased with no way out. Their means to lit fire, which for them was the only possibility to see, were exhausted and they got trapped for the rest of their lives. It happened also in our modern time. It's hard to accept that in their extreme primitive state they explored deep caves to bury their dead, when that could be done much easier outside.
This is my theory as well. Isn’t it more likely that this group of people were fleeing a large predator or group of predators that couldn’t fit into these caves? Everyone played a waiting game and the naledi lost. The predator could have been a larger sized hominid.
Why would a team like this choose to prepublish a paper like this? To gather challenges such as you raise and address them?
Lots of scientists post preprints for different reasons. The journal they submitted to requires it as part of the process.
One hopes teams take critiques and improve from them. That's the idea
Gustick Gibbon referenced you and Chris Stringer also which is amazing so here I am. Your video is 1 and 1/2 hours so I will produce a time stamp and put it on physics forums, an excellent science site that has been discussing the finds and the papers for a couple of months. I know you have titled the video itself but I will put in the comments at pf so they can jump to points. Nice tribute to your father, i raised my glass at that point.
Awesome! Thank you!
Great video. I appreciate all the info.
It was never explained the reasoning behind the thinking that they didn't go in the cave and couldn't get out and died there.
A few reasons. A key one thats not published well yet is that there are Homo naledi skeletal remains are also found in other,more accessible chambers of the cave system
What has been published in depth is that the demographic pattern for the group of naledi that has been studied does not match what one would exp3ct for such a catastrophe
That said, I'm sure that hypothesis is still being considered even if it seems not to match the evidence
New homo naledi video later today about the latest published paper
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. So the remains were not so much buried by others as the trapped Naledi curled up somewhere to die. 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
The individuals cover all ages, not just young and very old. I do think the hypothesis of a group hiding from a threat has merit.
They haven't seemed to prove (granted haven't read the paper) that this (all of these remains) was not the result of one event. I'm finding it hard to believe they returned repeatedly, dragging their dead through that maze just to put them in the bottom of the cave.
Lee mentioned somewhere either in the Netflix documentary or a podcast that they found bodies buried at different layers on top of each other. Essentially they went back later to bury another body at a different date *theoretically.
@@joshuaburch4908perturbation of the layers by flooding, slumping, or other geologic processes is a much better explanation for this, especially given how mixed up the actual bones are.
Good review. Late to the party because this is nowhere near my field. I am no academic peer of the authors.
I appreciate very much your exposure of the process that is peer review, given that it is a foundational element of the scientific process. If more laypersons understood this then we might have an easier time explaining why scientists tend to use qualifiers like 'may have', and how this is different from 'just guessing'.
Having said I am not the authors peer, I immediately reacted quite strongly to the tone of the abstract. Far too definitive. My academic background is software engineering, a far more absolute field than paleoarchelogy, and I'd not have dared assert fact as they did. It will never be possible to take the stance their abstract does, you cannot know these things. You can investigate the possibility, but the vibe i get is that they had an answer they wanted, which they then sought after to the detriment of other avenues of inquiry.
They could turn out to be correct in their theory, but that doesnt make this paper good science
It’s not important that we find truth….it’s important that we question the current form of what is accepted as truth. This…and only this…is science. Good work.
The discovery is amazing I’m glad the field is getting it’s do publicity in world press it’s got people talking and will help get funding for future research
Fantastic!
They dropped their dead down a hole into a cave. Then the cave collapsed Was that hard to understand? WTF.
This seems to be the new science. This was interesting and cheers to your Dad.
Watching from India..thank you 😊
My pleasure 😊
Is there a sense in the academic community that the paper was going for glory above all?
It seems like they decided in advance that they had made a groundbreaking discovery and assumed that the red carpet would be rolled out for them, regardless of whether they had dotted their Is and crossed their Ts.
They rushed out a low quality paper missing key evidence and tried to abuse a new publishing tactic, knowing that science news might run with their "discovery" before proper peer review?
It's annoying because it seems like the cave could well have provided the necessary evidence if it was done properly.
At least, the mystery of this cave could have been narrowed.
Thanks for any answers, I'm a layperson but I found this all very interesting 🤔🎉
The marks could just be sharpening patterns for the digging tool found in a hand.
It isn't clearly a tool, nor are the marks clearly made by a tool or a hominin
@@FlintDibble True enough, but if the "not clearly a tool" was found clutched in the hand it would seem to indicate some significance. That's a very human thing to do to place memorabilia in with the deceased.
@@couerl it wasn't found clutched in the hand. According to the written report, the preprint, it was found "near" the hand which is pretty vague
@@FlintDibble Hmm, that's not how I read it. I saw it was in the hand and there were no other rocks of that kind in the cave.
@couerl not true either. It's made of dolomite, which is what the walls of the cave are made from. Many clasts of the same type of rock found in the Rising Star caves as reported in Dirks et al. 2015, the first report on the geology
Even though you have experience with burial contexts, like you yourself admit, you don't have experience with Paleolithic burial contexts, Geology or, I infer, Paleoanthropology. So to ensure rigour, shouldn't this be peer-reviewed by a Paleolithic Archaeologist? I mean, you don't really have direct experience with ancient human burials to fall back on or even for comparison purposes. In fact, no one has ever seen a "pre-human" burial until now, so can you really claim to know what it should or shouldn't look like (in reference to your Point 1)?
Thanks for watching. Just to clarify, I have plenty of experience excavating in 5 diffferent Paleolithic caves and rock shelters, and mentioned Fontechevade was my first excavation ever.
I'm sure Paleolithic archaeologists will be reviewing it. But the team defines it as a burial (a dug grave and infilled sediment), so being a Paleolithic archaeologist or not isn't an essential requirement for reviewing such a paper
@@FlintDibble Thanks for your reply. However, as I mentioned, since this is the first ever potential pre-human burial and we have nothing to compare it with, I don't understand how you can venture to say that the grave pit is "too small", by way of a constraint or obstacle to calling these pits burials. Too small compared to what? Lee Berger said that they had also found children and even a foetus, not only adults. Also, with regard to the abstract etchings, I recommend ancient cave art specialist Genevieve Von Petzinger's peer review interview on World of Paleoanthropology, if you haven't already seen it.
@@annemarielara1962 too small compared to the size of an adult Homo naledi. The article says this is an adult
Thanks for this.
Skeletal articulation: If a group practices excarnation and buries the bones afterwards, then the skeleton is likely to be disarticulated. Disarticulation on its own perhaps doesn't really point either way.
Excellent discussion. I hope you know you're going to have to dumb things down significantly for JRE.
Not sure if I plan to make things dumb. But will plan to make them understandable to a larger audience, many of whom aren't familiar with archaeology.
Just a superb explanation, Flint! Let's all the laymen such as I completely understand your reasoning.
Upload more content, would you?!
Plan to!
An interesting critique. I found a number of the claims of intentional burial questionable and which should have been given a more nuanced view as to certitude.
Human burials are, of course, complex. I presume they are claiming a primary burial, not a disarticulated secondary internment.
1) I don't see evidence or the specimen being fully or almost fully articulated in Feature 1. While articulation is not necessarily a proof of primary interment, as a naturally deceased was individual, without post-mortem disturbance would also be articulated...it would be something highly expected in a primary burial. The feature plan shows lower appendage long bones are in positions that are clearly not in a position that would be expected in an undisturbed burial. (eg. the proximal femur and the distal tibia are adjacent but with shafts at about 70 degree angle to one another. Some other long bones that appear to be tibial or femoral shafts are at 90 degrees to the identifiable femur.
It may be possi ki
2) The site of the zone of burial is near the surface (8cm =3inches) and one might expect that after 130,000 years that naturally accumulating cave soil would develop sufficiently enough to produce that much sedimentary cover. One might get a good estimate of cave soil accumulation in the chamber by looking at the stratigraphy between datable speleothems. I suspect that the original corpse would be on the surface.
3) The discoloration of the soil vs. surrounding soil could simply be the diagenesis of soil infill into the cavities, or chemical, insect or bacterial activity distinct from the surrounding soil. It may not be the result of excavation of a pit and covering the corpse back over. The small size of the pit and shallowness of overburden (8cm) doesn't allow one to really assess the pit as being excavated vs. Cadaver diagenesis. Their points 1, 4 and 5 can be explained by cadaver diagenesis (taphonomic processes).
Feature 3 may, indeed, show better evidence of articulation. But the location directly under the 30 meter drop which is where access and egress occurs is odd. Hominins would have to trod upon the burial when they entered and exited. Also, as noted, below the shafts mound of debris from the overhanging passage, which contains the skeleton, is found. In fact the skeleton appears to angling along the surface of the mound
These characteristics suggest a fall or dropping of the body from above, as suggested from some remaíns from Atapuerca Cave.
Raise that hand if you're ONLY here to watch it go down hill 🖐
Whether they buried their dead or merely placed them inside that chamber, it's still a series of actions which, at their heart, aren't a whole lot different than funeral rites practiced today. In fact, it took a considerable amount of time and effort just getting the bodies to, what these creatures must have considered a very special place. You ask me this has "ritual" written all over it. There's no telling if they contemplated some type of after life but intentional or not, these little guys built a freakin' time machine for their dead who now live once again.
Lots of scholars don't think the evidence demonstrates they placed them in that chamber. Future video will cover some of the parallels and problems with that point
I've only been reading about human evolution for a few weeks, so I'm clearly no expert. From what I understand, the amount of fossil-evidence found is unprecedented in paleoanthropology. I totally get the critiques you make, I think they're valid, and the team has been jumping to conclusions on some things. I just wish there were more videos presenting the evidence found, in a manner designed to get the evidence out to the public.
I dont know. But this guy is a Gênios crazy inteligent😅
I'm thinking maybe something happened above ground and they decided to go underground.
Maybe they couldn't get back above ground and couldn't survive down there with the little food or water they had.
You studied horses and dogs?... The State Museum of Prehistory Halle has a Bronze Age grave of a baby who has been buried together with a horse and a puppy.
That should be right up your alley. ^ ^
The resemblance is UNCANNY.
I agree with most of your perspectives. The whole H. Naledi thing just doesn't jibe for me.
The team showed very little objectivity or decernment and seem to have presented the evidence in such a way to support their desired conclusions. Really the Netflix movie I watched on this may just as well have been a Graham Hancock production.
Rather a lot of woffle, and scarce alternative explanations.
Um, as I said, looks like it was naturally covered over and naturally disturbed, aka not an intentional burial
But thanks for watching!
A relatively unknown wants to peer review the equivalent of a Paleoanthropologist rock stars work. Hmmmm you just jealous homie
@@UltrEgoVegeta yeah and who are you other than an angry anon?
A few days ago, May 2023, "Gutsick Gibbon" went over a recent paper that evaluated the close morphism of these Naledis.by comparing their teeth to a number of primates including several groups of Sapiens.
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There's no definitive answer, but as Ms Erika puts it in the title of her episode "The Homo naledi Situation Somehow got Even Weirder". Evolved for very low variation = EXTREME monomorphic folks? Close members of one family? Extreme inbreeding? All the individuals are the same sex? (I would like to add - two sets of sextuplets? .^_^. )
They probably did it so the natural predators never got a chance to develop a taste for them,
I have found early pre human tools all over Florida but not one arrow head. I think we are dealing with meteor strikes here. All the Mayan structures were found destroyed. Like a bomb went off. When a meteor hits northern and south hemisphere, more often it is bounced off earth by the atmosphere. This won’t happen in equator regions. Meteors have to explain the disappearance of early humans in Florida.
I personally think H. Naledi didn't bury their dead in holes in the floor of the cave. I think they just chucked the corpse down the chute and called it a day. That would explain the mound found at the bottom of the landing area. As the bodies decayed and the cave got wet and then dried again, it pulled the bones down the slope, scattering them all over the floor. Maybe there was some depressions that bodies slid into while they were still wet and slimy, leading it to look like it was purposeful burial.
How about the evidence for fire, charred antelope remains, hearths and similar evidence?
what about the carvings on the wall and the tool placed on the child’s hand?
And the bodies at the far extremities of the cave system?
We all should know archeology is an art/science. Human interpretation of data is subject to MISINTERPRETATION. Your pointing out improper language in the report and questionable or not fully substantiated claims is SCIENCE!! Thanks for your insight. Language has meaning in these claims.
Burial or funery rights? Seems that one can get fixated on the fefinition of burials. A sky burial is not a burial but a dunery right for instance
The paper was specifically about evidence for burial, so that's what is addressed in the video
I feel like this team's literature is on par with the garbage I submitted back in my first year of community college.
It’s so clear that these little Naledi guys were running around the savanna and fell into an indiscernible hole, died, then rain, mud over thousands and thousands of years alternately disturbed and buried them. Jeez, think Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming! No people in there, but plenty of running mammals fell and fossilized. 😊Thank you for this video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Except that no other animal bones were found, but 1 baboon tooth. I'll buy that THAT one fell in.
it's pretty typical popsci hype but I bet they'll get enough funding to finish their excavations right? If you move it from a science journal to a humanities publication you could go with "Earliest signs of religious behavior found in Homo Nalendi "caves are hungry for corpses" ritual
I think this video is well-intentioned but has the potential to cause harm to 'actual science'. Why not deliver a more positive message such as "the early research is promising, but more research is needed to confirm'. Actual science' is not done on TH-cam - it is done by the experts in the field, obviously. Popular science is the marketing arm of actual science. It is OK to let the imagination run in popular science as long as it is done in good faith. So why cast a shadow on the author's research when all they were doing was trying to market their idea in good faith. They even said that more research needs to be done in this area.
I am an actual expert who does actual science. And this video was praised by my colleagues, so 🤷♂️
I watch your peer review on the Homo Naledi Burial. I am interested, as a lay person, in archeology and paleontology. I was looking forward to watching your review. The first half of your assessment on the burial site seemed flippant and snide. I was truly disappointed at the attitude and apparent disrespect you have for your colleagues. Can a true scientific review come from a person that admits they are not an expert in that particular field of study? I did watch the entire video, however finding your viewpoint credible was difficult. My thoughts kept going to sour grapes. I would like to listen to your scientific peer review without the attitude. Thank you for your contribution.
Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry you thought I sounded snide or had an attitude, as that was not my goal. I focused on giving it it a factual review, which is why the video was so long.
One note: I am an expert in the field and qualified to peer review this article. I have all the necessary credentials (a PhD in archaeology, peer reviewed publications in scientific journals) and experience as I laid out in my video. I've excavated Paleolithic contexts at several sites, I've studied and published burials, and I specialize in studying bones and teeth.
fueron arrastrados hasta esa recamara por corrientes de aguas "quizás"
What is your speciality?
There's evidence on both sides but proof for neither and it's going to stay that way. We'll never know for sure.
here from Gutsick Gibbon, the living in a cave joke alone was worth coming here
You say that claim has not been persuasively proven. Well, existence of so many kinds of Gods too have not been persuasively proven but believers don't mind it and scientists never try to attack that despite the idea of divine creation going against organic evolution. However, a small piece of belief that H naledi may have buried their dead seems very disturbing as it challenges several belief.
I am critiquing a scientific paper that has nothing to do with religion or gods or even belief, but rather evidence and the conclusions one can draw from it
Great argument!
Sorry about your dad man.
Some good points, but I didn't need a review of his entire grave excavation experience or his father's (thought R.I.P.).
Dude, fix your audio. One second you're barely audible; the next you're screeching
If ur claustrophobic it isnt for u
A collection of several remains in one place can never meet the archaeological definition of a burial site. This is, by definition, a repository of remains - nothing else. Dig more, get the job done before you make fantastic claims.
Your choice of that picture for this video was enough to make me not watch it. So much for objectivity.
Peer reviews are not objective. A reviewer is supposed to express their opinion of a piece grounded in their experience and knowledge.
It's why when you submit a paper to a journal you have the right as an author to ask the editor not to send it to rivals. Also why you aren't allowed to suggest they send it to friends.
But all reviews are opinionated and critical. The goal is to use the experience and opinions to improve the piece
@FlintDibble "Friends and rivals"? Are we talking about High School? I assumed we are talking about professional opinions. I come from the physical sciences. I understand peer reviews. I'm disappointed by what I've seen in the paleoanthropologist community around the Homo Naledi issue. Everybody's credibility is diminished.
@carlkaufman2429 hahaha, really? It's pretty standard when submitting to science journals such as those run by Elsevier to include suggested peer reviewers as well as people who you'd like not to review the paper
You think hard sciences don't have rivalry? Scientists are people. And science is competitive. Better to be honest about these things than pretend they don't exist
That said, I clearly explain my biases in the video (hint, I don't know the team). And my points in the video stick to evidence in the paper. If you don't watch or have questions about substance, then let me get back to my work
@FlintDibble So, you're objective when you get down to the substance, but first you engaged in petty ridicule because everybody does it. Got it. I have a crazy idea. Demonstrate the high standards that we should expect from all professionals, even if they don't. BTW I have been watching a lot of paleoanthropology TH-cam lectures and interviews. I don't see a lot of ridicule.
It seems kind of obvious that creatures with such small brains would not be capable of such intelligent behavior. Has there ever been a precident for anything similar?
You do have the hat. 😂
Aren't Homos a wonderful species
🪷🙏🤩🌈🧩🦋💎🛸🎼
The downfall of archeology is getting closer and closer