The Curious Case of Homo naledi | William Harcourt-Smith
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 มิ.ย. 2024
- Homo naledi is an early human relative recently discovered deep within Rising Star cave in South Africa. This find, consisting of over 1500 fossil fragments, is arguably one of the most significant fossil discoveries of the last half-century. In this lecture, Leakey Foundation grantee William Harcourt-Smith discusses what makes Homo naledi so unique, where it may fit within the human lineage, and what consequences this ground-breaking discovery may have for our current understanding of human evolution.
Dear Leaky Foundation, please give a year from when those presentations are and please also show the slides that are getting discussed. Thank you in advance!
Well the podium states California Academy of Sciences.
@@philippkirsch2716 The question was when,not where.
Not being able to see what the speaker is talking about makes this unwatchable. For some topics, it works, but not when the speaker is discussing differences that you cant see.
There seem to be a number of questionable presentation edits on this channel. For shame!
interesting lecture undermined by bad presentation. WHY keep the camera focused on the speaker while what he is discussing is not shown?
Obviously the cameraperson has been paid off by the creator of the diorama in the background as that seems to be their main focus. God forbid they pan right without zooming out first. Half the time the speaker is right justified instead of centered. I smell the hand of Big Diorama here
Its really weird why the camera is focused on the speaker. I agree: unwatchable.
The museam of paleontology in Alberta's is the only one I know that goes too far the other way and never shows the speaker. Please camera men and content creators 1 to 5 percent on the speaker unless they are describing stuff with there hands. 95+ percent on slides and illustrations
Leakey foundation conference camera work still has the problem of focusing on the speakers face instead of promptly focusing on the slides of the presentation. Are the camera men simply a disinterested crew who is just counting their minutes down? Atleast this one is slightly better that the one on nutrition.
How can this be 10 months ago?
Totally agreed. Pointless production crew.
Great lecture shame camera didn't focus on the slides he was referring to and looking at. Would have brought more context.
@lisawhittaker5680 - DITTO!
Camera person is a total train wreck. What the heck is wrong with the Leaky Foundation? Heads should roll.
Unfortunately, the camera persons perhaps were messaging on their smart phones. The screen was rarely shown when the speaker pointed to it.
Sadly, this interesting lecture is unwatchable because the slides are almost never shown.
The presentation in this manner is just disastrous. No other phrase covers it.
Utterly miserable camera work. He’s talking about the pictures we mostly never get to see. Pathetic.
It must have been his mum behind the camera.
It is clear from what he says in this lecture that it is nearly 10 years past when this presentation was recorded. We have i.e. known the age for years... And add the slides that were shown in any video you upload from now on. Thank you.
Great video as far as the information provided, but **terrible** presentation because the camera stayed focused on the speaker almost the entire time, rarely shifting to show the fossils he was describing. Granted, he described them well, but there are certain things that you really should see with your own eyes rather than try to form a mental picture from the speaker's words.
please....i want to see what is being presented!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't need to stare at a face for an hour.
Doesn't look like we are going to see anything.
Maybe the camera person does not understand the speakers language...
Who is the idiot who thinks that a video of the speaker conveys any meaningful information on the subject?
Please spend ninety five percent of our video time on the graphs and pictures.
This reduces the educational benefits by over ninety percent.
A scientific organization should be able to present a lecture with more technical sophistication.
5:48 "You can see, just looking at them..." No, we can't. Sorry, Leakey Foundation, but I'd put a modest bet on no-one caring a jot about what the speaker looks like. We'd love to see the graphs and the fossils, though.
Edit: OK, nearly a minute later we get a distant view of the screen from the back of the hall. Oh dear.
Such bad management of the graphics!
Who in the hell was directing the cameras?
Could you all please include the slideshow as a downloadable file?
Fascinating lecture. Clear focus on the visual aids would have added quality. The idea these still semiarboreal bipeds with australopith sized brains are transporting dead to designated caves indicates ritual which strikes me as a reach, but logical deduction leaves me with this conclusion.
Definitive dates for he deposition of the Homo Naledi fossils in the Dinaledi chamber were announced in 2017. The deposits were made between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago. In the lecture he mentions new discoveries, but doesn't name the Lesedi chamber or "Neo" the name given by the research team to the substantially preserved individual skeleton and skull found there. So I assume that this lecture actually dates from early 2017 or before.
He fails to say a lot of things. Watching the two talks from Lee Burger himself on the two finds that he found is much better plus he gives credit where credit was due. Those hiker worked for Lee Burger. They were just two hikers that went and found the nearest anthologist. They have names.
The camera person needs more training .
Speakers delivery is great and makes this subject very interesting. The camera work fragments this speakers work so bad. So the result is, in my opinion 60% of this subject is lost.
Please fix this issue and it would add so much quality to this lecture. Thanks !
Bad editing, the slides he is talking about aren't shown.
I regret that I can’t see the slides
The Canada person really should be capable of panning to the graphics (or better still, use 2 camaras with picture-in-picture) like any of the thousands of other TH-cam videos of speakers with supporting materials. If the speaker thinks they are helpful, perhaps more effort should be made to provide these materials to viewer.
So annoying to not show the slides as the lecture progresses. Half the presentation is missing.
The content is fascinating. I have read many books and seen many videos on the Naledi. The camera work in this presentation is abominable. The camera operator misses most of the photos and charts, especially early on, and does not zoom in on them, even when the presenter is pointing out features or close detail within the photos or charts. Awful!
When was this originally recorded? He is saying there is no date on the fossils, but there have been dates for a couple of years.
What's wrong with the camera work? D-. No panning to the pics or graphics.
Keeping the wide-angle view is best because we can see the speaker, the stage, and the slides together. There is no need to pan in and out and no need to see closeups of the speaker. Thank you.
Nah, just stay on the slides and pop over to the speaker now and then. But I agree that the camera work is awful.
would have loved to have watched this, but since the slides are not included effectively, what's the point? Who would set up the videography with this camera angle if they are depending on the camera to show the slides? This is so frustrating. William Harcourt-Smith is handsome, but I'm sure his slides are interesting to see in detail too.
Despite not being able to see most of the slides, the speaker is quite dynamic and descriptive and worth listening to.
Sort your slides out guys.
Why aren't we shown the graphics indicated in the lecture?
As per other comments, the camera was badly placed, it should have had the screen over the Doctor's shoulder, And yes, the camera should have stayed on the screen most of the time, even from this angle where it would be trapezoid-shaped. Having said that, this is a fascinating presentation, and I had seen these slides in other presentations including by Dr. Berger himself, so I knew what was being shown.
Bitte den Vortrag überarbeiten! Der Vortragende bezieht sich auf Grafiken und Bilder, die nicht gezeigt werden oder nur als kleiner Bildausschnitt sichtbar sind. Was ist da schief gelaufen?
If you don’t show the slides, I can’t watch. I don’t care to see the presenter, only to hear him/her.
Such a shame that so many of the slides were missed in this video
No graphs shown??? Who produced this?
Shows none of the photos. Very frustrating
This should be a 2-camera operation.
Wow.. I can’t believe this has been up for a month and I’m the second view and first to comment.. updates on this topic should be being gobbled up! ?
I’m genuinely surprised..
I’m frequently looking for new information to watch about these topics.. thank you very much for posting this!
The only thing is the videographer didn’t get the majority of the presentation images in the shots.. that’s a bit frustrating, but I appreciate being able to get the information regardless..thank you so much for putting the video up..
ATB..
I'm here a month later and the tracker tells me I'm only the third viewer (which, as you say, doesn't sound right). I see that the video has the tag 'Unlisted' above the viewcount - maybe it's only find-able through the playlist?
@Ruth Thinking, Outside There are masses of videos on Homo Naledi available. John Hawks, Jeremy DeSilva and Lee Burger all provide gripping accounts of the discovery and the science being done in several public lectures available on TH-cam.
@@robintrehaeven6800 Thanks anyway for the recommendation.. :)
I’ve already been watching them for the past couple years.. John Hawkes is a excellent lecturer, I’ll even watch the different presentations on the same topic to get the extra tidbits and nuances.. same with Svante Paabo.. and a few others.. fascinating stuff!
ATB :)
@@ruththinkingoutside.707 so I’m not the only one who does this 😀 Unfortunately I think this lecture is far older than a month since I/we know more than the speaker. I am really really wanting to know what was found at the 105 site, and what new things have been discovered with advanced research on Neo & others. I often search the keywords to make sure I’m not missing anything. It’s all just so exciting & fascinating. I want to know everything!!
@@robintrehaeven6800 - The "Gutsick Gibbon" channel has several videos on Homo neledi.
How disappointing! Obviously the presenter's slides are essential to understanding. Please get your technical act together! Your organization does such important work, thank you for that.
Extremely interesting! I can't wait to hear more information on Naledi as they continue discovering more of the many samples still out there.
A most interesting lecture from an interesting and somewhat excited participant in this field.
Thankyou for sharing.
Why aren't we seeing the slides ? Is he only talking to his public ?
This must have been before the dates were announced bc they know now for sure that this species was alive somewhere around 300k years ago. Super crazy that such a primitive cousin of ours was walking around competing with us just 300k years ago.
I also don’t like the fact that this presenter is so adamant that this was not a deliberate burial site. Well what is it then? If you are so sure it’s not a burial site, then you should at least have a hypothesis of what it is. This is so obviously a burial site and I don’t understand why that’s such a crazy theory when this is a closely related species to us that lived just 300k years ago.
Why are there cremations in other parts of the cave? Explain that one away? This is a burial site or I’m speaking Russian right now.
Cremations? Where did you get that. According to the speaker, it’s hard to imagine a creature with such a small brain 🧠 carrying out burial activities!
@@mmusimapheto2924 I heard it straight from Lee Bergers mouth. Good enough for you or do you want more proof? He said they were in the process of excavating a partially cremated naledi from a different chamber slightly closer to the mouth of the cave. These creatures had fire. Now maybe they couldn’t make it, but they at the very least took advantage of it at certain points. This video made no mention of that, you are correct, but I assure you the team is working on it. The speaker didn’t mention the cremation because it doesn’t fit their obviously incorrect and bias narrative. Geologists confirmed that the cave has not had a different entrance in at least 1.2 million years, there are no cut marks on the bones (meaning no predation$, no other animals we’re found except a couple mouse teeth and a bird bone (we would expect to find thousands more), and it’s in the “dArk zone” meaning they HAD to have a light source to even get back there. Brain size isn’t everything, remember that, in fact it’s a lot more to do with how the brain is wired. Example: Homo Floresiensis had a tiny brain yet it’s widely accepted that they had fire and could sail to distant islands. With all the evidence you’ve been given, and you still don’t think this is a burial site, at this point I consider you to be someone who can’t objectively look at all the evidence and come up with the most plausible solution.
@@adamh.2791 well I don’t think any theory is going to be 100% plausible. We don’t have a single hypothesis that makes 100% sense.
Yes you’re right. Brain size isn’t everything, you also need to consider the brain architecture. With H Naledi, the brain arrangement is missing critical parts required for such an activity.
Assuming also that it was a burial site, how do we fathom that H Naledi could see inside such a dark space 👀
@@adamh.2791 - When publishing several papers on - the Naledi, burials, art - Berger's methodology and findings were SKEWERED by peer reviews. And the community was very unhappy that he made a TV documentary BEFORE he even published his findings at all.
I was wondering about the cave being a place for human sacrifices to whatever the Naledi thought was that important.
Amazing!
Is this 2021, or is this Charles Darwin giving a lecture at the Royal Society in 1875? Is this 35mm film or is this digital video? Can't you insert the slides (which are in digitized PowerPoint format) at the appropriate points? Fire all the crew and rehire the entire lot including the Director for their inadequacy.
Pretty hard to follow without the slides.
The speaker mentions anatomical features suited for climbing trees, but these bones were found in a difficult to reach cave that required scientists with climbing experience to access - is there any discussion about these features being adaptations for caves?
Can't watch it without the screen he's referencing. Too bad, sounds like it was an interesting lecture.
Better to watch Lee Burger give his presentation.
This train wreck of a presentation gives no new information or analysis of H. naledi.
Made worse by the the atrocious camera work.
It would have been much better to put this anthropologist on Zoom so we could follow the illustrations he is pointing at, but we couldn't see here.
Great research, terrible camera work.
Show the damn slides!
7 (seven) Considerations for two simple questions. Whereas (1) THAT, in a rare event, several fossils were found gathered in the same place; (2) THAT, these fossils are of individuals with ages ranging from months (infant) to mature age; (3) THAT these individuals appear to have died at the same time; (4) THAT there are no traces of food or hunting utensils/tools - nor of routine use of fire, although the place is very dark; (5) THAT the site is difficult to access even for small individuals, being difficult to go down to the lower chambers of the cave; (6) THAT exit from the site must be via the entry point; (7) THAT transporting adult corpses through the narrow labyrinth would be especially trying. I ASK: Wouldn't these individuals belong to a group (complete family, with adults, young people and children) that, in a hurry, sought refuge in the depths of the cave when fleeing from a pursuer who, in turn, had the means to understand the situation and set up guard for days or weeks, until it kills the refugees with thirst and hunger? Could the stalker be sapiens?
For this kind of presentation the images are needed !!!! We don’t need to see the speaker!
I like this speaker. He gives a lot of information and some very current thinking about how to study the fossil record.
The open access, collaborative model of doing this sort study would seem to me to be most profitable. One field of study cannot cover all the bases. The bone people have to have the opinion of the rock people when trying to date this sort of material. The foot poeple need to talk the tooth people who need talk to burial people who need go talk to the chemistry and physics people who need to talk to the behavioral people to pull together any coherent study of this material. No one field of study can do all this research. If any one field of study were to think they can pull together coherent, accurate study of any of this fossil business, then they are delusional.
Great ‘PODCAST’, NOT a Great Video presentation though😳🙄😕
Surely the Visual Presentation is as Essential as the audio🤷🏻♀️
Such a shame😕
The camera person needs to grasp a more competent understanding of how media works
have to move on. just a talking head that you can't follow because you can't see his charts..
Pro tip - don't focus on the speaker when he is presenting slides.
I’m guessing the camera operators were respecting copyrights?
Impossible to watch if we can't see the what the speaker is talking about. Terrible camera work.
We don’t need to see the narrator. We need to see what the narrator is talking about. Better camera work needed here.
What's he looking at all the time? His head fakes are distracting. AS IF you could focus your attention on a talking head for a 59 minute presentation.
Viewers need to see the slides. If you are not going to show the slides, you get no credit for putting the video on TH-cam. BAD Leakey! BAD! BAD!
Why did all these H. Naledis end up in an underground ul-de-sac?
@oldsachem - The $64,000 question!
This could have been a fabulous video, if not for its amateurish production/editing. Not fair to Mr. Harcourt-Smith.
What an annoying cameraman! 🤬 The speach itself is introducing though.
Interesting talk, but major fail for not showing the slides. Boo.
Homo naledi was carbon dated to just 250,000 years ago. Also, isn't it premature to call that area the "cradle of humankind?"
For the love of baby jesus, show the slides!!!
Housing is the reason those hominid chimps were there, predators cannot reach them and some food comes to them,an animal trap and housing safe from predators all in one safe structure, the volume of dead is generations of small numbers of individuals using the shaft/cave,i hope this helps ❤️👍🇬🇧
Can the camera work be any worse? Amateurs
Watch the actual 2 talks from lee burger himself on his 2 finds. So much more interesting than this.
@katiekat4457 - Peer reviewers of his submitted papers were not at all kind to him. They questions his methods and his interpretations. This is still very much a breaking (though in slow-motion) story.
Haha. "And look at the way this perfect foot is shaped...." Really? Umm, all I see is a homo sapiens face, male, circa 21st century. I hope the camera operator has been retrained our reassigned by now.
Show. The. Slides.
What a shame that the filming is so bad. There is no dating either, when is this from? Shame on the foundation for not being able to produce a simple decent video. Live up to expectations, do better.
What is the point of the video if you don't show what is on his screen?????? Waste of time. The focus should the screen NOT him!!
My god hire a 2nd year film student.
nobody mentions how proto humans lost their body hair---living part of the time on water. Also, in water we perfected our bipedal movement
It is amazing that some people are still on about this.
@@jollyandwaylo No one lives on water when there is cola to be had surely?
@@robinhampshire8923 There are people who think that humans lived in water for a while so they lost their hair. It has been thoroughly debunked but we see that doesn't stop people from believing weird shit.
This question has indeed been addressed in several books on the various finds and timelines of the various species or varieties. Check a wider range of publications. Not everything need be mentioned in any specific lecture or video on the many topics. When the Homo group of lineages lost their fur is a minor topic and, as noted, has been addressed as a topic in relevant and appropriate topic contexts by more than one scientist.
@@robinhampshire8923 - @iart2838 seems to be addressing the dopey "theory" that Homo ancestors spent time as an "aquatic ape". Jimney Cricket!
multimedia from hell. shape up.
"No one will dig old monkey bones to back up a theory that I was once a baboon. Sorry," said Zwelinzima Vavi, I am no grandchild of any ape, monkey or baboon ! Said the South African politician who has dismissed the discovery of a new human ancestor as a racist theory designed to cast Africans as "subhuman",
It's paleontology, some anthropology, but definitely not morality. So the term sub-human is not a reference point here in my opinion. Remember these finds are sources of all of us homosapians.
@@jamesdolan4042 I'll pass on the message to the politician but suspect that your explanation will fly right over his head and leave him even more confused.
How do you ruin a good presentation? Answer: don't show the slides.
So there’s literally no visuals here? A 15yr old could produce this video better.
Even Homo Naledi would make a better camera work. Shame on you
Total waste of time.
Just ridiculous.
Africa has the perfect climate for preserving these remains… that is why early fossil remains of human ancestors will probably never been found anywhere else on earth…. I’m still not convinced that all humans came from Africa.
The climate now is nothing like it was when these creatures were alive.
Lousy video auditing...if there has been any!
Blah Blah Blah. Listen as I talk about the slides you can't see. Shame
Terrible videography, leaving out nearly all of the visual content, ruined what might have been an interesting presentation, as others have mentioned.
Dude cut that hair off!