Homo naledi update.

Pinball1970

Pinball1970

Valued Senior Member
Hope fully I will be forgiven for starting another thread on this but there have been some important updates.

Very heavy criticism of the papers conclusions and methodology.

www.gmu.edu

George Mason researcher debunks popular narrative about ancient human ancestors

Did Homo naledi bury their dead? A Netflix documentary says yes, but new research published by George Mason anthropology professor Kimberly Foecke says no.
www.gmu.edu www.gmu.edu

Prior to that there was this:


and prior to that 11/12 negative reviews of the papers they published on the finds.

A reminder of those papers here and reviews here from Gutsick Gibbon

-The video is 2:33 so I have time stamped it here.

0-5mins. Intro. The discovery of the fossils and caves. 2x dozen individuals, 300,000 years old, presentations, controversy.
8:00 Peer review, Elife process

19:55 BURIAL PRE PRINT
21:54 Peer review 1
38:22 Peer review 2
45:59 Peer review 3
57:28 Peer review 4

1:06:58 Summary. All negative.

1:08:09 CAVE ART PAPER
1:19:20 Peer review 1 (neutral)
1:21:20 Peer review 2
1:31:59 Peer review 3 (tool shaped comment)
1:38:52 Peer review 4

1:41:20 SMALL BRAIN PAPER
1:42:45 Peer review 1
1:44:04 Peer review 2 "perilous ramifications" "easier to introduce than correct."
1:46:42 Peer review 3

1:47:42 Summary 10 negative 1 neutral

1:48:36 Author response

2:15:00 Gustik discussion.
 
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Gawdzilla Sama said:
The Rising Star Cave will continue to generate controversial information for a good long while.
Click to expand...
The controversy is not in the claims as such it is obviously a very important and significant find.
The community appear to be in agreement on that.
The controversy is the standard of the papers, timing and mode publication using E life.
Experts in the field, including references that Berger has cited, have criticised the methodology and analysis very heavily.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
T/Y, didn't expect that tack.
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I have been lazy and copied from another site, no point in doing it twice.

In short, the intentional burial claims have been savaged, not because the claim may be incorrect, but because the quality of the study supporting claim is poor. See below.

Latest instalment from Foecke, Queffelek and Pickering.

Paper here.


An article here:


"From poor research design through misapplication of simple statistics, the problems continued to multiply. Foecke and her team, which included Alain Queffelec of the Université Bordeaux in France and Robyn Pickering at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, re-analyzed the original data and discovered that none of the soil differences indicating a burial were actually present in the data."
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Okay, so how did they get down there?
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That is the million dollar question and not the only one. Why are all the individuals so alike? Morphologically?
Erika describes the finds like one "inbred family."

Put a gun to my head? I would say funeral cache. Dead bodies are a risk to the tribe, they stink, attract predators and also are a disease risk so they needed to be got rid of.

Why are all the individuals so alike? Isolated tribe? Don't know.
 
Having driven from Cairo to Cape Town I can say that carrion stinks a long way off when conditions are ... ripe.

Have they found any predator skeletons down there? If not then my SWAG is that they were covering the bodies up.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Having driven from Cairo to Cape Town I can say that carrion stinks a long way off when conditions are ... ripe.

Have they found any predator skeletons down there? If not then my SWAG is that they were covering the bodies up.
Click to expand...
No that's the other very curious thing, virtually all samples they found were from the same species, Homo naledi. They found a few baboon bones but that's it.
If natural process washed things down we should expect a Mish mash but we don't get that.
This is why funeral cache is a good candidate, other animals do it.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Having driven from Cairo to Cape Town I can say that carrion stinks a long way off when conditions are ... ripe.

Have they found any predator skeletons down there? If not then my SWAG is that they were covering the bodies up.
Click to expand...

Anyway we have another paper on the way. A biggie. Since most of the work has centred around geology, sedimentology and ancient burial expertise I will leave this to the experts and report on their review.
 
I appear to have stumbled into the middle of a report so I don't know the premise. A mass grave has been found in S.Africa that contains specimens from a community that's known to be too far away?
 
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