Welcome Homo naledi! New Species of Hominid has been Discovered

spidergoat said:
I was struck by the nature of the existing entrance to the chamber, which is like a vagina. We come out of a vagina and in death, return to something like one, a womb in the Earth. It makes sense to me that ancient people could have thought of it this way.
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Maybe too much desensitization, spider goat.
 
Daecon said:
Just thinking about that makes my claustrophobia tingle.
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Especially considering that whoever deposited these creatures in there didn't have electric lights or modern caving gear.

If these bones really are early, from before the time of Homo erectus, they probably didn't have fire either. So if these creatures were the ones who deposited their own bones in there, they would have had to have done it in total darkness. That seems unlikely.

One of the quotes that Bells posted in post #5 hypothesizes that these bones may be from a relic population of earlier type that survived in the remote southern end of the African continent until more recently. Perhaps what exterminated them was more modern hominins (erectus or sapiens) expanding into their area with bigger brains, fire and better weapons. And perhaps it was these immigrants who put the remains of these dead naledi in the deepest cave they could find. Out of sight, out of mind. The intruders might conceivably have thought of the earlier hominids as unclean in some magico-religious sense, as twisted caricatures of themselves. Embodiments of evil, perhaps.
 
Yazata said:
One of the quotes that Bells posted in post #5 hypothesizes that these bones may be from a relic population of earlier type that survived in the remote southern end of the African continent until more recently. Perhaps what exterminated them was more modern hominins (erectus or sapiens) expanding into their area with bigger brains, fire and better weapons. And perhaps it was these immigrants who put the remains of these dead naledi in the deepest cave they could find. Out of sight, out of mind. The intruders might conceivably have thought of the earlier hominids as unclean in some magico-religious sense, as twisted caricatures of themselves. Embodiments of evil, perhaps.
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I have to say, the first I read about suggested burial rites with naledi, my immediate thought was: "That's a bit of a stretch." I do conjure up my own images of these apes laid to rest deep in the dark, only one of them being an adult and all that. But if we're gonna speculate, they might just as well be one simultaneous group who got washed in there by a flash flood or chased in there by a predator, perhaps fell down a ledge and then got lost in the darkness untill they reached a dead end and died of thirst. That's just as reasonable to suggest, it's impossible to say anything for sure about any ancient religion at play.
 
So far:
There is no evidence that the remains were washed in by a flood.
There is no evidence of violence.

How to date the fossils?
radioisotopic dating?
Thermoluminescence (TL) and/or Electron Spin Resonance (ESR)?

Best guess?
 
sculptor said:
So far:
There is no evidence that the remains were washed in by a flood.
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One piece of graphics shows a line of 'red mud' six feet deep around the so-called "Superman's Crawl" section.



http://www.theatlantic.com/science/...of-the-new-human-ancestor-homo-naledi/405148/

I'm not saying a flash flood drowned these critters, more that it may have washed them down into the cave and after they reached a dead end then they died. That is just speculation, but no more than talking about burial rites for something the shape of a bonobo.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
One piece of graphics shows a line of 'red mud' six feet deep around the so-called "Superman's Crawl" section.

I'm not saying a flash flood drowned these critters, more that it may have washed them down into the cave and after they reached a dead end then they died. That is just speculation, but no more than talking about burial rites for something the shape of a bonobo.
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Lee Rogers Berger pretty much ruled "washed in by flood" out, posting that there was no flood debris where the fossils were found.
 
sculptor said:
Lee Rogers Berger pretty much ruled "washed in by flood" out, posting that there was no flood debris where the fossils were found.
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But that's my point. If we're gonna speculate, I can't see why the group wasn't washed in alive, and in pitch darkness wondered further in trying to find a way out, and finally died when they reached that dead end.

I have to say, the whole burial rites aspect is starting to sound like an attempt to better sell the find to the media. To maybe make these hominoids sound more human than perhaps they were. 'Cause the media doesn't care about anything other than hominins.
 
Yes, but anyone can speculate regardless of their level of qualification in the field they're speculating about.

Such speculation is only worth paying attention to when it's done by professionals in that field.
 
Daecon said:
Yes, but anyone can speculate regardless of their level of qualification in the field they're speculating about.

Such speculation is only worth paying attention to when it's done by professionals in that field.
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Not if the speculation is bollocks, darling.
 
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Counter point to the 3 preceding:
Often, speculation from outside the discipline offers a new perspective which may actually be more accurate.
 
Daecon said:
Which is why ignorant amateurs shouldn't speculate on things they know nothing about. Because more often than not, they're talking bollocks.
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Look, I'm not in the industry of questioning consensus just for the sake of questioning consensus. But that crest on the paranthropine skulls has been staring me in face for a good long while. Homo sapiens and its closest relatives don't have a feature similar to that, but gorillas do. On top of it, paranthropines are larger than any other hominoid fossil group, while gorillas are the largest extant hominoid. The above naledi graphics then adds further troubling questions about the entire status of the hominin fossil archive. On top of it, the fossil hunters never present paninin and gorillinin species, which is mathematically odd to say the least and aught to set off some alarm bells. If hominins, paninins and gorillinins died on the same continent on similar acidic soils across hectomillenia, some paninins and gorillinins aught to have been found as well by now. If not only to confirm that they are indeed hominins, the fossil archive of in particular the pliocene African hominoids should in my opinion be completely reevaluated. Perhaps then we can look closer at the mystery as to why hominins, our lineage, are so massively over represented in the archive, if indeed we are.

That's all I'm saying. I'd love to be set straight on this, I don't want paleoanthropologists to have conducted bad science for decades, if that's somehow the case. If they have, nobody would be at fault for bringing it up, however inconvenient. Unfortunately human psychology will always confuse the scientific process, what ever people's intentions.

I'm just the horse fly here. It's not enough to keep telling me, "Don't speak up in proper company, peasant!" What the hell can I do with that? Is this a site for scientific debate or not? Tell me where it's wrong, I'll happily drop it.
 
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