Discovering Homo naledi’s meaningful burials

As a part of the Rising Star program, National Geographic explorer-in-residence Lee Berger and his team discovered evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and used symbols for communicating.

#abcnews #burial #nationalgeographic #risingstar

[dirtramper]

This site just keeps getting more and more incredible!

[awildapproach]

Wow...the dedication of this man and his team...amazing and I'm in awe. Glad you did it and were brave enough to do it!

[gregorytremaine]

They had "Souls". They Loved. They Laughed. And Now, they're gone. Bless Their Hearts and

[Swinefeld]

Absolutely amazing! We’ve learned so much about our hominin family thanks to the incredible work of Lee Berger and his team.

[mortalclown]

Absolutely fascinating and heroic. That tiny space he crawled through... just no.

Props.

[joelarmour]

Lost weight, Tore his rotator cuff and dislocated his shoulder just to get to the site. Claustrophobia doesn't quite cut it

[dragonfox.]

Berger is the most important paleo-archeologist ever. He is a hero.

[Arulane]

Amazing. So glad we are learning more and more about our planets past.

[lynnporter]

I watched the documentary on Netflix a few nights ago. At first I thought this is a discovery indeed, but then it began to fall apart. There are so many holes in what we are being told that I can see how the story will unravel in the future There is really no evidence that this was a burial, or that was a stone tool (we don't even know what type of rock it is and that's a pretty important piece of missing information), or that the marks were made by the species or that they made fire. There is no evidence to link one to the other.. Yes it was amazing that he got down the chute, that was an achievement. However we mustn't forget the others of his team who were going there already...was this really just about his achievement, I felt that the documentary sidelined us on that point. Leaving so many questions about H Naledi.

[Jolene]

That's amazing. The story and visuals of them in that space is harrowing. A once in a lifetime experience indeed... I would have advocated for a rover of some type, personally. Lol. Amazing work, team. 👍

[skimmer]

Fascinating. Just fascinating. Also I got a feeling of claustrophobia just watching. My god !

[worldofpaleoanthropology]

I encourage everyone to take everything with a grain of salt. This was all announced before the peer reviews came out, and they need to be considered in the entire picture. Berger's story has changed many times, and there is a great deal to keep in mind. Look at what the scientific consensus is at the moment, not just what Berger is saying. Check out my hour-long interview with him for more, and others.

[michaeldeierhoi]

It's good that there are people who are willing to go to extremes in the interest of science. But just looking at how confining that space was that he was crawling through brought up my claustrophobia!

[LoriDeMarco]

His claims are in need of a great deal of vetting…and I’m excited for the outcome of more reviews.

[cosmicat]

Why isn’t this all over the news!!! I have been following this for awhile!!!

[dr.paulj.watson]

As this scientist knows, intelligence is not all about size. It is more about the diversity and complexity of different neuronal types, and the complexity and degree of their inter-connectivity.

[OwenMGilbert]

Very cool finding! But I am skeptical of the statement that, "I was the first human in history to recognize another species' symbols." What about people who studied, or for that matter first came into contact with Neanderthals? What about the skinny people who got in the cave first? (I got this impression from the video). It also seems a stretch to say that this erases human exceptionalism because there is no evidence of H. naledi visiting the moon or inventing Chat GPT-4. No need to blow anything out of proportion, these finding are interesting without doing that.

[randomvideos]

I'm wondering who went inside that kind of cave first!? Why do they even squeeze himself/herself into that cave for the first time!?? 😳

[WW-]

Fix the volume on the outro ffs. 😢 My poor ears..

[huntermock]

Was the cave this compact that long ago? Land moves slowly so it could have been a little bigger in space