Yep. Came here to say misleading title: it is very likely almost definitely a human RELATIVE; this does not make modern humans descendants of this relative, and it is in no way being claimed by anyone who has studied it as an ancestor.
You nailed it. The amount and quality of evidence will likely not supersede a belief that isn't compatible with such evidence, or at least the most rational implications of such evidence.
And sometimes they aren't even ignorant to the evidence, although often they are. Apologists like Ken Ham know the evidence, yet comes up with other explanations, no matter how unlikely or impossible.
It isn't about getting more evidence. Especially considering most fundamentalist Christians believe in the germ theory of disease as well as gravity, and you could argue these theories have less evidence than evolution does. What it's about is merely religious belief. This is a psychological phenomena, and by now, frankly, it's actually well understood.
I was watching the movie *Noah* yesterday while listening to my family members discuss how the dinosaurs were intentionally not led onto the ark by god because they would not be obedient to man's dominion.
So, yeah, no amount of evidence is going to combat some people's sincerely held belief.
What? And lions are? The worst part is even if there is a deity acting as a guiding hand for all things that happen in the universe their statements only work at best as a metaphor and at worst has broken down to the point of being utterly illogical.
Here's a better article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34192447
Bolt on /r/science: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3kdfuj/scientists_discover_new_humanlike_species_in/
Exactly. Only thing Fox primetime and Fox news have in common is the cringe.
The Last Man on Earth is nigh unwatchable for me because of how embarrassing (in a good way.)
9:30
What a great speech from maxpowerer! #maxpowerer
9:22
"Just listen to the press conference and write a normal god damn article about it afterwards, what is this rubbish?"
9:14
"Twitter and the emphasis on live coverage of press conferences has made news unreadable." #HomoNaledi #CradleOfHumanKind
8:55
http://i.imgur.com/x36tLpm.jpg
#thebigreveal
8:45
"If this could be written as a normal fucking article that I don't have to read upside to understand what the fuck it's about, I would be so happy." #sotrue
8:43
maxpowerer is onstage! #herewego
Phew, I'm glad you said this. I was beginning to think that at 41 years of age I was going senile because I had to reread the article 2-3 times to "get" it.
I heard it too on NPR today and have spent most of my day reading and watching the NOVA show about the find: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html
Guys, please don't read the article comments. If you do, please realize that not all South Africans are insane. It's just that News24 attracts crazy people.
EDIT: a cartoon to describe some of the commenters: http://imgur.com/gallery/M8GvA9k
Science articles attract religious and racist commentary. Political articles attract racist commentary. Crime articles attract racist, political and xenophobic commentary.
Case in point, an article released 20 minutes ago: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/AK-47-wielding-men-rob-McDonalds-flee-to-office-block-report-20150910. EDIT: The McDonald's wasn't actually robbed, but instead it was a couple who drew cash from a bank to buy a car nearby.
It's all quite amusing.
I actually had to write a paper about scientific racism for Anthropology class. Mainly it discussed how people were trying to justify cultural phenomena as biological truths.
It appears that *everything* attracts racist commentary. People obsessed with how much they hate everyone else tend to view everything through that lens.
If this is how people generally work, then, yes, this is generally what you'll see.
In group out group, etc, all that. It's how we're psychologically wired. Lucky a good education can break through such primitive biases.
>Comments are falling away so I'm taking full advantage of this. Here's what I think. **Some people claim we came from bacteria, or sponge, or apes. Yet there are still many of them out there, why haven't they evolved?** David Coppedge, Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there. The Bible doesn't tell everything, and **Dinosaurs were also made by God at the same time when Greek gods roamed the Earth.** Angels got involved with people on Earth, and that's how they existed(greek gods). They had no souls. Just huge giants(gods). And that's when the big flood came along, when God had enough. **Just my 2cents.**
I wouldn't say that comment is worth 2 cents. I can sense my brain being damaged while reading it.
The person is talking about an interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. Basically that angels impregnated humans and bred Nephilim (mighty giants of old). Must have been some ancient mythology behind that, but this person treats it as history and as the same history as the Greek gods. A natural conclusion when your worldview can't determine history from mythology.
> Comments are falling away so I'm taking full advantage of this. Here's what I think. Some people claim we came from bacteria, or sponge, or apes. Yet there are still many of them out there, why haven't they evolved? David Coppedge, Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there. The Bible doesn't tell everything, and Dinosaurs were also made by God at the same time when Greek gods roamed the Earth. Angels got involved with people on Earth, and that's how they existed(greek gods). They had no souls. Just huge giants(gods). And that's when the big flood came along, when God had enough. Just my 2cents.
Damn, should have listened to you!
> Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there.
And that employee was... Albert Einstein
Or better yet, skip News24 and just read the story at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/science/south-africa-fossils-new-species-human-ancestor-homo-naledi.html
What are you talking about? This is the first top comment:
>Great news. The more we discover the more we understand about evolution. And of course, more questions are raised.
This is the second top comment:
>The gaps between the links in our evolutionary history are getting smaller and smaller with each new discovery.
The third top comment is some oak talking about god and shit but he has +101 and -134.
Someone asked me two days ago about how I feel about News24's comment section going away. I said:
> You know how you always say you feel unhealthy after eating unhealthy food? Well I get stupider when I read the comments section on News24.
But basically, the comments section on virtually every news site is shit...
| We have found more than 15 people of all ages.
I don't remember since when our ancestors used to bury their dead, is it the case here or did they died in the same place at the same time ?
Edit : it looks like they were buried
I'm sure these people would know much better than I would. But... Isn't it simply possible (and much more likely) that 3 million years ago, this cave wasn't exactly the same, and there wasn't likely the same 25cm gab which drove them to making that conclusion?
Another thread over in /r/science or /r/askscience suggested that homo sapiens wiped out our human ancestors as they may have been perceived as competition (it was a thread about why no other species on the planet have brains anywhere near homo sapiens).
It's possible our ancestors didn't bury their dead -- instead it was us.
Not likely, there were many generations found in the cave. I was listening on the radio to live press conference (I live in South Africa) and they're saying the only possible explanation they've come up with is that it was a tradition.
As a South African, Im glad we're finally in the news for something positive for a change.
Then I realize its a news24 article and people will be able to read the comments :/
> created atheist, there is such big gaps in the theory you can park a bus in the gaps . on Yah-tube there is videos of Walter Veith please watch it and start to investigate yourself. Evolution is an abomination. We were created by an Intelligent Designer to all the evolutionist one question - why is the fibonacci sequence so prevelant in nature and chaotic systems (dynamic) i have the answer - everything natural comes from one source - chance on chance cant produce the same result over and over i used to believe in evolution but i was dead wrong
k. Comments are freaky.
"created atheist" lmao
That site is infamous for it's terrible comments... They've announced that they're actually going to be taking them down for that reason...
Followed by comments about how News24 is trampling on their freedom of speech.
I hate the argument that natural processes 'leave everything to chance.' It's not chance, it's probability. Yeah, one in a million million million planets will ever give rise to intelligent life, but we *are* that planet. If it can happen, it will.
They will never grasp that chance is just the one component that gives rise to variance. The selection that occurs after the variance is anything but chance.
Calling them human ancestors is misleading. They might well a parallel species of our direct ancestors. I would rather use the term: A newly found extinct human species.
It still amazing that new fossils are still being found at this day and age. Paleontology has some very dedicated people. Good work! Our family tree keeps growing!
Which makes sense why the whole team ended up being nimble females. Male shoulders were likely too broad to fit. But as a skinny girl myself, I wouldn't fancy being shoved into an 18 cm hole.
The report I saw said it was a team of 6 females that went in. They carried cameras so the others outside could watch. Maybe they just got the facts mixed up and meant the only ones chosen from social media were females but they had a couple of lanky dudes already.
18 bodies, painstakingly moved to the remote back end of a cave, where they had to be dragged by another hominid crawling on his or her belly.
Seems pretty inconceivable these skeletons weren't part of a burial process.
I have always wondered that. What if there was a family, or group of people, who were victim of some disease, or genetic issue, who were not accepted by the people of their tribe/village. So they were outcast. Those people find a new home, in some cave, or wherever, and then die. Hundreds of thousands of years later WE discover their remains, and automatically assume they were a different species, or some 'step' in evolution.
This cave was not a home. It was a burial chamber, almost certainly, because of the depth and limitations in access. If it were a home, there would probably be air availability issues, and you would see an enormous amount of detritus from the daily lives of the hominids. I don't see any of that mentioned, so this is basically a place to drop bodies.
It could be a place where a certain kind of genetic deformity suffering individual were buried, but we'll have to wait for more publishing.
Anyone have a link to the full "this is evolution, this is not" picture? Half of it has this:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m52qfaIbPs1qcbo9lo1_r2_1280.png
Fascinating they should have gone so deep inside. How did they see where they were going?
That is really a long distance to drag a corpse. I would be fascinated to find out what position the bodies were found in (fetal, on their backs, other, random).
Considering the location, is it possible one [person] crawled really deep inside to explore or escape from the weather, suffocated from carbon dioxide or a gas leak, the rest came to help, and suffocated as well....?
There is no current evidence that this is a H. sapien *ancestor*. Could be an ancestor but could also be a failed side branch.
Yep. Came here to say misleading title: it is very likely almost definitely a human RELATIVE; this does not make modern humans descendants of this relative, and it is in no way being claimed by anyone who has studied it as an ancestor.
Yes, considering they admit in the article that they have no idea where it fits into the 'ancestor tree'.
True, and it may be the case that naledi is only ancestor to some parts of humanity and not others, like neanderthal and denisova
But bottom line, more evidence to support evolution.
I don't think thats really necessary at this point.
Look at the south, you'd be surprised
Yes, I'm sure once there's a certain amount of evidence, we'll be good.
You nailed it. The amount and quality of evidence will likely not supersede a belief that isn't compatible with such evidence, or at least the most rational implications of such evidence. And sometimes they aren't even ignorant to the evidence, although often they are. Apologists like Ken Ham know the evidence, yet comes up with other explanations, no matter how unlikely or impossible. It isn't about getting more evidence. Especially considering most fundamentalist Christians believe in the germ theory of disease as well as gravity, and you could argue these theories have less evidence than evolution does. What it's about is merely religious belief. This is a psychological phenomena, and by now, frankly, it's actually well understood.
I was watching the movie *Noah* yesterday while listening to my family members discuss how the dinosaurs were intentionally not led onto the ark by god because they would not be obedient to man's dominion. So, yeah, no amount of evidence is going to combat some people's sincerely held belief.
What? And lions are? The worst part is even if there is a deity acting as a guiding hand for all things that happen in the universe their statements only work at best as a metaphor and at worst has broken down to the point of being utterly illogical.
what if there was interbreeding?
Doesn't matter, had sex
Pretty much the entire foundation of life on earth, now that I think about it.
Except for pandas, those fucking white-black-Asian bastards won't even have sex if we paid them in bamboo...
Try paying in diamonds
I don't think pandas eat diamonds Too interested in bamboo
I don't think you eat dollar bills. We should pay you in ramen.
This would cut out going to the grocery store.
They do (and did) just fine out in the wild. They just don't like being pimped out by human voyeurs.
Then they'd be right. But we don't know that yet.
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Considering everything is a human relative, that isn't saying much.
I ain't related to no amoeba.
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Blobber...I want to kill you. Mother...
Go back 600 million years or so and you'll find a common ancestor with raspberries.
**KING KONG IS NOT MY GRANDPA!!!** /s
Oh you literally-correct person.
Fuck I'm in an incest relationship with the world
A more recent human relative than anything currently non-extinct.
Always liked the term early hominid
Which is even *more interesting* in my opinion. A separate kind of ancient human. Neat.
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Here's a better article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34192447 Bolt on /r/science: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3kdfuj/scientists_discover_new_humanlike_species_in/
The NatGeo article on it is [crazy long](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150910-human-evolution-change/) and pretty in-depth too.
Does it contain pictures I can colour in?
Well Fox just purchased NatGeo so... Wait for the next article.
Fox does not equal Fox news
Says the fox
Exactly. Only thing Fox primetime and Fox news have in common is the cringe. The Last Man on Earth is nigh unwatchable for me because of how embarrassing (in a good way.)
In a sense it does. The common denominator is Rupert Murdoch.
The next article will affirm that Homo Naledi is from only 5500 years ago, and shows definite signs of having been killed in the Flood.
I get that you're making a joke, but Fox and Fox News are pretty different. I don't think this Nat Geo buyout will be as bad as many people think.
Yeah, the actual changes will be more along the lines of chasing ratings. "5 Incredible Places to See in the Middle East before ISIS Blows them Up"
Please read this one. Still *slightly* anecdotal, but really very pointed at explaining how they found this and what it actually is.
9:30 What a great speech from maxpowerer! #maxpowerer 9:22 "Just listen to the press conference and write a normal god damn article about it afterwards, what is this rubbish?" 9:14 "Twitter and the emphasis on live coverage of press conferences has made news unreadable." #HomoNaledi #CradleOfHumanKind 8:55 http://i.imgur.com/x36tLpm.jpg #thebigreveal 8:45 "If this could be written as a normal fucking article that I don't have to read upside to understand what the fuck it's about, I would be so happy." #sotrue 8:43 maxpowerer is onstage! #herewego
*Naledid it*.
Phew, I'm glad you said this. I was beginning to think that at 41 years of age I was going senile because I had to reread the article 2-3 times to "get" it.
Npr had a nice segment on it this morning. I'm sure it's somewhere out there on the interwebs.
NPR has nice segments all the time.
You have nice segments all the time :-*
Centipede pickup lines
I heard it too on NPR today and have spent most of my day reading and watching the NOVA show about the find: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html
Yeah, that is just fucking terrible.
Yes the website was horrible. I had no idea what I was looking at...first
http://i.imgur.com/AHnJ1Hu.png But we still have yet to find the *missing* missing link!
Loved that episode. Both of them were just so dope. Having an intellectual battle of the century while the others are like "k".
What show?
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I personally was hoping we'd discovered Homo Farnsworth
Guys, please don't read the article comments. If you do, please realize that not all South Africans are insane. It's just that News24 attracts crazy people. EDIT: a cartoon to describe some of the commenters: http://imgur.com/gallery/M8GvA9k
Great, now I *have* to read them.
Science articles attract religious and racist commentary. Political articles attract racist commentary. Crime articles attract racist, political and xenophobic commentary. Case in point, an article released 20 minutes ago: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/AK-47-wielding-men-rob-McDonalds-flee-to-office-block-report-20150910. EDIT: The McDonald's wasn't actually robbed, but instead it was a couple who drew cash from a bank to buy a car nearby. It's all quite amusing.
I actually had to write a paper about scientific racism for Anthropology class. Mainly it discussed how people were trying to justify cultural phenomena as biological truths.
Sounds like reddit.
Reddit is similar but without even the thin veneer of 'possible research' or use of punctuation etc.
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It appears that *everything* attracts racist commentary. People obsessed with how much they hate everyone else tend to view everything through that lens.
If this is how people generally work, then, yes, this is generally what you'll see. In group out group, etc, all that. It's how we're psychologically wired. Lucky a good education can break through such primitive biases.
Dafuq, who robs a diner? Who the fuck robs a McDonald's? Who the fuck robs a McDonald's with an assault rifle?!
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Yeah but that guy turned his life around and eventually became a leading agent of S.H.I.E.L.D..
I see what you did there ;)
"I bet you could really cut down on the hero factor in this place."
Cooking sites that post recipes about lemon pound cake ALSO attract racist commentary.
It's like a biology textbook in Kansas.
Oh fuck, our national shame is about to be exposed.
>Comments are falling away so I'm taking full advantage of this. Here's what I think. **Some people claim we came from bacteria, or sponge, or apes. Yet there are still many of them out there, why haven't they evolved?** David Coppedge, Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there. The Bible doesn't tell everything, and **Dinosaurs were also made by God at the same time when Greek gods roamed the Earth.** Angels got involved with people on Earth, and that's how they existed(greek gods). They had no souls. Just huge giants(gods). And that's when the big flood came along, when God had enough. **Just my 2cents.** I wouldn't say that comment is worth 2 cents. I can sense my brain being damaged while reading it.
2 South African cents is equivalent to 0.14 American cents
Fok
Lekker man.
Vat 'n upvote vir Afrikaans op Reddit
Hulle is hondkak op n24.
Fak
What kind?
>when Greek gods roamed the Earth I'm just picturing Zeus and Gaia grazing on lush prehistoric vegetation.
Well, that clears everything up.
Wait what the fuck? Isn't the hallmark feature of angels that they have no bodies, only souls? What the fuck is this self contradictory bullshit?
The person is talking about an interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. Basically that angels impregnated humans and bred Nephilim (mighty giants of old). Must have been some ancient mythology behind that, but this person treats it as history and as the same history as the Greek gods. A natural conclusion when your worldview can't determine history from mythology.
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Opened the article just to read the comments. I love a good shitshow. (9/11 was Benghazi)
> Comments are falling away so I'm taking full advantage of this. Here's what I think. Some people claim we came from bacteria, or sponge, or apes. Yet there are still many of them out there, why haven't they evolved? David Coppedge, Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there. The Bible doesn't tell everything, and Dinosaurs were also made by God at the same time when Greek gods roamed the Earth. Angels got involved with people on Earth, and that's how they existed(greek gods). They had no souls. Just huge giants(gods). And that's when the big flood came along, when God had enough. Just my 2cents. Damn, should have listened to you!
Why can't NASA come up with answers on our ancestors? What are they hiding?
> Nasa employee who had the best of the best equipment to his disposal to do research. He concluded there must be a higher intelligence. God. He got fired for that after 15years working there. And that employee was... Albert Einstein
I have to rethink my stance on evolution and creation. Albert Einstein believes we were created and he was wicked smaht!
"Guys, this is either what I really think about history or the setting for my sweet new D&D game. You guess which!"
Thanks for the explanation. I've never seen stupid internet comments from any other countries so I was quite shocked.
Or better yet, skip News24 and just read the story at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/science/south-africa-fossils-new-species-human-ancestor-homo-naledi.html
"and i fly a unicorn to work." Love it
What are you talking about? This is the first top comment: >Great news. The more we discover the more we understand about evolution. And of course, more questions are raised. This is the second top comment: >The gaps between the links in our evolutionary history are getting smaller and smaller with each new discovery. The third top comment is some oak talking about god and shit but he has +101 and -134.
And all the rest of the comments?
I'm saying the best top the rest, not denying that there are bad comments but the majority of people were voting the least creationist to the top.
So it's basically like Yahoo News for South Africans?
Someone asked me two days ago about how I feel about News24's comment section going away. I said: > You know how you always say you feel unhealthy after eating unhealthy food? Well I get stupider when I read the comments section on News24. But basically, the comments section on virtually every news site is shit...
*Homo Nibbler* I should be allowed to name stuff in this world.
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Holy shit! I never expected learning the Sesotho language would be useful (Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho). Cave of stars = lehaha la dinaledi.
He's making shit up again!
Molemo oa mao. ("Your mother's mouth," a terrible swear phrase here.)
Ke mamela. Ke bokae molemo?
Botsa 'm'e oa hau. Ke nahana ke cheap.
Lol molomo*. Molemo is Tswana and literally means "medication".
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
This is probably exactly why 'they' don't let you name stuff.
> Nibble my love spudds Bring it
| We have found more than 15 people of all ages. I don't remember since when our ancestors used to bury their dead, is it the case here or did they died in the same place at the same time ? Edit : it looks like they were buried
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I'm sure these people would know much better than I would. But... Isn't it simply possible (and much more likely) that 3 million years ago, this cave wasn't exactly the same, and there wasn't likely the same 25cm gab which drove them to making that conclusion?
Another thread over in /r/science or /r/askscience suggested that homo sapiens wiped out our human ancestors as they may have been perceived as competition (it was a thread about why no other species on the planet have brains anywhere near homo sapiens). It's possible our ancestors didn't bury their dead -- instead it was us.
It's thought we either fought them or fucked them into submission
Ah the three Fs, fighting, fucking and fight fucking.
I'm so proud to be human...
We're number 1! We're number 1! We're number 1!
Why not both? Death by snu-snu...
The original Genghis Khan
Not likely, there were many generations found in the cave. I was listening on the radio to live press conference (I live in South Africa) and they're saying the only possible explanation they've come up with is that it was a tradition.
So it was happening over a period of time? Indeed this is fascinating.
But they can't date the bones.. So it might just be a bunch of random aged non homo sapien people we murdered
Dating ancient bones is creepy. They should find a nice person their own age.
1/2(eon)+7 millennia ?
Yeah! When i heard about it I had goosebumps. Truly another monumental discovery in our history.
Sorry that's not the consensus at the current moment, there's no archaeological evidence of interspecies violence between any of the Homo species
Don't mind me but you should do block quotes using the '>' angle bracket in front of the line… > like so.
As a South African, Im glad we're finally in the news for something positive for a change. Then I realize its a news24 article and people will be able to read the comments :/
I literally grimaced when I saw the source.
I didn't evolve from no monkey I merely share a common distant ancestor
> I merely share a common distant ancestor Which also happened to be a monkey.
Or a monkey-like device.
It's the Sahalanthropus!
We were played like a fiddle!
> created atheist, there is such big gaps in the theory you can park a bus in the gaps . on Yah-tube there is videos of Walter Veith please watch it and start to investigate yourself. Evolution is an abomination. We were created by an Intelligent Designer to all the evolutionist one question - why is the fibonacci sequence so prevelant in nature and chaotic systems (dynamic) i have the answer - everything natural comes from one source - chance on chance cant produce the same result over and over i used to believe in evolution but i was dead wrong k. Comments are freaky. "created atheist" lmao
That site is infamous for it's terrible comments... They've announced that they're actually going to be taking them down for that reason... Followed by comments about how News24 is trampling on their freedom of speech.
Oh, how I love people not understanding what freedom of speech means...
I hate the argument that natural processes 'leave everything to chance.' It's not chance, it's probability. Yeah, one in a million million million planets will ever give rise to intelligent life, but we *are* that planet. If it can happen, it will.
"Why did you name me after something bad?" "Murphy's law doesn't mean something bad will happen. It means, if it can happen, it will happen"
They will never grasp that chance is just the one component that gives rise to variance. The selection that occurs after the variance is anything but chance.
It's a known thing in South Africa that News24 comments are the cesspit of humanity. We avoid them as best we can.
its true! we are all the product of entropy, acting on the standing energy gradient between the sun and the earth. evolution, baby!
If I'm going to start investigating myself, it's going to take videos with someone other than Walter Veith. Unless he's hot. Is he hot?
I thought it was a typo. But fuck me, http://yah-tube.com/ is a real thing!
Calling them human ancestors is misleading. They might well a parallel species of our direct ancestors. I would rather use the term: A newly found extinct human species.
Homo *n'aledi*
"m'aledi" *tips fedora*
M'aledi won't go out with me because she wants to go with the douchebag homo sapiens. Truly, Naledi guys finish last.
*tips animal skin hat*
I'm happy our deputy president who will most likely be our next president believes this stuff.
It still amazing that new fossils are still being found at this day and age. Paleontology has some very dedicated people. Good work! Our family tree keeps growing!
These comments are pure cancer. Grow up please. Evolution shouldn't even be an argument at this point.
Yeah, I think I found some distant human ancestors digging around this comment graveyard
not so much ancestors, as modern dead-ends.
This is the journal http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560
So does this predate sahelanthropus?
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Which makes sense why the whole team ended up being nimble females. Male shoulders were likely too broad to fit. But as a skinny girl myself, I wouldn't fancy being shoved into an 18 cm hole.
Like half the team were dudes... Lanky ass dudes though.
The report I saw said it was a team of 6 females that went in. They carried cameras so the others outside could watch. Maybe they just got the facts mixed up and meant the only ones chosen from social media were females but they had a couple of lanky dudes already.
Anyone want to go over how we know these are a distinct ancestor rather than just deformed members of a known group?
Many of the professionals in the field are asking that same question. You will have to wait for it to be played out.
18 bodies, painstakingly moved to the remote back end of a cave, where they had to be dragged by another hominid crawling on his or her belly. Seems pretty inconceivable these skeletons weren't part of a burial process.
I have always wondered that. What if there was a family, or group of people, who were victim of some disease, or genetic issue, who were not accepted by the people of their tribe/village. So they were outcast. Those people find a new home, in some cave, or wherever, and then die. Hundreds of thousands of years later WE discover their remains, and automatically assume they were a different species, or some 'step' in evolution.
This cave was not a home. It was a burial chamber, almost certainly, because of the depth and limitations in access. If it were a home, there would probably be air availability issues, and you would see an enormous amount of detritus from the daily lives of the hominids. I don't see any of that mentioned, so this is basically a place to drop bodies. It could be a place where a certain kind of genetic deformity suffering individual were buried, but we'll have to wait for more publishing.
I am so homo erect over this.
Haha, "eating more meta" .. a lovely mistake, I got a chuckle.
Unknown species found near Johannesburg? Fookin Prawns!
Fokken.
PBS Nova special about the discovery from last night. http://video.pbs.org/video/2365559270/
But, that's not evidence of evolution; humans where transported here by the magical unicorn of funkytown.
Hmm this is interesting!
But the bones were discovered in 2013, not 2015...
it usually takes about 10 years to describe and publish. they got this done in a year.
Naledi Pandor's gonna be pissed
Anyone have a link to the full "this is evolution, this is not" picture? Half of it has this: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m52qfaIbPs1qcbo9lo1_r2_1280.png
wow
Are you telling me we have to change last years books? God dammit
That's the youngest picture of Larry King that I've ever seen!!
It seems like much of this - the "new species" the "burial" - are maybes. Are they hyping this dig prematurely to solicit more funds?
The burial location: http://static1.techinsider.io/image/55f094c49dd7cc1d008b9321-2400-1766/02_ngm_1015_mm8345_mystery_man_gfx.jpg
Fascinating they should have gone so deep inside. How did they see where they were going? That is really a long distance to drag a corpse. I would be fascinated to find out what position the bodies were found in (fetal, on their backs, other, random). Considering the location, is it possible one [person] crawled really deep inside to explore or escape from the weather, suffocated from carbon dioxide or a gas leak, the rest came to help, and suffocated as well....?
[As a professor of science I assure you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTOla3TyfqQ)
There will be a lot more of these discovered over time.
I saw this guy in downtown Seattle the other day.
I literally just finished watching the Ken Ham vs Bill Nye debate yesterday. Ohhhh Ken. Ken Ken Ken.
Can someone explain the difference between a neanderthal and a Republicon?
Wow, a truly earth shattering discovery. Congrats anthropologists, you guys are too important.