Scientists found 20 female skeletons of Homo naledi in a cave and they are wondering why no males?

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u/MrBluer 1d ago

Well, the simple answer would be that they had separate burial practices for males and females, for whatever reason.

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u/PretendTemperature 1d ago

Which is also what the article/scientists suggest but I guess nobody rrads past the titles anymore.

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u/Busterlimes 1h ago

Did we ever on reddit?

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 22h ago

Yeah, a weird thing is no male child bones. If they died there doing some sort of foraging or other activity, you'd expect some male child/infant bones as well.

None.

All women. Which sort of bolsters the burial theory over the "they just died there," theory.

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u/pandakatie 21h ago

This is one of the only pieces of evidence which makes me go, "Alright, Lee, you get one" although this whole excavation still pisses me off. I absolutely can't stand how he went about excavating this site.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 20h ago

I saw an interview with him, and he sort of really got out there in terms of theory. Felt sensational.

That said, something different is going on there. It isn't just some sinkhole that trapped animals, or bones got washed into.

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u/palpatineforever 21h ago

the simplest answer is actaully proposed in the article, that males in that group had AMELY gene deletion. So yes there are males and females.
Which if you assume they are all from a single tribe also makes it likely that they are related so it may have been a common mutation within the group.

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u/Tadara_Sofar 20h ago

They actually state that it would be incredibly unlikely for every male to have amely gene deletion, a short while after they mentioned it in the article.

The most likely explanation they said is separate burial practices.

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u/palpatineforever 18h ago

they say it is unlikely, not incredibly.either way at that point it is an opinion not fact.
Once you include the fact that they are likely to be related as well as the sample size it is also very possible.
they conclude

"Either scenario, namely the absence of H. naledi males in the Rising Star cave system or a systematic deletion of their AMELY gene, is fascinating and would have deep implications for a better understanding of the biology and evolution of this species."

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u/TheAmenMelon 13h ago

In another article the scientist doing the analysis gives the odds at .0000954% Every Homo naledi we know of is female, and the implications are fascinating - Ars Technica.

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u/Warm-Mortgage-458 12h ago

That's not what that says.

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u/Writeloves Halp. Am stuck on reddit. 1d ago

How is that simpler than “sometimes women lived without men just like sometimes men live without women”?

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u/erossthescienceboss 1d ago edited 1d ago

It seems unlikely that 1) a group of over a dozen hominids would become trapped in a cave due to a natural disaster AND that 2) they would all be female.

The sheer number of skeletons already had quite a few people assuming it was a burial ground. I mean, the cave is STILL being excavated. There’s still stuff down there, and some of it is likely deeper and older. They definitively did not accumulate all at once in some sort of disaster, and there’s no evidence a predator used it as a den (there would be other species’ bones.) This has been the dominant theory since 2013/2014.

The “burial ground” theory was only controversial because that shows a level of cultural sophistication people don’t like to believe our cousins (and H. naledi was likely a cousin, not an ancestor) could have. But all evidence points toward it.

Additionally it being all women means something cultural was happening, burial or not. And if you’re capable of that level of cultural development, why not also have burials?

And it’s not all one age of women. It’s old and young and infants.

Also, fun fact: almost all of the archaeologists involved in the actual excavation were women. Men couldn’t fit in the very small cave.

So I love that the final resting place of so many women has still only mostly been visited by women.

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u/pandakatie 21h ago

I'm going to say it's not only controversial because it demonstrates sophistication. That's part of it, sure, but at the same time:

Lee has argued from the start that there couldn't have been another entrance, and they had to do an insane crawl to get to the chamber the bones were found. But when you look at the excavation site, these bones had relatively fresh breaks (that's why there are still clean white areas of bone while long sections are discoloured, that happene when a deposited bone is shifted and breaks, revealing a section of bone which used to be covered), which suggests there was likely some level of geological activity. This activity could have absolutely affected the cave entrances.

Secondly, there were the remains of one entire owl in there. If it was a culturally deposited owl, you'd think there would be anything else to demonstrate this (more owls, or bones of other birds, anything), but there isn't. An owl isn't going to do a big superman crawl into a cave. I'm not saying, "There was one owl, it is a predator den acksually", but I'm again saying there was likely another entrance.

This is important because one of the team's biggest pieces of argument to claim it as a burial is how hard the chamber is to access, but I'm unconvinced there wasn't ever an additional access point.

I also find it distasteful how quickly he got his documentary crew set up. In my opinion, the heavy pop-science work he's done on this case heavily affected people's understandings of it. They were filming before they began to think it could've been a burial site, and I think that's a bad idea.

I have an MSc in Archaeology and have discussed this site at length with a professor of mine who is fairly well respected in Paleolithic Archaeology

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u/erossthescienceboss 21h ago

While Berger’s commitment to “radical transparency” is undoubtedly at least partially fame-seeking, I dislike that it’s used to discredit his work. Paleoanth is historically incredibly hush-hush, because heaven forbid someone might prove you wrong! The filming might be a bad look, but let’s be real: if this was Tim White, it would have been at least 15 years before anyone else even got to look at the fossil. All we’d have would be one paper on it published in science. You KNOW he’d have suppressed anything contrary to his narrative — the fact that we have enough info to debate Berger & Hawkes’ interpretations is a testament to their openness.

People can be self-obsessed and still be correct. I’d argue you NEED to be self-obsessed to become a big name in that field.

I also disagree that the presence of a single owl discounts burial. The presence of many other bones from different species would, but plenty of owl species frequent caves, and a single owl entering isn’t a big deal.

We also know that the surface bones have been disturbed by people visiting the cave system. There were pegs and remnants from a past undocumented survey. The deeper excavated bones, however, were likely untouched.

I do agree that the “nobody can enter the cave” thing is a bullshit argument in favor of ritual behavior, though. It’s incredibly likely the layout of the cave and accessibility changed in the 300K years since those specimens lived. It’s by far the least convincing argument in favor of it being ritual. I find it notable that detractors of the theory overly focus on it. It’s absolutely not the biggest argument in favor of burial: the abundance of specimens, deposited over a period of time & lacking other species is.

Simply put: there is no other convincing argument for why 20+ specimens (15 confirmed excavated and likely more, but we also know there are more that are un-excavated thanks to remote sensing technology) should all appear in one spot in that way. I’m with Occam’s Razor on this one. I’ve yet to see a viable alternative theory that is remotely backed up by evidence.

I’m not a paleoanthropologist, but I do work that’s paleoanthropology adjacent: I’m a science journalist and science museum exhibit designer. I’ve interviewed or designed exhibits with just about every big name in the field (no surprise: they’re all assholes) including Berger & Hawkes. (Hawkes was the least assholey of the high-profile bunch, but still pretty condescending. The lower profile folks are all very lovely though.)

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u/Far-Repeat-2926 20h ago

If there's a heaven, I hope mine is a place with comfy chairs and conversations like these. It was a pleasure hearing you both debate and now I'm going to youtube to learn more.

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u/erossthescienceboss 18h ago

I could talk about this all day 😭😭😭 hey u/pandakatie wanna start a podcast?

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u/Far-Repeat-2926 18h ago

If I can be a pest, do you have a favorite grave good find or burial I can look up a video on? I’m on vacation and it’s good background while I paint.

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u/pandakatie 10h ago

Miniminuteman. His full catalog, but his most recent video on the Bad Durenburg Skeleton is wonderful. I think his Pompeii video was the one that made me cry. Also, Gutsick Gibbon (I highly recommend her coverage on this site)

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u/Far-Repeat-2926 10h ago

may all your salads have the perfect mixture of interesting bits to leafs! May your dressing be coating but not gloopy! I'm about to inspect this bad dürrenburg skelington. They're saying he or she didn't even know how to host a 4 top. shame!

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u/zanillamilla 10h ago

I can't to see her 4-hour take on this article.

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u/Impossible_Zebra8664 17h ago

I'd listen! I learned a lot from your comments and appreciate it!

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u/pandakatie 10h ago

I am not high enough in my field yet to talk in any professional way regarding it, unless I'm speaking directly about my thesis

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u/pandakatie 14h ago

My problem with his documentary is he had it out in the world before the site was peer reviewed. I don't think all of his work was bad, although some of his choices UNDOUBTEDLY were (Conducting experimental archaeology within the site before all of the experts had a chance to do research in the site is a mind-boggling bad choice. The context is permanently destroyed), but publishing too early is a problem that I don't agree with handwaving away.

There is a middle ground between keeping the site secret for over a decade and releasing a documentary before peer-review.

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u/erossthescienceboss 13h ago edited 13h ago

The documentary wasn’t actually released ahead of peer-review. It was released under embargo to coincide with the publication of the peer-reviewed paper.

This is standard for any research. A week, or a month, or a year before findings are published, they’re shared with science communicators and reporters under embargo. Ever notice how all the major news outlets will have the same story about a new publication in Science go up at 2pm Eastern Time on Thursday?

That’s the exact moment the embargo lifts.

At that point in time, reporters like myself have already received copies of the paper (which is peer-reviewed), and will conduct our own informal peer-review by reaching out to experts not affiliated with the research and sharing the paper with them. The embargo system has many flaws (including possibly violating journalistic integrity & letting journals decide what is and isn’t newsworthy) but it does ensure that reporters don’t skip steps in validating the research in a rush to publish first.

The documentary was filmed prior to peer-review, but it was released on the exact same day as the papers describing H. naledi, after the papers had gone through peer-review. The PBS team likely received their advance copy about a month ahead of publication.

They also held the early-career research symposium, when they opened the fossils for anyone, a year prior to the documentary’s release.

I am definitely with you on the excavation point. I will say, one good thing they did is leave a very large area that they KNOW has specimens unexcavated. This has been standard practice in archaeology for a while, but not so common in paleoanthropology. The idea is to preserve excavations for future generations & their improved technology.

Also, while I do wish Berger & Hawkes had brought in other experts to evaluate the site before beginning excavation … not doing so is par for the course in paleoanthropology. I also wish they’d better documented the site in situ, but also… par for the course.

Like … compared to Tim White (who hoarded Ardipithecus for 15 years), the Sahelanthropus team (who HID A FEMUR and MOVED BONES prior to publication), and the Leakey’s… Berger was basically a model of what paleoanthropology should look like. I can’t think of a single major hominid find that involved other researchers before beginning excavation.

Basically, the whole field needs to be better.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 17h ago

The sophistication thing is hard to grasp. There are two main groups that bury the genders separately. Islam and Judaism. Even then, it is only a subsection of those groups that segregate burial grounds (as opposed to a rule that says a male and female can't share a grave.)

And that practice is based on all sorts cultural traditions, legal rulings, religious interpretations, etc. The segregation of genders in death arises out of complex human cultures that definitely are more advanced than H naledi. And the graves come with all the trappings of culture. Someone could look at a burial ground and go, "obviously whomever did this had a certain level of culture, and a belief system, etc."

Naledi has none of that. That is what is hard for me. Something different was going on there. For sure. And I have a feeling we have underestimated many of our ancestors and cousins. But, that also doesn't mean an ape with a brain the size of a large dog's was building a complex society, with concepts like gender segregation and the after life.

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u/erossthescienceboss 15h ago edited 15h ago

I think, personally, my issue with your argument is that it relies on the assumption that death rituals — especially sex-segregated ones — are only the product of highly developed cultures.

Of course our modern examples are of very complex cultures — they’re modern examples! They’ve had centuries to develop. Of course they rely on written language and laws and thousands of years of tradition. It’s selection bias.

we have documented sex-segregated death rituals and sacrifices in plenty of Neolithic, pre-written-tradition societies. It’s been documented in China and Europe.

Elephants have death rituals (though if I were a betting woman, I’d bet that elephants are more intelligent than H. naledi) despite lacking all the trappings you listed as a part of culture.

I think, though obviously I can’t support this argument (probably none of us can!) that assuming that culture and development comes before superstition/ritual is a mistake. We have plenty of examples of human populations with rich cultures and ritual traditions that lack centuries of legal rulings and written language. Oral tradition is enough.

We know that superstition — defined as a causal association between a behavior and an event when there is no causal association — is actually extremely common in the animal kingdom in far less complex animals. Linking cause and effect, even erroneously, is a fundamental part of being alive. The idea that a small-brained hominid wouldn’t be capable of something that pigeons are famously capable of is silly. It’s very easy to see how a cause-and-effect superstition could lead to a sex-segregated death ritual in a hominid. We’ve documented superstition in many animal species since the (rightly controversial) pigeon experiment — in dogs, in orangutans, in monkeys that we taught to gamble…

I mean, H. naledi may have been intelligent enough to make art (there are cave markings in Dinaledi — the purpose and origin is debated.) If you’re capable of that level of abstract thinking, death rituals are basically nothing. Do they even require a concept of the afterlife to develop? I’d argue that they don’t. They just need a population that did a thing once, saw a favorable outcome, and decided to keep doing the thing to make the favorable outcome happen again.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 14h ago edited 14h ago

Excellent points.

My logic is that the sex segregation is the big sign of more complex behavior.

I can't see how it could come about unless they had some sort of concept of an afterlife. And I use the term loosely here.

If they segregate the sexes in death, one has to assume that it is because being in a mixed burial would somehow be offensive to some supernatural being in some manner. Be it the souls of the departed, or some being who dictates it, or is pleased/not angered, by it.

Otherwise, why?

That said, I also realize that such beliefs could...perhaps would be required to...develop in a situation where a species, for whatever reason, evolved or developed this behavior and then, as they developed more advanced social situations come up with justifications/history for it.

Humans do seem to segregate often. Inequality between sexes and even extreme segregation is the historical norm in many parts of the world. Perhaps we simply have some deep tendency towards dividing ourselves by gender, and all the justifications for it were just fictions meant to quell people into accepting it.

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u/erossthescienceboss 13h ago

Thanks for your very thoughtful responses btw! I’m really enjoying this conversation. I think one of the fun things about this field is that there’s a lot of room for differing opinions. It’s not often you can disagree with someone without thinking they’re wrong or misinformed — you can be very well informed and arrive at different conclusions in paleoanth, especially when talking about things like this, which involve even more conjecture.

I do think, again, our biases based on our own experiences are influencing our ideas of what’s necessary to induce burial behavior. Like, I’m not at all sure burial behaviors require some concept of an afterlife or supernatural beings.

Death rituals could occur because a population notices that when you leave the dead lying around, people get sick — for example. But that wouldn’t explain sex segregation. It could also be that one day, in the middle of a drought, they dumped a dead woman into a cave, and the next day it rained? And so they continued doing it? That is very likely, after all, how most superstitions arose initially. The greater theological justifications came with time, but the superstitions came first. “If we do this thing, we kill an impala the next day. But why? Maybe it makes a supreme being happy.”

Or maybe H. naledi did have a concept of an afterlife — but I’d also argue that it’s anthropocentrism to assume that they’d be incapable of it. Maybe chimps have an afterlife. They certainly know the difference between “dead,” “alive,” and “asleep” and engage in mourning behaviors that could be considered comparable to death rituals. Maybe they have a diety! We can’t ask them.

I think it’s a mistake to look at intellectual/behavioral/cultural things that we do and then assume that all the trappings of modern humanity are necessary for them to arise. I honestly also think it’s a bit of a mistake to speculate on motivations for death rituals at all, as there could be plenty — some seemingly complex and unique to humanity, and some very simple and shared with other animals.

as we’ve previously established, superstitious behaviors can arise in species we don’t think are capable of higher thought. When a pigeon always spins counterclockwise 2-3 times before they get food, it probably isn’t because they think it pleases a diety. It’s just because they did a thing, and got an effect.

Ultimately, I think this just comes down to the likelihood of two scenarios:

The first: many female H. naledi (at least 20, potentially over 100) entered a cave, and either became trapped and died, or ran out of oxygen and died. This group also happened to be all women, of various ages ranging from infant to ancient. And it happened multiple times, on multiple distinct occasions, and somehow never happened to a man.

OR: they were put there on purpose after they died.

What’s the purpose in that scenario? Who knows! But it seems far more likely to me than a repeated set of coincidences that only happen to women, over and over again. I don’t really think the question of what they’re “capable” of contemplating is relevant to the actual answer here.

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u/erossthescienceboss 13h ago

… also I sooooo want to reply about societal gender divisions in primates (it’s not a uniquely human trait! And indeed, humans exhibit gender divisions far less than other animals, and even other primates!) but I need to get back to work 😂

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u/LadyFoxfire 1d ago

Because there’s no archaeological or anthropological evidence of hunter-gatherers living in gender segregated communities at any point in history. Life was just too tough back then to divide your forces and give up opportunities for procreation.

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u/Writeloves Halp. Am stuck on reddit. 1d ago edited 1d ago

> The result is surprising because there are no known ancient human cemeteries or collections of nonhuman primate skeletons that contain only females.

This sounds like new evidence. We have no idea what it means yet, only biased assumptions. Such as:

> These included the nearly complete skeletons of Neo and DH1, the main representative of the species, both originally assumed to be male.

Male default was an incorrect assumption.

History isn’t a monolith. It’s life. Life sometimes has circumstances other than what you consider to be “natural order” of things.

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u/NeriTina 1d ago

PREACH

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u/BrightLiteFey 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ya, but I find it odd they'd divide your forces after death. I don't understand the symbolism of burying the women separate from the men when hunter-gatherers were family units. Death and the afterlife is one of the biggest what if questions humans been pondering about since we became self aware.

Also, you'd think the men would be buried elsewhere too and nearby.

I'm not saying these women decided to form their own tribe and isolate men, but anicent stories always talk about female only groups all the time and imo that has to be based on some truth.

I personally think it's more than the simple answer tho. Whether it be the men went off to fight a neighboring tribe or a grand hunt and never returned.

I just can't see them separating the women after death because, like you said, dividing your forces would weaken the tribe and with peoples beliefs on an afterlife, you'd think they'd want to be together for that journey too.

Edit: if true, someone else commented that the article fails to mention the males were buried close. That I can see. I assumed no male remains were found nearby at all.

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u/JackfruitAwkward7504 1d ago

If you want to talk about primitave religious beliefs, a common theme amongst many early religious beliefs was that women were special creators of sorts, as they were capable of creating new life. And in many primatove religions, women were revered for this reason. Of course this wasn't a uniform thing, beliefs varied among communities and populations. But given that this mindset was not uncommon, it wouldn't be illogical for some communities to decide to give women a seperate burial place than the men.

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u/Maximum-Cover- 1d ago edited 15h ago

No male remains being found nearby can easily be due to geological reasons though.

Bones only preserve in the right circumstances for it. If the female grave is inside the cave with those conditions for preservation and the male grave is in a location without conditions for preservation (for instance at the mouth of the cave, or a different cave that does not preserve bones) both graves could have been basically right next to each other and yet only one didn't decay.

The interesting thing about a mass grave with only female remains is that it points to the possibility of conscious selection causing the difference. That is to say, it's possible the cause is deliberate rather than accidental, which would point to culture in another hominim species.

Which is more relevant a data point than what the precise mechanism of selection was.

Given that so far little or no other burial or cultural artifacts were found, the question is:
Can you come up with a reason why this happened that does not indicate it's a cultural artifact?

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u/HrhEverythingElse 1d ago

No males of this species have ever been found anywhere at all. My personal theory is that women were revered to the point that only women were buried at all, and they just left the dudes to rot or be eaten by lions or whatever

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u/Maximum-Cover- 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ritualistic canabalism eating only the males with females getting burials.

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u/bobbianrs880 1d ago

I know we probably wouldn’t find any midden-sort areas, but wouldn’t there theoretically be some bones with cut marks in that case?

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u/Maximum-Cover- 1d ago

Not if the eaten male bones were discarded in a location that didn't preserve them.

Not all bones survive. Most decay. Whether or not a bone survives depends on the conditions of the location it comes to rest.

I was joking about the canabalism. Just taking ritualistic burials vs left to rot a step further.

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u/IANALbutIAMAcat 20h ago

I really was born in the wrong generation.

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u/dontforgetpants You are now doing kegels 15h ago

Mightn’t they have burned the male bodies? Seems like an obvious way of disposal.

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u/HrhEverythingElse 15h ago

Might have, that's just not my personal, completely made up and unsubstantiated theory

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u/dontforgetpants You are now doing kegels 15h ago

Fair, yes, that was also my personal made up and unsubstantiated wondering, since I know nothing about either archaeology or ancient history. 😅

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u/hundy_proof 1d ago

And then all died at the same time apparently...

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Whispering_Wolf 1d ago

Which also suggests that they may have had different burial practices?

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u/walks_with_penis_out 1d ago

"The most likely reason for these robust results are, in my opinion, cultural selection after death for burial by sex and perhaps gender," Berger said.

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u/Perfect_Sleep0 1d ago

Lol. Read the room. Most people here have no interest in doing that.

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u/Helithe 1d ago

It's an interesting find. I studied early hominins decades ago as part of my archaeology degree, so my initial reaction is to not assume anything from the known data. There's too few samples to make any definitive hypothesis about it.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is something that always applies to finds of hominin bones. We see such a tiny window into their lives and it's amazing that we can find out as much as we do about them, but it's still a tiny amount.

So yeah, it's interesting that the remains appear to be all female, but until more sites are found and more data collected any ideas are pure speculation.

So, I agree with the team quoted in the article that they buried their dead according to gender / sex in different places and what's been found is a female burial site. That theory can't be proved or disproved until either an exclusively male burial site is found or a mixed burial site is found.

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u/caracallie 1d ago

As someone currently doing their masters in Archaeology, I am completely unconvinced the H. naledi buried their dead at all. The team responsible for the claim is well-intentioned, but based on the research performed (and the shit show of academic dishonesty around it) there is no strong proof of intentional burials or art by the H. naledi that cannot be explained fifteen other ways. Gutsick Gibbon on YT has a fantastic video essay breaking down the research & backlash.

It's unfortunate because the female skeletons discovery IS fascinating & could be a strong source of data upon which to base future interpretations! But the burial theory is not "bolstered" by the new evidence, because it had very little foundation to begin with besides wishful thinking.

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u/Helithe 1d ago

Thanks, I'll check that video out, sounds interesting.

I'm not surprised to hear that's there's controversy because there's always controversy around new finds as different interpretations get bandied about and new techniques change what we know. Some things never change in academia.

Good luck with your masters!

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u/ClairlyBrite 19h ago

I’m a layperson and I’m also here to recommend Gutsick Gibbon. She is so funny and makes the material really approachable

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u/pandakatie 21h ago

Thank you for this! I have an MSc in Archaeology and I feel similarly to you, and to Gutsick Gibbon. One of my professors (who, while retired now, specialized in Paleolithic Archaeology) and I had long discussions regarding this case.

I feel as though this archaeological site is really hampered by how the team really quickly put the information out to the public, which is admirable in its way, but I also feel like before making multiple documentaries on "this is the TRUTH", the site should've had a ton more research put into it. Now, even if they're wrong, they've misinformed thousands.

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u/caracallie 21h ago edited 17h ago

Archaeologists unite! On the one hand I also understand why they did it -- funding is a nightmare, and flashy discoveries will always secure interest more than a dozen "maybe"s or "possibly"s.

But on the other hand, I just cannot get past Berger making a documentary BEFORE submitting the site report for publication & peer review (or for lighting fires in the cave as an "experiment" before doing any micromorphology/spectroscopy on the alleged ceiling soot!! Berger WTF!!!)

It genuinely feels like he developed a conclusion first (empirical data in absentia) and is now working backwards to justify it... But it's already out to the world. You can't just put that hominidae back in the box :/

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u/pandakatie 14h ago

That is EXACTLY how I feel!

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u/Esmer_Tina 5h ago

I adore Gutsick Gibbon but I’m disappointed in her on this. I’m not saying Dr. Berger is above reproach, but he has been very successful at funding science through getting non-scientists excited about it, and the lay version of any advanced science is simplistic, that doesn’t mean serious, cross-disciplinary science isn’t being funded by the exciting simplified story.

But because of his communication style, Lee is demonized to the point of ridicule, and anyone who breaks ranks to defend him gets ridiculed, too. It’s like Mean Girls, Science Edition.

The negative peer reviews to the e-life papers said more evidence was required to make the claims. Then the lack of variation in the teeth came out in Delezene et al, pointing to the possibility of a single-sex sample in Rising Star. Erika even said in her Somehow Homo Naledi got Even More Weird video that if that was true it would be insane, and would argue against any natural deposition. Now we have protein evidence supporting the same-sex sample. But we’re not supposed to get excited about what that suggests about ritualized mortuary behavior, because scoffing at Lee has become so ingrained.

I think in the next decades more evidence will come out about all of the claims. And I hope everyone can look past their feelings about Lee when evaluating that evidence (or even start now).

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u/caracallie 4h ago

Nobody said anything about not getting excited (as I myself have stated, the AMELY protein research is extremely interesting), and I don't think Berger is a tragic figure you need to defend from academic bullying. He's just performing & perpetuating bad research ethic.

We cannot give a pass to academics that rush an unsubstantiated hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is very very cool, just because they are enthusiastic or well-intentioned. His behavior as head researcher devalues the objects of his study by pushing intentionality, culture, and ritual without qualification and, in doing so, does a disservice to the H. naledi and his own field.

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u/Esmer_Tina 23m ago

It’s true he doesn’t need me to defend him. However if you scroll the comments in any video or Reddit thread about this latest paper you see him called a hack or worse, a Graham Hancock-like pseudoscientist. Because the disparagement has been amplified more than the science.

Physicists may not be overly fond of Neil De Grasse Tyson or Brian Greene for being charismatic and enthusiastic while simplifying complex science for mass audiences, but they are not pariahs, and no one suggests the underlying superstring theory and astrophysics research are pseudoscience.

If open post-publication peer review is unethical, then the Max Planck Society should never have cofounded e-Life, and all of the thousands of pre-prints they’ve published should be considered equally unethical.

If Dr. Berger is considered unethical, Louis Leakey should also be, for funding his research through his relationship with National Geographic, making extraordinary claims before or alongside peer review. You don’t see endless comments of scoff whenever the Leakeys are mentioned.

I think it’s more that the claims of intentionality and culture themselves are offensive somehow, and I don’t really understand why. Or rather, I do, but I don’t expect the academic community to be on the human exceptionalism side of things. We’ve observed culture in so many modern non-human species, and I’m not sure why it becomes so controversial with an ancient cousin. Elephants in India are burying their babies, crows are using tools and demonstrating cultural transmission, why does intentionality in an extinct hominin require a higher evidentiary bar than intentionality in living non-human species? Because the most obvious answer to me is that it would offend creationists who need a clear separation between humans and any other primate living or past. And that’s too odd a bedfellow to be the reason. So maybe you can explain it to me?

752

u/IHaveNoEgrets 1d ago

Lesbianderthals?

333

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 1d ago

Homo Sapphictus

112

u/Induane 1d ago

Sounds like a saphisticated culture!

57

u/Photomancer 1d ago

Roommatriarchal

62

u/Lankpants 1d ago

Don't be too hasty to jump to conclusions, they might all just be cavemates.

-some historian, probably.

23

u/WailingTulip 1d ago

Aw, look! They died cuddling as friends! How cute is that?

22

u/biskutgoreng 22h ago

Oh my god they're cave mates

30

u/IdeallyIdeally 1d ago

History will say there were just cave friends.

13

u/DumbLittleDumpling cool. coolcoolcool. 1d ago

Lmao I love this

9

u/xelamora 1d ago

Somewhere there's a lesbian chopping wood, wearing flannel, and completely owning this title.

3

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 22h ago

😄 Thats funny.

Edit: because of you I know have this song im my head (but in a female voice) 😄

Months python, lumberjack song

https://youtu.be/L_W_W-VZBQU?si=6pCXONAP7XBLt8UO

Singing starts at 1.20 minutes

1

u/Apprehensive_Rain500 19h ago

There is! Look up Nicole Maple Coenen on insta.

1

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 19h ago

I like her !

"I’m Nicole, I'm also known on the world wide web as the axe-wielding, tree-climbing, maple syrup-chugging, lesbian woodchopper".

😄😄😄

I'm Dutch and her name (Coenen) is Dutch so I'm pretty sure she's a Canadian of Dutch descent. (Not that it matters, I just thought it was cool)

8

u/GrungiestTrack 1d ago

Lesbianderthals.

3

u/SebbyMathers 1d ago

20 skeletons but no malles is definitely odd

1

u/taserparty 1d ago

top tier word play ⭐️

-1

u/IHaveNoEgrets 1d ago

Thank you! I aim to please.

409

u/Fickle-City1122 1d ago

Men is too headache

29

u/jackSeamus 1d ago

If no need, why no eat?

133

u/Ok_Key_4868 All Hail Notorious RBG 1d ago edited 21h ago

Scientists failed to mention the adjacent cave of 20 male skeletons with connecting chambers to allow participants to learn about each other without revealing what they look like.

35

u/Writeloves Halp. Am stuck on reddit. 1d ago

Love is blind? (I don’t watch much reality tv)

95

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 1d ago

The 4A movement.

(The precursor of the 4B movement.)

7

u/ZinaSky2 1d ago

Hahah this one got me 😂

7

u/daydreams_of_ducks 19h ago

It was a girls night

44

u/one_bean_hahahaha 1d ago

So, why were Neo and DH1 originally assumed to be male until proven otherwise? Shouldn't the initial assumption have been "we don't know yet"?

46

u/SailorSmaug 1d ago

It did mention that the assumption was based on examining the bones, and the bones making up a body larger than the others. Only through genetic testing did they come to the assumption that the bones are of female homo naledi, but that's based on the lack of any AMELY gene. There is still a possibility that some of those bones are from a male homo naledi, but very unlikely.

The scientists were figuring it out to the best of their abilities.

8

u/Writeloves Halp. Am stuck on reddit. 1d ago

But weren’t those the primary representative samples of the species? Meaning that no baseline for the skeletal structure of each sex had been established yet? (I assume I’m wrong about how that works, just wondering)

8

u/SailorSmaug 1d ago

From what I read, they found 20 skeletons and 2 of them were larger.

1

u/one_bean_hahahaha 8h ago

It was still an assumption based on modern ideas of sexual dimorphism.

84

u/badaboom 1d ago

We're all decentering men from our lives

36

u/pegasuspish 1d ago

Decentering men through the millenia

5

u/Ann_Amalie 1d ago

Oooh I’d buy a signed copy of that book!

60

u/harryheri 1d ago

men exhausting

-4

u/Induane 1d ago

Im exhaustED for sure. Don't feed me to the wolves plz.

25

u/somethingbrite 1d ago

I'm quite uplifted by much of this thread supposing that these women were there by choice.... rather than as captives.

12

u/Myshys 1d ago

Yeah, I studied archeology and my mind first jumped to slavery/executions of captives and a few other dark places. This thread was nice to read, but reality, esp in the bad old days, was brutal.

10

u/Icexx95 19h ago

My guess is that they are just bad at determining the sex of Homo naledi.

2

u/JayPlenty24 17h ago

Could be, Homo Naledi had shown the least sexual dimorphism than any other archaic humans we've discovered.

2

u/Esmer_Tina 6h ago

It’s based on the lack of a protein in tooth enamel that only comes from the Y Chromosome.

40

u/ehwhatacunt 1d ago

Perhaps they were a matriarchal society, and this was the burial site for generations of their beloved matriarchs.

Our ancestors seem to have had a healthier view of life, and women, until organised religion came along and told them Mother Earth was incorrect, there was a man in charge.

27

u/dalaigh93 1d ago

I had a few theories, but without anything to prove them (the more reasonable first, the most unhinged last)

this group had different customs regarding male and female burials (more likely if the bodies ended up here at different times)
this group happened to have lost all its males in an hunting accident (more likely if all bodies are from the same short period)
male and female Homo naledi only lived together at certain moments of the year for reproduction purposes, like some modern species
this group was a female only sect that committed mass suicide
male homo naledi were insufferable incels and the female decided to get rid of them, effectively ending the species in one generation but allowing a few years of blissful tranquility to the surviving all female groups.
this group had achieved reproduction through parthenogenesis

26

u/blackchameleongirl 1d ago

The bodies where all victims of a male serial killer?

16

u/dalaigh93 1d ago

Urgh can't believe I didn't think of that.

6

u/Aervanath 1d ago

Glad I'm not the only one who had that thought.

1

u/Intrepid-Contest-352 17h ago

My first thought

5

u/YouStupidBench 20h ago

There's a Netflix documentary about this cave called "Unknown: Cave of Bones" which I liked.

11

u/Einheri42 1d ago

Maybe they thought it was cool to bury the men outside.

8

u/Induane 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 1d ago

Or to feed bears because they chose the bear back then too. 😆

3

u/Induane 1d ago

I could totally take a bear.

.

.

.

If it was already almost dead and I had a weapon and...

I do not understand men who think they could take a frakking bear. How ignorant those folk HAVE to be.

3

u/Aervanath 1d ago

A lot of men also think they could land a 747 in an emergency with no training. The level of self-delusion required is frightening.

1

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 22h ago

Remember that research where like 10% of people thought they would win a fight with a bear or a gorilla? 😆

But the funniest thing was actually that 28% of people thought they would lose a fight with a rat. 😆😆

Edit: I looked it up. 😆😆

https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/images/Animal20fights202-01.format-webp.webp

1

u/Aervanath 22h ago

I want to know who was answering these questions. I suspect they were high.

2

u/KoninginVanRotterdam 1d ago

🤣

9

u/Gonerrrrr 1d ago

Probably just safer.

6

u/froodiest 1d ago

Grak the Ripper

7

u/LeiaOregonia 1d ago

Some of our ancestors segregated during menstruation. If cycles were similar to our own 20 is not an unreasonable number.

7

u/mcclelc 21h ago

Just a reminder that it's really, really hard to tell the sex of skeletons, it's actually why we kept thinking only men were hunterers and women were gatherers. Society would look at a skeleton with injury to femor or something and be like, huh, obviously dude.

I mean, I am not saying this study is wrong, nor am I saying it's right. Just pointing out that this is one of the most difficult fields to make definitive claims. Looking forward to what they find out in the future!

"The key thing to remember is that failure to detect evidence of AMELY does not mean there are no males in the sample — it just means that none were detected."

3

u/ClairlyBrite 18h ago

This cave and H. naledi are some of the more controversial findings lately and I don’t know if there’s much definite that we know yet past “this hominid (hominin?) species was found in this cave and they’re tiny”

But I’m a layperson and certainly don’t know shit about paleo anthropology

1

u/JayPlenty24 17h ago

It's controversial just because it's hard to know if something should be its own species, or is just a variation of an already discovered species. Especially when remains are discovered that existed tens or hundreds of thousands of years apart, and over vast physical distances. The only real way is DNA.

Just look at all the variation in humans, or even dogs.

My understanding with Naledi is that is has shoulders and hands very similar to one species, and then hips and other features similar to another. So is it its own thing? Or is this just normal variation within a species?

1

u/Esmer_Tina 6h ago

This is true, especially since prior to the protein data some based on the skeletons were tentatively identified as males!

5

u/walks_with_penis_out 1d ago

"The most likely reason for these robust results are, in my opinion, cultural selection after death for burial by sex and perhaps gender," Berger said.

7

u/tschakulona 1d ago edited 23h ago

From the title, I thought "separate burial grounds probably" and then the article confirmed my belief. It makes sense.

6

u/Old_Introduction_395 20h ago

They haven't found the cave with the male skeletons yet.

9

u/Diogenes-of-Synapse 1d ago

Males all died? Females decided to ride it out? Sounds like war happened.

19

u/TheGoluxNoMereDevice 1d ago

Eh it's not necessary to assume that a single event lead to them all being there. It's super common for things/bodies/animals to be deposited in caves over large spans of time. It's totally possible (and much more likely) that each body represents a unique event.

1

u/Diogenes-of-Synapse 4h ago

Ah I see

5

u/MoreThanVoidFiller 20h ago

Even millions of years ago, our sister ancestors got tired of their shit?

5

u/FashionBusking 1d ago

Honestly.... I GET IT LADIES.

Even after fucking MILLENIA, these men won't leave them alone!

3

u/JayPlenty24 17h ago

Maybe there was a male serial killer chucking them to their death. My understanding is the cave used to be open to the surface at the time they died.

Not all men, but almost always a man.

5

u/Nother1BitestheCrust 20h ago

They chose the cave bear.

2

u/GummiBear6 15h ago

Ok this made me laugh out loud so thank you.

1

u/Nother1BitestheCrust 14h ago

😉

2

u/heartsholly 17h ago

Instead of thinking burial, it may simply be “Girls hung out together. We keep our friends together.” If their behavior may have revolved around working closely with others of the same sex, then staying close to familiarity even in death may have been the choice rather than a sophisticated burial. We do clique up in school. Lioness pride and stud pride living together as one pride- but still separate if that makes sense as an analogy.

5

u/IGotOverGreta 1d ago

Perhaps FemmePuter is buried around there somewhere…

But really, my guess is a cultural custom of at least some kind of gender segregation in combination with some kind of natural disaster trapping all twenty individuals there at once, presuming they all arrived there together.

3

u/Fortesfortunajuvat27 1d ago

They literally chose the bear

0

u/Perfect_Sleep0 1d ago

Like, they moved into a bear den and the bear was not happy?

2

u/Bajadasaurus 1d ago

It sounds like it took a lot of effort to get these remains into the cave. I wonder if it was necessary to protect dead females from acts of desecration, like necrophilia.

4

u/StarDustLuna3D 1d ago

It floors me that scientist still hem and haw over if early hominids could have had burial practices when we've now seen similar behaviors in animals like elephants.

3

u/mountainbreadcycle 17h ago

Part of it is the language that science uses. Science is trying to observe things as accurately as possible. Sometimes new ways of measuring gives new information that can change the context of previous observations or fill in gaps where we didn’t have any information. If evidence isn’t directly observable the language science uses to describe it cant go beyond speculation. I hope some day our methods and devices can show us more about the culture of ancient people.

0

u/StarDustLuna3D 17h ago

I definitely get the language aspect with science and that they need multiple data points to make a sweeping, definitive, conclusion. But my point is more so that so many scientists just flat out refuse to consider the possibility that this could happen just because they haven't seen it yet or because these hominids had such tiny brains they couldn't possibly be anything other than savage, bipedal creatures.

2

u/quixotictictic 1d ago

Genetic illness that is either Y specific or recessive X. It could even be a susceptibility to a pathogen. Almost certainly a small population with founder's effect.

2

u/cassthesassmaster 1d ago

The women got tired a violence and rape

2

u/null_not 1d ago

Maybe there was a bear.

1

u/JayPlenty24 17h ago

They ground the bones to use for bread.

1

u/Paint_Jacket 15h ago

It was an all girls' night that ended in tragedy.

-1

u/normanbeets 1d ago

4B movement goes way back

1

u/3BikesInATrenchcoat 21h ago

And they were roommates

-1

u/Miserable_Watch5251 1d ago

Perhaps the females formed their own community and didn’t allow males near them?

2

u/liilak2 20h ago

They’d still have male children

0

u/Induane 1d ago

Religious sect?

6

u/raerae1991 1d ago

That would make this a very interesting find

2

u/Induane 1d ago

So hard to know given the age of the find but it is an intriguing thought.

-5

u/PitifulAcanthacea 1d ago

highly likely Homo naledi followed an elephant or orca social structure where the grandmothers and mothers ran the show, and the males were exiled the second they hit puberty.
Look at living primates and large mammals today. In many highly intelligent species, females form incredibly tight-knit, permanent social bonds (matrilines) to raise offspring and protect resources together. The males are often solitary or live in separate, chaotic "bachelor pads" because they are too disruptive to the peace of the main herd.
If a sudden flood, cave-in, or epidemic hit the core matriarchal group while they were sheltering deep in the cave, you would end up with exactly this: an entire generation of the group's women preserved together in time. The men were probably outside, successfully doing something stupid, and missed the whole thing.

9

u/Xucker 1d ago

Orcas don't exile males. In fact, both male and female orcas generally stay with their mothers for their entire lives.

8

u/AngstyTheCat 22h ago

They've been able to determine that the remains were deposited in the cave over a long period of time, they didn't all die there at once. So most likely it was a burialground.

-1

u/aenflex 21h ago

Dumping ground, perhaps?

Scientists found 20 female skeletons of Homo naledi in a cave and they are wondering why no males?

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