Homo Naledi Burial? A Public Peer Review of the Evidence

This video is dedicated to my dad, Harold Dibble.
Since publishing this video, the peer reviewers at eLife have unanimously (all 4 of them) confirmed that the claims in this paper were supported by INADEQUATE EVIDENCE. Read the editor's comments, the paper I reviewed, and the reviews here:
Berger, L. et al. 2023. "Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi." elifesciences....
Just a note of pride, several of these peer reviewers have reached out to me and praised this video.
For a quick read about the Neandertal 'burial' at Roc de Marsal, see this Twitter thread: / 1138102486420676608
For a quick read about Fontechevade, see this Twitter thread: / 1163435944642588673
Chip me a tip at
www.ko-fi.com/flintdibble
Or: / flintdibble
Summary
In this lecture, I critically examine the evidence for Homo naledi burial practices presented in the recent preprint by Lee Berger and colleagues. It's garnered a lot of press and media attention and apparently will be the focus of an upcoming Netflix series in July, "Unknown: Cave of Bones." But the paper has not been peer reviewed yet.
Specifically, I examine the detailed evidence presented for the stratigraphy, anatomy, and taphonomy of Feature 1 in Dinaledi Chamber, within the geological context of the Rising Star Cave System.
These behavioral claims for hominin burial and ritual/symbolism have wide ranging implications for the field of Paleolithic archaeology and human evolution.
In conclusion, I think the paper requires major revisions, and the claims are not persuasively proven.
Works Cited
Berger et al. 2015. "Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa." eLife. elifesciences....
Berger, L. 2022. "The Future of Exploration in the Greatest Age of Exploration - Dr. Lee R. Berger." (where my background image is from). • The Future of Explorat...
Berger et al. 2023a. "241,000 to 335,000 Years Old Rock Engravings Made by Homo naledi in the Rising Star Cave system, South Africa." Preprint. www.biorxiv.or...
Berger et al. 2023b. "Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi." Preprint. www.biorxiv.or...
Bolter et al. 2018. "Palaeodemographics of individuals in Chamber using dental remains." South African Journal of Science. www.scielo.org....
Brophy et al. 2021. "Immature Hominin Craniodental Remains From a New Locality in the Rising Star Cave System, South Africa." Paleoanthropology. paleoanthropol...
Chase et al. 2010. The Cave of Fontéchevade Recent Excavations and their Paleoanthropological Implications. www.cambridge....
Dirks et al. 2015. "Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa." eLife. elifesciences....
Fuentes et al. 2023. "Burials and engravings in a small-brained hominin, Homo naledi, from the late Pleistocene: contexts and evolutionary implications." Preprint. www.biorxiv.or...
Harcourt-Smith et al. 2015. The Foot of Homo naledi. Nature Communications. www.nature.com...
Kivell et al. 2015. "The hand of Homo naledi." Nature Communications. www.nature.com...
Robbins et al. 2021. "Providing context to the Homo naledi fossils: Constraints from flowstones on the age of sediment deposits in Rising Star Cave, South Africa." Chemical Geology. www.sciencedir...
Sandgathe et al. 2021. "The Roc de Marsal Neandertal child: a reassessment of its status as a deliberate burial." Journal of Human Evolution. pubmed.ncbi.nl...
(keywords: Homo naledi burial, archaeology, Paleolithic, pleistocene, human evolution, behavior, hominid, hominin, taphonomy, geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, formation processes, Dinaledi, Rising Star Cave)