I saw Homo Naledi in South Africa but it was in a Box! ( Part II )

Homo Naledi was not only written about in National Geographic that September of 2015, it was in the news all over the world. If you have not heard about how remarkable was this find, and how extraordinary was the way it was found, please google it. Lee Berger, whose team made the find, was all over the news giving interviews and explaining in detail how his team went about exploring the Rising Star Cave in the Cradle of Humankind where they found Homo Naledi.

I will simply summarize by saying the space in the Rising Star Cave was so small that Lee Berger had to hire a team of cave explorers who were small enough in stature to squeeze through -- an 8 inch opening!! And they did it! For the personal story, I had planned to come home and tell all my friends and family about how thrilling an opportunity it was to visit the two South African vaults that housed The Taung Child and Mrs. Ples- two of the oldest and most famous fossil finds in the world ( next to the fossil find of Lucy in East Africa.) Not to mention the surprise of getting to see Sediba in the Wits vault, whose discovery was news to me. But then to have discovered upon returning home that I had been in the same room with Homo Naledi was just too much to comprehend.

So I spent the next several months sharing this story with anyone who would listen. And it would have never happened without my dear friend asking me to go to South Africa with him and his willingness to stay an extra week for the fossil tour. ( We also went on Safari while there, but that is for another post.) Of course the fossil tours trip to Wits University and the Cradle of Humankind would not have been possible without the graciousness of Lee Berger and Francis Thackery. I want to thank them both for treating us as visiting scholars interested in paleoanthropology and it's application to our two disciplines. My friend's interest is in the evolution of symbolic thinking and primitive religions, and my interest is in the evolutionary development of the early human brain/mind. Dr. Thackery arranged a discussion with his colleagues in the Evolution Department around these two topics. Dr. Berger took time from his quite full schedule to visit with us and share with us about his find of Sediba. And finally, what Dr. Berger could not share with us in the Vault that day was that we were all standing next to the shelves with the plastic containers ( boxes) that housed Homo Naledi!! Talk about a trip of a life time....