Been reading up on hominids from 300kya for a comic project I’m working on, and obviously stumbled upon Homo Naledi and Rising Star Cave very early on. The implications of the site and Berger’s take on the findings are obviously staggering- but seeing how quickly this guy rushed through his science and ran to the press has rung alarm bells.
What I want to know is, besides the rushed nature and the immediate push for a netflix doc, what is materially questionable about the hypothesis that homo naledi was burying their dead? Has anyone proposed alternate theories or are there any massive problems/assumptions in the research that other paleoanthropologists have pointed out? Or are the dismissals mostly based on how fast/grifty it all feels?
u/Canneddogz — 22 days ago