[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to ID the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today, I'm sitting down with Casey Luskin to get an update on the recent controversy surrounding claims that the hominid species Homo naletti may have had high intelligence, buried its dead, used fire, and even carved markings into a cave wall. For those of you who don't know Casey, he's a scientist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over evolution. He also holds a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg, where he specialized in paleomagnetism and the early plate tectonic history of South Africa. Casey serves as associate director of the center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Welcome, Casey.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Andrew.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, earlier this year, you wrote at Evolution News about a host of news coverage reporting on the claims of South Africa based paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his team. Now, Berger is a bit of a rock star in the field of paleoanthropology. In 2013, he was credited with introducing the world to Homo naledi after discovering a rich deposit of hominid fossils in a South African cave. A media circus ensued, gaining him coveted support from National Geographic and even an Emmy Award nomination. In 2016, he was named one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine. Now, Casey, tell us what you know about Berger and about his most recent claims.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Sure. So, yeah, Lee Berger is a very well respected and renowned paleoanthropologist. He works at the University of Vodersfrand in Johannesburg, just a couple miles down the road from where I did my PhD at the University of Johannesburg. And he is very well known for his discoveries of fossils like Australopithecus Sadiba. And then, as you mentioned, Homo naletti. And the discovery of homo naletti was very significant because it's arguably the largest collection of hominid bones ever found at one specific site. They literally found over a thousand bones. And when you're dealing with a field where finding one or two little bone scraps gets people really excited to find this many bones in a cave, and many of them well preserved, they had some fairly complete, if not almost completely complete, skeletons that were found in the Rising Star cave. This was really a spectacular find. And so Leigh Berger deserves a lot of credit for making this discovery, for recruiting the team that helped to do the research and bringing this spectacular paleoanthropology find to the world. Now, he is a bit of a colorful personality, but this is not about Lee Berger. This is about the evidence. And what does the evidence show and whether or not it's established? So I think that we can stay focused on that. Yeah.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Now, Berger's new evidence, the latest that he's brought out, was published in Pre [unk]print Papers. Now, for listeners not familiar with what that means exactly and how it differs from other types of peer reviewed journal publications. Can you tell us what preprints are?
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Sure. So initially there were three new papers published in June of 2023 in BioArchive. And BioArchive is a preprint server. So basically, you are a team of researchers. You write up your paper manuscript, and you want the world to be able to see what you found before you actually officially have it go through peer review and get it published in a peer reviewed journal. So you upload your article to BioArchive. This is a regular practice, very uncontroversial. A lot of people do it. And Leiberger and his team did this. Certainly nothing wrong with that. Where I think some of the controversy came is they then published their papers in a journal called Elife. And Elife kind of has a unique publishing model where you can publish your paper alongside basically peer reviewed responses to the claims made in your paper. But most journals would require you to essentially modify your article in order to satisfy the peer reviewers before they will publish your paper. But with Elife, you don't have to necessarily adjust or change your paper in order to accommodate the statements and criticisms of the peer reviewers. They will publish the peer review criticism alongside your paper. But if you don't feel like you agree with it or you don't want to change anything, then you just say, okay, well, we don't agree with this, and here's our paper. You can take it or leave it. That is kind of what happened in this case where there is these three articles that originally were BioArchive. Now they've been published in Elive and yes, there are peer reviewed criticisms of the paper, but from what I understand, they really did not adjust their claims or sort of answer or modify their papers in response to the peer reviewers. And the peer reviewed criticism was pretty harsh, I have to say. It was pretty strongly negative and critical of the claims that they were making about homo naletti in these papers.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Okay, well, and we'll explore kind of what the feedback there was in a few minutes. In your first article on this controversy, you look at each of the three main claims that Berger and his team make about a homo naletti, use of fire, burial of the dead, and the presence of cave art. So I thought we could just discuss each one here. How about claims that homo naletti engaged in the burial of their dead?
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yes, some of these claims are actually not actually new claims. In fact, the claim that homonoletti was deliberately burying their dead in this cave goes back to 2015, when some of the first papers were published about homonoletti. So we've been debating and hearing about this claim for a long time, and it's been quite controversial. One of the reasons why it's controversial is because it's very difficult to get into this cave. Okay?
They actually had to put out notices to hire very petite female researchers who could squeeze through some very narrow passages in this cave, something called the dragon's back. You have to be a very, very good spelunker and cave climber in order to get into the chamber where they found these bones. And so the idea that this sort of primitive, small brain hominid could somehow be dragging bodies in the dark through this very torturous route inside this very complicated cave without the luxuries of modern caving equipment, again, while carrying dead bodies, really struck. It very difficult for many people to believe that they were intentionally burying the dead in this cave, much less that they were even unintentionally burying their dead in this cave. So this was a very difficult claim to accept. But in this new paper, they're claiming that they've done excavations of the actual site where these bones were found in the cave and that this bolsters the claim that these was intentional burial of the dead. But the peer reviewers, without getting into the specific sort of rhetoric we'll get into that in a few minutes. But some of the substantive concerns they had with this claim was that they claimed that the paper did not sufficiently demonstrate a difference between the mineral composition of the sediment in the proposed burial plot area and the surrounding area. And they were saying, look, if you could demonstrate clearly that there was a difference between the sediment composition in the burial zone versus the surrounding sediment, that might suggest that somebody was moving dirt around to bury these dead. But they said that had not been sufficiently demonstrated. Another argument that was made is that they found clearly articulated skeletons, or at least portions of articulated skeletons, and this showed evidence of deliberate burial. Basically, the bones weren't all broken up. However, some good counterarguments were made by some of the reviewers that other explanations for having articulated skeletons are possible apart from deliberate burial. And in fact, in this particular case, in this cave, there would probably not be very many predators this far back and deep into this very complicated, tricky cave. And so it's likely that if so, perhaps these hominids did just die in this cave in place, and then they got buried naturally, that there wouldn't be predators going back there and messing up the bones. You might get fully articulated skeletons without deliberate burial. They also noted that they did not do a good job of demonstrating the sedimentation rate. So the idea is that if they were deliberately buried, then that would bury these bones before there was an opportunity for natural decay to set in and sort of cause them to not look like they were just buried in place. But if the sedimentation rate is high, the natural sedimentation rate in this cave is high, then perhaps it's possible that they could have died just through natural causes at the back of this cave, and Then They Were Naturally Buried By Sedimentation Processes, and this Would Have Buried These Bones. But some of the reviewers said that they did not do a good job of establishing what the sedimentation rate was and if a natural burial could be ruled out. And so really, they found that this was not established by very high standards required in this field through Tafonomy, the study of death. Tafonomic standards were not well applied in this case to establish that this was a deliberate burial rather than some kind of unnatural process that buried these bones.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Okay. Some strong criticisms there. Well, Berger and his team also discuss artificial markings on a cave wall. Has this evidence been properly vetted and substantiated?
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think actually, in this case, the reviewers did agree that the markings on the cave wall probably were artificial. And I've seen the papers, and I think that they look very artificial. In fact, interestingly, they look almost like TicTacToe type markings, which have been found in other caves from much more advanced Homo species like Neanderthals, or even Homo sapiens. You can find these kinds of scrawlings and markings. So I think it's pretty well established that these were, in fact, artificial markings. The question is, who made these markings? And so the biggest complaint was that they did not date the scrawlings to establish that they were not made very recently. And one of the reviewers said, well, you don't know that. Somebody didn't wander into this cave 50 years ago and make these markings. They just didn't have any way to establish that these markings were actually made by Homo naletti, this species that lived 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. And some of these markings look like doodles that I make when I'm sitting in staff meetings and I'm bored. It's very possible that these could have been made by just about anybody. Sort of like tic TAC toe, cross, X type markings. And so, yeah, I think that they did not establish for sure that these were made, or even with any real degree of certainty, reasonable certainty, that these were made by homonoletti. And that was a major criticism of that claim.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Okay. I think they even said that one looked like a hashtag. So there might have been some proto Twitter thinking going on there.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Hashtag? Not enough evidence.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Well, what about the use of fire? Berger's team claim they have found new evidence for hearths, including charcoal ash, discolored clay and burned animal bones. What's the issue with this evidence?
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, again, the argument was that they really had not done a good job of establishing that any of the evidence of fire use was actually done by homonoletti. They hadn't done a good job of providing radiocarbon dates that dated the fire remains to the age of homoletti. And really, there was just not evidence that connected the evidence of fire to when Homoletti would have been inhabiting this cave. So maybe there was fire use in this cave. But again, this cave's been around for a long time. There could have been a lot of people going in and out, a lot know, activity going on in this cave. We just don't know that this was actually done by homoletti. And I think that to be quite frank with you, I got the sense from reading a lot of the dialogue back and forth that people were feeling that this is a small brain hominid it had a brain size of about 450 to 600 cubic centimeters. That's basically less than half the size of the brain of a typical human being today. I mean, some folks will maybe have a brain size that's about double this, but it's pretty small brain. So people felt like, look, if you're going to be making these claims about high intelligence, burying the dead, writing on a cave wall, essentially doing rock art and using fire, then you're going to be claiming this is happening with this very small brain species. We want to see evidence that actually shows that this species is the species that performed these activities and did these things. And so they were holding them, I would not say to a higher than normal standard, just a reasonable standard, reasonable standards within this field. And the reviewers, pretty much universally, all the reviewers comments that I read felt that they had not met the standards of this field to establish that there was burial of the dead deliberately and that the fire and the cave scrawlings actually were linked to homo Niletti.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Okay, now I understand there's been a Netflix documentary showing some of Berger's work and discoveries. The documentary claims that homo niletti rewrites humanity's origin story. Now you just watched it. What were your thoughts?
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so I don't have any problem with scientists promoting their ideas to the public using Netflix. I mean, it's very important to communicate scientific ideas to the public. And I think it's great when scientists do that, when they do it carefully and responsibly and they're making sure that the evidence has been thoroughly worked out. You know, you've got solid evidence here. In this case, there was a sense that they had sort of put the cart before the horse, that they had made this Netflix documentary, before their claims had actually been subjected to peer review. There was a lot of criticism that they had not really done a good job, know, carefully making sure that the evidence had been vetted before they went out and started promoting it to the published. In fact, there was an article in the Guardian which was very concerned about this making of the Netflix documentary and it said, to push a notion that is so unsubstantiated, that has been met with rejection by scientific community is irresponsible. That's from a researcher named Paige Madison at Arizona State and then another researcher named Andy Harrys from La Trobe University in Australia. He said, I have no issue with the idea that non homo sapien species dispose of their dead. But I do have an expectation that there is robust scientific evidence to support such statements before scientists go on massive media campaigns regarding these ideas. So a lot of folks were not necessarily concerned about using Netflix to promote scientific literacy and scientific ideas, but this had been done before. The evidence had been thoroughly vetted by the peers in this community. And I think that's a fair criticism, to be quite honest with you. And what's interesting is that this Netflix documentary, it certainly had an agenda, an ideological agenda. And this goes back to when these ideas were first promoted back in June, when the preprints came out, they were promoting these articles and promoting these ideas through these preprint articles to the public before they had even gone through any peer review. And there was an ABC News article that said that this evidence erases the idea of human exceptionalism. Okay, so what are they basically saying? They're saying that you get this small brain species that is performing these very high complex activities, burying the dead, fire, cave art, et cetera. And if this small brain species can do this, then that means that maybe some of humanity's activities that we think are very special are really not all that special. Okay? And so this erases human exceptionalism because it shows that other species, even species with small brains, are doing the same kind of things that we think make us special. Okay? So this was sort of the ideological agenda that ABC News picked up on back in June. And this idea that it makes us look like we're not special was heavily promoted in this Netflix documentary. In fact, there was a quote that said that from the Netflix documentary where one of the researchers said that homode is, quote, redefining what it is that makes us complex humans. And apparently we're not as complex and special as we seem to be. We're not that special. This was sort of the punchline of the Netflix documentary. So not just was the evidence, I think, on very shaky ground, but they're promoting to countless people who are watching this in the public that this very, very shaky evidence shows, quote, unquote, we're not that special. And the evidence isn't even there. And there's an agenda here to sort of break down human exceptionalism and the idea that humans are special. So I certainly take issue with the ideological agenda here that's not backed by good evidence. And I'm thankful, actually, that the peer reviewers were willing to put the evidence first and not the agenda first. I wish that maybe the research team had done a better job of letting the peer review come in before they went and did this Netflix documentary. But it's out there. If you're a Netflix subscriber, you can go watch it. Search for HuMone Aletti on Netflix, and you can watch this and you'll find a whole documentary that's basically based upon claims that were heavily rejected by peer reviewers in the field. And that's very, very interesting and somewhat disconcerting, to be honest with you.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd agree. Well, so you wrote a second piece after the peer review comments came on these preprints in the journal Elife. And so now that the peer review is out, we get to see the comments of these peer reviewers. And you've already mentioned some of them. They're pretty scathing in their criticism. Can you share some of the key responses?
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I can read you some of the comments that were made by the peer reviewers here's, just a couple of them. One says, unfortunately, the evidence presented in the two related submissions that the current paper entirely relies on is incomplete at this stage. Another reviewer said, as responsible and ethical researchers, the team must return to the sites, conduct the required standard chronometric and taxonomic studies, and weigh the strength of the evidence before proceeding with the current claims. So some pretty heavily critical peer reviewed comments when they were reviewing this claim of intentional burial of the skeletons, one reviewer said, the main point of the paper is to describe three possible burial features. The working hypothesis is that the features are intentional burials, and the authors seek to support this hypothesis throughout rather than to test it. And then talking about these scrawlings, these engravings on the cave wall, one reviewer said, Based on the evidence presently available, however, I feel that we have no robust grounds for asserting when these engravings were made, by whom they were made, or for what reason they were made. Another said, the claims relating to artificiality age and authorship made here seem entangled, premature and speculative. Whilst there is no evidence to refute them, there isn't convincing evidence to confirm them. So basically, they felt that the case had not been made and that the evidence was just not there to support the claims made in these papers.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Okay, well, there's nothing wrong with getting excited about things you're finding in the field and even connecting the dots in your own mind to previous research and stuff like that. But it does seem like they kind of put the cart before the horse and got a little premature in their exciting media coverage of this.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: I mean, people get negative reviews all the time. Okay, like that's. Nothing unusual. What is a bit unusual is to go out and make a Netflix documentary before your papers are even peer reviewed. But despite all this criticism, you do have to give some credit where credit is due. In the Netflix documentary, Lee Berger, the lead Nileti researcher, he managed to get in good enough shape to climb down into the diniletti chamber where they found most of the bones. And this is a very impressive feat given how small the passageway is. So I respect the fact that he really took some physical hits for the sake of doing science here. But I would say that if his team's claims about homoletti's intelligence and culture are going to be accepted, they're going to have to get their scientific arguments into better shape as well. So it's not enough to just get your body into shape, you got to get the arguments into shape also.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah, good point. Would that be your main takeaway, then, of all this controversy?
[00:20:31] Speaker A: I think the main takeaway here is to be very skeptical of some of the hype that surrounds paleoanthropology, claims that are made to the media. We have seen this many times before that often when some new claim is made to the public, there's a lot of news media and sort of hubbub and hype that really promotes these views without a lot of critical analysis. And what invariably happens is a few months go by and the peer reviews come in and some critical papers come out, and you then see that the initial hype was all wrong. We've seen this pattern over and over again in paleoanthropology, and I'm thinking of fossils like Artipithecus Ramadus of Australopithecus Anamensis, many different fossils. We've seen this hype pattern. And now this is just another example of this, where they went so far as to promote these claims to untold thousands or millions of people, potentially, that are now watching this Netflix documentary and believing that humans are not special, entirely based upon evidence that was thoroughly rejected by peer review. So we've got to be very careful of trusting a lot of the hype of paleoanthropology claims that are made to the public. And this is yet another example of hype that is no longer valid. And we've seen this many times before, and now we're seeing it again.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: So I guess the challenge is do good signs, but keep things in perspective, right, and don't blow things out of proportion.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: And I think it's important to not hype your claims to make sure that you're being careful with your science. And this is a lesson for everybody in science, not just them, for all of us who do science. Let's make sure we're being careful with our arguments, careful with our claims. And look, the team of scientists who did this research, they're good people. I mean, to be quite frank with you, I know some of them, and they're good people. They're good scientists. I just think in this case, the Netflix documentary ish I mean, they put the cart before the horse. That should have been done after the peer review was finished, and unfortunately, the public is paying the price right now.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thank you for clearing that up, Casey, and for joining us to unpack some of this. Where can listeners learn more about homoletti and our coverage of it?
[00:22:39] Speaker A: You can learn
[email protected]. We've been writing about homo naletti. Also, there is a book titled Science and Faith and Dialogue where I have a chapter. It's an open access peer reviewed academically published book from South Africa. And if you Google Science and Faith and Dialogue, you can download the book. My chapter is chapter nine, and I've got quite a bit of discussion of hominid fossils in that chapter, including homonoletti. Of course, this came out before the most recent claims, but you can learn a lot about homoletti from that chapter as well.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Okay, so we have a book resource, a website, and speaking of websites, if you do want to learn more about Casey's awesome work in lots of different areas, you can check out his own website.
Well, Casey, thanks again. Join me again soon.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Thanks so much, Andrew. It was a fun conversation.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: For Idthefuture, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
