yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

New Human Ancestor Discovered: Homo naledi (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO) | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

We do have our genus. What these discoveries are telling us is that there's a lot out there to be found, that we actually don't have the whole story of human evolution. I mean, it looks like it might be a fragment of like the superorbital taurus or something. Oh my God, the Homo naledi fossils are extraordinary in a wide variety of ways.

We know they have the characters of an early member of the genus Homo. By comparing their morphology to other early hominids, we can see that we would place them right at the base of the lineage that leads to us. We've never seen a non-human that shares so many primitive and yet sometimes advanced characters: tiny brain, curved fingers, but a generally human-like hand, long legs, and a human foot.

You're looking at well over a dozen, in fact, probably around 18 different individuals representing all different age spans, from near fetal age to senile individuals who were at the last stages of their lives. When I first saw these images by my exploration team, I knew that we had to act.

The Rising Star cave system is one of the best known in South Africa. It's been caved continuously for more than 50 years. I had this fossil lying on the surface and I could see that it had been damaged, so I called National Geographic to put together an expedition. Fast, the entrance is very, very difficult to get to; you have to move through a seven-and-a-half-inch slot, wiggling your way across sharp rocks before you drop into this remarkable little chamber.

And the floor is quite literally comprised of parts of the bodies of these human ancestors. Look at this! Tell them they're a go to all collect! You got the fossil! It appears, based upon the context that we have discovered, this incredible assemblage of hominin fossils in is that they were deliberately placed there by their next of kin after death.

Homo naledi was doing something that until this moment we thought was unique to modern humans: that is, deliberate disposal of the dead. If this hypothesis holds true, that's an extraordinary thing. What Naledi has taught us is that there is clearly more out there that we didn't know.

More Articles

View All
Cave Art 101 | National Geographic
[Narrator] Wooly mammoths, step bison, and other large mammals once roamed alongside people across Eurasia. Tens of thousands of years later, we may have a glimpse into this Ice Age world through the cave art left behind by early humans. (tinkling music) …
Warren Buffett | Getting Rich is Easy
Speaker: Feel that they have to create a dynasty or anything, and they give it back to society, and a great many do it anonymously. They do it in many states to some extent. We see a little, some concentration of it in Nebraska because, uh, they generally…
Warren Buffett's 5 Rules for Money
So if you clicked on this video, it’s fair to say that you want to learn how to build wealth and not be broke. Thankfully for us, billionaire investor Warren Buffett has provided us with five key principles that will help you start building wealth and avo…
Before You Visit Angkor Wat, Here's What You Need to Know | National Geographic
Eager to experience a spectacular sunrise at Cambodia’s ancient Angkor Wat? Here’s everything you need to know to get to this iconic site and make the most of your visit. Angkor Wat is actually just one of over a thousand temples that make up the ancient…
How To Get Rich According To Ray Dalio
There are a million ways to make a million dollars, and in this video, we’re looking at one of them. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, is a role model for the world of finance. With a net worth of over …
Integration using completing the square and the derivative of arctan(x) | Khan Academy
All right, let’s see if we can find the indefinite integral of ( \frac{1}{5x^2 - 30x + 65} \, dx ). Pause this video and see if you can figure it out. All right, so this is going to be an interesting one. It’ll be a little bit hairy, but we’re going to w…