Talk:Homo naledi

Theory that smoke siege from cave attackers is cause of Naledi bodies?

It is an unattractive theory, but mammals rarely venture into claustrophobic, damp, dark, recessed caves, so the small brained Naledi either had fire or a reason why it wasnt damp dark and recessed.

If Naledi specimens didn't end up deep in the cave willingly or by burial "behavior", seeing as they shared Africa with larger brained homo species, They may have been trapped in the cave and smoked out... with a large fire at the entrance. That would have caused a number of small specimens to crawl to the deepest part of the cave and to die there and not be recuperated. Indeed there have been caves where large numbers of men women and children were found grouped at the back of the cave due to a fire at the entrance in bronce age times, which are well documented.

Examples of bodies grouped in a cave after suffocation are:

Eigg, Scotland, 1577,

Dunmore, Ireland, 928

Apache Death cave, Arizona, 1878

Kadjenica cave Slovenia 1814

also see sculptors sacrificial cave, 1000BC

and other grizzly things on this page http://listverse.com/2014/03/19/10-scary-holes-with-deadly-pasts/ The cave i had read about was a mystery until relatively recently and contained a small village of people.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lifeinthetrees (talk • contribs) 14:10, May 11, 2017 (UTC)

Interesting conjecture. The evidence so far suggests that the bodies (alive or dead) did not enter the Dinaledi chamber all at one time (Mentioned under Deliberate placement of bodies hypotheses: ". . . the bones did not accumulate there all at once."), but over an extended period (of tens to tens-of-thousands of years? – I will need to re-read the papers at some point to check this). However, such a tactic could have been used repeatedly over a long period. If the papers don't explicitly rule out such a scenario, (or even implicitly permit it), perhaps an email enquiry to one of the lead researchers (Berger or Hawks) might be in order.

For interest, have you references for the Bronze Age examples? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.60.183 (talk) 13:00, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi, i added some references. cheers

Tswaing crater is of the same age as the Naledi remains. A distance of 70 km separates the two sites. A meteor of that size would have led to a powerful shock wave and fires over a large area. Clearly soot and ash layers would have resulted, and possibly an iridium layer. Paul venter (talk) 11:25, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Obsolete opinions

The entire Opinions section was accumulated before Dirks et al. had found the true age of the fossils in May 2017; that is, ~300 kya instead of over a million years. The greater portion of those opinions ("...the significance of this discovery is unknown until dating has been completed...", "...without an age there is no way to judge the evolutionary significance of this find" plus Bernard Wood, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, etc.) seems to be based on the old estimates. IMO, the overwhelming majority of additions to the Opinions section (and possibly other sections as well) no longer apply.

What do we do when there's a major shakeup in an article (like the new dating) and every conclusion reached before that date is suspect? Do we simply delete those opinions before that date? (The entire Opinions section will disappear.) Change the section title to "Historical opinions"? (Do we want historical opinions in a scientific article?)

From a WP:NPOV viewpoint, do old and probably obsolete opinions have any WP:Weight at all? Can we, as the editors of the H. naledi article, make decisions regarding weight? (If not us, who?) Are there any rules beside common sense? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 20:25, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

depends how much traction the ideas had. Might be better to combine the early opinions as initial reaction to the discovery. Puts subsequent analysis and import into context. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:15, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I have tried to tweak some tenses used in the paras containing the opinions so as to minimise the mis-match between pre-dating stances and the dating now published. I decided not to delete anything because (a) some of the citations may still be of interest and (b) some of the opinions mixed dating-dependent observations with other, still valid, questions. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.212.201.233 (talk) 16:26, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• While this discussion is a bit old, imagine if Wikipedia was around when Lucy was discovered, or T. rex for that matter. At first there would be a bevy of verifiable news items, as every paleontologist weighs in or gives quotes to media. Books upon books have been written on certain subjects, but we as editors must periodically edit and curate, such that articles do not become bloated lists of "Scientist X said Y on this date. Then Professor Q said Z on this date. Then the President of Foobania proclaimed XYZ. One year later, Professor Q said R." Try to keep things in perspective, e.g. what will likely still be salient in 5 years, and realize the purpose of an encyclopedia is not to document every bit of scholarly opinion (that's for scholars to do), but to summarize the essential knowledge as currently recognized. --Animalparty! (talk) 19:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Good point. I would delete those "opinions", but redact a paragraph (if not aleready there) on the polarity of the early (pre-dating) opinions. BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:27, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Species articles written in singular form

This article is about a single species and therefore should be written in the singular form, not the plural. See Homo sapiens, Australopithecus afarensis, and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) for other hominin examples. Sorry for spamming this on multiple talk pages but it seems multiple articles have been changed to the plural form for some reason? Cheers, Jack (talk) 10:29, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I mean there's no real prescribed policy on using singular vs plural (just that you stay consistent within the article), but if we're trying to set a precedent for archaic humans, Neanderthal, which just got to GA yesterday, uses plural   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  12:53, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I've continued the conversation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology#Species articles written in singular form. Cheers, Jack (talk) 10:34, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I'll just copy/paste my response over there then   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  13:49, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:

• Homo naledi femur.jpg
• Homo naledi mandible.jpg
• Homo naledi metacarpals.jpg
• Homo naledi pelvic specimens.jpg
• Homo naledi reconstruction of the endocranium.jpg
• Homo naledi tibia.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Discovered in September 2013. Berger latched on, in October

See section "Discovery", this [1] version. It seems that Berger had nothing to do with the discoveries in September 2013. 89.8.158.26 (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2021 (UTC)