Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Sep 10

Watch: This Face Changes the Human Story

I want to thank Josh K. and David H. for sending me this article.

Scientists have discovered a new species of human ancestor deep in a South African cave, adding a baffling new branch to the family tree.

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While primitive in some respects, the face, skull, and teeth show enough modern features to justify H. naledi’s placement in the genus Homo. Artist Gurche spent some 700 hours reconstructing the head from bone scans, using bear fur for hair.

A trove of bones hidden deep within a South African cave represents a new species of human ancestor, scientists announced Thursday in the journal eLife. Homo naledi, as they call it, appears very primitive in some respects—it had a tiny brain, for instance, and apelike shoulders for climbing. But in other ways it looks remarkably like modern humans. When did it live? Where does it fit in the human family tree? And how did its bones get into the deepest hidden chamber of the cave—could such a primitive creature have been disposing of its dead intentionally?

 

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32 Responses to “Watch: This Face Changes the Human Story”

  1. Kenneth M

    What I find interesting is that there is some discussion about it needing to perhaps use torches to navigate the dark areas of the cave(s). Perhaps it had really good night vision capability compared to human cousins??

  3. Steven B

    I have one problem with this “reconstruction” – they used the same technique that is commonly used to reconstruct the face of Neanderthals. They make the assumption it would be human looking and so “stretch the skin” over that model – if they used the same thing on a chimp skull it wouldn’t look like the ape we all know. Just me, but probably the thing looked closer to the reconstruction done for the Neanderthal in “Them and Us”

    • Seamus J. C

      How would a chimp look if they “stretched the skin”, as you say? Can’t picture it. I don’t know how much of the man’s work this might invalidate, but I’ve never understood the “Then and Us” reconstruction in terms of the nose: why, when all neanderthal skulls have a huge nasal foramen, indicating the large nose seen in all other reconstructions, would he present almost no nose at all, just open nostrils like a gorilla? Not to mention that such a nose would suck cold air right into the head in one of the coldest places on Earth at the time? I agree that more than one artist should be commisioned to show a range of possibilities, though, and for all I know the rest of the Them and Us reconstruction is spot on. I’m just sayin.

  7. Kim L

    Remove all hair, make him 6’5″, add smokey the bear hat-
    my D.I., San Diego, 1968. Only, this guy looks a lot more pleasant
    That is one cool find, stuff in caves lasts a long, long time. It will be interesting to find out what all was buried in there with them.

  8. Kim L

    Well, we knew they buried him somewhere.
    Sorry about your shed, let me just say, I PITY THE FOOL, who tries to break in your place! He may end up keeping the wild pork in your freezer company till you stake his carcass out for squatch bait.
    We rely on our pack of yappin’ border collies for deterrence, works great, till a burglar shows up with a tennis ball!

    • Steven B

      No worries about the shed – whoever it was stole the lock I had hanging loose from the hasp – don’t know what they would do with it – they don’t have the key to use it. And some chowder-head pried on the edge of the screen on one window – yeah – right, you’re going to pry open a screen on an unlocked shed – intelligence is not gifted to all of our species. Now then, if they had chosen the house to come into in the night – yes – there would be indoor fireworks – hope it never happens – as the sign on my front door says, “There is nothing of value in this house to steal that is worth your life.”

      Your border collies act as an “Advance Warning System” even if he has a ball – gives you time to prepare:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45glq7huJJc

      🙂

      • Paul M

        That’s a great heads up steve. Dogs will give you a heads up. When seconds are most needed. We can no longer be careless on our part. Times are a changing. Thanks Paul m

  9. Rick F

    I’m with Steve, if you are an evolutionist scientist , you will recreate the image that fits your theory. Even gigantopithicus was created from a tooth(or maybe a piece of jaw bone). The same goes for the scant bones found for so called Neanderthal .

  10. PATRICK

    I wonder if perhaps they were dropped into a hole in the earth so long ago and such entrance has since been sealed geologically speaking.
    Not that such precludes a conscience thought by them of a symbolic final resting place.
    Good to see the logical admittance that we may know so little. Imagine biological stuff surviving for x thousands of years or MILLIONS and being found.

  12. Michael K

    Soft tissue guess work still under the assumptions of its humanish nature and pandering to evolutionary dogma so each discovery fits neatly into the sequence or its forced into the sequence. These reconstructions need to be taken with alot of grains of salt.

  15. Carson H

    “There were some 1,550 specimens in all, representing at least 15 individuals. Skulls. Jaws. Ribs. Dozens of teeth. A nearly complete foot. A hand, virtually every bone intact, arranged as in life. Minuscule bones of the inner ear. Elderly adults. Juveniles. Infants, identified by their thimble-size vertebrae. ”

    Creationists do the same with their dogmatic worldview , everything must somehow fit inside 1 chapter of 1 book rewritten about idk 10,000times by innumerable authors throughout its 2k yr existance , without exception of course. So yea, this skeleton must be either an animal that adam and eve walked around and shared apples with or it was the spawn of the nephilium .

    Where as scientists learn new things an then adjust their understanding…if they are wrong they re-write what they know because its not scary to change what you know its just trying to find the truth….it is scarry however to throw a wrench in the thing that makes you feel good about dying in life whenever that time comes.

    ps the number of bones if far inexcess of “a tooth” or something,..and by now (not by guesswork or the writings of bronze age sheep herders fairy tales) we know how to put a skeleton together that falls in lockstep with biology(a science)

  16. Seamus J. C

    I’m wondering why some react to a reconstruction as if it were evidence of some kind of conspiracy? If you were to ask the artist, Did this creature definitely look exactly like this, he/she would probably say, I don’t know for sure, this is my best guess. But I think in general, if there are enough facial features present in the skull they can do a pretty good job, because the size of bone protrusions generally corresponds to the size of the muscles that attach to them. And it’s the muscles that generally fill out the face. Now, whether they had fat pads on their face like male orangutans do, or particularly thick skin or something–there may be no indication whatsoever of such on the skull….I think it looks just a bit more human than a chimpanzee, which the bones indicate is the case: it’s a creature that’s very similar to a chimp but with just enough human features to place in the genus homo, with us. I think you doubters just have homophobia….Rick, the bones for neanderthal can hardly be described as “scant”. There are bones from all over Europe, and some in the Middle East. There is even one almost-complete skeleton. As for the gigantopithecus teeth, there are reasons scientists picture a certain kind of beast around those teeth. You should look it up, it’s not totally stupid, nor, again, do scientists claim 100% certainty about the appearance of an animal for whom we have only teeth. It’s not arguing fair to exaggerate people’s claims so as to make them look ridiculous. So why don’t YOU tell us what gigantopithecus looked like?

  17. Kim L

    Ah Steve! You truly have a great video for every occasion. That was a classic, my wife and I both exclaimed ” hey! that’s Frank from the range!” and it is, exactly.
    I agree, about these re-creations based on bones. I’m sure they strive for an accurate final product, but (without having done it myself), it seems like there must be some wiggle room in the process. I wonder how large the visual deviation would be if you had 10 different reconstructors flesh out the same scull? The Neanderthal exhibit at the Smithsonian contains my good friend Fred, as part of the family group, he’s quite proud of the fact, and has framed the picture I took to show him. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but Fred is well known as a really gifted knapper, and I suspect he drags his wife by her hair, when he has one!

  18. Gary C

    This was all over the news last night in the UK, they had other scientists commenting disputing the evidence and stating that this is possibly an offshoot of home erectus, they were also reporting that this has split the scientific community with certain groups always battling to out do each other with their theories and finds .
    Sounds like the Bigfoot community in some respects

    • Joyce N

      Ha! Wouldn’t that a switch? Not really surprising though, man is corrupt. We bring new evidence And create every convenience to the world today, our electronics have pigeon holed us. In 10 years, people won’t speak to each other at all. We’ve forgotten how to interact with each other. We isolate ourselves from nature more and more every day. We’re the odd balls on the planet. The native tribes may be right. We may be star children that lost the memory of what really happened. This wouldn’t surprise me. We’re steadily regressing. And the people who may very well know the truth , cover it up and refuse to share the information. That’s frustrating. So to get to the truth we must get smarter than those who hold it from us.

  23. Stephanie G

    This was one of the best discussions I’ve seen lately! Thank you all for your varying viewpoints. On another subject altogether, why do some of the comments show up in white boxes?

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