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Bulgarians Using a Coffin as a Table? - Ep 275
2.3k Plays4 months ago
This week we cover 3 recent archaeology news stories including an ancient Roman sarcophagus turned beach bar, the source of the altar stone at Stonehenge and more evidence refuting the claims about Homo Naledi “burial”practices made in the Cave of Bones documentary on Netflix.
Links
- Beach bar used a 1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus as table — until a tourist noticed
- The voyage of the Altar Stone: A Stonehenge mystery solved (maybe)
- More Research Shuts Down Controversial Claims About Homo Naledi, Star Of Netflix Documentary
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction to The Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Preview of Unusual Archaeological Finds
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 275. On today's show, we talk about a sarcophagus turned beach bar, the ultra stone at Stonehenge, and the ever controversial Homo naledi. Let's dig a little deeper and look under your feet. It could be an old Roman artifact.
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to the show. How's it going? Good. Tired. Yeah. It's been a long weekend. It has been a long travel
Hosts' Travel Stories
00:00:49
Speaker
weekend. We're still in Maine, loving in it up here so much. I'm in a sweatshirt right now and it's on. So that makes me happy. i We're like a long sleeve all day today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're in our first weekend, I guess at Acadia national park.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, we're actually physically in the park this time. Yeah. Cause sometimes we're outside of the park when we say we're at a park, you know, but I managed to get us a camp spot, like in the actual park, although it's on the mainland side, not the island side, which is great and fine and beautiful over here. So, but it's where the big RV park area is. When was the last time we were in a ah RV park in the national park? Was it Zion or was it Glacier?
00:01:33
Speaker
It's kind of hard to get into these parks when you're there at the the high season and also like with ah an RV of our size. Yeah, yeah yeah but Acadia is really nice because it seems like the park has been pretty well updated.
00:01:49
Speaker
This side, this yeah this particular bit of park, it's called Scudic Peninsula, I think is what it is over here, and this is the Scudic side of the park. This this area, this camp's campground has been constructed in the last 10 years, I think, so it's very much updated compared to a lot of the old ones. Not a lot of tree cover, but like that really works for us when we need Starlink, so yeah. We Scudic'd right into a cancellation. We did, we did.
00:02:15
Speaker
I have a lot of ways of checking for cancellations and that kind of thing. There's a lot of, there you know, this is why we're gonna do an RV podcast. Cause there's a lot that goes into slightly more last minute planning to go to places like this. I wouldn't even say last minute. We knew we were coming here for like four months, but four months is last minute when people book these campsites out like, you know, six months or even longer sometimes. So anyway.
00:02:41
Speaker
Well, we'll try to post some of our day on the popular side today, but it was... It was very foggy. It was very foggy and very, very misty. Couldn't really see much, but it was still a fun day over there, I think. Tons and tons of people, despite the weather. It was so gorgeous. I mean, it was great. Yeah, so you know what else is gorgeous?
Roman Sarcophagus Found as a Table
00:03:03
Speaker
A 1,700-year-old coffin sitting at your bar.
00:03:08
Speaker
I'm like, I read this article title, Beach Bar used as a 1700 year old Roman sarcophagus as it as table yeah until a tourist noticed. And I'm like, is there a problem here? Like, shouldn't we use really cool sarcophaguses as bars now? Sarcophagi? Sarcophagi? I like pluralizing things with an I.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm kidding. Obviously, like, you know, ancient artifacts should not be used in a social setting like that, but... Especially probably burial items? Yeah, I mean, probably not. But this is a coffin. It's pretty disrespectful, obviously. But in a place in Europe, I mean, the Romans were everywhere and they left things everywhere. So, yeah. But we'll get into it.
00:03:51
Speaker
Right, so this was reported in the Sacramento Bee and elsewhere, but the one we were linking to is from there. But a former law enforcement officer, and it doesn't say who this was, this was in Bulgaria, Varna Bulgaria, and it doesn't say whether the law enforcement officer was, you know,
00:04:06
Speaker
what nationality he was or anything like that or she was or anything like that. Yeah, it doesn't say anything about them. It really doesn't say. Just that they were there and they reported it basically. Exactly. And so this person's on vacation and they're like, um, this looks suspiciously like something super old. Yeah. So I'm going to report this to the authorities and I don't even know how you do that in Bulgaria, but they reported it to officials and Officials, you know, i' I'd like to imagine in a place like Bulgaria or somewhere in like Eastern Europe that you find archaeologists like there's a team of crack crack team of archaeologists like at the ready, you know, and they're just like Duh, archeologists engage, right? And they've they heard about this and they're like, okay, let's get on it. yeah And they just like descended on this thing. Now, I don't know how long it took between the reporting and the archeologists descending, but the article makes it sound like it was like the day, the same day, but it was probably, you know. Probably not. Probably not. yeah Anyway, archeologists soon arrived. and identified it as a 1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus. Yeah, soon arrived as a journalist speak board. Came at some point after the report. Right. Could have been a month. yeah I don't know.
00:05:18
Speaker
But anyway, the box is decorated. The sides have carved garlands, flowers, grapes, and several heads of horned ox-like animals. You can see pictures of it. yeah yeah There's pretty good pictures in the article. And there's even a YouTube video from like a promotional video that the hotel did or the bar did. yeah And it shows it like right there. obvious so and It's It's in a spot, like the first picture you see in the article that we linked to, the bar is kind of gone and the the the sarcophagus with ah with a lid on it is basically or a table on it. It's basically just sitting on the beach, but in the promotional video, the bar's basically built up around it. it It's sort of a centerpiece. so yeah Anyway, the lid was missing, the actual original lid, and it was replaced with a table-like top that doesn't really match the rest. Yeah, it looks much more modern in the picture, so yeah.
00:06:05
Speaker
It was traced to the a Rajana Beach Bar at the beachfront of St. Constantina in Elena is what it's called. And they did some digging and apparently there's May 2022 Google Maps photo of people sitting around what looks like an ancient sarcophagus with a bar visible in the background. And you mentioned the promo video and The coffin itself measures about three feet by eight feet by two and a half feet. It was super heavy, but they got it off the beach anyway, so it's no longer sitting on the beach. And here's some interesting information. In Bulgaria, every object that has archaeological value belongs to the state. That's law. That's why archaeologists came and basically took it. So they took it and put it in the archaeological museum in Varna. Now, I don't know if it's on display yet, obviously, but it's probably, you know,
00:06:52
Speaker
in the back and being studied. So here's the thing is it's probably not from here. It was probably brought in from somewhere else. Right. They don't know. And they know what's been there for at least four years based on the photos and videos and stuff that they were able to find. Right. Well, it could have been from there. but We know the Romans were there. Well, it does say it was likely brought in from elsewhere. and yeah they say that article They don't know for sure. But I mean, it looks like the kind of thing you find in Rome, like that this is an expensive sarcophagus, right? Like you don't find this in the hinterlands. You find this where there are large complex populations. So that tells me it was probably in a large Roman city, which must at least over be closer over to Italy, if not Rome, right?
00:07:36
Speaker
Maybe. that That's what it seems like. Not necessarily. They had capitals and things out and around and about. They had larger centers around. I mean, this, you know, 1700 years ago, who knows though, right? and Sure. i don't know i mean I don't know. What it seems like to me is that the restaurant bar thought it would be cool to have this as the centerpiece and they didn't really think through the consequences of it. and yeah They got it from somewhere because they're not talking. They're not saying where it came from, how they got it or anything like that. It's not publicly. They probably are to the authorities, but not publicly.
00:08:06
Speaker
So, it seems like they got it from elsewhere and brought it in as a a showpiece, a vocal point, a talking point, whatever. That's what it seems like. Yeah. Yeah. But that was a bad choice. That's basically like, it's effectively grave robbing. you know They didn't take it from the grave, but somebody else did and that's where it ended up. Yeah. yeah It's entirely likely too they could have just bought it on the black market in Bulgaria.
00:08:31
Speaker
you know They could have had an antiquities dealer. yeah They didn't know what they were getting. They were like, somebody told it to him as a table. I don't know. I kind of feel like you kind of know what you're getting. maybe look like a brand It doesn't look like somebody carved it as a replica of a sarcophagus. It's too old and it just... Well, no, but it is just that way it is just stone too, right? And stone is stone, right? So stone if I carve stone tomorrow and I and i make it look antiquey,
00:08:56
Speaker
This is kind of one of the things that drew me to this article is so people that live in these areas, like Bulgaria is, this area of Bulgaria is on the Black Sea, it borders Greece, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. These people that live in this area, they just grow up with old crap around all over the place, right? And and ancient temples and old buildings and you know you drop your shovel in your backyard and you find a thousand year old Roman artifact, right? Or something crazy and they just,
00:09:25
Speaker
kind of get desensitized to it. And not only them, but the people sitting around these tables, they're just like tourists and and even locals and they're, they're, they're seeing all these things. And you know, it took somebody four years to notice and say something and say, Oh, I don't, I don't think this belongs here. No, I feel like you're just giving them a little too much credit. I don't know. No, I think the bar knew what they were doing. Yeah. I feel like the bar knew what they were doing. Yeah, for sure. But I also think that they knew they could probably get away with it because people sitting around are just like, yeah you know, not going to notice. And most people aren't going to notice. Yeah. Yeah. But I also thought while they probably knew what they were doing and they were like, Oh, this is old. They probably thought nobody was really going to care. Yeah, probably. you know probably so Well, they might not have been thinking about the fact that Bulgaria considers every object that has archeological value a possession of the state, right? They probably figured, well, this didn't come from Bulgaria. It came from somewhere else. So it doesn't belong to the state. It came from somewhere else, but it entered Bulgaria. So therefore it became Bulgarian property, yeah apparently. so
00:10:26
Speaker
yeah all right well shading shady for sure yeah definitely yeah all right Well, let's talk about something else that came from somewhere else. The altar stone back in a minute.
Origins of Stonehenge's Altar Stone
00:10:40
Speaker
Welcome back to the archeology show episode 275. And speaking of, like I said, things that came from other places. let's centerpieces that came from other places maybe. Pretty much. yeah Although maybe, let's find out. yeah Let's talk about Stonehenge, because Stonehenge is always in the news. It's not been that much lately, I don't feel like, right? Yeah, we just don't always talk about it. Yeah, but this was big news, so we definitely had to talk about it.
00:11:06
Speaker
So this article comes from the Washington Post by William Booth. And you really liked this article. I did. It was a little bit more like tongue in cheek and lighthearted than other articles that are reporting on science are. But I also felt like the science was still really good in it. So it's just like more of an entertaining read than they can be sometimes. yeah So i I definitely recommend this article. Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
It's been reported everywhere though, so all you have to do is look up Stonehenge and you can find out what we're going to talk about. Although if you just look up Stonehenge, you're going to find a lot of stuff. yeah True, but this is big news. Type in Alterstone. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so real quick, Stonehenge, it's in England. It's down like south west of London, give or take.
00:11:56
Speaker
and you know It's about 5,000 years old, ye built by Druids, or so they say. Nobody knows. Yeah, so that part's not true. Don't say that. but No, it wasn't built by Druids. It was built by Merlin. No. He floated the stones by magic from Ireland. Still not true. That's definitely the theory I'm going with. It's definitely not it. Yeah. So anyway, there's several rings, or at least two big ones. And the altar stone is this stone that's kind of like lying in the ground in the middle. yeah And it's just been called the altar stone because that's what they called it 150 years ago, yeah right? When they were started really diving into this thing. There's a couple other stones with crazy names. We'll get to them later.
00:12:36
Speaker
They just call this thing the altar stone. It's not necessarily even an altar. Maybe it was sitting in the middle one day, one at one time, just maybe like propped up, and maybe that's why the early Victorians called it the altar stone. Who knows? Maybe they thought it was, but I don't think any modern person that's ever written anything down has ever seen that stone anything but half buried in the ground.
00:12:54
Speaker
Well, it's like laying over on its side and so it's in a recumbent position. That's what I mean. They've never seen it like in its original glory, so to speak, if it had one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's been that way for 3000 years. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe. Right. Yeah. So anyway, the recent research that we're talking about here indicates it came from Scotland. Yeah, I know. And that's not just a little bit far away. That's like extremely, hugely far away. Yeah, that's a long ways away. Neolithic peoples to have been moving the stone. So And we have talked about Stonehenge before on this podcast. Yeah, of course. A bunch of times, right? Yeah. One of the big times we talked about it was a few years back because the blue stones, which are the smaller stones that form one of those, well, there's like couple levels of circles in Stonehenge. And the big ones, of course, you see in the pictures, but then the blue stones are like a smaller inner circle. I think there's like two concentric circles of them.
00:13:48
Speaker
And they were found to come from Aquarian whales, right? So that was the last big news that we got about Stonehenge. And the larger so stones are called the Sarson stones. So those are the big ones with the upright posts and the lentils across the top and all that. So yeah.
00:14:05
Speaker
And so this altar stone is in the middle of all this, right? Yeah. And this is why I'm really recommending this article because the way that the guy wrote about it, it was so funny. He said that these names that they gave to these stones like, you know, 200 years ago or whenever it was.
00:14:21
Speaker
There's another one they called the slaughter stone, and there's no evidence it had anything to do with slaughtering or sacrifice or whatever. And from the article in quotes, these were just the romantic lurid names that the early pearl clutching antiquarians gave the rocks, imagining druids doing their nasty business to appease some unholy deities. right So like, yeah, like you said, it's just a name that somebody gave it 150 years ago. We don't actually know what it was used for. Yeah. And like you said, until now we thought the Ultra Stone was from Wales, just like the Blue Stones. Yeah. Yeah. We just made an assumption there.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, so this new study is PhD student Anthony Clark. And he is from Wales. And he led this new research into the altar stone. And they basically examined two examples of the stone. Each one was like thinner than a hair, which is so crazy to me that they can use these tiny, skinny, thin little samples and and draw so many conclusions from them. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, of course taking pieces off these stones of Stonehenge is no longer allowed. Of course. You can't even walk up to Stonehenge anymore, right? Well, not like regular people. No. I'm sure researchers can. Sure, sure. But like yeah, if you go to visit, you're going to be on like this walkway that's like all the way around the outside of it. You can see it on the aerial if you look it up. It's very much a protected place these days. Yeah, but they do have samples that were taken before these protections were put in place, of course. And one of them is from 1840, and the other is from 1920.
00:15:46
Speaker
I kind of immediately had some red flags about those samples. How do we know exactly where those samples came from? They must have very good provenience on it, right? They know for sure. What kind of provenience comes from 1840 that's really good? Well, the one from 1840 is the one that feels a little bit more suspect to me because it's from a personal collection of somebody that was donated, blah, blah, blah. Even then. Because back in the day, they used to just walk up and knock off chunks of stone, right?
00:16:11
Speaker
But the one from 1920 is actually pretty good because that one was uncovered during excavations around the Ultra Stone and they matched it up to where it like fell off of the Ultra Stone so they know for sure that that piece came from it and it was buried in the ground until 1920 that it's been in a scientific setting, a catalog setting since then.
00:16:29
Speaker
So that one's really good. British science in 1920 was not super great. I mean, they were talking about Piltown man. and I mean, they were getting ready to like... They could catalog some artifacts in the 1920s, okay? Yeah, and then put them all together and make a monkey man. That's what the British were doing. No, no, no, no, no. No, that that one seemed pretty good to me. so And then I don't know if, I can't remember if this was in the article when I read it, but I'm just reading like your notes. You said samples were sent to a cutting edge laboratory. Cutting edge. They did call it a cutting edge laboratory. Come on. They're literally cutting edges over there. Where they analyzed mineral components, in particular, appetite, which is not the desire to eat stone, but it's a type of stone, rutile, and zircon. So these decay at a known rate and can be used as a geological clock. Yeah. yeah
00:17:17
Speaker
And once they had the mineral composition and the age of those minerals in the sample, they were able to determine with 95% certainty that the Ultra Stone is old red sandstone from the Orkadian Basin in northeast Scotland, like way northeast Scotland, like in between the far northern tip, like up towards where the Shetland Islands are, like way up there and in the nets, I think.
00:17:41
Speaker
so Yeah, so of course they're wondering like why, and then of course how. Yeah, I mean those are always the questions. Like great, we know that this altar stone, the altar stone came from Scotland, but it still doesn't answer any of the questions. And I don't see how we could ever answer the why or the how. Not really. No. It's like not gonna be possible. Yeah, well I mean they're, I mean those are the biggest questions, right? Because Stonehenge was,
00:18:10
Speaker
I mean, clearly built, it was built over a long period of time because it wasn't it wasn't built over just like a summer, right? Or even ah a generation, necessarily. Thousands of years. Yeah, there was lots of pieces put onto it. yeah and And so by many, many cultures, presumably, yeah right? Not just one culture leading itself in from one generation to the next. yeah and and And people saw a lot of ah lot of purpose and a lot of I don't know, intention here, right? So there were lot of there was a lot of things going on and at this place throughout thousands of years. And it just makes you wonder if...
00:18:47
Speaker
either A, you know, people knew they couldn't move it, so they wanted to make their contribution on it, or maybe at some point in time it was seen as a ah such an important place and such a, you know, through time, such a significant place that people would come together there. You know, when they'd say, I want to bring my contribution here, even though it's going to cause us massive amounts of hardship, we're going to bring this piece here and make our contribution and this is going to solidify our political relationship, you know, something like that. It's still like, why? Why this spot? Why? Well, because it already existed. I mean, the first time, i guess so yeah, the first time it was like, why not? Let's build something here. Yeah. And then after that, it was like, it just kept returning to the same place. Yeah. It's like returning because it's there. Yeah. You know? became a landmark, essentially, that was easy to send people to. This is a relatively small place, England was, right? Relatively small island compared to all of Europe. So probably everybody for thousands of years on this on this on this island of England knew about this thing, yeah right? And the other question you can never answer too is it part of the why question is like,
00:19:57
Speaker
who contributed sandstone from Scotland to this, to Stonehenge.
How was the Altar Stone Transported?
00:20:03
Speaker
Was it somebody who lived in the area of Stonehenge and they were sent on a quest to find some special stone in that perfect rock yeah and that's what they found and they came back with it? Or was it a group of people who were from that part of Scotland who had some kind of affiliation or tie to the Southern, the people in Southern England and that they contributed. Yeah. It, you know, like there's so many different reasons why it could have happened. So it's, it's really interesting. And then my other favorite thing too, is the theories on how they did it. Cause that's where people kind of go off the rails with the how theories, right? Like I read in like one part of it was like, they wrapped it in Willow baskets and rolled it. and
00:20:46
Speaker
Like that's that's that's a lot. Yeah, and that wasn't just for this stone This is for any of the big stones that they were moving from wherever like that's that's a lot But you know dragging it by people and oxen sure maybe they might have not rolling it on logs that one seems to make the most sense to me because you can roll the logs with it you know on top of them yeah, and push on sleds and then of course there's the the marine transport idea which we were discussing that and it seems like it would be both the easiest and the hardest way to do it so who even knows like how these people did it right well we'll be talking about Stonehenge probably a little bit on our pop culture discussion in a few episodes oh we will yeah yes yeah because Apple TV has rebooted if you don't have Apple TV find a way to watch this but Apple TV has rebooted the old
00:21:39
Speaker
1970s, I think, maybe 80s, time bandits movie yeah into a TV series yeah starring, oh, what's her name? Why can't I remember her name? Phoebe from Friends. Phoebe from Friends, Lisa Kudrow. Lisa Kudrow, geez. Yes, and she's fantastic in it. yeah But also, like she's great, but like personal favorites of mine, Jermaine Clement concord and taiowati from from everything. Right. He's amazing. I love everything he does. yeah They have actually kind of smaller parts in it. They do. They do. Yeah. But they produced and wrote it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all their genius behind it. I just, I like, love it so much and we're definitely going to do a pop culture review of it. So cause they, I mean, just real quick so you can go watch it. They got some of the history that we've kind of looked at. We just kind of already knew and then yeah some of the stuff we've kind of verified. Yeah. Shockingly accurate. They did. Spoiler alert. They go to Woodhenge. They don't even talk about Stonehenge in the first episode. yeah Well, maybe they did, but they definitely started with Woodhenge. Who even knows what Woodhenge is except for archeologists? It just like warmed my nerdy heart when that happened and I was like, I am in, this is my show, I love it. right yeah Anyway, so yeah, pop culture episode coming soon.
00:22:58
Speaker
Right. So one thing you don't do is you don't tell a bunch of archaeologists something that isn't true and you've done your research.
Reevaluating Homo naledi Burial Claims
00:23:05
Speaker
Make sure you've done your research and make sure you've published and make sure you've done all your all your things and you've crossed all your T's. Just talk to the other archaeologists before you publish. You've done it all your eyes. You know. Unlike the people of Rising Star Cave. We'll be back in a minute.
00:23:22
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 275. And a few, I don't know, months ago. we Was it months ago or was it last year? Episode 246. Episode 246, if I'd only read my notes. If only you would read the first notes. A few 30 episodes ago.
00:23:39
Speaker
he
00:23:42
Speaker
So episode two forty six According to my notes in front of me. I do know the date because I put that note in, obviously. It was December 21st last year, so it was right at the end of the year. It was a few months ago. I was right. um Is that a few months? Is eight months a few? That's ah more than one. Okay, sure. All right.
00:24:03
Speaker
So four score and 30 episodes ago. We, and actually it's way fewer than four score. Yes, yeah. 30 episodes. thirty Approximately 30 episodes ago. What are we even talking about right now? One score and 10 episodes ago. have No idea what's happening right now. Okay, so... I'm gonna probably cut some of this out, because it's ridiculous. No, it's awesome. This is good podcasting content right here. So last year, like you've been trying to say for five minutes, we covered the unknown colon, Cave of Bones documentary. And we were actually a little bit late on that coverage, I think. we It came out a couple months before. So it's probably been out for you know almost a year at this point, right? Mm-hmm.
00:24:51
Speaker
and The guy who did the documentary, Lee Berger, it's a real slick like Netflix documentary. It's really well presented, had all these beautiful graphics. It was wonderful. And it was all based on research that hadn't been peer reviewed yet. And now we've talked about the peer review process and how there's a lot to be criticized there for sure. But The peers, the peers have revolted over the Burgess. Yeah, they have reviewed and they are not happy with Lee Berger's conclusions or not conclusions, even his.
00:25:28
Speaker
I think his just research. is yeah his the Yeah. The of his research. I mean, the data doesn't lie. The data is there. It's just that the conclusions that he's drawing from that data, other people are not agreeing with it. And so this is just another article of people who are not agreeing with him. so no yeah People are notoriously, especially if it's not your research, people are notoriously I would say not only skeptical, but cautious to upend all of scientific know-how and reasoning and archaeological theory. I don't need to quote Carl Sagan here, but you guys know what I'm about to say. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yeah, so, to recap here. Yeah, let's go back and see what we're talking about. Hoenn Naledi was a Cuban ancestor, first found in the rising star cave system in South Africa in 2013. Now, if you remember, this was the one where they had to basically recruit a bunch of really tiny
00:26:25
Speaker
um archaeologists basically, yeah paleoanthropologists, yeah a lot of which ended up just being women because they're just physically smaller. yeah So these all these just like fantastic paleoanthropologists shimmied their way into this tiny ass little cave system. Lee Berger himself lost a crap ton away just so he could go down there one time. Cause he wasn't like a tiny guy. He did it in the show. So he did it a little bit for like ah a show stunt. Well, he also really wanted to go in there, but they happened to be filming. So yeah.
00:26:52
Speaker
ah ok I mean, come on, let's like call it what it is. It was a bit of a stunt for the show, but that's fine. I'm not mad at that stunt. It's fine. ok Yeah. So anyway, they went down there yeah and they they found these, these remains, yeah right? These remains that ah that looked like they had been buried. Yeah. And they were a new species and it was very exciting. It was, it's beautiful context, you know, like they, and they have pre human remains are not often complete, right? But they have a lot of skeletons that are like somewhat complete. yeah Like these remains are just fabulous. That's what caves do for you, right? They preserve things so well. So,
00:27:31
Speaker
So, they've been excavating there for, you know, 10-plus years. And last summer, they Lee Berger and his associates, they released a series of what's called preprints. And those were announcing that they had found evidence of human burial yeah amongst the Homo naledi remains in this cave.
00:27:51
Speaker
Now that might not sound crazy because we're talking about buried remains, right? and yeah But this was extremely controversial, not only because it pushes back the earliest evidence of burial by 130,000 years, which is a huge amount of time, yeah but it was also carried out by a non-human species, yeah which we've never seen that before in any other site or any other human ancestor. Right.
00:28:17
Speaker
So those are gigantic claims. It says so much about a species to say that they had the structure, the social structure around death to basically perform a burial for their loved ones that says so much about the development of a brain, of the brain.
Debate on Homo naledi Burial Practices
00:28:36
Speaker
It's huge claims that you need to have big evidence to back up.
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah, and the burials that they were talking about date to about 236,000 to 335,000 years ago, like which, like you said, is shockingly old. Yeah, so old. Yeah. So the immediate response that was published by experts saying that the evidence was incomplete and inadequate and should not be viewed as finalized scholarship, they just think there's more work that needs to be done. Yeah, more analysis, more work. It was kind of a ah quick knee-jerk clap back that happened almost right away, which I think is what got us on the bandwagon because we saw the response to the documentary and we're like, oh, wait a minute. This documentary is maybe not so on the up and up. And then, yeah, so it's kind of been a rolling like criticism since that happened.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And another paper recently was published in the journal paleoanthropology and refute some of the specifics of the burials. Berger's work claims that the remains of the Homo naledi were found in a hard to reach spot true in the back of the cave, true seemingly laid out in an orderly position and placed in shallow dugout pits and covered with soil. And therein lies the rub, right or the the problematic information. Yeah, the exactly. yeah So this covered in soil piece makes it look like it's an actual burial, yeah and people are having a but um problem with that. A burial with intention, yeah like a person wanted to cover their dead family member or whoever in soil to protect them from whatever, like whatever their reasons were. you know
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, so in this new study that was published in the journal Paleoanthropology, the researchers basically carried out a reanalysis of the geochemical and sedimentological data that was presented in Berger's work.
00:30:28
Speaker
And I did go take a look in the article, we linked to an IFL science article, right? In that article, there's a link to the actual peer reviewed article. And I went and looked at that. Oh boy, it is jargon heavy, very geomorphology focused, blah, blah, blah. But the takeaway I got from it is they have this really great figure in there where they In one column, they put up Berger's work where these these graphs show that the burials were on purpose. That's what his graph is supposed to show. And then in the middle, they put up the same figures so and they reproduced those same figures that Berger created using his numbers and his data. And they sort of walked it back to figure out what variables and constants he was using. Because these are math equations, right? This is statistics and math equations. So they wanted to know what constants, what variables, what other math-y things he was using to create the graphs that he did. And those graphs that they created, they said were not using consistent methodology for the type of analysis that he was doing. Yeah.
00:31:38
Speaker
And then they reran all that data using what they consider to be consistent, constants, math-y stuff for this kind of analysis and came out with different graphs basically that yeah don't support burial. So there's your like five second summary from somebody who doesn't even have a master's degree. So make sure you get your math-y stuff right. Get the math-y stuff, right? Well, you have to make choices, right? When you're doing the math-y bits of research, there are choices to be made. You have to pick out certain constants and stuff like that in your formulas, right? You have to, that's part of doing that. and But you have to do it following the standard of whatever thing you're doing, you know? And according to these people who are experts in this thing, they said it was not standard.
00:32:27
Speaker
I think to break all this down, what all this kind of looks like is while these may have looked and felt like burials and there was soil sitting on top of these these actual remains, is that what archaeologists know when somebody is buried and the soil around them is but the soil is put on top of them, even if it's not the soil that was pulled out of that hole. yeah you know As long as they are decomposing around that soil, and you know we're not talking about somebody in a coffin or something like that, we're talking about somebody who's just dumped in a hole and soil is put on top of them. Like I said, even if it's not the soil that was pulled out of that hole, any soil, you leave them there long enough and their own decomposition will change the chemical composition of the soil around them. It's true. and it doesn't seem like
00:33:15
Speaker
That's necessarily happened. Yeah. It doesn't seem like the the evidence is there to state that that may have happened. Right. Right. Now, I guess I don't know a whole lot about this chemical composition stuff. And um my question would kind of be, well, would any evidence of that kind of like maybe washed away after 230,000 plus years of possible yeah water action and other kinds of things and other kinds of soils falling yeah in the cave and coming in and out? and When they said in that documentary, they were going on and on about the like, like, textural and visual differences of the soil around the burials. And I'm like, I'm like 250,000 years later. Right. Right. Really? Yeah. Like, yes, that might be true. But is it because they moved the soil away 250,000 years ago and then put it back on top of the body?
00:34:03
Speaker
like it It could be for so many other reasons, I guess is my problem with that. And and you and I have worked on lots of burials we did earlier in our CRM careers. And yeah, sure. The soil is different around a burial, but the stuff we worked on was like from 100 years ago or maybe even 500 years ago in some cases. So like, I don't know. It just, yes, you have a difference there, but 200,000 years. I just don't, I don't know if those soil differences translate over that amount of time. So. I'd have to wonder too, like if you bury somebody on a cave floor and that cave floor is still being used for another 150,000 years, because apparently these burials cross at least 100,000 years. yeah So if that's the case, then people, at least some people were going in there still, right? After at least one of the burials was was there. Yeah, true. right So yeah if you buried them presumably deep enough that
00:34:56
Speaker
the soil would, you know, after their body decomposes, the soil then kind of depresses a little bit. And then you're probably going to have people walking on that burial again. Yeah. So then you're going to have it compacting again. Yeah. Okay. So now you've compressed. Or animals, like large animals too, right? Well, maybe not large animals. That is a hard place to get to. Yeah, that's true. So probably not animals. Yeah. But you're going to have people deliberately coming back there, probably walking over these again, because even generations later or a thousand or 10,000 years later, nobody knows who's buried there. Nobody cares, right? Right.
00:35:26
Speaker
And you're going to have this this compaction of soil even from from occasional depressors of a foot, even if it's one foot every thousand years. When you talk about 100,000 years, that's a lot of feet. you know And you talk about 300,000 years, that's a lot of feet. yeah And even if it's no feet, or just a few feet over 100,000 years, and then no feet for 200,000 years, that soil just on its own is going to be compacted. And it's going to recompact itself just like the other stuff around it. Now, maybe not as compacted as the original soil around it. So maybe they could tell that a little bit you know from that. Oh, this definitely was dug up. yeah This was not. And you know you can see some things. But yeah, it just seems like they jumped a gun on the research a little bit. It does. and
00:36:11
Speaker
You can tell too, because in Berger's work, there's a lot of guessing about what the data could mean, right? Which is fine. You can make guesses, but they make guesses in a way that makes it sound like it's probably this. Whereas what you actually need to do and what the people in this new research did was say that this data does not support this.
00:36:31
Speaker
So it doesn't mean it didn't happen. It doesn't mean that these weren't burials, honestly. It still does not necessarily mean that. All it means is that the data that they had access to does not support an intentional burial. So different data or data collected in a different way might support it, but they didn't have access to that. So yeah you just have to choose your words really carefully when you're talking about drawing big conclusions like this. Because in the end, you can only say,
00:37:01
Speaker
Well, this doesn't support doing that, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. And it doesn't tell me how it happened. If it's not this way, then what's the other option? It doesn't say that either. Science is kind of maddening in that way sometimes, because you don't get the full picture just from one small study like this. What is this? All right, well, I did just get some data, and it supports this podcast being over.
00:37:25
Speaker
So have you had enough of talking about statistics and math-y stuff? I'll never get enough of that. But I have had enough of this day. Yeah. And it's time to go. I know. I'm so tired. Yeah. All right. See you next week. Bye.
00:37:44
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening, and have an awesome day.
00:38:07
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.