JOSEPH DE CA'TH LON & THE HOMO NALEDI IN GAUTENG

Lee Berger and the Homo naledi's skull

Joseph de Ca'th Lon is visiting the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Today, he wants to talk about Homo naledi an amazing homo species.

Homo naledi is an extinct species of hominin, which anthropologists first described in 2015 and have assigned to the genus Homo. In 2013, fossil skeletons were found in South Africa's Gauteng province, in the Rising Star Cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg. 

As of 10 September 2015, fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to more than 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave. Newer findings, remains of at least three individuals: two adults and a child, in a second chamber, known as Lesedi, light in the Sotho-Tswana languages, were reported by Hawks et alii in 2017.

More information: Newscientist

The species is characterised by a body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations, a smaller endocranial volume similar to Australopithecus, and a skull shape similar to early Homo species. The skeletal anatomy presents ancestral features known from australopithecines with more recent features associated with later hominins. Prior to dating, initial judgement based on anatomy favoured an age of roughly two million years old. Dirks et alii in 2017, using a variety of dating techniques obtained a much younger age range of between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon in the Rising Star Cave

The fossils were discovered by recreational cavers Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker in 2013. Homo naledi was formally described in September 2015 by a 47-member international team of authors led by American-born South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, who proposed the bones represent a new Homo species. Other experts contend more analyses are needed to support this classification. There are some indications that the individuals may have been deliberately placed in the cave near the time of their death.

The word naledi means star in the Sotho-Tswana languages. It, and the corresponding name Dinaledi Chamber, chamber of stars, were chosen to reference the Rising Star cave system where the fossils were found.

More information: National Geographic

 It just shows that you can never stop looking. 

Just because something has been studied for years doesn't mean that 

it can't still tell us new things.

Lee Berger

DESMOND TUTU: AN ANTI-APARTHEID FIGHTER

Desmond Mpilo Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on October 7, 1931 in Klerksdorp, South Africa. The South Africa of Tutu's youth was rigidly segregated, with black Africans denied the right to vote and forced to live only in specific areas.

Tutu became increasingly frustrated with the racism corrupting all aspects of South African life under apartheid. In 1948, when Tutu was 17 years old, the National Party won control of the government and codified the nation's long-present segregation and inequality into the official, rigid policy of apartheid. In 1953, the government passed the Bantu Education Act, a law that lowered the standards of education for black South Africans to ensure that they only learned what was necessary for a life of servitude.

In 1958, Tutu enrolled at St. Peter's Theological College in Johannesburg. He was ordained as an Anglican deacon in 1960 and as a priest in 1961. Tutu was selected as the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches in 1978, and he continued to use his elevated position in the South African religious hierarchy to advocate for an end to apartheid.

In 1984, Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize not only as a gesture of support to him and to the South African Council of Churches of which he is leader, but also to all individuals and groups in South Africa who, with their concern for human dignity, fraternity and democracy, incite the admiration of the world. Tutu's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize transformed South Africa's anti-apartheid movement into a truly international force with deep sympathies all across the globe.

In 1985, Tutu was appointed the Bishop of Johannesburg, and a year later he became the first black person to hold the highest position in the South African Anglican Church when he was chosen as the Archbishop of Cape Town.

Nowadays, Desmond Tutu continues his fight in a favour of peace and democracy supporting acts around the world.

More information: The Desmond Tutu Peace Centre

If you are neutral in situations of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse
and you say that you are neutral,
the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Desmond Tutu