The central claims that initially got the naledi story much media hype, including the recent Netflix program Cave of Bones, have been strongly criticized by peers. In my view, they are not well supported at the moment. It isn’t certain at all that naledi buried their dead in the Rising Star cave system, or that…
Review of Netflix’s Unknown: Cave of Bones
Let’s get a few things out of the way. Cave of Bones is well worth watching. The entire team at the Rising Star cave system has been doing incredible and incredibly valuable work in a very difficult context. They are heroes of science, no doubt about it. The discovery and the recovery of naledi remains…
The problem with the naledi burial saga is not that it involves preprints
The claim that Homo naledi buried their dead and created art on cave walls recently made a lot of noise in the media. The claims appeared in the form of preprints, one detailing the claimed burials, one examining the proposed engravings, and one discussing the evolutionary implications of all this if true. The papers were…
Yes, archaeologists know virtually nothing about the pharaohs, but to paraphrase Miracle Max, there is a big difference between virtually nothing, and nothing at all
The National news website recently published a piece that proclaims that “Archaeologists know virtually nothing about the Pharaohs”, this according to “leading archaeologist John Romer.” On the one hand, of course we know some things about the Pharaohs. We know some of their names, we know when they lived, and we know some of their…
Did a comet airburst destroy the Hopewell? Comment on The Hopewell Airburst Event, 1699-1567 Years Ago (252-383 CE), by Tankersley et al. (2022).
Tankersley et al. (2022) recently published a brief paper in Nature Scientific Reports, arguing that the Hopewell culture of the first half of the first millennium CE in the North American Midwest was ended, or at least severely helped along toward its demise, by a comet fragment airburst event. The paper is getting quite a…
ArcheoThoughts 