It seems a more sober assessment of Homo naledi is now emerging after the media went over hype. At http://phys.org/print361434216.html … more details have emerged and scientists, it seems, are not agreed if the bones come from apes or from hominids. See the cave diagram below – well out of the way for a drop in from above
The piece continues by reiterating that no DNA has been taken and no date for the deposit has been secured – which are startling omissions (leading to some strange theories)
At http://phys.org/print361520955.html … the headline is 'what about Homo naledi's geologic age? – so some people are worried. It seems the paper will be published in the journal Science as some of the hype comes from their direction. The press release said that the bones could be up to 3 million years of age and this clearly caught the fancy of the press. However, the following day there was a similar discovery – but this one had a geological date, of something like 400,000 years ago. It was ignored by the media. The bones in this instance are the earliest, so far, specimens of Neanderthals.
At http://phys.org/print361437498.html …. we learn that Australian Aboriginal numbers in the interior steadily increased until the Late Glacial Maximum and then fell away. The began to increase again following the end of the Late Glacial Maximum. The evidence is derived from the frequency of charcoal from ancient camp fires and is theefore subject to some corruption – but the general idea is that the Late Glacial Maximum had an affect on Australian humans too – presumably as it became cooler. The findings gelled into research here at www.researchgate.net/publications/279456087_A_continental_narrative_Huma…