we’re finding that we have just touched
the beginnings of the discoveries of
human origins
we have probably almost doubled the
number of known skeletons from the
entirety of the early hominid record
this little remarkable hole in the
ground had delivered to us this
extraordinary wealth like no other site
in history
I stand here representing one of the
largest paleontological or
archaeological projects in history this
project is only three years old and yet
it involves more than 80 scientists from
around the world in fact every continent
except Antarctica and I’m looking for
someone down there to do some research
this discovery and I’m was in part
largely due to the organization you sit
in tonight and funny enough was due in
fact in part to what was perceived at
the time as a failed expedition in 1997
1998 1999 I actually took a National
Geographic grant to utilize a new
technology to utilize a technology that
been developed called handheld GPS that
we had just become aware of and it just
become a commercially available I bought
one of the most expensive GPS as you
could get that could bring you to the
remarkable accuracy of 15 meters on
planet Earth or so it said on the box I
also at that time with a very large
National Geographic grant bought
something that was absolutely remarkable
I bought digital satellite images from
NASA that they had just made available
they had the ability of getting you down
to 30 meter pixels on planet earth for
ten thousand US dollars a sheet
I bought two of them and with those in
hand I decided to go back out and
explore southern Africa and so I was
going to GPS coordinate the fossil sites
of southern Afghanistan I’d technology
and off I went and over a period of
three years I concentrated my
explorations around southern Africa but
in the end specifically around an area
called the Cradle of Humankind just
outside of Johannesburg now this area is
one of the most explored areas on planet
Earth for early human fossils it was the
first area explored in Africa in from
1935 onward luminaries like dart and
Broome and even Frank Peabody was out
there Philip Tobias Bob Wright everybody
in our field has explored this dolomitic
region and rightfully so it’s become one
of the richest sources of human ancestor
fossils and we knew it very well at the
time I began that exploration project we
knew of about a hundred cave sites and
about sixteen fossil-bearing sites in
the area and we pretty much thought we
had it figured out by the end of that
three-year period I had found four new
fossil sites and about 25 or 30 new cave
sites that no scientists had put a pin
on and I thought that was remarkable so
to my colleagues and so over the next
decade or so I began to dig with
colleagues some of those new sites and
we found remarkably little in those
sites the objects that were after I have
to remind you these early human ancestor
fossils are probably some of the rarest
sought after objects on planet Earth
I sit in a field that is probably
populated by more scientists than the
fossils they study I sit in a field that
for the vast majority of people who call
themselves paleoanthropologists or
physical anthropologists who work on
early humans they will go through their
entire careers and never find a single
piece of one of these in the wild so
it’s an extraordinary difficult field
and the perceived rarity of these things
makes even tiny fragments valuable I
found myself in December of 2007
as the last single human being on planet
earth to discover Google Earth and in
doing that I was staggered there I was
sitting at home over our summer vacation
in South Africa and I did what every
single one of you did when you found
Google Earth before that date remember
what you did you look at their own home
right to see if you’re lying naked by
the swimming pool I wasn’t and then the
second thing you do is you start looking
at places that are familiar to you and
somewhat where along that journey you
find that when you type in a longitude
and latitude or a GPS coordinate
it flies in in that really cool way that
Google Earth does and I had these very
expensive hardly explored numbers from
the late-1990s petition and I eagerly
typed the first one in and it zoomed
into nothing I typed the second one in
it was wrong and on and on I didn’t have
the caves mapped it didn’t take me long
to Google why because in the late 1990s
the United States government owned those
GPS satellites and they had put in
deliberate error so that they couldn’t
be used for military purposes and other
things and with my highly accurate 15
meter resolution combined with that
deliberate error my numbers were all
wrong fifty meters one hundred and fifty
two hundred and fifty meters off it was
a disaster but I could play move the
dots because on Google Earth they had a
five meter resolution in the Cradle of
Humankind area and I could move those
dots on to the cave sites I could see
the cave site I had intended to map and
so over January and into February I
spent my time moving all these dots on
to the right place and as I did that I
began to see patterns in distribution I
began to see lines
I saw areas where I thought the fossil
sites were in deliberate association
and then I began to see what I thought
were other caves if that’s a cave this
is a cave I knew their wording because
I’d explored this area
everybody’s explored this area but in
March of 2008 it’s so intrigued me I
took my laptop out and a 3G card so I
could get onto Google Earth and I
printed out a target area onto an a4
page with little dots map to put I
thought look like caves and I went as
far away from where I had spent the last
17 years working this side of GLaDOS
ville in the middle of this area because
I knew that area better than anyone I
knew there was nothing there I started
in the city limits of Krueger store and
on the first day out I found 21 new
fossil site by July I’d found over 600
previously unidentified cave sites and
40 previously unidentified fossil sites
literally we went from say 20 fossil
sites to 60 in a matter of a couple
months on the 1st of August
I dropped a colleague of mine Paul
Dirk’s off at a series of caves right in
the middle of the property that the site
of Gladys Vail is on right next to where
I’d spent the last 17 years to map that
cave
my dog tau and I drove down a road
that’s coming up in a valley that you’ll
see in just a moment into an area where
I knew I was not going to find anything
and the reason I knew I wasn’t going to
find anything is because I had found one
of those 4 fossil sites in this valley
in that very expensive National
Geographic expedition I had been there
before but I saw these little blips
those little clusters of trees being
marked and they looked like targets to
me and in particular that little cluster
of greenish dots you see there looked
like what cave should look like and so
tau and I stopped the car on that dirt
road right next to that red star 50
metres from the road and I immediately
saw a lime trackway what a lime trackway
is is little
tiny strip of cleared area I had been on
that road maybe 300 times in the last 17
years and I’d never seen that track and
when I saw it I knew I was about to make
a discovery because the miners who had
mine these limestone caves to get lime
to build Johannesburg in the late 19th
and early 20th century would build those
track ways leading up to fossil-bearing
cave sites and so tau and I walked up
that road we came to an old game fence
which you can see it running right in
here but the property is being expanded
and it was deteriorating and animals had
broken through in just the right place
so that we could slip through this game
fence and we walked into this and I was
staggered because I knew as soon as I
approached what you’re looking at right
there this cluster of trees that there
was a cave site there those trees grow
in the disturbed area of these denuded
trees white stink woods wild olives it’s
the signal marker when I walked into
that I was truly staggered in this next
slide don’t gasp yes I know it’s
exciting isn’t it there was a little
hole in the ground two and a half meters
wide two meters deep and that is highly
unusual that cluster of trees I saw was
probably about 30 meters long and about
25 meters wide that would be the extent
of the cave and the miners knew that and
when they found sites as they had found
this one they would put blasts in and
they had done that here using dynamite
they put three blasts in here and they
blew up a couple of dozen rocks onto the
surface and then they had left this site
I had almost never seen a cave that
miners had bothered to blast and leave
and they’d left this one I was on a
mapping expedition so I took some notes
in the very first rock I turned over had
an antelope humerus in it a huge bone of
an antelope sitting right on the surface
I was one kilometer
from where I’ve spent the last 17 years
digging a hill and a half away and I had
never seen this side no scientist had
been there no scientist had ever marked
it in when we scientists find a site
like this we leave tells we pile up
little rocks and you can tell we’ve been
there no one had been there
despite this area probably being outside
of the sterk Fenton Valley the most
explored area within the most explored
area on planet earth for early hominids
I studied with stun me but I was on a
exploration mission so I took accurate
GPS coordinates and this very bad photo
and I walked up the hill and found 46
previously unidentified caves 46 right
next to where I’d spent almost last two
decades that surprised me I went back to
the lab and something I didn’t tell you
something terrible had happened the week
before this a young man who was going to
come over and take over the directorship
of our Institute and transform us into
this modern technological lab to create
this new generation have been killed in
a motorcycle accident and we had already
hired staff and everything to work under
them one of them was a young man named
Joe kiviak Kenyon postdoctoral student
and he came into my office three or four
days later and said Lee would you take
over my postdoctoral supervision and I
said no you’re a lab guy I’m not a lab
guy I can’t teach you this stuff but
I’ve just found this site and if you’re
willing to learn to be a field guy I’ll
take you out there and let’s see what
this thing has could it is bugging me so
on the 15th of August Joe myself I dog
cow and my nine-year-old son Matthew we
went back to this site to see what it
had to offer and we walked up that
little lime track way through the fence
got to the edge of this pit and I was
telling them the story of that how I
discovered the site and we got to the
edge and I said okay go find fossils if
you find anything call me I’ll identify
it let’s see what this place has to
offer
and with that Matthew and Tao
are gone off the site into the high
grass I think we’re going to chase
giraffe or something and I’ll see them
at lunch time and I was standing next to
Jobe saying you know I think they left
this alone because they probably did
what I did they found the site first and
then as they started drilling these
holes for the dynamite the foreman
probably walked up the hill found all
these easy-to-get caves and they had
then gone and destroyed every one of
those 46 caves and as I said that
Matthew said dad I found fossil and I
almost didn’t go look because I knew
what he had found he’d found an antelope
fossil because that’s all we bloody will
ever find for every single early hominid
we find we find about 250,000 and tulo
fossils but he’s my nine-year-old son
and just like all you have to encourage
fossil hunting so I started walking
towards him in five meters away from him
I saw this and I knew that both his and
my life were going to change forever and
instead of me telling you this story let
me actually let an expert tell you
actually what happened I’m Matthew
Berger and 12 years old and this is the
lightning structure you I found one the
coolest things in the world what
happened was my dad had found the site
two weeks before and he had said that he
had found some antelope fossils at it so
he wanted to take me out to see if I
could find anything so two weeks later
we came out with myself my dog Tao and
his colleague job Kitty and we came to
the site and he said go look for fossils
so I ran off down a path trying to
trying to catch my dog Tao and Anna and
as I was running I tripped over log in
the middle of the path and as I was
tripping I saw a fossil sticking out of
rock right next to this tree and when I
got up to the Sall the dirt off myself I
picked up the rock and there was the
clavicle of a hominid sticking up but at
first I didn’t know
the clavicle I thought was a antelope
fossil so I called my dad of and about
five meters away he started swearing and
I was like what did I do and he’s like
nothing nothing you found a hominid and
I was pretty shocked I wasn’t as shocked
as I would be when it actually got
released because I’d never knew it was
gonna be that big I just thought it was
going to be just another fossil find
what was sticking out of the edge of
that rock was this remarkable bone and
how I knew it was a clavicle from five
meters away although I doubt the
veracity of the cursing that Matthew
mentioned is that very few animals have
clavicles in Africa bats have them this
was too big because bats fly moles have
them because they dig this was too big
and primates had them and amongst
primates the only one with an S shaped
or sigmoid shaped clavicle are hominids
and I happen to be one of the only
world’s experts on hominid clavicles I
did my PhD on them all sort of six or
seven partial fragments that have ever
been discovered I did my PhD on the
clavicle the proximal humerus and the
scapula of which there had never been a
complete one of any of those bones ever
found in fact there never been for two
of those bones anything but fragments
and I was looking at one and I did what
anyone would do I didn’t believe it I
looked at it and as I turned it over to
get it in better light thinking this has
got to be something else sitting on the
back was sticking out the jaw and canine
of a hominid as well as other bones
indicating the upper part of a skeleton
was sitting in that tiny block remember
how rare I told you these things were
there maybe 3,000 or so they’ve ever
been discovered the vast majority of
hominid fossils we discover isolated
teeth something in excess of 90% for
almost every bone below
the neck except for maybe a couple
finger bones and some of the denser
bones we have never found a complete
bone in any early hominid everything’s
fragmentary for really rare things those
things like mandibles and skulls that
bless the pages of National Geographic
occasionally there are literally only a
few dozen that have ever been found
anywhere in Africa and when you get to
the truly rare things what we
paleoanthropologists generously call
partial skeletons and that means any
single piece of the cranial remains
teeth or head associated with any single
piece of the body of one individual
there had at that time been about seven
or so found of which probably about four
or five you would know the names of Lucy
Littlefoot Turkana boy – kike child then
they start getting really scrappy after
that and I was probably holding one and
I was stunned because what are the odds
that the jaw and a clavicle in these
upper limb elements I could see sticking
out were not one individual I actually
called the South African heritage
Resource Agency because of course
there’s cellphone coverage at the site
and got permission to take that rock out
but now of course we could not touch the
site it comes under an entirely
different permitting structure and
that’s frustrating I take that rock back
and we begin preparing it out and within
a couple of days we realize that yes
indeed there was a partial skeleton
inside of that rock there was a jaw
coming out of a child the m3 was not
erupted but the m2 was there were these
upper limb bones and the growth centers
were not fused as would befit a teenage
child and it was in clear association
even from the first minute and there was
much rejoicing at our Institute on
September 3rd I was told that I would
receive the permit and back out we went
to the site on September 4th everybody
who was a paleoanthropologist a physical
anthropologist and archaeologist
biological anthropologist or who like
dogs went back out to that site from
vets 14 of us professionals
because we don’t find these things as I
told you and everyone in our group I
think was thinking if a nine-year-old
can do it in a minute and a half we got
back out to the site early in the
morning and three and a half hours later
we had not found a single piece that you
could identify as an early hominid in
this tiny little hole with that little
block coming from right back there we
couldn’t even connect the dots and we
were devastated we couldn’t find a
single thing that you would positively
identify as a probable early human and
like all good South Africans do in
moments of tragedy we broke 40 and
everyone went over and sat just to the
left of this picture and I walked back
to this pit a pit that we had all been
in and out of trying to fit that block
back in and exploring countless times
and I was standing there trying to
visualize that moment maybe a hundred
years ago a blast just gone off the
miners go down they start throwing rocks
at how would a rocket from here to there
and I began to have that ugly feeling
that maybe that rock hadn’t come from
here maybe it come from one of those
other 46 caves they’ve been destroyed
and we would never know its context and
I was trying to visualize those miners
and see them and as I did the Sun had
got up just enough to light the back of
this wall and I saw sticking out of the
wall the proximal humerus of a hominid
two and a half centimeters out of the
rock remember I’m one of the world’s
experts on them I know what they look
like I didn’t say anything though I
climbed down into the hole as I got
within about a metre and a half of it I
realized to my astonishment that
attached to the humerus was a scapula
remember I did my PhD on them
and I knew that I had found the skeleton
mandible clavicle proximal humerus
scapula it’s got to be this child I
still didn’t say anything now I put my
hand on the rock and two hominid teeth
fell out of the dirt on the surface into
my hand and then I said something and
everyone came down in and we were
astonished and I said be careful these
things are falling out of the wall and
as I said that an archaeologist reached
down to lift a rock and I said stop
because sticking out of the back of it
was the proximal femur the thigh bone of
that juvenile hominid I couldn’t believe
it it would be something that never
crossed my mind I promise you yet it
should have when I was holding those two
worn teeth that this was not that
child’s skeleton this was a second
skeleton because never in history had
two skeletons been found together in an
early hominid deposit it would take
another month and a half and us taking
that block out this this large block
right here out and beginning to prepare
it and within minutes I then knew that
we indeed did have a second skeleton
because it was an adult
it’s a PUC’s refused we would later find
the little child right above there just
a few centimeters above what turn out to
be a female skeleton this little
remarkable hole in the ground had
delivered to us this extraordinary
wealth in the last three years like no
other sight in history not only has it
yielded the two most complete early
hominid skeletons ever discovered
without excavating it’s also yielded
other individuals last April we
announced a new species of early hominid
from this site Australopithecus sediba
means fountain our wellspring in the
suti language and of course my
colleagues always forced me to show this
image because it was of course on the
cover of the Durham
science and for scientists that’s like
maybe a rock star being on the cover of
Rolling Stone magazine and so we’re very
proud of that three weeks ago we were
again on the cover of science announcing
new morphologies and interpretations and
things like this which I’ll talk about
in a moment we were talking about the
remarkable remarkable morphology
unexpected morphology of
Australopithecus sediba it is not what
we had predicted it has these long
ape-like arms here is the arm of a
chimpanzee this is the female’s arm and
by the way every one of those bones is
the only complete undamaged bone of its
kind ever found in the entirety of the
early hominid record the radius the ulna
and the humerus that is a human a pygmy
of approximately the same size you can
see how odd those arms are and when we
saw that we said it must be a climber
and we predicted what the hand would
look like
it must be long and curved with a
shortened thumb just like all the early
Australia but the scenes are and it was
not it was human life it’s the most
human-like hand that has ever been
discovered in the early hominid record
it has a long thumb like a human in fact
almost superhuman
it’s got shortened fingers and it lacks
curvature in those fingers it is more
advanced than the Homo habilis hand for
which handyman and the first ancient
member of the genus Homo was named which
just happens to be about 300,000 years
younger than this it should not be on
the end of that ape-like arm but there
it is if we’d found it separately we
wouldn’t have put those two things
together that hand is almost iconic this
is Archbishop Desmond Tutu for those of
you who don’t recognize holding that
remarkable thing and it is a clear
identifier of a unique
aspect of human morphology something
that is only really found in Homo
sapiens and Neanderthals and we presume
in Homo erectus although we’ve never
found a hand in those just three weeks
ago we began publishing more this is
what those skeletons look like in April
of last year and they may look pretty
scrappy to you but they both
individually even at that stage where
the most complete early hominid
skeletons ever found they were more
complete than Lucy this is what they
look like now they are works in progress
there is absolutely no reason to suspect
that we will not find these skeletons in
their entirety we have not explored this
planet we have not understood what we
were walking on we must take the
technology of the 21st century we must
take this lethargy of the idea that we
have found all the cool stuff and we
must prepare everyone in this world for
discovery we must teach the children
that there’s more out there because
there is
you
you
the beginnings of the discoveries of
human origins
we have probably almost doubled the
number of known skeletons from the
entirety of the early hominid record
this little remarkable hole in the
ground had delivered to us this
extraordinary wealth like no other site
in history
I stand here representing one of the
largest paleontological or
archaeological projects in history this
project is only three years old and yet
it involves more than 80 scientists from
around the world in fact every continent
except Antarctica and I’m looking for
someone down there to do some research
this discovery and I’m was in part
largely due to the organization you sit
in tonight and funny enough was due in
fact in part to what was perceived at
the time as a failed expedition in 1997
1998 1999 I actually took a National
Geographic grant to utilize a new
technology to utilize a technology that
been developed called handheld GPS that
we had just become aware of and it just
become a commercially available I bought
one of the most expensive GPS as you
could get that could bring you to the
remarkable accuracy of 15 meters on
planet Earth or so it said on the box I
also at that time with a very large
National Geographic grant bought
something that was absolutely remarkable
I bought digital satellite images from
NASA that they had just made available
they had the ability of getting you down
to 30 meter pixels on planet earth for
ten thousand US dollars a sheet
I bought two of them and with those in
hand I decided to go back out and
explore southern Africa and so I was
going to GPS coordinate the fossil sites
of southern Afghanistan I’d technology
and off I went and over a period of
three years I concentrated my
explorations around southern Africa but
in the end specifically around an area
called the Cradle of Humankind just
outside of Johannesburg now this area is
one of the most explored areas on planet
Earth for early human fossils it was the
first area explored in Africa in from
1935 onward luminaries like dart and
Broome and even Frank Peabody was out
there Philip Tobias Bob Wright everybody
in our field has explored this dolomitic
region and rightfully so it’s become one
of the richest sources of human ancestor
fossils and we knew it very well at the
time I began that exploration project we
knew of about a hundred cave sites and
about sixteen fossil-bearing sites in
the area and we pretty much thought we
had it figured out by the end of that
three-year period I had found four new
fossil sites and about 25 or 30 new cave
sites that no scientists had put a pin
on and I thought that was remarkable so
to my colleagues and so over the next
decade or so I began to dig with
colleagues some of those new sites and
we found remarkably little in those
sites the objects that were after I have
to remind you these early human ancestor
fossils are probably some of the rarest
sought after objects on planet Earth
I sit in a field that is probably
populated by more scientists than the
fossils they study I sit in a field that
for the vast majority of people who call
themselves paleoanthropologists or
physical anthropologists who work on
early humans they will go through their
entire careers and never find a single
piece of one of these in the wild so
it’s an extraordinary difficult field
and the perceived rarity of these things
makes even tiny fragments valuable I
found myself in December of 2007
as the last single human being on planet
earth to discover Google Earth and in
doing that I was staggered there I was
sitting at home over our summer vacation
in South Africa and I did what every
single one of you did when you found
Google Earth before that date remember
what you did you look at their own home
right to see if you’re lying naked by
the swimming pool I wasn’t and then the
second thing you do is you start looking
at places that are familiar to you and
somewhat where along that journey you
find that when you type in a longitude
and latitude or a GPS coordinate
it flies in in that really cool way that
Google Earth does and I had these very
expensive hardly explored numbers from
the late-1990s petition and I eagerly
typed the first one in and it zoomed
into nothing I typed the second one in
it was wrong and on and on I didn’t have
the caves mapped it didn’t take me long
to Google why because in the late 1990s
the United States government owned those
GPS satellites and they had put in
deliberate error so that they couldn’t
be used for military purposes and other
things and with my highly accurate 15
meter resolution combined with that
deliberate error my numbers were all
wrong fifty meters one hundred and fifty
two hundred and fifty meters off it was
a disaster but I could play move the
dots because on Google Earth they had a
five meter resolution in the Cradle of
Humankind area and I could move those
dots on to the cave sites I could see
the cave site I had intended to map and
so over January and into February I
spent my time moving all these dots on
to the right place and as I did that I
began to see patterns in distribution I
began to see lines
I saw areas where I thought the fossil
sites were in deliberate association
and then I began to see what I thought
were other caves if that’s a cave this
is a cave I knew their wording because
I’d explored this area
everybody’s explored this area but in
March of 2008 it’s so intrigued me I
took my laptop out and a 3G card so I
could get onto Google Earth and I
printed out a target area onto an a4
page with little dots map to put I
thought look like caves and I went as
far away from where I had spent the last
17 years working this side of GLaDOS
ville in the middle of this area because
I knew that area better than anyone I
knew there was nothing there I started
in the city limits of Krueger store and
on the first day out I found 21 new
fossil site by July I’d found over 600
previously unidentified cave sites and
40 previously unidentified fossil sites
literally we went from say 20 fossil
sites to 60 in a matter of a couple
months on the 1st of August
I dropped a colleague of mine Paul
Dirk’s off at a series of caves right in
the middle of the property that the site
of Gladys Vail is on right next to where
I’d spent the last 17 years to map that
cave
my dog tau and I drove down a road
that’s coming up in a valley that you’ll
see in just a moment into an area where
I knew I was not going to find anything
and the reason I knew I wasn’t going to
find anything is because I had found one
of those 4 fossil sites in this valley
in that very expensive National
Geographic expedition I had been there
before but I saw these little blips
those little clusters of trees being
marked and they looked like targets to
me and in particular that little cluster
of greenish dots you see there looked
like what cave should look like and so
tau and I stopped the car on that dirt
road right next to that red star 50
metres from the road and I immediately
saw a lime trackway what a lime trackway
is is little
tiny strip of cleared area I had been on
that road maybe 300 times in the last 17
years and I’d never seen that track and
when I saw it I knew I was about to make
a discovery because the miners who had
mine these limestone caves to get lime
to build Johannesburg in the late 19th
and early 20th century would build those
track ways leading up to fossil-bearing
cave sites and so tau and I walked up
that road we came to an old game fence
which you can see it running right in
here but the property is being expanded
and it was deteriorating and animals had
broken through in just the right place
so that we could slip through this game
fence and we walked into this and I was
staggered because I knew as soon as I
approached what you’re looking at right
there this cluster of trees that there
was a cave site there those trees grow
in the disturbed area of these denuded
trees white stink woods wild olives it’s
the signal marker when I walked into
that I was truly staggered in this next
slide don’t gasp yes I know it’s
exciting isn’t it there was a little
hole in the ground two and a half meters
wide two meters deep and that is highly
unusual that cluster of trees I saw was
probably about 30 meters long and about
25 meters wide that would be the extent
of the cave and the miners knew that and
when they found sites as they had found
this one they would put blasts in and
they had done that here using dynamite
they put three blasts in here and they
blew up a couple of dozen rocks onto the
surface and then they had left this site
I had almost never seen a cave that
miners had bothered to blast and leave
and they’d left this one I was on a
mapping expedition so I took some notes
in the very first rock I turned over had
an antelope humerus in it a huge bone of
an antelope sitting right on the surface
I was one kilometer
from where I’ve spent the last 17 years
digging a hill and a half away and I had
never seen this side no scientist had
been there no scientist had ever marked
it in when we scientists find a site
like this we leave tells we pile up
little rocks and you can tell we’ve been
there no one had been there
despite this area probably being outside
of the sterk Fenton Valley the most
explored area within the most explored
area on planet earth for early hominids
I studied with stun me but I was on a
exploration mission so I took accurate
GPS coordinates and this very bad photo
and I walked up the hill and found 46
previously unidentified caves 46 right
next to where I’d spent almost last two
decades that surprised me I went back to
the lab and something I didn’t tell you
something terrible had happened the week
before this a young man who was going to
come over and take over the directorship
of our Institute and transform us into
this modern technological lab to create
this new generation have been killed in
a motorcycle accident and we had already
hired staff and everything to work under
them one of them was a young man named
Joe kiviak Kenyon postdoctoral student
and he came into my office three or four
days later and said Lee would you take
over my postdoctoral supervision and I
said no you’re a lab guy I’m not a lab
guy I can’t teach you this stuff but
I’ve just found this site and if you’re
willing to learn to be a field guy I’ll
take you out there and let’s see what
this thing has could it is bugging me so
on the 15th of August Joe myself I dog
cow and my nine-year-old son Matthew we
went back to this site to see what it
had to offer and we walked up that
little lime track way through the fence
got to the edge of this pit and I was
telling them the story of that how I
discovered the site and we got to the
edge and I said okay go find fossils if
you find anything call me I’ll identify
it let’s see what this place has to
offer
and with that Matthew and Tao
are gone off the site into the high
grass I think we’re going to chase
giraffe or something and I’ll see them
at lunch time and I was standing next to
Jobe saying you know I think they left
this alone because they probably did
what I did they found the site first and
then as they started drilling these
holes for the dynamite the foreman
probably walked up the hill found all
these easy-to-get caves and they had
then gone and destroyed every one of
those 46 caves and as I said that
Matthew said dad I found fossil and I
almost didn’t go look because I knew
what he had found he’d found an antelope
fossil because that’s all we bloody will
ever find for every single early hominid
we find we find about 250,000 and tulo
fossils but he’s my nine-year-old son
and just like all you have to encourage
fossil hunting so I started walking
towards him in five meters away from him
I saw this and I knew that both his and
my life were going to change forever and
instead of me telling you this story let
me actually let an expert tell you
actually what happened I’m Matthew
Berger and 12 years old and this is the
lightning structure you I found one the
coolest things in the world what
happened was my dad had found the site
two weeks before and he had said that he
had found some antelope fossils at it so
he wanted to take me out to see if I
could find anything so two weeks later
we came out with myself my dog Tao and
his colleague job Kitty and we came to
the site and he said go look for fossils
so I ran off down a path trying to
trying to catch my dog Tao and Anna and
as I was running I tripped over log in
the middle of the path and as I was
tripping I saw a fossil sticking out of
rock right next to this tree and when I
got up to the Sall the dirt off myself I
picked up the rock and there was the
clavicle of a hominid sticking up but at
first I didn’t know
the clavicle I thought was a antelope
fossil so I called my dad of and about
five meters away he started swearing and
I was like what did I do and he’s like
nothing nothing you found a hominid and
I was pretty shocked I wasn’t as shocked
as I would be when it actually got
released because I’d never knew it was
gonna be that big I just thought it was
going to be just another fossil find
what was sticking out of the edge of
that rock was this remarkable bone and
how I knew it was a clavicle from five
meters away although I doubt the
veracity of the cursing that Matthew
mentioned is that very few animals have
clavicles in Africa bats have them this
was too big because bats fly moles have
them because they dig this was too big
and primates had them and amongst
primates the only one with an S shaped
or sigmoid shaped clavicle are hominids
and I happen to be one of the only
world’s experts on hominid clavicles I
did my PhD on them all sort of six or
seven partial fragments that have ever
been discovered I did my PhD on the
clavicle the proximal humerus and the
scapula of which there had never been a
complete one of any of those bones ever
found in fact there never been for two
of those bones anything but fragments
and I was looking at one and I did what
anyone would do I didn’t believe it I
looked at it and as I turned it over to
get it in better light thinking this has
got to be something else sitting on the
back was sticking out the jaw and canine
of a hominid as well as other bones
indicating the upper part of a skeleton
was sitting in that tiny block remember
how rare I told you these things were
there maybe 3,000 or so they’ve ever
been discovered the vast majority of
hominid fossils we discover isolated
teeth something in excess of 90% for
almost every bone below
the neck except for maybe a couple
finger bones and some of the denser
bones we have never found a complete
bone in any early hominid everything’s
fragmentary for really rare things those
things like mandibles and skulls that
bless the pages of National Geographic
occasionally there are literally only a
few dozen that have ever been found
anywhere in Africa and when you get to
the truly rare things what we
paleoanthropologists generously call
partial skeletons and that means any
single piece of the cranial remains
teeth or head associated with any single
piece of the body of one individual
there had at that time been about seven
or so found of which probably about four
or five you would know the names of Lucy
Littlefoot Turkana boy – kike child then
they start getting really scrappy after
that and I was probably holding one and
I was stunned because what are the odds
that the jaw and a clavicle in these
upper limb elements I could see sticking
out were not one individual I actually
called the South African heritage
Resource Agency because of course
there’s cellphone coverage at the site
and got permission to take that rock out
but now of course we could not touch the
site it comes under an entirely
different permitting structure and
that’s frustrating I take that rock back
and we begin preparing it out and within
a couple of days we realize that yes
indeed there was a partial skeleton
inside of that rock there was a jaw
coming out of a child the m3 was not
erupted but the m2 was there were these
upper limb bones and the growth centers
were not fused as would befit a teenage
child and it was in clear association
even from the first minute and there was
much rejoicing at our Institute on
September 3rd I was told that I would
receive the permit and back out we went
to the site on September 4th everybody
who was a paleoanthropologist a physical
anthropologist and archaeologist
biological anthropologist or who like
dogs went back out to that site from
vets 14 of us professionals
because we don’t find these things as I
told you and everyone in our group I
think was thinking if a nine-year-old
can do it in a minute and a half we got
back out to the site early in the
morning and three and a half hours later
we had not found a single piece that you
could identify as an early hominid in
this tiny little hole with that little
block coming from right back there we
couldn’t even connect the dots and we
were devastated we couldn’t find a
single thing that you would positively
identify as a probable early human and
like all good South Africans do in
moments of tragedy we broke 40 and
everyone went over and sat just to the
left of this picture and I walked back
to this pit a pit that we had all been
in and out of trying to fit that block
back in and exploring countless times
and I was standing there trying to
visualize that moment maybe a hundred
years ago a blast just gone off the
miners go down they start throwing rocks
at how would a rocket from here to there
and I began to have that ugly feeling
that maybe that rock hadn’t come from
here maybe it come from one of those
other 46 caves they’ve been destroyed
and we would never know its context and
I was trying to visualize those miners
and see them and as I did the Sun had
got up just enough to light the back of
this wall and I saw sticking out of the
wall the proximal humerus of a hominid
two and a half centimeters out of the
rock remember I’m one of the world’s
experts on them I know what they look
like I didn’t say anything though I
climbed down into the hole as I got
within about a metre and a half of it I
realized to my astonishment that
attached to the humerus was a scapula
remember I did my PhD on them
and I knew that I had found the skeleton
mandible clavicle proximal humerus
scapula it’s got to be this child I
still didn’t say anything now I put my
hand on the rock and two hominid teeth
fell out of the dirt on the surface into
my hand and then I said something and
everyone came down in and we were
astonished and I said be careful these
things are falling out of the wall and
as I said that an archaeologist reached
down to lift a rock and I said stop
because sticking out of the back of it
was the proximal femur the thigh bone of
that juvenile hominid I couldn’t believe
it it would be something that never
crossed my mind I promise you yet it
should have when I was holding those two
worn teeth that this was not that
child’s skeleton this was a second
skeleton because never in history had
two skeletons been found together in an
early hominid deposit it would take
another month and a half and us taking
that block out this this large block
right here out and beginning to prepare
it and within minutes I then knew that
we indeed did have a second skeleton
because it was an adult
it’s a PUC’s refused we would later find
the little child right above there just
a few centimeters above what turn out to
be a female skeleton this little
remarkable hole in the ground had
delivered to us this extraordinary
wealth in the last three years like no
other sight in history not only has it
yielded the two most complete early
hominid skeletons ever discovered
without excavating it’s also yielded
other individuals last April we
announced a new species of early hominid
from this site Australopithecus sediba
means fountain our wellspring in the
suti language and of course my
colleagues always forced me to show this
image because it was of course on the
cover of the Durham
science and for scientists that’s like
maybe a rock star being on the cover of
Rolling Stone magazine and so we’re very
proud of that three weeks ago we were
again on the cover of science announcing
new morphologies and interpretations and
things like this which I’ll talk about
in a moment we were talking about the
remarkable remarkable morphology
unexpected morphology of
Australopithecus sediba it is not what
we had predicted it has these long
ape-like arms here is the arm of a
chimpanzee this is the female’s arm and
by the way every one of those bones is
the only complete undamaged bone of its
kind ever found in the entirety of the
early hominid record the radius the ulna
and the humerus that is a human a pygmy
of approximately the same size you can
see how odd those arms are and when we
saw that we said it must be a climber
and we predicted what the hand would
look like
it must be long and curved with a
shortened thumb just like all the early
Australia but the scenes are and it was
not it was human life it’s the most
human-like hand that has ever been
discovered in the early hominid record
it has a long thumb like a human in fact
almost superhuman
it’s got shortened fingers and it lacks
curvature in those fingers it is more
advanced than the Homo habilis hand for
which handyman and the first ancient
member of the genus Homo was named which
just happens to be about 300,000 years
younger than this it should not be on
the end of that ape-like arm but there
it is if we’d found it separately we
wouldn’t have put those two things
together that hand is almost iconic this
is Archbishop Desmond Tutu for those of
you who don’t recognize holding that
remarkable thing and it is a clear
identifier of a unique
aspect of human morphology something
that is only really found in Homo
sapiens and Neanderthals and we presume
in Homo erectus although we’ve never
found a hand in those just three weeks
ago we began publishing more this is
what those skeletons look like in April
of last year and they may look pretty
scrappy to you but they both
individually even at that stage where
the most complete early hominid
skeletons ever found they were more
complete than Lucy this is what they
look like now they are works in progress
there is absolutely no reason to suspect
that we will not find these skeletons in
their entirety we have not explored this
planet we have not understood what we
were walking on we must take the
technology of the 21st century we must
take this lethargy of the idea that we
have found all the cool stuff and we
must prepare everyone in this world for
discovery we must teach the children
that there’s more out there because
there is
you
you
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