No prisoners taken in the Naledi wars

Drew Forrest looks at the fierce academic controversies that have been ignited by South Africa's most recent hominin find

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It's hard to think of another scientific discovery that has caused so much ill-will. The geo picks were out almost as soon as the Homo naledi fossils were unearthed in the Cradle of Humankind's Rising Star cave system in 2013.

Remarkably young for a creature with a brain half the size of ours, the fossils have been dated to between 335 000 and 236000 years before present.

For University of California palaeoanthropologist Tim White the dates were irrelevant, however, as Naledi was merely a primitive, smaller version of the long-known hominin Homo erectus.

By creating a new branch of the Homo tree, Rising Star team leader Lee Berger another American and a long-standing theoretical foe was guilty of "artificial species inflation".

Leading the counter-charge was Berger's American collaborator, John Hawks, who argued that despite similarities, the two species were a poor fit.

Hawks accused senior palaeoanthropologists of "being accustomed to secretive practices" and White, by name, for clutching details of a fossil hominin to his breast for many years.

"These [researchers] might think people would trust their authoritative pronouncements about fossil remains because no one will ever see the data."

At stake was more than specific names. White was accusing Berger of prematurely thrusting flimsy claims into the public domain and using the media to supercharge them.

"Making sure you've got things right is ... of critical importance, particularly in a science in which there are so few specimens," he told The Guardian. "Rushing things, in particular to suit film-makers, is very dangerous."

In 2023, senior South African palaeoanthropologists Robyn Pickering and Dipuo Kgotleng doubled down on the theme.