Lee Berger certainly chose the right career. His lecture was very inspiring.

Dear Lee - Given the incredible journey you have been on, given the proud moment of discover by your son . . . you have also revealed the rare but special trait of few modern men . . . and that is humility. Your talk is one of enrichment and enchantment. Thank You.

Lee Berger is not only an exceptionally nice person, but an incredible innovator. I hang on his every word and discovery that makes our ancient history so exciting. Thank you, so much, Lee! I love his book and have re-read it several times. It never gets old.

Dr Berger's excitement is infectious, stirs the imagination. I feel like he's an inspiring milestone in action, a powerful speaker, and a ground-breaking (no pun intended ha!) scientist of historic proportions.

I was so upset that I had to watch this video for school until I actually watched this. This is incredible. Amazing.

Sharing with the world when others would be overtly protective of their discovery is so refreshing. We find out in near real time things that may usually take years if not decades. This is how you get young people interested in your field of study. This is how you build and leave your legacy. Fabulous stuff 💜

I listen to this story over & over. It’s such an excellent tale, and I love how he tells the truth about success-perseverance, hard work & many hours of study produces results.

I thought he was rather funny, pitty the audience wasnt in a laughing mood. Must have been monday. Good show Mr Lee Berger! Thumbs!

I grew up in this area around the Magaliesberg, where all these sites are found. There are numerous caves and sinkholes and wonderful cliff sites in gorges like Tonquani, which are wonderful for rock-climbing. I have been fortunate enough to explore some of those caves and climb some of the climbing sites with my friends. The environment above-ground is also very beautiful with some incredible plant and animal life. There are many antelope and leopard here and many birds of prey. The Magaliesberg is the place where the Sable Antelope was first discovered and named to science. Close-by are some of the richest platinum mines in the world and the richest and deepest gold mines (up to 4km deep) ever discovered. About 60% of all the world's gold ever mined was found in these South African mines. The Sterkfontein Caves are one of many incredible sites that scientists are still exploring. There is a lot of ancient and modern history in this area. There are fossil hominids, bushmen paintings, ancient village sites and more modern historical sites. The Magaliesberg is also infamous for being the area where the AmaZulu and many Sotho tribes massacred each other in the Difecane, which led to the death of between 1.5 - 2 million people (it was a true genocide) in the late 1800's. The Boers fought the British in this area during the Anglo-Boer Wars and there was a lot of other interesting history that occurred here. Wits University, my alma mater, has done considerable research in this area, particularly but not exclusively, done by the palaeontology department. This was a wonderful lecture and I hope that people understand that South Africans are more than just the Apartheid history we get labelled with. There were many great discoveries, inventions and scientific studies done by South Africans, and much of the history of the world is attributable to what occurred on our shores. During the battle of Spioenkop in the Anglo-Boer war, Gandhi (a stretcher bearer at the time), Winston Churchill (a young British officer) and Generla Louis Botha (the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa) were present and all went on to make considerable contributions to the history of the world. For the record the Boers won that Battle.

Brilliant!!! Besides the fascinating lecture and engaging story, the closing speech are words to live by. I am inspired.

I lived close to these areas and never went near those caves ...these researchers are brave

Exploration is never dead! I love his message and his determination to not destroy while exploring.

Actually Spiffing talk. I was told to watch by Bio teacher and found it extremely interesting. 5/5 would recommend it. Five stars review.

So much better than a TED talk. Awe-inspiring and humbling.

On Lee's closing comment: I climbed my 411th mountain with prominence yesterday, 13006' Pennsylvania Mountain. I saw an alpine flower I've never seen before, and I have been exploring tundra at least once a week for the last month.

A great man, imo, and a great scientist , speaker, professor, and leader.

Incredible talk 👏 I would have loved joining that adventure

It is good to know that we do not know it all, that a question is held over everything, and answers are not assumed, and our arrogance dies not get in the way of discovery.

Dr. Berger is the most inspirational scientist I have ever heard. Wow. I can't wait to see the new work.

I remember first learning about australopithecus, homo habilus, and homo erectus when I was in 7th grade social studies class. It absolutely fascinated me then, and still does, almost 50 years later.

Absolutely amazing. I'm truly humbled by these things. I'm not sure i completely understand our family tree but i'm learning. Wonderful lecture.

I read his book and he is an amazing story teller and a scientist.

Astounding, captivating and listening to him was like seeing a movie. I wish I was part of this historic find. God bless you. The motivational speech in the end is so beautiful

I have also long been fascinated with early evolution of humans. So many new things to learn!

Those years you thought were just passing by....were preparing you for just this eventuality. That is one of the important lessons. People need to know that too.

The audience is absolutely humorless. Interesting speech, interlaced with enough humor to keep me engaged.

Enjoyed this immensely, well done Dr Berger and team! 👏👏👏

What a great lecture. Simply enthralled right to the end

Thank goodness for the bravery, skill, fortitude, and tenacity of "amateurs" Steve Tucker and Pedro, and for their bringing their discovery to Lee Berger! 🏆 WELL DONE!!

Amazing, seems to inspire more questions than answers, in a good way. Bravo to the courage of the young explorers.

Outstanding! I am 71 but I am going on a diet. One never knows when an opportunity will present itself!

Amazing story, great inspirational speech and a good lesson to us all.

Thank you so much for this video what a great man what a great story and a great inspiration for kids and adults alike I've been on a find your hominid ancest the quest on KZfaq for a week now so yeah this was a gym thank you again sincerely yours,

Wonder if the mythical legends of elves and dwarves are based on those hominid people's?

An amazing story and even more amazing discovery, I wish I had been part of it. Speaking as an interested amateur this species brings up so many questions: -It's without doubt an ancient lineage but has lasted until comparatively recently while "more modern" hominids were coming and going They must have been doing something "right" to stick around so long in the face of what we would usually consider "more modern" competition. Assuming it's not an artifact of taphonomy how did an "isolated" population last so long? -Even I can see there's an extraordinary mosaic of "modern" and "ancient traits" Are they the "end point" of the "trunk" many lineages we know branched from or are they an example of a "alternate trajectory"? What does their mosaic of traits say about "our" development... either directly if close relatives or indirectly if an "alternate line"? -They have "tiny" brains that seem to be very well developed given the endocast evidence What are such creatures doing seemingly "burying their dead" for an extended period of time? Is a really big brain not needed for "higher" cognition? They certainly weren't dwaves. Does this mean "our" route to "higher cognition" was achieved by brute force while they achieved it by efficiency? -H. Floresiensis begs fewer questions Pretty much everything about it's unusual anatomy can be hand-waved by invoking "island dwarfism" in an Erectus-grade ancestor. For myself I don't have a problem with the idea of ancient hominids rafting, indeed I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the more peculiar specimens in Dmanisi and Asia turned out to be descendants of some Australopith that left Africa... wild speculation, I know! ...just a small selection of questions off the top of my head.

Prof Lee., You are an incredible man of Worth! Thank you for all your credibility and energy to bring all this to Fruition! Jenny from Johannesburg. South Africa 🦒🐘🦛🦓🇿🇦

Would love the names of those first young caver-scientists who descended through and into those claustrophobic spaces in order to do such marvelous science.

What a truly inspiring man! If this is the direction my son is going, I’m sending him to Wits!❤️

Awesome speaker! I look forward to seeing more of your exploits. oh how I wish I had gone with my early love of archeology and ancient history and anthropology.

He doesn't mention the two or three hour doc PBS & NatGeo produced together, titled. "The Dawn of Humanity". It's excellent & thorough. His FOUR-talks on Sediba, produced AFTER THE DISCOVERY by NatGeo, are also FANTASTIC. Prof John Hawks, his co-collaborator on both finds, is even more engaging & very funny. He has dozens of talks and lectures on PBS, KZfaq, and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prof Hawks gets around the globe more and is in BBC doc productions. He has a very active blog. His KZfaq channel is more of an instruction on the characteristics of skulls found over the last 100-years. Sorry to go on but Prof. Hawks is known an expert on Neandertals and population genetics.

INCREDIBLE STORY! Saw the finds live at the Perot museum in Dallas.

Berger is anthropology's Fosbury. We all benefit from such original people. All hale!!

This is one of the most exciting talks I’ve ever seen. I was glued to the screen. That is living as life is meant to be lived!

I have nothing to say. everything about this series of discoveries is personal ( “Dad, I found a fossil”), and timely ( google maps, facebook, unpaid girl scientists, university motorcycles, etc…) The expanding circle of lessons radiating out from these discoveries can be credited to one man- Dr Lee Berger. it’s only the beginning.

How wonderful, that exactly those people found and are exploring this site, who are sharing their knowledge about their findings with the world. Also, remaining open for the unknown, and thinking outside the box for further discoveries, that might change everything and proove the established science wrong, is what real scientists do. Too bad most science fields nowadays have turned away from new discoveries, and are solely working on clearing their field from evidence that might tackle the established teachings. I am convinced that modern humans have evolved from several different human species and that there actually are several differring histories, which finally resulted in what we now name human races.

Mr. Lee beeger is a great person, his contribution is no doubt too much,

I remember the news story told of the call to recruit the caver sciencist for this cave . The fact they were skinny women just thrilled me...congrats to you & your family for the find...

An inspirational speaker and educator.

Africa is the cradle of life so just understanding that narrows the search down to one continent, still a huge region to be able to find fossils of other humanoid species. So Good job, we need to know the whole history of everything that walked on this plane of existence and nothing less then that. I applaud all who delve into this adventurous field wether successful or not, every bit helps no matter.

Applauded alone at the conclusion... well done !!

I find hard to believe that Homo Naledi went into the caves without some kind of light source.

Exactly the kind of human story I loved ! Wow, bravo 🤘👨‍🏫👍

What the heck were ancient hominids doing in such a difficult cavern to reach? How did they get there?

Thanks for an excellent talk

Please thank that son of yours for finding that rock that revealed the skull of Naledi. And you for training him.

Stunning discovery. I am near tears.

Congratulations to this great team!

These discoveries would never happen if it was up to me....never going into a cave like that!

*Without a doubt one of the most **_fascinating_** lectures regarding the evolution of our species lineage, told by the man who made possible the discovery of Homo Naledi, Professor Lee Berger!* (And yet, there are individuals around us that thinks our planet is merely _Seven Thousand Years old_ . . . . 🙄)

These same discoveries may well be found in different places of the planet. Thank you for sharing these videos and your experience throughout.

Astonishing, captivating what a great story

Amazing discovery.

the greatest story in the history of modern times

Reading some of the comments remind me of reading comprehension tests where the questions were laid out in excruciating detail and yet people often had an incredibly hard time coming up with the correct answers.

Quelle aventure extraordinaire !

I want to know what is in the breccia! What is it?!?! Is it an older Naledi? I’m so excited!

Hats of to your resilience...you were a leaky boat in a stormy sea....but your faith in yourself carried you through.

Hard to believe that they could have carried the bodies to such a depth given the complexity. Even today, with lamps and all of our specialized equipment it is no piece of cake. Maybe at the time, the connecting tunnels were somewhat wider and easier to negotiate?

This guy is obviously focused on self-aggrandizement first and foremost, but what he'd researched and dicovered is a great contribution to finding out about our origins.

Here's a theory. Maybe this creature was nocturnal and spent the daytime hours hiding in the cave. With its ability for climbing, coupled with an ability to navigate in low light environments it was able to explore and navigate the depths of the cave. In summary, a creature spending a great deal of time in the cave, add to that climbing ability and being comfortable in dark environments due to their nocturnal nature. Suddenly finding individuals down there doesn't seem so unlikely. Add to this predentary pressure from cats or other humanoids that can pursue Naledi into the cave system. Then the remote depths of the cave become a natural refuge where predators couldn't or wouldn't follow. I'm not saying I believe this, but if outside-the-box thinking is invited, then give this some consideration?

We inhabit a fascinatingly beautiful planet that would produce such life!

The Perot Museum in Dallas hosted a presentation of some of these fossils. I had the opportunity to go see them. That was pre-covid. Now I get to watch this lecture. Life is good.

Was Homo Naledi an outcast or marginalized subspecies with larger brain hominids in the better lowlands and choice areas?

Inspiring!

Has the topography of the cave changed over time? Might it have been more accessible at the time the hominids were alive.

Amazing. This is amazing on so many levels.

This was what I wanted to do growing up, but life took me into a different direction. I find this so amazing. I hope new DNA techniques will reveal even more.

I agree - but to resolve this mystery, one must think outside the cave...

Fascinating story!

Apart from all intriguing questions about which we have not got the answers yet, I'd parallel this as 'the Dead Sea Scrolls' findings in the field of paleoantropology, and that's hillarious.

Great! Stuff! I thank God my parents took National Geographic. I was 9 yo and fascinated by what I saw. It ignited a curiosity in me that has never left. A curiosity for SO many things. I'm too old to cave now but WOW.

BEYOND BELIEF, AWESOME...

Very interesting on the discoveries… a lot of time was spent on about “me, my reputation, cover of magazines…” The ego and protective nature of academics and need to claim discoveries has held back the use of open-source knowledge and perspective for ages. At least this is a start toward a more shared use of resources.

This is an absolutely fucking awesome presentation. Has there been any study done to test genomic remnants of H. naledi in native SA people, as H. neanderthalensis has been shown as a genomic contributor to modern Europeans?

YES!!! ❤️‍🔥👁 The most important and beautiful part of this is how he understood that our own current ideas which serve us and might be essentially correct can also be our biggest hurdle to progress. If you want to see that idea writ large, take a look at the evolution of life. Our own brains tend to go into niches. And for the same reason an organism is invisibly transformed by the process over time. It’s always invisible to the evolving organism until ironically we get to the inner invisible species of the mental life. Full disclosure: I wrote the book “The Textbook of the Universe: the Genetic Ascent to God” 20 years ago about this exact thing. So I have sat here for 20 years watching humanity catch up to what I have been saying all along. I became less upset about this when I began to see that pattern too writ large in civilization and in the much older and larger universe. It has been waiting far longer, as have the sun and the Earth. With science we are catching up. But since I wrote the foundation in my first book, I have continued at a furious pace thinking and writing to the point where I launched myself far into the future-the viable one, anyway. And so I became aware at an unprecedented level and I see dangers now which humans need to be working on solutions to but they don’t even see the problem. They see some of the problems. But the real issue is vision itself-understanding at a higher level. That’s why we have science and the modern world. Thank you for this beautiful message and for all the work you have done. It’s of absolutely transcendent importance ❤️‍🔥🙏🏻

Freaking Amazing!!!!!!!!! Wow!!!! What an Awesome story!!!!

This is just around the corner from me, and have I never visited the caves. This makes me really want to.

What I want to know is how did they see all the way in that cave all those years ago?

Wonder why the heck those H. naledi dudes crawled down into such a scary random cave in the first place?

What I learned was scientist explorers should be trim and athletic. The others before them couldn't fit down there and figured there was nothing there.

I wonder who took the dead into the cave? The family? A shaman? A midwife?

Incredible, addictive and an amazing presentation. Wondering if bones are clean or do they have post-mortem tool marks though.

How did they maneuver through these cave systems to find that chamber without artificial light to show them where these small openings were?

I'm curious as to how and why the skeletons got so far into these caves. Was this how early hominids disposed of their dead? Were caves ossuaries, grave yards? I saw a video of the Hazda tribe in Africa. When asked what they think happens after someone dies they said when someone dies they put them in a cave and they go back to the sun.

This is all so mysterious. Some questions. 1) was the cave topography different back then, and these chambers were more accessible to the hominids? 2) if the topography has not changed, how is it that the hominids were able to climb so far down, which for us with ropes and lines and equipment is so difficult? 3) how could they have done this in pitch blackness? and why?

Awesome. Not 1 um or err just the pure facts. Magical presentation thank you.

An absolutely amazing lecture Dr. Thank you for sharing this. How in the.....did those "people" get into that cave.....and why? Such a wonderful mystery.

Fascinating lecture. Love the comments too, Thank you.

Watched all of it, I think I watched it before, no I watched a couple of documentaries of his discovery, great video, a must watch, gooo scientist, thank you very much scientist you truly advance our knowledge

I'm glad we have humans that get lost in their work, but lost in their work indeed.