For All Mankinds
"It doesn't work like that for any other species, but we like to think of ourselves as special."
A few weeks ago while researching another article, I was scouring Google news for the word "anthropology." As I was scrolling, I came across an article that had come out an hour earlier on the CBS News website. The story — titled Pre-human ancestor believed to have used fire as a tool, researchers say — appeared to detail some rather paradigm-shifting findings regarding the history of our human ancestors.
I was skeptical at first. I figured a story like this would've been all over social media platforms if there had in fact been a discovery of the magnitude suggested by the headline.
But as I read, it became increasingly clear that the findings of Lee Berger and his team had massive implications for our species. The accompanying video was even more so, with statements by Berger and his team that gave me chills as I listened to them speak.
Homo naledi, an ancient non-human hominid with an adult brain the size of a large orange, had apparently harnessed fire thousands of years before Homo sapiens. The Rising Star cave system that Berger and his team had been excavating for almost a decade had signs of fire throughout its tight and treacherous caverns.
According to Berger, the soot observed on the roof of these chambers and a vast amount of burnt animal bones suggested to him that Homo naledi had been using fire to cook food and navigate underground.
Previously, Berger had made the startling claim that the remains found in the Rising Star cave had been placed there intentionally as a ceremonial gesture akin to a funeral. This was suggestive of a species that was capable of symbolic thought, believed by many to be a social construction and indicative of culture.
This interpretation was, expectedly, criticized by many in the scientific community. The notion of a creature with such a small brain having the capacity for a complex understanding of ritualistic behavior goes against the dogma of human evolutionary theory itself.
The generally accepted point of view is that cognitive ability increases with brain size. This throws a massive wrench into that status quo and surely causes many in Berger's field to feel like the work they have done based on this presumption is being threatened.
Unfortunately for them, the reality is that now they may have no choice but to consider the implication of Berger's hypothesis as it relates to their life's work. The undeniable proof of fire in the Rising Star cave system may force humanity itself to rethink our place in history and how we have propped ourselves up on a pedestal, even to this day.
In early December, Berger gave a presentation on his findings of the evidence of fire in the Rising Star cave system at the Carnegie Science Foundation, titled The Future of Exploration in the Greatest Age of Exploration. He spoke about Homo naledi and dropped some hints that even more monumental findings are to come, and are currently going through the process of peer review.
He also alluded to these discoveries on his Twitter account.
During his presentation at Carnegie, he elaborated a bit further and gave an overall view of where humanity may be headed in the coming years based on his recent discoveries. He also provided some intriguing informed speculation during the Q&A portion of the event.
Berger: Anyone who has paid even the mildest attention to the study of whales, or the study of birds, or the study of cultures emerging or rituals…I don’t think should be surprised at all. I think what it is, is that we as a field were infected by the same arrogance our entire species has been. The arrogance that somehow we were picked out. That we are more special than all the animal kingdom, and we, therefore, have dominion over it. What I think this is beginning to show us is that we were neither first in [harnessing fire], neither is it as uncommon as we would like to think it is because it, therefore, means that we are less separated from them. I think they're doing what a complex creature would.
Interviewer: Just to follow up on that, you have this linear plot between brain size and evolution, shall we say. Then you showed the naledi and then the floresiensis sort of dropping off. Do you think we're going to find many more in the category that are not in this linear, humanistic viewpoint? Will we find more of these kinds of things?
Berger: I think the trajectory that is exploding our field right now means it's going to go in both directions. We'll find larger-brained ones [that are] older, we're going to find smaller-brained ones later…perhaps even horrifyingly much later in our system. You have to ask, if Homo naledi makes it into the large-brained hominin era — and it is in fact what it appears to be, something that descends from a very primitive hominid that's likely more than two million years old — why would it go extinct that suddenly?
I think it's really important for people to not think about the dates we present of a site as the beginning or the end of that [species]. I think it's too easy to do that, it's too easy to look at a date. When we say 230-330 [million years ago], that is for those few individuals in that locality that we've dated. It's not the beginning of that species, nor is it its terminus. That's not the way it works.
I think our field has been bad about explaining that. We've often let people assume, [evolutionary history says] bigger brain, extinction. Bigger brain, extinction. Bigger brain, extinction. It doesn't work like that for any other species, but we like to think of ourselves as special.
To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of Homo naledi figuring out fire before Homo sapiens is that both species were around at the same time. Our ancestors were not at the top of the food chain and were technologically less superior to another version of primate for thousands of years. We have always been taught that humans are the epitome of advanced cognition on this planet, and always have been.
That is potentially no longer the case.
As pervasive as our arrogance has been, this reality of human supremacy over all other beings on earth has not been shared by a specific group of people whose experiences have shown them otherwise. Countless Homo sapiens have claimed to come into contact with what can only be described as a highly advanced non-human intelligence.
These individuals report observing craft exhibiting impossible maneuvers in the sky, floating orbs that can cause debilitating health effects, and even ethereal beings violating their sovereignty through the act of abduction.
These experiencers will most likely have no problem accepting the findings of Berger and his team, as they are well aware of the possibility that a more advanced non-human presence may have existed beside our species on this planet for millennia.
I am talking, of course, about UFOs.
The head of the Pentagon's now-defunct UFO program AATIP, Luis Elizondo, presented quite a soliloquy on the subject of ancient human history when asked in an interview how the public would react if they knew what he did about the phenomenon.
So this guy I respect tremendously. We had a conversation. He said you know, Lue, mankind has been around for a little while, and most of the time mankind has been around we’ve been smack in the middle of the food chain. We ate a lot of things and a lot of things ate us, and that’s just the bottom line.
About 70,000 years ago, something fundamentally changed. Something changed, and our species was instantly catapulted to the very top of our planet as far as predatory animals.
Now, all of a sudden, we became the most feared. We were the most lethal and the most successful. In fact, most of the large species that existed on this planet went extinct because of us, because we started eating all of them.
There were a couple of species that did very, very well with our immediate ascension. We brought a couple of species with us, the dog as an example. That species benefitted greatly from mankind’s ascension as the alpha predator and wound up succeeding as well, doing very well off of that. That changed the entire global landscape of the planet almost overnight. Large animals went extinct because of us.
What if it turns out that there’s another species that’s even higher on that ladder than we are? Do we need the social institutions that we have today? Will we need the governmental and religious organizations that we have today if it turns out there is something else, or someone else, that is technologically more advanced? And perhaps, from an evolutionary perspective, more advanced? Have we been wasting our time all this time? Or are we doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing?
Does it turn out that mankind is, in fact, just another animal in the zoo? We thought of ourselves as the zookeeper before, but maybe we’re just another exhibit. What would that mean to us? When I say somber and sobering, I mean there’s going to come a point in this conversation where we are going to have to do a lot of reconciling with ourselves, whatever that means. From whatever philosophical view you have, this is going to impact every single one of us equally, yet differently, and I think that’s important.
Elizondo's comments here echo certain statements put forward by Lee Berger in his Carnegie presentation. These include the fact that humanity puts itself on a pedestal above every other creature on the planet, that we may not have been at the top of the food chain throughout history when it comes to cognition, and that technology has existed that remained outside our comprehension as a species -- and perhaps still does to this day.
It is also worth noting Berger's insistence that the public has a bad habit of mistaking the dating of an archaeological site as the time period in which that species existed. He wants people to understand that just because remains were found at a certain point in history, it doesn't mean that the species went extinct right after those specific individuals died.
Another fascinating finding about ancient hominins has also surfaced in recent days. This discovery shows that our ancestors had the cognitive capacity for seafaring half a million years ago, using evidence of sea levels in the Aegean Sea and comparing that data to fossil record dating.
Could hominins predating the very evolution of sapiens, sail? It's been suggested before. Now a new study supports the case that supposedly primitive hominins made short sea journeys around the Mediterranean Sea, and populated the Aegean Islands at least half a million years ago. That is well before the much-vaunted Homo sapiens was even a twinkle in the eye of natural selection.
The question of when humans, or their ancestors, gained the cognitive and technical ability to cross the seas has long been the subject of debate. For a while we thought that Sapiens was the only member of the Homo family to have the ability to sail the oceans, with modern humans first reaching Australia around 50,000 years ago. But that paradigm has been crumbling in recent years in the face of evidence suggesting that early hominins were much more advanced than previously thought and did in fact leave clues that they traveled to lands completely surrounded by water.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that we may have vastly underestimated the cognitive abilities of our ancient ancestors. This finding is especially interesting when it comes to certain historical aspects of the UFO phenomenon, as these discoveries are focused in the area around the Aegean Sea, specifically the Greek island of Crete.
As I expanded upon in a previous article, Crete was the main setting for the second book in Tom DeLonge's Sekret Machines trilogy. This fact may likely be even more important in the upcoming and final installment. One of the main plot points occurs around an archaeological excavation on the island where discoveries of ancient tablets with mysterious powers are a primary cause of conflict between the characters.
Morat, an assassin hired by an aerospace conglomerate called Maynard who has successfully reverse-engineered UFOs, is tasked with retrieving the tablet at any cost.
Fotinos, Crete
Morat could feel the presence of the ancient tablet on the other side of the altar screen with the archaeologist, though it wasn’t a pleasant sensation. It resonated on the edge of his consciousness like a high-frequency whistling or the deep rumble of a generator, the kind of sound you pick up less with your ears than with your bones. It was a distant, smoldering radiance and he felt sure it was trying to mute itself from him, like an animal breathing shallowly lest the hunter hear it . . .
It did not want him to find it.
Even there, submachine gun trained on the hapless Nicholas Tan making his futile last stand, the thought struck him as intriguing. The stone could not think, could not feel. Of course it couldn’t. But some ancient consciousness had imprinted itself into the rock and metal. Perhaps. It had a sense of purpose, of power, and wanted—if that was not too strong a word—to be used by the right people.
Not him. Not Sigorsky. Not Maynard and most definitely not whoever was feeding them, holding their leash. Not the swarm.
Interesting, he thought. And, for the tablet, disappointing.
Because Morat was going to take it, was going to hand it over to Maynard, was going to add it to their arsenal. What would happen after that, he couldn’t begin to guess but it would, he thought, be glorious and terrible. The kind of thing you needed to be on the right side of.
Granted, this book is written as fiction. But as Tom has stated adamantly, these books are based on the truth as told to him by his advisers, all of whom have impeccable military and intelligence credentials. If there is some sort of powerful ancient technology associated with these tablets or the island of Crete itself, it brings another level of intrigue to the fact that ancient hominin species were setting sail around this area so long ago.
It may cause one to wonder how our ancestors came to know the intricacies of sea travel and exactly when they acquired that knowledge. It also begs the question of what other cognitive capabilities they could have possessed that would be considered impossible by modern-day science.
And — if we give credence to Berger's declaration that the end dating of archaeological evidence is not equivalent to extinction — how do we know these species aren't still around to this day, hiding underground or even in plain sight?
How can we rule out the possibility of a breakaway, ancient, non-human hominin civilization when there is growing evidence to support our ancestors possessing cognitive abilities thought impossible just years ago?
Recently, Australian journalist Ross Coulthart's sources have told him the US Department of Defense is covering up just that.
The other side of this that is fascinating is I've been engaging with archaeologists and anthropologists who have talked to me about the implausibility of a lot of the modern explanations for some of the ancient buildings that exist on this planet, that do not fit within the known timeframes of human technology being developed.
Even some of the Egyptian pyramids could not possibly have been built within the timeframe that we've described because they were working with bronze axes, and you have almost laser beam accuracy in some of the buildings that were constructed.
Some of the people I've been talking to in the Pentagon told me that they think there is strong evidence to suggest that there was a previous civilization on this planet. One of the things that's been suggested to me is that there might have been a civilization that has shared this planet with us that has never left.
I don't know. As a journalist, I'm just listening and collating the information and assembling facts as I hear them.
These recent findings — that Homo naledi harnessed fire before humans and our ancestors set sail half a million years ago — appear to support the possibility of a more advanced ancient civilization predating the rise of our species, as suggested by Coulthart's sources.
It will be interesting to see the additional findings of Lee Berger's team in the coming years as they complete the peer review process. Berger's claim that the use of fire inside the Rising Star cave system by this non-human species is among the less important discoveries really gets the imagination going.
Another new development that may contribute to the upending of what we know about human evolution comes from a recent study on non-coding DNA. Referred to as "junk DNA" due to its unknown function up until the past few decades, scientists have recently discovered two human-specific genes that emerged after our split from the chimpanzee.
A stack of microproteins produced by non-coding regions of DNA was found to have evolved de novo, or not from pre-existing genes. These genes were basically created "from scratch," meaning they did not come from duplication events or other common, well-understood processes.
New genes typically arise through well-known mechanisms like duplication events, where our genetic machinery accidentally produces copies of pre-existing genes that can end up suiting new functions over time.
But the 155 microgenes pinpointed in this study seem to have appeared from scratch, in stretches of DNA that didn't previously contain the instructions that our bodies use to build molecules.
Since the proteins these new genes are thought to encode would be incredibly tiny, these DNA sequences are hard to find and difficult to study, and therefore are often overlooked in research.
"This project started back in 2017 because I was interested in novel gene evolution and figuring out how these genes originate," says evolutionary geneticist Nikolaos Vakirlis, from BSRC Flemming in Greece.
"It was put on ice for a few years, until another study got published that had some very interesting data, allowing us to get started on this work."
That other study, published in 2020 by a team of researchers at the University of California San Francisco, catalogued a stack of microproteins that are produced by non-coding regions once described as 'junk DNA'.
The team behind this new study subsequently created a genetic ancestral tree to compare those tiny sequences found in our genomes against those in 99 other vertebrate species, tracking the evolution of the genes over time.
Some of the new 'microgenes' identified in this new study can be tracked all the way back to the earliest days of mammals, while others are more recent additions. Two of the genes identified by the study seem to have emerged since the human-chimpanzee split, the researchers found.
With so much still unknown about non-coding DNA, and the recent discovery of novel human-specific genes within it, it seems reasonable to speculate that there may be findings in the future with the potential to turn our understanding of human evolution on its head.
One suggestion made by Elizondo, in the same interview quoted previously, could give us some insight into what to expect.
The host, Curt Jaimungal, asked him about physical signs that would show evidence of an advanced intelligent presence on our planet in ancient times. Curt was initially referring to megalithic constructs such as the pyramids or other potentially unknown structures on the moon, but Elizondo took the conversation down a different route when he suggested the most enduring method would be through our DNA.
What would last long enough for us to go back and say, “Wow, is this an indicator of alien life on this planet 100,000 years ago?” What would you have to achieve that, to accomplish that? It’s a lot harder than one might think. And then again, would you recognize it?
One might say well, DNA.
DNA is a perfect example if you wanted to do something that was enduring for humanity. That we could look back 100,000 years ago and say, “Yes, that was absolutely manipulated by an intelligent life form.”
Well, deoxyribonucleic acid may be one way to do it. You can put coding and sequencing in there that will perpetuate over time and yes, you’ll have some degradation over generations, but in essence, you could do something that way. And basically, it’s a biological marker, right?
So we have to be careful when we say we look for evidence because evidence isn’t just necessarily a spearhead found in the Big Horn Mountains from 11,000 tears ago. It’s not necessarily a pyramid sitting in the middle of the desert. It could be far more sophisticated than that. You said put it in orbit, right? Well, what if we put that, rather than orbit, we put it into the human body?
Considering the new report on de novo gene birth specific to the human species, one may wonder if Elizondo is speaking about the introduction of something that could be detected through this new method of sequencing microproteins.
The paper itself admits these novel sequences have been thrown out as anomalies in scientific studies. They also state it is "practically inevitable" that they will find more of these, and that some of these microproteins may have already assimilated into the human genome as a result of their useful cellular functions.
While many studies have addressed the conservation of human microproteins, their modes of origin, de novo or otherwise, have not been systematically investigated. Indeed, conservation is widely used as a coding/functional signature, hence, non-conserved, novel ORFs are excluded from most studies.
However, it is practically inevitable that novel genes will initially arise as ORFs coding for very small proteins (with additional tendencies stemming from genomic mutational biases. Given the fact that de novo gene birth seems to consistently result in short ORF sequences (at least initially), and that microproteins perform functions out of simple structures, it follows that human microproteins could have recently emerged de novo and already assumed selectively relevant cellular functions. Thus, the study of microproteins and the study of de novo emerged genes naturally intersect.
It is clear our knowledge of the human genome is lacking. But with recent technological advances, as demonstrated in this new paper, we could be on the verge of finding out some rather shocking things about how our species evolved.
If we interpret Elizondo's words as more of an informed speculation than a hypothetical thought experiment, it sure sounds like the understanding of our evolutionary history may need a slight revision to include some kind of intervening presence.
As humans, we are always looking for answers as to our purpose on this planet. This article is evidence of that, as I try to connect events in our gap-filled history to more recent scientific discoveries and individuals on the inside of the current government disclosure process. The questions we continue to ask will dictate the conversation regarding what it means to be human.
Are we really at the top of the food chain?
Have we been living alongside a more advanced non-human species, as historically demonstrated by Homo naledi?
Is there ancient knowledge or technology we are not privy to as a species?
Was our ancestor's DNA affected by a higher intelligence, directly or epigenetically through cultural guidance?
And, what would these answers mean for our future?
Between the discoveries of Lee Berger and his team, the uncovering of our ancestors having the cognitive capacity to brave the oceans, and the detection of human-specific novel genes that evolved from scratch, we certainly have much to look forward to as we continue to unravel the mystery that is the history of the Homo sapien.