Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story by Lee Berger & John Hawks

Author:Lee Berger & John Hawks [Berger, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781426218118
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2017-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

17

The next day, October 6, I sat at my kitchen table looking at the job advertisement I had typed out on my laptop. It was fairly straightforward, a basic description of the kind of people I would need and the time line for starting work. Working through the morning, I sketched out a plan of the kind of equipment I would need to mount the expedition, created a rough design of the communication systems, drafted a set of safety procedures, and, finally, filled out an application to SAHRA, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, requesting legal permission to do the work.

It had to be a big operation, with all the cavers, scientists, and support people I required, that was for sure. My rough count came up to around 50 people in all. They would have to be housed, fed, and transported. All this had to come together within a three-week period.

Why was I moving so fast? What bothered me most was that I could see from both Steven and Matthew’s photos that some of the bones were freshly damaged. As Steven and Rick had assured me again and again, they had been very careful and had not stepped on the material or dislodged any from the cave’s floor. That meant other cavers had likely been through that chamber, even though it was not on maps of the site. And then there was that survey marker on the back wall of the chamber. Someone had indeed been in there before, and I had no way of knowing who or when they would be back.

Now, after our trip of last night, perhaps 10 people knew about the existence of important fossils in the chamber. Soon there could be many more. Though I had warned everyone against it, casual tourism by someone just interested in seeing the material in the chamber, or someone who heard a rumor that it existed, could cause tremendous and irreparable damage. So I was not going to waste any time. I wanted to be in that chamber by November if I could get all the permits and permissions in place and find the right people to do the job.

I needed to get the landowner’s permission. Although the cavers knew who that was—a Mr. Leon Jacobs, who had given them permission over the years to cave in the system—they had lost his number. I called a friend, Mags Pillay, at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site Management Authority, informed him of the discovery, and asked for assistance in finding out the landowner’s number, the management authority keeping such records. He agreed to help, and offered assistance in fast-tracking permit applications from their side as well.

Now I had to find the right people. I reread my description of the requirements again: knowledgeable scientist, intrepid caver, tiny in stature. Should I just mail this to my colleagues and ask them to distribute it in the normal way? I guessed there probably weren’t more than a handful of people in the whole world who fit the description and were available on such short notice.

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