Pygmies of South Africa

Dear readers of Strange Reality , after a long-term report on the discoveries of European Pygmy fossils , I propose to take you on a new cycle, which will take a world tour of Pygmy populations solidly supported by the scientific community, whether they are modern, ancestral or prehistoric.

     South Africa, the subject of this chapter, has a rich folklore concerning dwarf peoples, already evident in the research of cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans ( Les ​​bêtes humaines d’Afrique , Libraire Plon, 1980). The indigenous peoples of Zulu and Xhosa languages ​​have a very deep cultural relationship with the Tokloloshe, a small man bewitched by the sangomas (sorcerers) in order to serve as their slave and to frighten men. Could this Tokloloshe not be, on South African territory, the current avatar of a much older dwarf creature, the Uhlakanvana?

     This dwarf demon from Xhosan mythology is no friend to men either. Violent and amoral, he likes to play the most dastardly tricks on them. He lives in South African caves and seems capable of creating storms and resisting most conventional weapons due to the hardness of his skin.

     Zulu stories also tell of the presence of a dwarf people called the Abatwa. They are tiny humanoids who can walk under the grass. They find refuge in anthills and shoot poisoned arrows. They are the first tribe to rule the country, with benevolence and respect for the species, at a time when life was miniature. Then plants began to grow, animals to grow, and men arrived, developing like a virus the desire to dominate others, to subjugate them.

Remaining at their original size – as small as an insect – the Abatwa have kept the ants as allies; armed with their tiny arrows with devastating poison, they guard the sacred minerals, including diamonds, and now fight against the malevolent white man. Only flattery allows them to escape their vengeance.

     This thicket of legends about the dwarves of South Africa is based on a very substantial fossil record concerning hominids whose adult size does not exceed 1.50 m: Australopithecus prometheus , Homo gautengensis and Homo naledi .

Australopitrhecus prometheus by Ron Clarke (2007)

     In the collective imagination, australopithecines come from the “cradle of humanity” of East Africa, especially since the discovery in Ethiopia of the highly publicized Lucy (Yves Coppens, 1974). But there is another “cradle of humanity” just as rich in South Africa in the province of Gauteng, classified as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1999. On this large site, one cave in particular will catch our attention: Sterkfontein, the place where three types of small hominids have been discovered over the years.

The Sterkfontein site, home to many hominid fossil discoveries

Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart was the first scientist to conduct systematic research in the cave, leading him in 1925 to classify a young primate nicknamed “the Taung child” (” Australopithecus africanus : the man-ape of South Africa”, Nature , vol. 115, no. 2884, 1925, pp. 195–199). It was classified as Australopithecus africanus . However, a few years later, in another cave (Makapansgat) on this large site of the “cradle of humanity”, Raymond Dart discovered bone fragments different enough from the “child of Taung” to lead him to define a new species of Australopithecus: Australopithecus prometheus (“The Makapansgat proto-human  Australopithecus prometheus  “,  American Journal of Physical Anthropology , 6, pp. 259-283, 1943).

Raymond Dart in the presence of the “child of Taung” ( Australopithecus, africanus , 1925).

     It would be more than 60 years later, in 1994, that the paleontologist Ronald J. Clarke discovered fragments of a new Australopithecus specimen at Sterkfontein, which he named “Little Foot”, because of the very small size of its left foot, which was the first to be extracted from the fossil matrix (RJ Clarke and  PV Tobias , “Sterkfontein Member 2 foot bones of the oldest South African hominid”,  Science , vol. 269, no ^.  5223, 1995, pp. 521-524).

     “Little Foot” is certainly a striking nickname for this Australopithecus, but not as much as the one unearthed by the media to give it a little more luster: “Lucy’s cousin” ( Sciences et Avenir , 2015), in reference to the most famous hominid in the world (Yves Coppens, 1974). In any case, this Australopithecus can boast of being one of the best preserved specimens in the world. “Little Foot” was a woman of about 30 years old, measuring only 1m35 for an older dating than Lucy, or about 3.67 million years BP

Ronald J. Clarke and his protégé “Little Foot” (2007)

After its discovery (1994), followed by meticulous work to extract it from its calcite layer (2007), the specimen, 90% complete, was finally exhibited to the general public in 2017 at the University of Wiwatersand where Ronald J. Clarke served as a distinguished professor.

  I was greatly intrigued by this skeleton and its mediocre wingspan (1m35). I wanted to know more, to clarify this, and so I personally contacted its sponsor Ronald J. Clarke. Very quickly, I had a positive response from the researcher. After a very cordial exchange of messages, he did me the honor of sending me a thick documentation that allowed me to see more clearly the issues raised by this fossil.

These various quality scientific documentations (2019-2021) have highlighted the anatomical specificities of this species:

– “Little Foot” acquired a very ancient bipedalism: living in trees, he would have quite skillfully combined braching (movement on tree branches) and partial bipedalism.

– Its morphotype was halfway between the chimpanzee and man: the size was very similar to that of the chimpanzee; a brilliant study of its ear shows that it shared specificities specific to the chimpanzee and to man.

– This academic reading reveals a long path of suffering to endorse “Little Foot” as belonging to the species Australopithecus prometheus (Raymond Dart, 1943) and no longer to the species Australopithecus africanus (Raymond Dart, 1925). Thus, the old taxon Australopithecus africanus remains valid, thanks to these few fossils that are linked to it: “the child of Taung” (Raymond Tard, 1925), Mrs Ples (Robert Broom, 1947). This inertia in the scientific baptism of “Little Foot” would be due to a conflict of chapel between Ronald J. Clarke and his counterpart Lee R. Berger, who did not want to recognize the validity of “Little Foot” as Australopithecus prometheus (Berger, L. R., & Hawks, J. “Australopithecus prometheus is a nomen nudum”, American Journal of Physical Anthropology , 168, 383–387, 2019).

     To sum up the capital importance of this fossil, Ronald J. Clarke expressed himself thus to Le Figaro in 2007, thus demystifying a little more the already shaky theory of the East Side Story  : “Our ancestors were already standing upright when they lived in the trees. When they came down, they walked upright”. Ronald J. Clarke, very verbose and influential, will keep this shadow cast on the two other hominids that we will examine without further delay.

Homo gautengensis by Darren Curnoe (2010)

     Less ancient but just as decisive as Australopithecus prometheus , our next hominid, Homo gautengensis , in reference to Gauteng (the famous “cradle of humanity”), is the South African hominid whose adult size seems to be the smallest: it did not exceed 0.91 meters for a dating between 2 and 0.8 million years BP. The most complete fossil that will serve as a reference (= holotype) is the fragmentary skull StW53 (Alan R. Huges, 1976) discovered again in the very prolific cave of Sterkfontein in the heart of the “cradle of humanity”.

Skull StW53, holotype of Homo gautengensis (Alan R. Huges, 1976)

The attachment of this fragmentary skull to the species Homo gautengensis took some time: the Sterkfontein cave is so prolific in hominid skeletons of all kinds that the fossil artifact was first attached to Australopithecus africanus (Raymond Dart, 1925) or even to Homo habilis (Louis Leakey, 1964) . Then, most studies often attached it to the genus Homo , even specifying that it belonged to a new species, but remaining laconic. Finally, in 2010, the Australian anthropologist Darren Curnoe settled the debate in a landmark communication on the subject and named the subject Homo gautengensis (Darren Curnoe, “A review of early Homo in southern Africa focusing on cranial, mandibular and dental remains, with the description of a new species (Homo gautengensis sp. nov.)”, HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology, 61(3): 151-177, 2010).

     In this scientific communication, Darren Curnoe recalls the dating of all the bone material related to Homo gautengensis  : the specimen from Sterkfontain (= the holotype StW53) is dated to between 1.8 and 1.5 million years BP; that of the Gondolin cave to 1.8 million years BP; the juvenile specimens from Swartkrans are dated to between 1.0 and 0.6 million years ago.

     According to Darren Curnoe, Homo gautengensis had large teeth adapted for chewing plant material, a small brain, and was probably an ecological specialist, consuming more plant material than Homo erectus , Homo sapiens , and probably Homo habilis . It apparently produced and used stone tools and may even have produced fire, as there is evidence of burnt animal bones associated with fossilized remains of Homo gautengensis . Weighing about 50 kg, it walked on two feet when on the ground, but probably spent much of its time in trees, perhaps feeding, sleeping, and escaping predators. It probably lacked speech and language skills, as did Homo habilis .

     According to a personal communication with Ronald J. Clarke, some fossil specimens have been retrospectively assigned to the genus Homo gautengensis , including material exhumed by Robert Broom that had previously been wrongly assigned to Australopithecus africanus . Some researchers even seem inclined to think that the Homo habilis fossils from South Africa are all assignable to this new genus. Homo gautengensis is therefore on the rise, helped along by its sponsor Darren Curnoe who, like Ronald J. Clarke, has been making numerous media appearances to communicate about his protégé. Very comfortable with popularizing science, Darren Curnoe has even become a regular radio columnist on the ABC channel since 2015.

Darren Curnoe on media tour (Australian TVABC-1, 2014), and in the video segment How Did We Get There? (UNSW, 2015)

 Homo naledi by Lee Rogers Berger (2015)

     One fact will never cease to surprise us: the third researcher featured in this article, paleoanthropologist Lee Rogers Berger, who is behind the discovery of two hominids, Australopithecus sediba (2010) and Homo naledi (2015), has once again worked in the same paleontological toy box: the caves of Sterkfontain, Malapa and Rising Star in the South African “cradle of humanity”. Before classifying Australopithecus sediba , Lee Rogers Berger sharpened his reasoning in 1995 by updating the file of the “child of Taung” (Raymond Dart, 1925) which could have been killed by a bird of prey.

Then, in 2010, the scientist discovered Australopithecus sediba from a partial juvenile skeleton, the holotype MH1, almost as complete as Ronald J. Clarke’s “Little Foot”, and from the partial skeleton of an adult female, the paratype MH2, both discovered in the Malapa Cave, a natural death trap, the base of a long vertical shaft into which animals accidentally fell. Aged 1.98 million years, this australopithecus would have lived during the Early Pleistocene alongside Paranthropus robustus  and early representatives of the genus  Homo such as Homo gautengensis . Australopithecus sediba  could represent a late surviving population or a sister group of Australopithecus africanus  that had previously inhabited the region.

    Then, in the same “cradle of humanity” at the Rising Star site, Lee Rogers Berger discovered in 2013 several fossilized remains that would be attributed in a 2015 scientific publication to a new genus of hominids: Homo naledi (Lee Rogers Berger  et al. , ”  Homo naledi , a new species of the genus  Homo  found in the Dinaledi chamber, South Africa”],  eLife , September 10, 2015). Naledi  means “star” in the Sesotho language and refers to the name of the site, Rising Star.

      Initially estimated to be 1 to 2 million years BP based on its morphology, it was dated in 2017 to only 335,000 to 236,000 years ago according to a scientific communication by John Hawks. The difficulty of dating came in particular from the absence of fossil fauna near the Homo naledi specimens  and the geological specificities of the site, in particular the narrowness of the conduits leading to the chambers (John Hawks  et al. , “New fossil remains of Homo naledi from the Lesedi Chamber, South Africa”,  eLife , vol. 6, no ^.  e24232, 2017).

     Homo naledi  has features that bring it closer to the genus  Australopithecus , with in particular a height of 1.50 meters and an average weight of 45 kilos for a small cranial volume, but also to the first representatives of the genus  Homo , with which it shares other characteristics, in particular a very advanced bipedalism. Furthermore, the great scientist Yves Coppens compared this hominid to the australopithecines: “the Homo  in question is, of course, not a  Homo , with the small head that it has, but one more Australopithecus, just as there have been many different species of pigs, elephants, antelopes, depending on the variations in climate and ecological niches” (Hervé Morin, ”  Homo naledi , a discovery that leaves one perplexed”,  Le Monde , September 10, 2015).

According to the University of the Witwatersrand, National Geographic and the South African Department of Science, Homo naledi ‘s hands   suggest that it had the ability to wield tools, the phalanges of the fingers were quite curved, which is a characteristic shared with Australopithecines and the first representatives of the genus  Homo . Furthermore, it is almost indistinguishable from those of a modern man. Its feet and long legs suggest that it was adapted to very long walks. To summarize its very singular morphology: the lower body and hands evoke the genus  Homo  ; the upper body and the small brain recall the Australopithecines.

     Homo naledi has even seen a resurgence of interest in 2023, which is what initially prompted me to write this article on the South African case: Lee Rogers Berger believes that the very fragmentary remains of Leti, a juvenile Homo naledi , could have been buried by his fellows, dating the practice of funerary consciousness back to a time much older than that of Homo neanderthalensis  (Lee Rogers Berger et al ., “Immature Hominin Craniodental Remains From a New Locality in the Rising Star Cave System, South Africa,” PaleoAnthropology , 2021).

    To conclude our reflection, this story of the South African “cradle of humanity” has been summed up for thirty years as a mad race for hominid fossils punctuated by several conflicts of authority: Ronald J. Clarke underestimated the work of Darren Curnoe by thinking that certain fossils of Homo gautengensis were similar to Australopitecus africanus  ; Lee Rogers Berger tried to invalidate the connection of Ronald J. Clarke’s “Little Foot” to Australopithecus prometheus  ; Lee Rogers Berger irritated his colleagues Ronald J. Clarke and Darren Curnoe with his overly hasty publications.

Moreover, having become a media figure, featured on National Geographic and in the documentary Unknown: Cave of Bones ( 2023) on Netflix, the South African scientific community has not failed to accuse him of being a vulgar “fossil hunter”.

     This theoretical tension between scientists will even lead to more personal repercussions: Ronald J. Clarke will distance himself from Lee Rogers Berger and leave the University of Wiwatersand, leading him to end his career at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. The temptation of anthropogenesis takes hold of this abundance of scientific baptisms and the quarrels within the chapel follow one another without any real end. The race for the “missing link” and the rare state subsidies on the subject galvanize a feeling of belonging: to whom do these hominid fossils from Sterkfontein belong? To Ronald J. Clarke, Darren Curnoe or Lee Rogers Berger? To the scientific community of course, and the wait-and-see position of Yves Coppens on this issue seems ultimately full of wisdom, as the phylogenetic revisions have been legion between Australopithecus and Homo and call for caution.

     Despite these numerous scientific quarrels and conflicts of authority, the fossil discoveries around small-sized hominids make the South African file particularly dense and coherent. In this new race for hominid fossils, my scientific conscience obliges me to mention the case of a crude hoax around a supposed very small-sized hominid: the Homo alaouite discovered by Mohammed Zarouit in Morocco.

      The version of this amateur paleontologist is as follows: “That day, I had the chance to discover a small  primate skull , in a marble quarry, 16 km from Erfoud (Tafilalet desert). The emotion was immense, because I know that the terrain is no less than 360 million years old. So that is also the age of the skull! Buried in the sand, in this quarry where open-air marble extraction work had been suspended, the skull was alone. There were no traces of the post-cranial skeleton” (Mohammed Zarouit, “Preliminary study and first photographs of a small human-type skull found in Morocco”, Bipedia n°25, 2005).

 Enlightened by his discovery and after a summary anatomical description of the skull, the amateur paleontologist goes a little further with somewhat nationalistic accents: “I have the honor of giving this specimen the scientific name of Homo alaouite, in homage to the Alaouite dynasty, of which Tafilalet, the place of discovery, is the cradle” ( Bipedia , Id. ).

     Taking our seriousness back to this preliminary note and lending ourselves to a quick debunk , the skull of Homo Alaouite does not stand up to examination:

– the supposed antiquity of the skull dating back to 360 million years seems highly improbable: we have seen that the first Homo (sp ., habilis ) are dated at most to 2.8 million years; the first Australopithecines ( anamensis , afarensis ) are dated to 4.2 million years; the first placental mammals are dated to 90 million years. The dating of this skull is therefore simply fanciful.

baca juga : https://dallynfriends-adventure.com/2023/10/17/the-lma-the-enigma-of-the-mini-yeti/

– even if the dating must be questioned, another shadow darkens the picture: of the thousands of hominid fossils found, no fossil as old has had the jaw adhered to the rest of the skull. In addition, cranial sutures are non-existent on Homo alaouite .

– the fossil sites near Erfoud are very unfavourably known for their fakes of all kinds that the antique dealers in the area carefully make in order to palm them off on to somewhat naive amateur paleontologists.

     Dear readers of Strange Reality , after this first dive into South African lands, I will explore in the next article a new geographical area concerning the pygmy peoples, always navigating between science, anthropology, folklore, conflict of interests and demystification.

Christophe Kilian

A France Journalist who has interested in Cryptozoology