The famous opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey culminates with the image of a bone tossed into the sky by a murderous early hominin, cutting into a scene 4 million years later, as a floating satellite completes the bone’s trajectory.
The movie’s themes – evolution, technology, and our deep past, present and future – and its image of humans as “apes who made it to space” were recently reflected in a stunt featuring the first near-space flight by our ancient hominin relatives.
A collaboration between palaeoanthropologist Professor Lee Berger and billionaire Tim Nash, promoted by their respective organisations, National Geographic and Virgin Galactic, saw two fossils – a thumb and collarbone – carried almost 100 km above the Earth inside a carbon-fiber tube.
Ancestors on a rocket
Touted by Nash as a chance to highlight our early hominin relations’ “enterprising spirit”, the flight’s ancient cargo was also intended to symbolise technological evolution and discovery that eventually led to, in Berger’s words, “what many consider the greatest human accomplishment of all time—[going to] space.”
The bones belonging to Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi were found in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site and are curated by the University of the Witwatersrand. Sediba dates back to 2 million years ago, and may be ancestral to our own genus, Homo, to which naledi also belongs. The latter are, however, far more recent, contemporary with early Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago, though more primitive anatomically.
What they would have made of being blasted on a rocket 89 km (55 miles) high – almost to the Kármán line, the boundary of outer space – we cannot know. But for many researchers, specialists in understanding human origins, the flight represented other things: an exclusive PR event with no scientific value, questionable public benefit, and a distinct scent of hubris and entitlement.
Journey of risk
As only the eighth full mission for the current version of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane, one of the key factors making scientists cringe was the risk to irreplaceable fossils. While the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) defended issuing the permit for this voyage, there was real risk the bones’ extraterrestrial journey could have become permanent.
In 2014, a test version of the spaceplane suffered a fatal crash, and in general crewed space missions are significantly more prone to incidents than typical air transport. Despite claims made by the fossils’ curator at the University of the Witwatersrand, Dr Bernhard Zipfel, that the remains are well recorded through measurements and scans, these aren’t just any old bones, but priceless scientific and cultural objects.
H. naledi was discovered barely 10 years ago, and is only known from a single site, so every piece – even a thumb – is crucial. The collarbone is from the “type” fossil for Au. sediba: the first piece found and the official means by which the species was described in 2010.
The existence of previous documentation doesn’t mean destroyed fossils are acceptable losses, since it is impossible to know what future analyses may be developed. Precious specimens do sometimes get transported, but this is justified by scientific study and risk mitigation plans.
As paleoanthropologist Dr Kim Foecke (Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and George Mason University) noted, cosmic radiation at such altitude may have “irreversibly altered” the fossils.
Given all this, it is not surprising that professional bodies, including the Eastern Africa Association for Palaeoanthropology and Paleontology, Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, have expressed strong criticism of this event.
Throwback to the old days
The threat of loss or damage without clear scientific or public benefit aren’t the only problems. There’s a long history of “helicopter science” within human origins research in African contexts. For decades, foreign individuals and money focused on extractive practices, excluding local populations (despite utilising their labor and expertise) and failing to invest or engage in meaningful ways.
Things are improving now, and African-led projects and research centers are at the forefront of much work. But on Friday, two privileged white men seized the chance for a uniquely risky use of uniquely precious national (indeed, global) heritage, with primary benefit to their own projects and reputations.
This stunt is an unwelcome throwback to the old days.
The opaque, exclusive nature of the event – barely publicised beforehand, with no coherent public outreach, and done without knowledge of key project members – is especially disappointing given Berger’s earlier criticism of “gatekeeping” in paleoanthropology, particularly regarding access to fossils.
The permission given by SAHRA to fly them to space also stands in stark contrast to curatorial attitudes to local communities’ requests for access to fossils, such the recent case of the Taung skull, from a hominin only a little older than Au. sediba.
For many South African communities the field of human origins is still very foreign, linked to justifications for racism and colonial oppression. If the team truly intended to honor Africa’s “deep roots of science and innovation,” the proposed flight should have been discussed transparently from the outset, outlining what they wanted to do, why it mattered, how it would be done safely, and what would be learned.
Behind the curtain
Some members of the public struggle to accept human evolution, and perceptions that scientific analysis “disrespects” hominin ancestors will not have been helped by this latest treatment. Moreover, there’s some irony that all this took place during South Africa’s Heritage Month– a time of reflection, celebration and learning about heritage as means of unification.
Berger has a history of controversial professional choices, happy to hashtag himself with “#NeverStopExploring”, a man who “dares to do things others won’t do.” While he has undoubtedly contributed to the discipline, his habit of making major announcements with mass media coverage before full scientific assessment has been made has attracted searing criticism.
In the past year, this included startling assertions that Homo naledi buried their dead, used fire, and created artworks, all unprecedented in a hominin with a brain barely larger than a chimpanzee.
Those claims appeared in an online journal that does not follow a standard peer-review process (normal checking and verification by independent scientists takes place before publication) and gave the impression of being rushed out to coincide with the release of a Netflix documentary and accompanying book.
While this was purportedly to promote discussion and allow the public “behind the curtain” of scientific process, after a range of experts heavily criticised the quality of analysis and lack of evidence in the articles, instead dialogue shut down.
Space-flown fossil future
What will happen to the “space-flown” fossils? Unusual items traveling beyond Earth have a long history, from postage stamps brought to the Moon, to almost 200 dinosaur fossils carried on a Blue Origins test flight. Frequently regarded as undergoing a nebulous transformation in meaning, spaceflight certainly increases the monetary value of such objects.
Their sub-orbital trip may or may not have physically altered the sediba and naledi fossils, but their future treatment will undoubtedly be different because of it. Plans in the university’s press release for them to tour Africa and beyond lack detail, so it’s unclear what this would achieve beyond further transitory media attention, and potentially further risks to the fossils themselves.
Five decades ago, 2001 showcased a vision of human origins where technology was a means for domination as hominins fought over resources. We might today hope to be beyond hurling bones into the sky, recognising that “move fast and break things” is the wrong paradigm for working with all fossils, let alone the remains of our distant relatives.
This op-ed was written by Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng, Director, University of Johannesburg; Robyn Pickering, Co-director, Human Evolution Research Institute; Chris Stantis, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Utah; Justin Walsh, Professor of art history, archaeology, and space studies, Chapman University; Ad Astra Fellow in Space Habitats and Space Anthropology, University of Southern California; Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Honorary Fellow, University of Liverpool