Editor’s note: Karina Wetherbee will be writing monthly book reviews for The Crestone Eagle.
Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins, by Lee Berger and John Hawks
By Karina Wetherbee.
Imagine making an earth-shattering discovery, one that upends the very understanding of the human ancestral story. Now, imagine that your discovery is located deep beneath the earth’s surface, where only the smallest, most agile, and bravest spelunkers can access. This is exactly the situation that famed paleoanthropologist Lee Berger found himself in in 2013, when his team of cavers returned with astounding images from their exploration of the Rising Star cave system beneath the rolling hills and grasslands northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa.
In this moment, the trajectory of Berger’s already blessed career took an unexpected turn, one that involved intimidating crawls and dark places. It is this 10-year journey that Berger recounts in his recent book, Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins. In 2013, skeletal remains of the new species, homo nalediI, and the cave in which they were unearthed, burst into the scientific arena as a truly astounding and impactful find.
Much of Berger’s fascinating book covers the ensuing years since 2013, as he was resigned to analyzing the most momentous discovery of his lifetime via a video feed from the surface. The extreme difficulty of access meant only a handful of properly skilled individuals had made the journey to the chamber, bringing out what they could and studying much of it in situ, so for years Berger could only imagine the experience, based on the fossils, videos, and data retrieved.
But human curiosity and professional inquisitiveness took over and Berger began to train and diet in order to be ready to fit into the most infamous section of the descent, The Chute, measuring less than 8 inches at its narrowest point. “The best cavers take almost 10 minutes to travel those 12 meters,” he writes. And of course, as all explorers know, the return route from a destination is often the most fraught with risk, as the body is tired and depleted, having run on the adrenaline of adventure and danger. But determination drove Berger forward. When doubt and trepidation rose in his mind, being able to see the promised trove, first-hand, was powerful motivation.
Not only is Berger’s book filled with impeccable science and the captivating account of the study of the skeletons found, including supporting graphs, charts, cave-system maps, and many color photographs, there is also a great deal of riveting narrative on the sensations of caving. Berger evokes a real sense of claustrophobia in his description of his eventual descent through the worst stretches of the cave system to the Dinaledi Chamber, where it all began for his decade of research and study.
Like a starving kid in a candy shop, Berger’s fresh eyes saw what had been overlooked and dismissed by others for so many years, and it is clear that this candy shop will keep revealing surprises for years to come. The book—and the companion Netflix documentary, Unknown: Cave of Bones—lays out new and dramatic findings and research and raises profound conceptual questions about the origins of culture in humans.
Karina Wetherbee, a Keystone, Colorado native, and part of the long-time Crestone Dercum family, has been a writer since 2004, having published a memoir and a novel.
In addition, she has been a professional photographer and watercolor artist for many years. She wrote regular book review columns for The Summit Daily and Vail Daily newspapers, and she is now looking forward to contributing book reviews to The Crestone Eagle each month.