One of the most remarkable archaeological finds of recent times was made in the fossil-rich area of the Gauteng Province, South Africa, known as the Cradle of Humankind. The find, first announced in November 2013, was made in a cave named Rising Star (Dinaledi in Sesotho, one of the local African languages) about 50 kms northwest of Johannesburg and about 16 kms from the Malapa cave where six skeletons of Australopithecus sediba were found in August 2008.
The fossils were found to have certain features in common with Homo sapiens and were thus announced to be a new species of the Homo genus, even possibly the very root of the Homo genus – and not Australopithecus. It was named Homo naledi (Star in Sesotho) after the cave in which the fossils were found. This declaration has been somewhat controversial, with some scientists believing instead that they are a branch of Homo erectus and not an entirely new species.
Two young cavers, Steven Tucker and Rick Hunter, while exploring the Dinaledi cave system initially found part of a jawbone and, after establishing that it was not the jawbone of an unlucky previous explorer, realised that they had found something noteworthy! While the opening areas of the cave have been well explored by local groups, the deeper aspects are extremely difficult to navigate, having two exceptionally narrow passageways (see Science’s diagram) and show no evidence of recent human visitation. The fossil site certainly was undisturbed. The first narrow passage is named Superman’s crawl because any wiry individual able to navigate it is only able to do so by keeping one arm firmly by their side and the other extended above their head, like Superman in flight! The second is approached by climbing the area known as Dragon’s back and in places is only 18 inches wide. It then drops steeply like an extremely narrow chute into the fossil site.

image: http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/09/new-human-species-discoveredclass
A small group from The Academy For Future Science, South Africa that went to view the display at Maropeng, the center established in Cradle of Humankind for the display of fossils and discoveries made in the area, was able to meet Rick Hunter (below) and get a firsthand description of their experience.

When Prof. Lee Berger of Wits University saw the photographs of what Tucker and Hunter had found, he sent out a call for ‘small’ scientists to explore the fossil site and obtained funding from National Geographic. Six brave women were selected to go into the fossil site and after painstaking work and exploration, Homo naledi was finally revealed to the world in September 2015 by the Rising Star expedition team.


Images: From National Geographic October 2015
While only a very small portion of this amazing time capsule with so many fossils found in the same area has been uncovered to date, the paleontological team has found intact skeletons (some 1,550 fossil elements in all) of every possible age, specifically they found the bones of infants, children, adults and an elderly individual believed to be female. There is a promise of more to come with at least one further major announcement expected soon.
The question of how H. naledi came to be in the depths of Dinaledi cave has led to an intriguing theory. There is no indication on their fossilised bones of large carnivore activity and only very few rodent and bird skeletons have been found on the site, thus being dragged into the cave and eaten by a carnivore has been eliminated as a possibility. There is also no indication that the bones were carried to the site and deposited by water activity such as flooding. Therefore, after some determination the scientific team realized that the fossils had not ended up there because of some catastrophe but rather through a meticulous operation of several burials over a period of time.This has led them to the conclusion that H. naledi demonstrated the unusual characteristic of burying their dead and showing the trait of human compassion or ritual comprehension by the placing of their dead in a special chamber.
According to Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, “This new South African evidence gives credence to what The Keys of Enoch® (Key 207, Key 212) explain as the ‘root races,’ a pre-human life form similar to Homo sapiens sapiens but with a much smaller brain. The very concept of another species is not new. We already know that the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and the Homo floresiensis lived on the earth, but this is the first evidence that an ancient species demonstrated the ritual of burying their dead.”
Research to date indicates that on average Homo naledi was approximately 4 ½ft or 1.5 metres tall and weighed about 90 pounds (45kg). More recent work (March 2014) on one of the skeletons has confirmed the great similarity between the hands and feet of this ‘new species’ and modern man. The shoulders are narrower and more ape-like, more suited to climbing, but the feet are much closer to ours, and although their feet are flatter than ours, H. naledi were clearly bipedal (see images below – H. naledi foot on the right, ours on the left). However, their hip and thighbone seem much more primitive. While the hands and wrist are more human-like, possibly suited to making and using tools, they are a little different, that is the last digits of the hands are more curved, typical of primates, and again, suited to climbing. Also, the thumbs are longer.



H. naledi’s brain is said to have been the size of an orange, about half the size of Homo erectus and its skull has about half the brain volume of a modern human skull. However, its teeth were smaller than average for any early Homo species, a trait usually associated with eating more calorie-rich foods like meat or starchy tubers, according to John Hawkes, a core scientist on the Rising Star Expedition team.

Image:Jawbone of H. naledi by Wits University
While they have many features remarkably similar to Homo sapiens, they also display features that appear to be even more primitive than Australopithecus. Although specific dating has not entirely been confirmed, it is believed that this species lived one to three million years ago. If it turns out that they lived one million years ago or less then they would have co-existed with other early species of the Homo genus.
The remarkable find of Homo naledi is thus adding to the growing realization that there was more diversity in the evolution of species than ever imagined before, and that ritual behaviour and compassion for life may have been a much earlier development than was previously thought. It appears that this trait may not have developed exclusively in Homo sapiens.
by Trish Roberson Davies – Academy For Future Science, South Africa
http://ewn.co.za/Features/Naledi
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/150910-homo-naledi-discovery-vin
http://www.polity.org.za/article/homo-naledi-determining-the-age-of-fossils-is-not-an-exact-science-2015-09-25
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/09/new-human-species-discovered
http://www.wits.ac.za/homonaledi
Photographs: Unless otherwise credited – by Peter Viljoen & Trish Roberson Davies taken at Maropeng

At any minute (starting 6th of March 2015) Jet Propulsion Lab scientists could be receiving a startling confirmation on vast water reserves on the dwarf planet Ceres as a result of the remote sensing technology onboard NASA’s Dawn Probe dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/. After some 3.1 billion miles, the spacecraft will answer questions on the nature of Ceres, particularly on the interior of a space object that may be 25% water. Dawn is already in orbit and making its spiral down to the surface of Ceres where it will take an investigative look at this icy world that some scientists believe could house primitive forms of extraterrestrial life under its surface. Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, and its neighbor, Vesta, the second largest object in the area, may also provide vital clues on the nature of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that was formed out of debris encircling Jupiter from an earlier time of our Solar system. Some claim the asteroids are the result of a planet that was destroyed in the distant past. Now these two sisters have been classified like Pluto, as dwarf planets.
The recent probes announcing the findings of massive water on the tiny Ceres and Mars in our Solar system bring us one step closer to an official announcements of finding exo-biological life forms in our own backyard. These findings come as no surprise to us, particularly to the thousands who were listening to us in our historic conversations on Televisa broadcasts worldwide on Mars with legendary journalist, Pedro Ferriz, and at several major auditoriums in Mexico City back in 1985. More recent updates have been made through journalist, Jaime Maussan in 2013 and 2014. Throughout the world, our lectures on “Life on Mars” for the last forty years have given factual clues and actual close-up pictures (Mariner-9) of massive water spillways and river systems that gave Mars its unusual network of canal-like features and oceanic water system that could have triggered Life millions of years ago. NASA can now start counting on its fingers the number of planets and dwarf plants that have potential for life in our Solar system.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is currently orbiting the ring system of Saturn. It has been on an extended mission since 2008 and amazingly continues to send back advanced data on Saturn, its moons and extensive ring system. The ring system has proved most amazing as it contains myriads of ringlets, moonlets composed of dust and icy rocks. It operates as an accretion disk with primordial matter, ice and micro debris. What is most interesting is that the rings are not as stable as they have appeared. Originally, the rings were observed by the Voyager mission when it passed by Saturn (1980-1981), but a comparison with the Cassini images has revealed great differences in almost all the rings, especially the F-ring, over the period of less than thirty years. Thus, in a relatively short period of time the vast changes in the rings have shown spectacular morphologies.1
The analysis of the changing rings has become one of the most important topics surrounding Saturn over the past 7 years. Not surprising, The Keys of Enoch® proposed that Saturn would be a sign of change, revealing how we, the human race, should take a closer look at our evolving Solar system. Specifically, Key 304:11- 12 tells us: “Our sun, by virtue of being a variable star, will be seen as having great limitations for future evolutions. This will be observable by visible exchange of the solar polarity fields and by the magnetic mapping of inner-solar magnetic lines rotating faster than the surface of the sun. These changes will also affect the rotation of Saturn. This will be seen as a periodic effect which will be noticed in the activity of Saturn’s rings. It will illustrate new changes that will take place throughout the entirety of the solar system.”2
It is fortunate that we have a 30-year comparison made by Voyager (1980-81) from colleagues at JPL and the team of Dr. Jim Warwick in Colorado. So why are the rings revolving and changing into strange patterns? Theories still abound. The answer to these deeper questions may lie in the nature of the outer planets and especially how the rings themselves seem to have rain affecting Saturn’s ionosphere.5 Saturn’s moon Rhea may also have rings around it, although this has not been confirmed. The rings of Saturn themselves although varying in width are incredibly thin, ranging from about 30 feet (10 meters) to several kilometers thick at most. The rings have slight pink, grey and brown colors due to the presence of dusty material mixed with the water ice.
In 1979, Alan Guth (now at MIT), proposed the concept of cosmic inflation. He believed that the initial energy of the universe would cause a runaway expansion. Until recently it has been theoretical although mathematically proven that the universe is inflating.
As many pathways of knowledge are now coming together, we wish to affirm a common basis for science, medicine and spirituality -and that common basis is a higher consciousness connected with what we call the “embodiment of Light” or the Light Body. We are an open-ended system, not limited in our ability to work only with the biochemical body and the psychochemical body, but capable of expanding those pathways into what we call the eka body of many plus and minus relativities, both in and beyond this physical form.
A new machine called “Hogan’s Holometer” presently being built at Fermilab will measure more precisely than any hitherto constructed the odd noise signals detected in previous searches for the gravitational waves (and their concomitant space-time ripples) that are theoretically emitted in the violent collisions between black holes and supernovas.The interesting thing about the noise emissions which precipitated the building of the Holometer is that according to Dr. Hogan, physicist directing its construction, the anomalous signals may indicate “microscopic convulsions of space-time”—i.e., at the quantum or micro-level. This possible quantum effect is not yet empirically proven, and remains theoretical until the new machine provides more data. However, because scientists were previously looking for a larger (macro) effect in the matter-energy continuum of a disturbance from a far-away cataclysmic stellar collapse, to have preliminary data point to its effect upon the sub-atomic particles must beg the question: how does the information (the ‘news’, as it were) of a distant stellar event show up in the subatomic particles if it is not ‘relayed’ through matter in space in a linear fashion? It could only do so if what happened at a distance (the disturbance) took place simultaneously within the tiny particles, meaning that the universe is holographic in nature.
Perseus, the brightest cluster of galaxies in the X-ray region, located some 250 million miles away has at its center a black hole. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered that surrounding the black hole is a ripple effect of waves of hot cluster gas. According to NASA, these ripples can create sound waves as they travel hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster’s central black hole.
There may be three times as many stars in the known universe as the number previously calculated, according to new research done at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Astronomers have until now used as a yardstick the number of brown dwarfs in our own Milky Way Galaxy to calculate the number of stars in all the other galaxies, but that yardstick may not be reliable.