tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/sesotho-22530/articlesSesotho – The Conversation2021-07-16T15:01:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1646502021-07-16T15:01:20Z2021-07-16T15:01:20ZThe Village Pope has passed: remembering Tsepo Tshola, Lesotho’s musical giant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411672/original/file-20210716-21-12rsg9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola performs at A Night With Legends Live in Johannesburg in 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/Slice Events</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“It’s the love of what I’m doing that’s kept me in the business,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4DMqgl2Wo">declared</a> singer and composer Tsepo Tshola, who <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-07-15-village-pope-tsepo-tshola-dies-of-covid-19-complications/">passed away</a> in Lesotho on July 15, aged 68. </p>
<p>Tshola had been in showbiz for over half a century: a career that stretched from Sesotho roots and popular music in the 1970s, through international tours and collaborations, to his most recent identity as an inspiring gospel singer, and the co-founder of independent music label Killer Joe.</p>
<p>What characterised his work was a passionate desire to tell it as he saw it, whether that was about the evils of racism in the early days of his career, or the dangers of addiction and, more recently, the need for self-reliance.</p>
<p>His righteous preaching earned him the soubriquet of The Village Pope, but was also a family legacy. </p>
<h2>The young artist</h2>
<p>Tshola was born on 15 August 1953 in Teyateyaneng in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Lesotho">Lesotho</a>, a small, mountainous and landlocked country surrounded by its larger neighbour, South Africa. His father was a preacher and church organiser and his mother a chorister. He first honed his rich baritone in a church choir.</p>
<p>As a teenager, he joined the pop band Lesotho Blue Diamonds. Later, he hooked up with Anti-Antiques, formed by guitarist “Captain” <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/frank-leepa-biography-brutal-history-personal-beefs-and-brilliant-music/">Frank Leepa</a>. The two first got talking in the streets, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReTH8l3IKE">recalled</a>: “It was God’s doing. I was looking for a match – so one of us had a match and the other had a cigarette: ‘Sure, man, let’s share.’” </p>
<p>They also shared opinions about music, and although Anti-Antiques already had a vocalist – and was definitely not earning enough to support two – Leepa’s dream of forming a super-group, and Tshola’s striking voice, ensured his membership.</p>
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<span class="caption">Detail from the album cover for Nothing Can Beat the Truth (2010)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCP Records/EMI</span></span>
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<p>Tshola goes on:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remember the first time I heard my voice on the radio. I was walking the streets and it was playing from a radio in a shop. I jumped for joy – and jumped straight into some water. I spent the time after that looking for cardboard to put into my shoes, because they had no soles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In that insecure, erratic environment of the nascent Lesotho modern music scene, Anti-Antiques morphed into a second incarnation of Leepa’s band Uhuru. A small but relatively successful 1979 tour of South Africa crashed and burned when “we were banned for singing <em>Africa Shall Unite</em>”. South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> rulers did not tolerate the song’s Pan African liberation politics. Leepa’s fourth band, <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/ode-sankomota">Sankomota</a>, was founded in the mid-1970s.</p>
<h2>Sankomoto</h2>
<p>Tshola sang with that incarnation of Sankomota for some time in Lesotho, but by the mid-1980s he was working more widely too. He eventually accepted an invitation from jazz trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a> to record the albums <em>Techno-Bush</em> and <em>Waiting for the Rain in Botswana</em>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sankomota had recorded their widely acclaimed self-titled <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-23-00-sankomota-ode-explores-a-cultural-treasure/https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-23-00-sankomota-ode-explores-a-cultural-treasure/">debut album</a> in Lesotho in 1983, with an international release the following year. The music combined <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sotho">Sesotho</a> musical roots with sharply contemporary musicianship and a stirring liberation message. </p>
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<p>When Tshola, by then in London, heard the cassette, he immediately rushed to persuade a London colleague, musician <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/julian-sebothane-bahula">Julian Bahula</a>, to help organise work for the band. After huge difficulties raising funds and arranging a route that didn’t pass through South Africa, where they were still banned, Sankomota made it to London. It became their base between 1985 and 1989.</p>
<p>Bahula organised a number of concerts and tours, many of them under the aegis of South Africa’s liberation movement, the African National Congress. “We were touring Europe and literally getting paid with bread and salami,” Tshola <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReTH8l3IKE">recalled</a>. “There is no way you can keep quiet when you feel the pain. We were driven by pain.” And, despite the hardships: “That contribution still makes me happy today.”</p>
<p>Tshola’s voice sounds out sweet and clear on Sankomota’s second album <em>Dreams Do Come True</em> (1987) and their third, <em>The Writing’s On The Wall</em> (1989).</p>
<p>He also continued to tour with others including Masekela and, like the trumpeter, went through reckless times shadowed by drug addiction. And like Masekela, he took that experience forward <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/07/15/god-music-and-overcoming-drugs-how-tsepo-tshola-built-a-solid-50-year-career">positively</a>, later counselling other musicians battling addiction.</p>
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<h2>The Village Pope</h2>
<p>Tshola had been composing since the mid-1980s. As change came and South Africa transitioned to democracy, he found plentiful work there: appearing, for example, on the 1983 Africa Against Aids project and the ANC’s 1994 elections album <em>Sekunjalo</em>.</p>
<p>Tshola’s own album as leader, <em>The Village Pope</em>, was released in 1993; a second album, <em>Lesedi</em>, appeared in 2001 and a third, <em>New Dawn</em>, in 2003. He worked with the late Zimbabwean singer Oliver Mtukudzi, with South African vocalists Brenda Fassie and PJ Powers and, later, with dance music producer Cassper Nyovest, with vocal star Thandiswa Mazwai and, as his interest in returning to his gospel roots grew stronger, with gospel star Rebecca Malope.</p>
<p>By the 20-teens, much of his time was being occupied by his label Killer Joe, co-founded with musician Joe Nina and lawyer Stanley Letsela. That too was a response to earlier bitter experiences. “I never found managers,” he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4DMqgl2Wo">said</a> in 2019, “they were just looters … Today, I manage myself.”</p>
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<p>Tshola also returned to his roots in other ways. He established a home in Johannesburg and another in Lesotho, where his adult sons, Kamogelo and Katlego, both singers, stayed. There, he collaborated with the Conservation Africa music project to archive Lesotho’s music legacy and mentor young musicians.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As news of Tshola’s death emerged, South Africa was staring bleakly at the results of nearly a week of unrest and disorder. Those mourning his death invoked his song <em>Stop the War</em>, as a message worth remembering.</p>
<p>But Tshola the social commentator had other words too. Asked by the South African Broadcasting Corporation on Freedom Day 2017 what freedom meant to him, he warned that living free was not a simple, self-evident thing: “Freedom needs discipline and focus. Unless you learn freedom, freedom will destroy you.” </p>
<p><em>Robala ka khotso</em> (rest in peace) to a truly golden voice and a very sharp thinker indeed.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Listen to a Tsepo Tshola playlist at the author’s blog over <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/rip-tshepo-tshola-1953-2021/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For over 50 years Tshola was loved by audiences around the world for his rich baritone voice, which he used to inspire and to speak political truths.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/849312017-09-30T07:09:31Z2017-09-30T07:09:31ZWhy translators and interpreters deserve a special day of recognition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188206/original/file-20170929-13542-1gp4j36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leaders use translators during the inauguration of President Mr João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço of Angola.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The United Nations marks <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/translationday/index.shtml">International Translation Day</a> every year to honour the work of language professionals. Politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo spoke to Dr Kim Wallmach about the day’s significance.</em></p>
<p><strong>What’s the idea behind celebrating the day and its history?</strong></p>
<p>September 30 has been marked as International Translation Day since 1991. It was chosen because it’s the feast day of the great <a href="http://www.fit-ift.org/international-translation-day/">Bible translator St Jerome</a>, the patron saint of translators.</p>
<p>There is even greater cause for celebration this year. In May, the United Nations unanimously <a href="http://undocs.org/en/A/RES/71/288">adopted a resolution</a> recognising the role of professional translation in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development. The theme this year is <a href="http://www.fit-ift.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ITD-Poster_2017Press_Release_EN_FINAL.pdf">“translation and diversity”</a>. </p>
<p><strong>How does translation differ from interpretation?</strong></p>
<p>Translation involves the transfer of meaning from one language to another in the written mode, whereas interpreting is either spoken or signed. Interpreting can be performed in any one of three modes: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>in the short consecutive mode, the speaker delivers a short statement, which the interpreter then interprets afterwards. </p></li>
<li><p>In the long consecutive mode, the speaker delivers a message for up to 15 minutes while the interpreter takes notes. Thereafter, the interpreter delivers the message in another language. </p></li>
<li><p>The third, and most complex mode is simultaneous interpreting, which is used in conference, parliamentary or legislature interpreting contexts.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is important to note here that neither translation nor interpreting involve the transfer of words, as languages are structured differently. Rather, they transfer meaning, which must be done as accurately as possible. This, while taking into account cultural and linguistic dissimilarities.</p>
<p>This explains why knowledge of two or more languages isn’t enough. A translator or interpreter must also know the subject matter and be trained in the necessary techniques.</p>
<p><strong>What are the daily, practical applications of translation?</strong></p>
<p>Work opportunities in translation in the South African languages, range from legal, technical and educational contexts, public health information and annual reports to the localisation of websites and mobile phone technology. Translation in the major European languages, Swahili, Arabic and Mandarin is also flourishing.</p>
<p>Increasingly, the fact that we live in a globalised, digital world affects the way in which interpreters and translators work. Translators use translation tools to produce more consistent translations faster and more efficiently. Interpreters can now also work remotely.</p>
<p>But, there is also a danger that the immediacy of technology, like <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a>, might cause us to be overconfident about the ability of technology to bridge all of our language barriers. </p>
<p>Google Translate can give us an immediate sense that we understand something about a text in another language. But research has shown research that its automated output is still <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/16073614.2012.750824?journalCode=rall20">considerably less professional</a> than that of a translation student. And, if one wishes to communicate a message effectively using plain language, there is still no replacement for a professional language service which integrates rigorous quality assurance and qualified staff.</p>
<p>The story of interpreting into local South African languages is even more amazing if one considers all that’s been achieved since democracy. As the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007722">Nuremberg Trials</a> after World War II marked the first use of simultaneous interpreting equipment, South Africa’s <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> could not have operated without the work of the first simultaneous interpreters ever to interpret into – and from – local languages. </p>
<p>These interpreters produced more than 28 000 hours or 3 551 days of simultaneous interpretation from April 1996 to October 1998. Of course, the courts, national government departments, parliament, provincial legislatures and local municipalities all cater for South African languages as well as for South African Sign Language.</p>
<p><strong>How well developed is translation in South Africa and what does future look like?</strong></p>
<p>Historically, translation has always played a pivotal role in South Africa – from the first Bible translations which codified the African languages and Afrikaans to the massive state-inspired increase in translation activity that permitted Afrikaans to take its place alongside English as an official language from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/afrikaans-becomes-official-language-union-south-africa">1925 onwards</a>. </p>
<p>Thereafter, all South Africa’s languages underwent a so-called “Shakespearean” phase – with the translation of canonical works going a long way towards establishing the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02564719608530150?journalCode=rjls20">literary status</a> of these languages. </p>
<p>Raising the status of the African languages to that of official languages in South Africa post-1994 led to an explosion of translation and interpreting work in the local and foreign languages. Opportunities for training and professional development also increased. Also, translation and interpreting play a key role in nation-building - acknowledging diversity while <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0907676X.2014.948893">promoting understanding</a>.</p>
<p>I have a rosier view of multilingualism in South Africa than language planners, who rightly point to the failure of legislation such as the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/35742_gon801_0.pdf">Use of Official Languages Act</a> to properly promote all the country’s languages.</p>
<p>The next major challenge is to bridge the digital divide. Companies competing globally have realised that English is not the catch-all language in the digital world. They need a multilingual digital communication strategy to reach multiple and diverse audiences. South Africa still has to realise this.</p>
<p>While banks have led the way in localising ATMs and ensuring that they employ multilingual frontline staff, other professions still need to make language an important part of the way in which they engage with their customers and with society.</p>
<p>But a lot of progress has been made in the digital sphere. Google, Microsoft Office and search engines like Firefox and Internet explorer are available in languages besides English. Cellphones can be accessed in these languages too. Keyboards, touch screen interfaces, spell-checkers and voice language inputs that work with local languages have also been designed and implemented in the past decade or so.</p>
<p>Of course, enormous linguistic challenges remain. But, in the words of Nelson Mandela himself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No matter what challenges lie ahead, none are as great as those we have already overcome.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Wallmach has previously received funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>Raising the status of the African languages to that of official languages in South Africa post-1994 led to an explosion of translation and interpreting work in local and foreign languages.Kim Wallmach, Director:Language Centre, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/811412017-07-30T07:51:32Z2017-07-30T07:51:32Z‘Dancing the Death Drill’: historical fiction that tells us about today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180176/original/file-20170728-1117-152dd5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mendi shown here in pre-war days in use as a mail ship.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the John Gribble Collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his keynote speech at the recent South African Sunday Times Literary Awards the novelist, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zanemvula-kizito-mda">Zakes Mda</a>, said that “we write historical fiction to take history to the level of what was it like to be in what happened”. Mda <a href="http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2017/06/27/the-illumination-of-truthfulness-zakes-mdas-sunday-times-literary-awards-keynote-address/">said</a> that as a historical novelist, he writes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>historical fiction to grapple with the present. Great historical fiction is more about the present than it is about the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a truism that has always informed, I suspect, most practitioners of historical fiction. It is one not different for Fred Khumalo in his latest novel, <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/dancing-death-drill/9781415209493">“Dancing the Death Drill”</a>. Although Khumalo says that he wrote the novel in order to remember black South African soldiers who played a role in World War 1, and those who perished in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ss-mendi">SS Mendi</a> ship, this is equally a novel about the present, and the ills that continue to bedevil the country.</p>
<p>While doing his early education, Khumalo’s protagonist tells his teacher, Madame Christine, that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to be a voyager, I want to travel on ships, I want to discover new places, engage in long conversations with strangers, play with ideas, experiment with things. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is obviously a mind of a precocious teenager; curious about the world and intent in finding out more about it. But this precocity is, inevitably, also naïve. The young Roelof de la Rey, who subsequently changes his name to Pitso Motaung (after he is deserted by his white Afrikaner father), is unfortunately still somewhat unaware that his desire to travel, and meet new people, can never be easily realised due to the sociopolitical landscape that he finds himself in in the early twentieth century. </p>
<p>As Pitso becomes an adult, he begins to realise that there are a lot of things that he has to deal with and that have to do with his identity and how people react to him because of it. He finds himself constantly having to confront the fact that contrary to his desires of only wanting to belong to the Sesotho-speaking tribe, that he is instead seen as a coloured person and consequently treated in this manner in colonial South Africa. </p>
<p>He in fact says to someone, as he does several times in the novel, that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>if you ever call me a coloured person or a mixed-race person, I shall make you swallow your faith, I am Pitso, the son of Motaung. The roaring cub of the Bataung people. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Dominant discourses of the day</h2>
<p>It however becomes increasingly clear to Pitso that to be in the world is to be marked and that people’s perceptions of you are dependent on the dominant discourses of the day. Thus against his will, and his constant desire to be regarded in his singularity, or as belonging to a group of his choice, he is forced to learn to accept the impossibility of this desire.</p>
<p>If Pitso’s ambitions, as stated earlier, are to travel and see the world, this does in fact happen. But as with most things in life, this happens by chance. Pitso and other young men hear from the South African government that they need to go and defend the British against Germany. They’re promised that if they do this, they will be well paid and that when they return to their country, the government will offer black people more freedoms than they currently enjoy. </p>
<p>It’s on this journey to France, in the SS Mendi troop ship, that Pitso and his countrymen encounter a crisis; the <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/first-world-war-home-front/what-we-already-know/sea/ssmendi/">sinking of the ship</a>, that was carrying 802 men of the South African Native Labour Corps, and the unimaginable suffering this brings. This was after colliding with a British merchant ship on 21 February 1917 - a total of 618 men drowned in the icy Atlantic.</p>
<p>It’s one of the tragic histories that is rarely spoken about in South Africa and the act of writing this novel, then, should be seen as an important archival project since it brings a repressed and difficult history into the spotlight.</p>
<h2>A time rife with complexity</h2>
<p>One of the strengths of Khumalo’s novel is that it shows the early twentieth century, similar to other times, as a time that was rife with complexity. This means that while a reader might expect the black soldiers in the novel to be portrayed as mere victims – without any agency – this is in fact not the case. </p>
<p>It is clear enough in the novel that Khumalo is deeply aware of time, and of the ways in which it shapes identity and one’s experience of the world. This does not however mean that those who were dispossessed did not also work to manipulate time in order to lessen their suffering. In the novel this is most clear when the ship starts sinking. </p>
<p>Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha starts preaching to his fellow soldiers that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers. Swazis, Pondos, Basutos, we die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s from this that they start dancing the death drill, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not crying, not panicking, not screaming at the approach of death. In Africa, even in the times of death, people celebrate. Death becomes a spectacular, moment of defiance, the defiance of death itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s with such understanding that the soldiers approach their unexpected catastrophe with grace. It’s reported that more than 600 black soldiers lost their lives when the ship sank. Pitso survives this tragedy and it’s his narrative that drives much of the plot after this event.</p>
<p>One of the obvious challenges of the times that we live in is that we are coming to the realisation that Hegel long <a href="https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/blogs/the-only-thing-we-learn-from-history-is-that-we-learn-nothing-from-history">taught us</a>, which is that “we learn from history that we do not learn from history”. </p>
<p>What then, with this in mind, might be the purpose of historical fiction? Perhaps it’s not so much that there’s something to “learn” from it. Perhaps the goal is a much more humble and subtle one which is to recognise and pay tribute to lives that came before us. </p>
<p>In doing so to connect the past with the present and to allow readers to recognise how much of their lives have changed and unavoidably, to pay attention to the many things, and ills, that remain the same. “Dancing the Death Drill” is a fine glimpse into this turbulent historical period in South Africa’s calendar and what is done with this narrative, as the cliché goes, is entirely up to the living.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manosa Nthunya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What might be the purpose of historical fiction? Perhaps to the humble and subtle to recognise and pay tribute to lives that came before us.Manosa Nthunya, PhD Candidate, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/504162015-11-25T12:33:43Z2015-11-25T12:33:43ZHomo naledi may be two million years old (give or take)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101607/original/image-20151111-9400-17a11sc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand holding the skull of Homo Naledi.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Shiraaz Mohamed</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been global interest in the announcement of new fossils from a cave called Rising Star in the <a href="http://www.maropeng.co.za/videos/entry/sterkfontein-caves-unesco-world-heritage-site">Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site</a> in South Africa.</p>
<p>These fossils were recently reported by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09560">Lee Berger</a> and his team, who described the discovery of more than 1500 fossils as representing a new species of the genus Homo. It has been called Homo naledi, associated with a name for star in the Sesotho language.</p>
<p>But the age of Homo naledi is not yet known with certainty. The new species has not yet been dated. Unsuccessful attempts had been made by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09561">Paul Dirks</a> and members of the Rising Star team to obtain an age. They used techniques applied previously to date a range of fossils. These included Australopithecus africanus, such as the famous <a href="http://www.encounter.co.za/article/58.html">“Mrs Ples”</a> skull, as more than two million years old, and fossils of <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/paranthropus-robustus">Paranthropus</a> robustus and <a href="http://www.livescience.com/41048-facts-about-homo-erectus.html">Homo erectus</a>.</p>
<p>In a new <a href="http://www.sajs.co.za/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/SAJS%20111_11-12_Thackeray_Sci%20Cor.pdf">paper</a> in the South African Journal of Science I suggest that Homo naledi lived two million years ago (plus or minus 500,000 years). If shown to be correct, this will help to place Homo naledi in the family tree of human relatives.</p>
<p>The variance is based on the fact that the earliest date for Homo rudolfensis is about 2.5 million years, and the date for certain African Homo erectus samples is about 1.5 million years.</p>
<p>Although different, Homo naledi is most similar to fossils attributed to Homo habilis (about 1.8 million years old), and to a lesser extent to fossils of Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus.</p>
<p>Taken together I am suggesting that Homo naledi is in the order of two million years old, with upper and lower limits of about 1.5 and 2.5 million years respectively. </p>
<h2>Why is dating so important</h2>
<p>Estimating the age of <a href="http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/thackeray335/">fossils</a> is important because it allows palaeoanthropologists the opportunity to try to draw up a family tree. It shows the evolutionary relationships of distant relatives.</p>
<p>Some of the fossil species can be considered to represent possible ancestors of our own species, Homo sapiens, while other species such as <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/paranthropus-robustus">Paranthropus</a> robustus can be considered to be evolutionary “dead ends”.</p>
<p>The big question being asked is: where does Homo naledi fit in the evolutionary tree?</p>
<p>It had a small brain of about 500 cubic centimetres in volume. This makes it similar to fossils of Australopithecus. On the other hand, bones of parts of the skeleton, especially the foot, indicate that this species was in some respect remarkably like Homo. </p>
<p>Dating such enigmatic fossils is crucial for an understanding of evolutionary relationships of Homo naledi, compared to more than ten other species which are recognised by palaeontologists.</p>
<p>My approach has been to assess the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between skulls. This can help to assess the age and affinities of fossils.</p>
<h2>Quantifying degrees of similarity between fossils</h2>
<p>Recognising that the new fossils have features of both Australopithecus and Homo, we need to know how old they are. One way of addressing this is to use a technique that I have previously described, based on measurements of <a href="https://theconversation.com/species-without-boundaries-a-new-way-to-map-our-origins-42646">skulls</a>.</p>
<p>Statistics are calculated by taking one set of measurements for specimen A, plotted against the corresponding measurements of specimen B. When A and B are the same species, the values for the two specimens are typically distributed along a straight line, with little scatter around that linear pattern. </p>
<p>When measurements of two specimens (C and D) of different species are plotted against each other, there is a high degree of scatter. The degree of scatter around the line can be quantified using a statistic that I have called log sem, based on a standard mathematical technique that is known as least squares linear regression. </p>
<p>Remarkably, a pattern has been found for comparisons of modern skulls of the same species, whether these are of mammals, birds or reptiles. The mean log sem value for comparisons of pairs of modern species has central tendency around a particular number with a value of -1.61 (plus or minus 0.1), which I have regarded as an approximation of a biological species constant called <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sajs/v103n11-12/a0210312.pdf">T</a>.</p>
<h2>How does this help to date Homo naledi</h2>
<p>Comparisons have been made between the skull measurements of Homo naledi and those of more than ten other recognised species. </p>
<p>It is possible to say that Homo naledi is indeed different because in all cases the log sem statistics for such comparisons is significantly greater than -1.61. </p>
<p>But what is exciting is the fact that of all such comparisons, Homo naledi is most similar to skulls attributed to Homo habilis known to date to about 1.8 million years, and to some extent to other fossils attributed to Homo rudolfensis between about two and 2.5 million years ago.</p>
<p>To a smaller extent Homo naledi is similar to fossil skulls of Homo erectus between about 1.5 and 1.8 million years ago. Using these results, based on comparisons of skulls, I suggest that Homo naledi is two million years old, plus or minus 500,000 years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francis Thackeray received funding for this study from the National Research Foundation and the A.W. Mellon Foundation</span></em></p>The big question being asked is: where does Homo naledi fit in the evolutionary tree? Assessing the similarity or dissimilarity between fossil skulls has provided a possible clue to the answer.Francis Thackeray, Phillip Tobias Chair in Palaeoanthropology, Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.