Quick Take
- Narration: Donald Corren brings Berger’s personal and often combative voice to life with an energy that suits a scientist who is simultaneously defending his methods and sharing a discovery he cannot quite believe himself.
- Themes: human origins and evolution, scientific controversy and open collaboration, what makes us human
- Mood: Exciting and occasionally defensive, like listening to someone who found something enormous and knows not everyone will believe them
- Verdict: An electrifying account of one of the most significant paleontological discoveries of the century, told with the peculiar intimacy of someone who was there for every argument.
I have a particular weakness for science books that are honest about controversy, and Almost Human is nothing if not honest. Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, is not writing a dispassionate account of a scientific discovery. He is writing his own account of his own discovery, and he knows that some of his colleagues disagree with his interpretations, and he says so directly. The result is a book that reads less like a scientific monograph and more like a field diary from inside one of the decade’s most contested debates in paleoanthropology.
The discovery at the center of the book is Homo naledi, a previously unknown species in the human family tree found in 2013 in a nearly inaccessible underground chamber in the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa. Berger puts out a call online for petite, adventure-ready collaborators willing to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels forty feet underground. The team they assemble finds hundreds of bones, at least fifteen individuals, representing features that combine characteristics of ancient australopithecines like Lucy with features more human than anything previously seen in prehistoric remains. The implications, particularly around the question of whether Homo naledi deliberately placed its dead in this chamber, are staggering.
The Discovery and Its Discontents
Berger does not shy away from the controversy his interpretations have generated. The deliberate burial hypothesis is the most explosive claim in the book, because intentional burial implies a level of cognitive self-awareness, an awareness of death itself, that has been used to define what makes a species human. If Homo naledi was doing this, it was doing something we thought only we did, and possibly at a time that overlaps with our own existence on Earth. Several of Berger’s colleagues publicly challenged this interpretation, and he addresses their arguments directly rather than pretending the consensus is settled.
What elevates this beyond a simple discovery narrative is Berger’s decision to publish his findings open-access immediately rather than holding them in reserve for years of analysis, as paleontological tradition generally requires. This choice attracted both praise and criticism, and Berger chronicles both honestly. One reviewer with an honors degree in anthropology described his publishing method as brilliant and refreshingly collegial. Another reviewer noted that Berger reads as almost too heroic in his own telling, making good decisions ninety-nine percent of the time. Both reactions are fair. This is a memoir as much as a science book, and Berger is the protagonist of his own story.
Donald Corren and the Energy of the Cave
Donald Corren’s narration brings an appropriate energy to material that might otherwise become dry in the hands of a more neutral reader. Berger’s prose is direct and often vivid, capable of making the physical reality of crawling through a nine-inch vertical slot forty feet underground feel genuinely present. Corren sustains the book’s forward momentum through the more technical passages about bone morphology and phylogenetic classification, which is no small achievement. At six and a half hours the book moves quickly, perhaps too quickly: some of the scientific context around the Homo naledi debate would benefit from more space, but the pacing matches Berger’s own urgency.
The 4.6 rating across nearly a thousand listeners reflects the book’s success at being genuinely exciting about material that is often made dry. A reviewer who said it brings more questions than answers and that this is what science is all about captured something important: Berger is honest about what remains unknown, which makes what is known feel more rather than less significant.
The Question the Book Keeps Asking
Buried throughout the specific claims about Homo naledi is a philosophical question that Berger returns to with genuine curiosity rather than performative profundity: what does it mean to be human? If another species was burying its dead, was engaging in some form of symbolic relationship with mortality, was inhabiting the same evolutionary moment as early Homo sapiens in Africa, then the characteristics we have used to define our uniqueness become unstable. The book does not resolve this question. It makes it more pressing, which is the better service to the reader.
For listeners who came to Almost Human expecting a comfortable confirmation of what they already believed about human origins, the book will be surprising. The story it tells is one of increasing complexity, of a family tree with more branches than the standard account allows, and of a definition of human that keeps slipping further from certainty the closer you look. That is not unsettling so much as genuinely exciting, and Berger communicates that excitement on almost every page.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Listen to this if you have any interest in human evolution, paleontology, or the philosophy of what makes us distinctively human. It is accessible to non-specialists and rewards anyone who wants to engage with active scientific controversy rather than settled consensus. Skip it if you want a neutral, all-perspectives account of the Homo naledi debate: Berger is deeply invested, and he is telling his own story from inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is Homo naledi, and why is its discovery considered significant?
Homo naledi is a previously unknown species of hominin discovered in a remote South African cave in 2013. It combines features associated with ancient, small-brained australopithecines and features more anatomically similar to modern humans than any previously known species at a comparable evolutionary stage. Its potential deliberate burial practices, if confirmed, would challenge fundamental assumptions about when human cognitive complexity emerged.
How does Berger address the scientific controversy around his interpretations of the Rising Star Cave findings?
Berger addresses his critics directly and names them, which is unusual in popular science writing. He presents their objections fairly before making his counter-arguments, and he acknowledges that the evidence for deliberate burial, while suggestive, remains interpretively contested. The book is honest about what is and is not settled.
Is Almost Human suitable for listeners without a background in paleoanthropology or evolutionary biology?
Yes. Berger introduces the relevant concepts, from the basics of the hominin family tree to the methodology of cave excavation, as the narrative requires them. The book is written for a general audience and prioritizes the story over technical depth, though it does not simplify the science dishonestly.
Does the book cover the subsequent research on Homo naledi published after its initial discovery, including findings about its age?
The book covers the initial 2013 discovery and the debates surrounding the first analysis. Research published after the book’s release, including dating of the fossils that placed Homo naledi’s existence much more recently than initially expected, is not covered. Listeners interested in the latest findings will want to supplement with more recent sources.
