Fire and Homo Naledi | Hacker News Reader

Fire and Homo Naledi

worldofpaleoanthropology.org

56 pointswallflower13 comments

Anyone else find this stuff the most fascinating, but choose startups/tech because of the money? My hope is I can accumulate enough before I’m 40 so that I can spend the rest of my days traveling the globe studying history/anthropology.

There's a long history of people engaged in commerce being more interested in books, culture, travel, and so on.

Absolutely -- if money were no object, what I'd like to do most is go back to school and get a doctorate in archaeology.

Same. But you don't need to wait. You can take a sabbatical, or take time off between jobs, or save up a few weeks vacation, or even find relevantish sites near you that need help and contribute on the weekend. Most people who say "I'll do X when I'm older" just keep working because that's what they've been doing for the past few decades instead of continually indulging their passions.

A dangerous path. The act of accumulating in itself might deeply change who you are, such that by the time you've reached your original goals new mirages have clouded your eyes.

If you want to do something, do it now.

This was my reasoning when I was younger. Now I think it's sometimes true but not always.

Lots of people do sacrifice financial success for other passions, some of them regret it and some don't. And lots of people put passions on hold and then do return to them once they have financial independence or at least a stable career to return to, and they're very happy with that choice.

Nothing wrong with having many goals, including a secure life financially. My youthful self didn't really need to fear losing my soul so much, basically :)

My first degree was anthropology, with an emphasis on human evolution. I was accepted to a masters program when things in my life changed and I finally realized the importance of money. So I returned to school and finished my almost-complete comp sci degree. Luckily I’ve loved programming since I was a little kid so it worked out well. After I’d worked for a while, I did exactly what you suggested and took a three month trip to check out various ancient sites that I’d studied in school.

Pretty similar story to my own, except that I never bothered with the comp sci degree. The compensation/funding story for archaeology was so bad that at one point I was essentially living in my car/tent. I thought hard about how much I wanted to endure next 5-7 years like that while I went through the academic hierarchy to get to a reasonable standard of living and decided tech was a much better alternative. Now I enjoy it from a safe distance as a tourist and vicariously through former colleague's stories.

> After losing 55lbs, Dr. Lee Berger himself made it into the Dinaledi chamber,

Such an odd sentence. It's is quite tantalizing yet no more is said about the weight loss. Was he obese or was the entrance to the chamber particularly narrow (I suppose someone had to have previously entered else why would they try?). Did he simply come back later or was the weight loss specific to this effort?

My understanding is that it is extremely narrow in places.

See this video for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KV42ilLJeM

There is also a virtual exploration app available, search for "Dinaledi Chamber app" or similar.

It was exceedingly narrow to the point that the first cavers chosen there were small women iirc.

Pic of them halfway down https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/homo-nal... plus article.

Probably intentional weight loss.

Most of the excavation work was done by women: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Astronauts

Yeah, I came for the anthropology, but I stayed for the weight loss ideas of the dreamy Dr Berger. Please share your weight loss tips! (if only this was anthropology teen dream edition).

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