He announced Monday that he had evidence that between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, a species with brains the size of a chimpanzee, Homo naledi, buried its dead and carved symbols on the walls of tombs. Or the oldest traces of burials ever found to date.

"Homo naledi tells us that we are not so extraordinary," he told AFP, perched on a large pebble at the exit of a cave of the very rich paleontological site of the "Cradle of Humanity" near Johannesburg, his playground, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"We may not recover," he says hilariously, with a strong American accent and a slight hair on his tongue.

A reproduction of the skull of a Homo naledi on display at Wits University in Johannesburg, May 11, 2023 © Luca Sola / AFP

Mortuary practices and symbolism have hitherto been considered the prerogative of man and his direct ancestors with large brains.

Is the scientist, with his latest find, in danger of being accused again of offending the history of humanity in a frantic race for glory?

In the world of paleontology, which is not spared by ego battles, the naturalized South African American has often been accused of skipping steps, announcing revolutions before having quite dated the fossils, shaking up the sacrosanct scientific rigor when others consolidate for 20 or 30 years a hypothesis before advancing a theory.

"Rosetta Stone"

"Lee Berger is a special personality," euphemizes French paleoanthropologist Bruno Maureille. "Maybe he's going a little too fast relative to the long time it takes to understand this type of context."

"There's always a temptation, a desire to say +Look, I've found something amazing, something really remarkable and I'm going to tell the world+," said Dominic Stratford, a geoanthropologist who is also conducting excavations at the South African site.

Squirming and elated, the clear-eyed and white-haired American shrugs: "Some will say they are not graves, let them say so. But they are graves," he says with a broad smile, convinced that he has dug up a new "Rosetta Stone".

The kid from the depths of Georgia, in the south of the United States, a distracted student and overcome by boredom, was however rather promised to a quiet career as a doctor, lawyer or pastor: "It was the extent of possibilities for kids quite talented," says the one who dreamed as a child of flying in space and wears a Mickey watch.

American explorer and scientist Lee Berger during a cave exploration in Maropeng, South Africa, May 11, 2023 © Luca Sola / AFP

He eventually travels underground, from reading a book called "Lucy", named after the iconic Australopithecus discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia.

After starting out in East Africa, where he was told that "there is nothing left to find", he bet on South Africa. The end of apartheid opens up new horizons.

In 2013, he discovered the richest hominid fossil deposit on the continent and the world became acquainted with Homo naledi (star). A feverish phone call in the middle of the night to National Geographic and he hits the jackpot in an academic environment where others are fighting for funding.

The excavations are documented live on social networks, he makes his data freely available on the internet and the fossils available to anyone who would like to study them. Not really to the taste of the conclavists of the material.

Journalists are summoned, miniature bones sold in souvenir shops, a documentary about the expedition is nominated for the Emmys.

A "media circus" far from pure science, according to its detractors, who consider that the fossil hunter turned star "sold his soul to the devil".

© 2023 AFP