Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And before we turn the mics on,
Speaker 1: or actually after we turned the mics on, but before
Speaker 1: we officially started the episode, we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: is there a better eighties action movie than Point Break? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean, arguably there there are some definitely some action
Speaker 1: pictures that I love more than Point Break. But Point
Speaker 1: Break has a purity to it, you know, this like this, this,
Speaker 1: this the weird nobility of this band of nomadic surfers
Speaker 1: who are also bank robbers. And uh. And then the
Speaker 1: man who is pursuing them, a man who must become
Speaker 1: a surfer in order to catch surfers. Because isn't that
Speaker 1: it meant the old saying in order to catch a surfer,
Speaker 1: you must become a surfer. Uh, something like that. Patrick
Speaker 1: Swayzy is the key to the movie. Oh and hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you're out there some kind of
Speaker 1: pedants saying wait a minute, Point Break didn't come out
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. How are you saying it's the
Speaker 1: best eighties action movie. As we all know, Cinna in
Speaker 1: the cinema world the nineteen eighties lasted until nine. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a solid argument. But yeah, this was
Speaker 1: This was some some really great sways in this film,
Speaker 1: Like sways. He just has such such a unique charisma
Speaker 1: that he's it's it's like with with the Roadhouse. You know,
Speaker 1: he's he's able to be just so serious in this
Speaker 1: role and it's you're you're laughing because it is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but at the same time you're totally buying into this presentation.
Speaker 1: He's giving you absolutely the deep seriousness in the delivery
Speaker 1: of the lines like pain don't hurt, the fact that
Speaker 1: he is is trying to commit to this character who's
Speaker 1: like a philosopher bouncer in Roadhouse. Yeah, in Roadhouse, but now,
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially, I think he's playing the same character
Speaker 1: in Point Break, and that in Roadhouse he's a pill
Speaker 1: asper bouncer. In Point Break, he's the same character. He's
Speaker 1: now become a philosopher surfer slash bank robber. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and he's he's tremendous. He just like he eats that
Speaker 1: they've seen he's in Point point Break is a great
Speaker 1: example of one of these eighties again, but it was
Speaker 1: the eighties. Eighties action movies that is so silly in
Speaker 1: a way that like, there are still action movies that
Speaker 1: have a great spirit of silliness that aren't like these unpleasant,
Speaker 1: self serious action movies. Uh. You know. A good example
Speaker 1: is like the later movies in the Fast and the
Speaker 1: Furious franchise, which can be a lot of fun, but
Speaker 1: they are they're in on the joke, like the rock
Speaker 1: is winking at the camera. It's you know, it's played
Speaker 1: explicitly for a kind of like wet laughter that like
Speaker 1: cars can fly and all this, but that's not what's
Speaker 1: going on in Point Break, Point Break, and and some
Speaker 1: of the movies like it are just as silly as
Speaker 1: the later Fast and the Furious movies, but they're not
Speaker 1: they're not winking at you. They're not in on the joke. Instead,
Speaker 1: they've got Patrick Swayzy who stay in himself. Real seriously,
Speaker 1: I wonder if part of that is that a film
Speaker 1: like Point Break like building on the in a sense,
Speaker 1: even though it's an eighties and so technically nineties film,
Speaker 1: it's building on like the grittier uh, like a film
Speaker 1: heritage of the nineteen seventies that preceded it, and where
Speaker 1: whereas nineties films are are proceeding from the eighties films,
Speaker 1: uh and so forth to where there's just like the
Speaker 1: initial groundwork underneath something like The Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 1: It's just that much sillier and that that and just
Speaker 1: further removed from like nineteen seventies cinema. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why are we talking about Point Break? Oh? Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about it because this episode is about surfing the indertals.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also not about surfing neandertals, but it
Speaker 1: is about neandertals. It's about surfer's ear and uh, surfing
Speaker 1: the Andertal's the working title of Point Break that was
Speaker 1: on the script. It it's exactly where my mind went
Speaker 1: when I first read a very recent scientific paper the
Speaker 1: came out about the under tolls and surfers here. But
Speaker 1: but before we get into all that um and we
Speaker 1: may come back two point break. As we proceed again,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that this episode is not
Speaker 1: really about surfing. It doesn't have that much to do
Speaker 1: with surfing, But I do want to point out the
Speaker 1: ancient origins of this aquatic practice we call surfing. What
Speaker 1: surfing wasn't invented in the nineteen sixties, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And I was looking at a couple of sources on this,
Speaker 1: but but one of the better ones that came across
Speaker 1: um was a book by Ben R. Finny and James D.
Speaker 1: Houston called Surfing A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's pretty insightful. They point out that that
Speaker 1: all you need really to surf is a surfer and
Speaker 1: a board and of course waves um or something standing
Speaker 1: in for a board, such as a canoe, or even
Speaker 1: the surfer's own body. I mean, you can body surf.
Speaker 1: What you don't need a surfballfall, you don't need a
Speaker 1: surf suit. Well, as we'll discuss, it can be very helpful,
Speaker 1: especially in the colder waters. Uh. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's ultimately and I don't know, have you ever surfed, Joe,
Speaker 1: Have you ever? No, I've I mean very limited water experience.
Speaker 1: I've done like knee boarding, and that's I know that's
Speaker 1: not surfing. I'd say that's the closest to that. But
Speaker 1: you've you've gotten up on your knees on a surfboard, well,
Speaker 1: not on a surfboard on a knee board. I don't
Speaker 1: know how different they are. I've gotten up on my
Speaker 1: knees on a floating thing that was being towed behind
Speaker 1: a boat. Okay, well a little. It's not close, but
Speaker 1: but it's it's enough. We can we can build from here.
Speaker 1: So I am not a surfer, but I on a
Speaker 1: trip to who I, um, you know, like like twenty
Speaker 1: years ago or something. Um, I was encouraged by a
Speaker 1: friend to go out and try it. This friend had
Speaker 1: surfed before. This is very helpful I find if you
Speaker 1: were going to try to surf, uh, certainly go someone
Speaker 1: who has at least done it once before, but proverably
Speaker 1: somebody who who is more skilled than that. But there
Speaker 1: is this kind of magical moment where you're you're pushing
Speaker 1: the board, You're you're paddling and kicking, you're just going
Speaker 1: as hard and as fast as you can. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then it comes this this almost magical moment where the
Speaker 1: wave catches the board and suddenly the waves propelling the board.
Speaker 1: And this is the point where then you can climb
Speaker 1: up on onto your knees on the board. And then
Speaker 1: then once you you know, have your figure out what
Speaker 1: you're doing. This is where you can rise up on
Speaker 1: both of your feet on the board and you can
Speaker 1: ride the surfboard like a surfer rides a surfboard. And
Speaker 1: it sounds hard. I mean, it's it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where I definitely would have given up had
Speaker 1: I not been encouraged to keep doing it, you know,
Speaker 1: to just keep do it again once more. Let's let's
Speaker 1: paddle back and then paddle as hard and fast as
Speaker 1: you can to try and catch this magical moment when
Speaker 1: the when the board catches you. Um yeah, and so
Speaker 1: like once so, all you need is a board, the waves, yourself,
Speaker 1: and then like the patience and or courage to to
Speaker 1: reach that point where you can rise up on the
Speaker 1: board and become comfortable enough doing so that you can
Speaker 1: manipulate the bird board further. Okay, so of surfing was
Speaker 1: not invented by the beach boys in the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Where does surfing actually come from? Well, as the authors
Speaker 1: at this point out how Hawaii is of course strongly
Speaker 1: associated with surfing, and humans seem to have first arrived
Speaker 1: at these far flung Polynesian islands by between three hundred
Speaker 1: and four hundred ce. Now, longboards would have developed over time,
Speaker 1: and the author's guess that Hawaiian surfing is ultimately perhaps
Speaker 1: a thousand years old. Yet the principles involved would have
Speaker 1: been known to Pacific islanders and the first pioneers to
Speaker 1: enter the Pacific as far back as two thousand b C. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of those again, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where the necessary technology, uh, and and and
Speaker 1: ability you know, is not something that were It did
Speaker 1: not exist before thousand years ago, you know, conceivably uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these more ancient cultures knew of the properties involved.
Speaker 1: So we don't know for sure how far back it could, right,
Speaker 1: And there's also some debate whether a form of stand
Speaker 1: up paddle boarding practiced by the pre Incan civilization in
Speaker 1: Peru would have constituted surfing some two thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's another thing you get into, you know,
Speaker 1: discussions of the terminology. Is it truly surfing, is it's
Speaker 1: something else? Are are the people on these paddle boards
Speaker 1: ever reaching that point where the you know, the magic
Speaker 1: of the wave takes over and propels them. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I just I found it. It'll be useful I think
Speaker 1: to just think of that as we proceed, uh, in
Speaker 1: order to also keep it connected to surfing in some way.
Speaker 1: To think of of surfing as this thing that is
Speaker 1: at least a thousand years old, maybe older, and uh
Speaker 1: and ultimately, just based on the technology involved, is not
Speaker 1: all that uh, you know, constrained to a particular portion
Speaker 1: of human time. For all we know dinosaurs for surfing.
Speaker 1: Definitely dinosaurs. Well, no, the dinosaurs were not surfing. But
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, to come back to the title of
Speaker 1: the episode, when you start wondering if Neanderthals surfed, there's
Speaker 1: that really no evidence that they did. But when you
Speaker 1: start considering the technology involved, yes, somebody could make a
Speaker 1: case for it, and it would be you know, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have be able to prove it necessary that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to disprove it. So what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about though in this episode is more a
Speaker 1: matter of what is known as surfers ear. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: I remember from when I was a kid, people I
Speaker 1: knew getting swimmers ear. But that was just like ear infections,
Speaker 1: right right, Swimmers ear is is a different thing. Is
Speaker 1: bacterial infection of the outer ear, often caused by trapped water,
Speaker 1: so water or debris, it gets trapped in the ear
Speaker 1: and it can cause an infection. And uh and depending
Speaker 1: on like the state and condition of your your ear canals. Uh,
Speaker 1: some people are more uh you know, have more tendants,
Speaker 1: more a greater tendency to uh to get swimmers eer
Speaker 1: than other people. I remember people with swimmers ear being
Speaker 1: treated by just getting like ethyl alcohol pulled in there
Speaker 1: or maybe I don't know what kind of some kind
Speaker 1: of alcohol alcohol uh poured in their ear. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: just a stest standard swimmer's ear um droplets you can get.
Speaker 1: I use some, like just the other day because I
Speaker 1: swim fairly regularly. But uh. But but then also not
Speaker 1: to be confused with the drops you would get for
Speaker 1: a full blown ear infection. Like this is where yeah,
Speaker 1: everything is actually getting like more and more painful in
Speaker 1: your ear, and that may require uh, some more advanced drops.
Speaker 1: But that's not really what we're talking about here. What
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is exostosis of the external auditory
Speaker 1: canal or external auditory exostosis or e a E, also
Speaker 1: known as surfer's ear. And then the game, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's a condition. It's a condition that affects both
Speaker 1: modern humans and our our prehistoric ancestors. So what is
Speaker 1: E A E? Well, these are dense bony growths that
Speaker 1: that that grow that slowly extend into the auditory ear canal.
Speaker 1: Whoa bony growths in the ear canal? Now please read
Speaker 1: sure me Robert that these growths are not like spiny
Speaker 1: you know, no, No, these are rounded growths um that
Speaker 1: you know. Basically if you look at it, if you
Speaker 1: look at an image of this, it looks like they're
Speaker 1: bony growths on you know, underneath the skin on either
Speaker 1: side that are like that are that are pushing in,
Speaker 1: causing kind of a cave in, gradual cave in of
Speaker 1: the auditory canal. That still doesn't sound good. So the
Speaker 1: question is what causes them? Well, this is where it
Speaker 1: gets weird. It is uh, we basically still have a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about surfers here. But the widely accepted
Speaker 1: hypothesis is the is the aquatic hypothesis, and that is
Speaker 1: that it is caused by repeated exposure to cold water
Speaker 1: or or in some cases cold wind, but especially cold water,
Speaker 1: and it's typically encountered in cold watered in cold water foraging.
Speaker 1: Among traditional and ancient peoples as well as among cold
Speaker 1: water sports practice today, such as surfing. Coming back to
Speaker 1: a question of what is required for surfing, and you
Speaker 1: asked about body suits and wet suits or dry suits,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and and a part of this
Speaker 1: is has to do with the fact that, in addition
Speaker 1: to having to deal with, you know, potentially being scraped
Speaker 1: up against things you don't want your body scraped against,
Speaker 1: you're often also surfing in colder environments and uh, and
Speaker 1: you want to protect your body from the cold. But
Speaker 1: cold water is is also an irritant to the inner
Speaker 1: ear and uh, and it is the most commonly observed
Speaker 1: irritant that leads to surfer's ear and repeated irritation leads
Speaker 1: to this growth. Now, wait a minute, it sounded like
Speaker 1: you were alluding to their being potential multiple potential explanations, right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is I mean, well, this is the primary explanation.
Speaker 1: Um and I did not encounter another explanation that that
Speaker 1: was really presented. Basically, it's just there are some mysteries
Speaker 1: remain about exactly how it occurs. Uh and uh. Anybody
Speaker 1: that's discussing surfers here like is sticking to the equatic
Speaker 1: hypothesis here, uh, and then certainly the evidence bears it
Speaker 1: out that it's I mean, you look at at where
Speaker 1: surfers here occurs, and it occurs in the ears of
Speaker 1: individuals who are engaging in a lot of cold water activity,
Speaker 1: be it foraging, you know, pearl diving, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: or surfing. But you know, other forms of irritation can
Speaker 1: can can technically cause it, uh, because it's just gonna
Speaker 1: result in tissue inflammation in the inner ear. Now that's
Speaker 1: gonna happen after just like you have a couple of
Speaker 1: bad days in cold water and you get these growths. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's uh, this is something that's going to develop over
Speaker 1: the years. So typically you see it manifest in a
Speaker 1: person during their like their mid to late thirties or
Speaker 1: possibly in their forties, lining up with the timeline of
Speaker 1: their exposure to the irritation. It could potentially occur earlier though,
Speaker 1: but like this is like when you think about like
Speaker 1: someone's prime surfing years and at what point they've been
Speaker 1: surfing for uh, you know, for say twenty years that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Uh, it's gonna line up with this,
Speaker 1: So you're more likely to see it in people who
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time in the water over a
Speaker 1: long period of their lives. Right, Yeah, they're spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time in cold water, like they're going surfing
Speaker 1: a lot, where they're going pearl diving a lot with
Speaker 1: with a uh, you know, a fair degree of regularity. Well,
Speaker 1: so it would seem like having bony growths protruding into
Speaker 1: your ear canal would not be a good thing. Right,
Speaker 1: So for for the for the longest, it's not really
Speaker 1: an issue, but you know, it'll reach the point where
Speaker 1: you'll have potential complications from your Essentially you're closing ear canals.
Speaker 1: That includes decreased hearing capability uh and increased likelihood of
Speaker 1: blockage and infection due to trapped ear wax or debris.
Speaker 1: And you know, you see generally you're looking at a
Speaker 1: five to eight millimeter diameter ear canal, but this can
Speaker 1: be narrowed to almost total blockage over time by surfers.
Speaker 1: Ere am I imagining that there's kind of a cultural
Speaker 1: stereotype where the you know, the the archetype, the surfer dude,
Speaker 1: the surfer person uh is saying like, what would you
Speaker 1: say A lot? Is that? Is that just my imagination
Speaker 1: or does that exist as part of the stereotype. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's certain certainly a crossover between like the
Speaker 1: surfer stereotype and sort of the the dude and sort
Speaker 1: of hippie freewheeling stereotype. I don't know if lack of
Speaker 1: hearing is really part of it, but it would make
Speaker 1: sense that that it would be right because based on
Speaker 1: what we're discussing here, I mean, this is this is
Speaker 1: where you're going to see some potential hearing loss due
Speaker 1: to exposure to the cold water. Now. An important thing
Speaker 1: to stress though, is that we only discovered surfers here
Speaker 1: in the last century or so. I believe the first
Speaker 1: report on it was a German paper by Welker h
Speaker 1: Uber in eighteen sixty four. And uh, and so you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't had that long to like really study it
Speaker 1: and figure out what's what the deal is with it,
Speaker 1: or even to figure out how, you know, ways to
Speaker 1: treat it or how to to prevent it. But the
Speaker 1: most obvious ways to prevent it are, of course, to
Speaker 1: avoid regular cold water activities, UM, which may not be
Speaker 1: an option or or desirable for you if if you're
Speaker 1: really into surfing or you depend on some sort of
Speaker 1: cold water foraging. But I've read that cold water surfers
Speaker 1: are six more likely to experience it than warm water surfers,
Speaker 1: and sounds like a significant effect. Now, you can also
Speaker 1: wear varying forms of ear protection that will help, ranging
Speaker 1: from special plugs to cat special caps to go over
Speaker 1: your head in your ear, to certain varieties of wet suits.
Speaker 1: But if you reach the point where where the bony
Speaker 1: protrusions have grown to the point that it's an issue,
Speaker 1: doctors can also remove the expoptosis with a surgical drill there.
Speaker 1: I think two different procedures, two different ways of going
Speaker 1: in there and drilling back the bone the bony growths.
Speaker 1: And the good news is that if if you have
Speaker 1: this done, you'll probably you really probably only have to
Speaker 1: do it once because generally, given the timeline of of
Speaker 1: them growing back, they can grow act, but you probably
Speaker 1: won't reach that second point where you'll need to have
Speaker 1: them removed. All right, looks like we need to take
Speaker 1: a break, But when we come back, we will ask
Speaker 1: the question of why the these spurs and the ears?
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. All right, So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about surfer's ear, or the idea of external auditory exostoses
Speaker 1: or E A E. And these are these bone like
Speaker 1: protrusions into the ear canal that seemed to pop up
Speaker 1: in people who spend a lot of their lives in
Speaker 1: cold water. If you're constantly irritating the ear canal with
Speaker 1: cold water, these things are likely to pop up. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess we haven't addressed yet why they occur. Well,
Speaker 1: if you'll think back to the Bible, you have Cane
Speaker 1: and Able and uh Able you know was was really
Speaker 1: into staying on the land. Cane was a big surfer,
Speaker 1: So God punish it now. Um has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that. Now, Now this is another area where it's
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of open questions about it now,
Speaker 1: so some are you it's essentially like bone spurs, you know,
Speaker 1: which these occur either due to these occur you know,
Speaker 1: due to constant irritation or stress, generally in the feet
Speaker 1: where you have these bony um. You know, protrusions that
Speaker 1: are forming in the foot could be quite painful. So
Speaker 1: one idea is that it's basically that irritation leading to
Speaker 1: growth leading to symptoms. And there's not a lot else
Speaker 1: beyond that in terms of why, Like what is the reason,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like asking what is what is
Speaker 1: the reason for bone spurs? What is you know, what
Speaker 1: are the reason for for various ailments that afflict us
Speaker 1: due to the things that we insist on doing due
Speaker 1: to our you know, our our human desire to to
Speaker 1: ride waves or climb mountains to ridiculous heights, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But there is one area where you will
Speaker 1: see an argument for a purpose behind all that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's in aquatic eight theory. Oh yeah, So aquatic ape
Speaker 1: theory has come up on the show before, and I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about how this is one of those
Speaker 1: theories that's like that's sticky. It's sticky beyond its explanatory power.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to know exactly why some some hypotheses
Speaker 1: are like this, but I think it tends to be
Speaker 1: the ones that are just the most uh, that offered
Speaker 1: the most totalizing explanation for the most phenomena through the
Speaker 1: most interesting image. And it does that. It but it
Speaker 1: is also widely rejected by science. Yeah, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about some reasons for that in a minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does continue to come up, and you know,
Speaker 1: in fact, it was it was recently it brought up
Speaker 1: and by none other than Sir David Attenborough himself. No,
Speaker 1: he apparently on a BBC four um series he talked
Speaker 1: about it and he there's something that criticized him for,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing up, you know, a redundant scientific theory. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna slam. I mean, you know, we talk
Speaker 1: about theories that are not accepted because you know, it's
Speaker 1: okay to talk about things. I agree, Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: have to think something is correct to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like he was sort of advocating it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, he has a history of being interested in it.
Speaker 1: I read that he also organized the symposium on the
Speaker 1: topic back in But you know, it's like you said,
Speaker 1: we discuss theories and hypotheses on this show that that
Speaker 1: are you know, sometimes definitely under the category of of
Speaker 1: rejected or unprovable. Uh. And I think my my opinion
Speaker 1: is that it is okay to discuss these It's informative
Speaker 1: to discuss these ideas, you know, as long as you're
Speaker 1: approaching them with the right attitude and you're not like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not seeking to to prove them, you know,
Speaker 1: in in your discussion of the of of of what
Speaker 1: is unprovable, right, You're not becoming an evangelist for something
Speaker 1: based on bad evidence. Uh. Now, So for a brief
Speaker 1: refresh in case you don't recall us talking about this
Speaker 1: theory in the past, the short version is, I think
Speaker 1: that the original idea was that in nineteen sixty a
Speaker 1: marine biologist named Alistair already proposed this idea that we
Speaker 1: had an aquatic primate ancestor maybe four to seven million
Speaker 1: years ago, and he proposed this in this article a
Speaker 1: new scientist. I think he also gave a big talk
Speaker 1: about this. I think the idea is that us having
Speaker 1: a an aquatic or semi aquatic primate ancestor could explain
Speaker 1: many interesting morphological features of humans that distinguish us from
Speaker 1: our closest relatives like the other great apes. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of examples of this, like why do
Speaker 1: we have less body hair than the other great apes?
Speaker 1: Why do we have this, you know, smoother skin. And
Speaker 1: his idea was, well, maybe we lost body hair and
Speaker 1: got smooth skin to streamline us for swimming, to reduce
Speaker 1: drag in the water. Um, why do we have a
Speaker 1: thicker layer of subcutaneous fat uh than some of the
Speaker 1: other than I think all the other great apes, and
Speaker 1: his idea here is, well, maybe that's like what we
Speaker 1: see in marine mammals that they use for water insulation
Speaker 1: to help keep their bodies warm. Why do we stand
Speaker 1: upright instead of walking on all fours. The ideas well,
Speaker 1: maybe we had to wade in the shallows and that
Speaker 1: got us standing up. And while it is an interesting idea,
Speaker 1: and I think you know Hardy it was it was
Speaker 1: clever for Hardy to come up with this. I think
Speaker 1: we now have better explanations for a lot of these
Speaker 1: interesting differences between humans and the other gray apes. And
Speaker 1: there's also no direct physical evidence for the aquatic ape theory.
Speaker 1: But to bring it back to the context here is this.
Speaker 1: You're saying that some enthusiasts of the aquatic ape theory
Speaker 1: would believe that our ear canals or features of our
Speaker 1: ear canals would seem to fit in with that list
Speaker 1: of supposed aquatic adaptations. Yeah, I've read e a positioned
Speaker 1: as possible evidence. You know that it's a narrowing of
Speaker 1: the ear canals and keeping with the narrowing of ear
Speaker 1: canals and aquatic mammals, because true enough, the ear canals
Speaker 1: and toothed whales are narrow and clogged with debris and wax.
Speaker 1: In baileeen whale ear canals are plugged with a waxy cap. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, they're obvious problems with this because it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not some sort of Lamarchian scenario going
Speaker 1: on here where surfers starts surfing and then their ears
Speaker 1: mutate into into weird forms. It's not like the children
Speaker 1: of surfers have have permanently plugged ear holes or anything.
Speaker 1: But maybe the idea would be that we evolved the
Speaker 1: the adaptation that gives our bodies the capability to adapt
Speaker 1: to repeated water exploit or or we would have developed
Speaker 1: the genetic predisposition for for surfers here, and we do
Speaker 1: have a genetic predisposition for surfers here. Uh that that's
Speaker 1: that seems to be the case. But um, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's a stretch to tie it in with this
Speaker 1: uh largely refuted theory. Yeah, well, I mean I want
Speaker 1: to say again, not that we accept the theory or
Speaker 1: would advocate it, but in the defense of this theory,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is interesting to consider, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: inherently implausible about the situation. It imagines no nor insidious.
Speaker 1: It's not like an anti science theory, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: It's just so there's nothing implausible about like prehistoric primates
Speaker 1: migrating to a partially aquatic lifestyle and gaining biological adaptations
Speaker 1: in the process. It happened with other mammals, right, so
Speaker 1: it's not hard to believe that a similar thing could have,
Speaker 1: in principle happened with primates. But the question is, just
Speaker 1: is that what the evidence we have today's supports, And
Speaker 1: I think most experts, for good reasons, think the answer
Speaker 1: is no. U. Most experts today believe the evidence for
Speaker 1: humans having an aquatic ape ancestor doesn't hold up very well. Again,
Speaker 1: there's zero direct evidence of it, so we don't have
Speaker 1: like remains of an aquatic ancestor that just doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: So you're you're having to hypothesize a sort of like
Speaker 1: lost period that we haven't found direct evidence of yet,
Speaker 1: but just reason backwards from traits that exist later. But
Speaker 1: there's a basic question here. I can't I came across
Speaker 1: this on from the writings of some paleo anthropologists, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry now I'm forgetting the the person's name. But
Speaker 1: here here's the basic answer. If all these traits that
Speaker 1: are they're trying to explain through the aquatic ape theory
Speaker 1: were acquired through an aquatic lifestyle that happened maybe four
Speaker 1: to seven million years ago, why were all the aquatic
Speaker 1: traits retained for millions of years after our ancestors supposedly
Speaker 1: moved back to dry land. You would you would expect,
Speaker 1: like then that these traits would be lost because now
Speaker 1: they'd be vestigil. Yeah, we'd grow all that lovely hair back,
Speaker 1: unless you pose it like, well, actually, it turned out
Speaker 1: once you moved back on the land, there was a
Speaker 1: good reason for retaining that trait. Now now it stayed
Speaker 1: because it served some other survival purpose. But then you
Speaker 1: could just short circuit the aquatic ape situation and say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we just got those traits because it served some
Speaker 1: other purpose. So, like, like coming back to the the
Speaker 1: hair theory of like the less hair you have, the
Speaker 1: more you're able to show off that parasite free skin. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a common theory. I mean, so there are a
Speaker 1: couple of major theories that exist now to explain why
Speaker 1: humans ancestors lost a lot of the body hair they
Speaker 1: originally had, and we don't know the answer but some
Speaker 1: fairly plausible answers seem to be that that it helped
Speaker 1: with with heat dispersal uh, and that it was maybe
Speaker 1: a very good sexual selection signal. It it showed off,
Speaker 1: I don't have any lice on me because look how
Speaker 1: little hair I have. And it turns out that I
Speaker 1: think there are better explanations like that, And again we
Speaker 1: don't know them for sure, but they seem like very plausible,
Speaker 1: fitting with the evidence, explanations for all of these traits
Speaker 1: that are answered through the aquatic ape theory. So why
Speaker 1: do we stand up on two legs? We don't know
Speaker 1: the answer, but a good candidate for that seems to
Speaker 1: be that we were using our hands for things we
Speaker 1: adapted to have to want to have free hands uh
Speaker 1: and other things like Oh. A common one that's cited
Speaker 1: for the aquatic ap hypothesis is that why do we
Speaker 1: have voluntary control over our breath? Right? We wouldn't need
Speaker 1: that less we were trying to be able to dive
Speaker 1: underwater to get you know, marine mollusks or something is prey.
Speaker 1: But what if we evolved voluntary control of the breath
Speaker 1: because we needed to speak right, to speak to seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, to to communicate with each other with each other,
Speaker 1: that these are activities that require control of breath. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I guess my main takeaway is that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to slam aquatic ape too hard. It's not
Speaker 1: like an odious theory or something. It's just that I
Speaker 1: think it's something that is. It's unfortunately sticky, and there
Speaker 1: are better hypotheses more in line with the actual evidence.
Speaker 1: We have to explain the same morphological features that people
Speaker 1: appeal to the aquatic ape theory to explain. All right, well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take one more break. But when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will we'll get to some more
Speaker 1: good stuff discussing surfer's ear in human remains but also
Speaker 1: in the remains of Neanderthals. Thank alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: I think all this stuff about surfer's ear is fascinating
Speaker 1: in and of itself. But the the extra cool thing
Speaker 1: here is that surfer's ear is detectable in human remains, right,
Speaker 1: because it's not just soft flesh. They're like bony protroser. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we can we can look to coastal humans of
Speaker 1: the past and judge to what degree they were interacting
Speaker 1: with cold water, and then we can also based on that,
Speaker 1: determine how such acts were divided between the genders based
Speaker 1: on the skeletal remains. For instance, in December of researchers
Speaker 1: from Washington University in St. Louis discovered skeletal evidence of
Speaker 1: surfer's ear in a pre Columbian Panamanian village. They were
Speaker 1: looking at a hundred and twenty five skulls from nine
Speaker 1: burial sites, and they found seven cases in males, one
Speaker 1: in female. So this is this is interesting. You think
Speaker 1: of Panama and you think of you You You may think
Speaker 1: of warmer waters, but the water in the Gulf of
Speaker 1: Panama is actually quite cold between January and April. And
Speaker 1: the researchers believe that the divers here, that the remains
Speaker 1: that they found were likely specialized pearl divers UH probably
Speaker 1: going after stuff like like mother of pearl or um
Speaker 1: or the orange and purple pearls that derived from two
Speaker 1: species of thorny oysters. These were These were popular in
Speaker 1: the region and you also find these artifacts among the
Speaker 1: very dead in these grave sites. Also, Spanish explorers would
Speaker 1: later record the activities of such pearl divers as well
Speaker 1: as you know, staying there. They were trained since childhood
Speaker 1: to dive down four fathoms that's twenty four ft or
Speaker 1: seven point three meters deep. My ears are hurt and
Speaker 1: just thinking about that. Uh. So you know, surface certainly
Speaker 1: like these would have been individuals diving down into those
Speaker 1: cold waters of training from an early age and developing
Speaker 1: these bony protrusions that would that were then detectable. Um
Speaker 1: you know, you know ages later when we look back
Speaker 1: and try and figure out how they lived. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little things like that that are insightful about it.
Speaker 1: But of course we're talking about the recent past. We're
Speaker 1: talking about human remain you know, Almo Sapiens, is there
Speaker 1: is there a reason you brought up Neandertells early on.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yes, we've got a connection here, and
Speaker 1: that's because there's a very recent study and this one
Speaker 1: came from Washington University. Uh, Eric trink Us at All,
Speaker 1: author to paper External auditory exostosis among Western Eurasian late
Speaker 1: Middle and Late Pleistocene humans, and this was published in
Speaker 1: Plos one. So, uh, just a refresher about the Neanderthals
Speaker 1: who we've we've talked about on the show before and
Speaker 1: we'll continue to talk about because there's always some sort
Speaker 1: of cool Neanderthal related story coming out. Uh. They are
Speaker 1: our closest extinct relatives. They lived in Eurasia two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand to thirty thousand years ago. We don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what happened to the Neanderthals. They likely transitioned from they
Speaker 1: were out likely originally translition transition from Homo antecessor to
Speaker 1: Homo neanderthal insis a hundred and fifty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and then they went extinct thirty thousand years ago. Now
Speaker 1: we're continuing to learn a great deal about them, how
Speaker 1: they differed from a physically, but also what their culture
Speaker 1: may have consisted of. They were ideal cold weather hominids,
Speaker 1: shorter and stockier than Homo sapiens. They had large brains,
Speaker 1: but it seems that their brains were were far more
Speaker 1: suited for intense visual processing rather than social processing, which
Speaker 1: would have been needed in the lower light northern climates
Speaker 1: of Europe. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, are ultimately
Speaker 1: the evolutionary project product of higher light regions of Africa.
Speaker 1: So enter this new study from Eric Trinkaus. At All,
Speaker 1: they examined well preserved ear canals and the remains of
Speaker 1: seventy seven ancient humans, including Neanderthals and early modern humans
Speaker 1: of the Middle too late Plicetocene epoch of western Eurasia.
Speaker 1: So the rate of Homo Sapiens surfers ear was more
Speaker 1: or less standard. But half of the twenty three Neanderthals
Speaker 1: sampled had E A and their cases were mild to severe,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing at roughly twice us the frequency of
Speaker 1: Homo Sapiens examples. So the obvious explanation would be that
Speaker 1: Neanderthals simply foraged in cold waters more than Homo sapiens,
Speaker 1: and that might well have been part of it. Certainly
Speaker 1: it highlights that the water, the cold waters were part
Speaker 1: of their foraging, uh, you know, realm. But it also
Speaker 1: could mean that they just had an even greater genetic
Speaker 1: predisposition for E A. Because again, humans have a pre
Speaker 1: disposition for E A. Uh, and we we see that
Speaker 1: in modern human genetics as well. So here's just a
Speaker 1: quick quote from from drink House about the study. Quote.
Speaker 1: An exceptionally high frequency of external auditory exotosis among Neanderthals
Speaker 1: and a more modest level among high latitude earlier Upper Paleolithic,
Speaker 1: modern humans indicate a higher frequency of aquatic resource exploitation
Speaker 1: among both groups of humans than is suggested by the
Speaker 1: archaeological record. In particular, it reinforces the foraging abilities and
Speaker 1: resource diversity of the Neanderthals. Well, that's interesting. So it's
Speaker 1: saying that this is an indication that maybe humans and
Speaker 1: especially Neanderthals of the time, we're spending more time foraging
Speaker 1: in the water than other evidence in the archaeological record
Speaker 1: would predict. Just another example of possible evidence for for
Speaker 1: Neanderthal exploitation of marine resources for for food or whatever.
Speaker 1: Is A is a paper I was looking at from
Speaker 1: P and A s from two thousand and eight by
Speaker 1: Stringer at all that found is I was looking at
Speaker 1: the Gibraltar region and the authors said that what we
Speaker 1: find indications that Neanderthals had knowledge of the geographic distribution
Speaker 1: and behavior of their prey. We present here the evidence
Speaker 1: from Gibraltar sites showing that Middle Paleolithic humans exploited not
Speaker 1: only mollusks, but also seals, dolphins, and fish through a
Speaker 1: wide spread of time. Dolphins and seals. So we got
Speaker 1: Neanderthals of the period potentially hunting marine mammals. Not quite wailing,
Speaker 1: but a modest form of marine mammal hunting. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and then in the process of doing it, developing surfers
Speaker 1: here possibly to the point of of deafness. And and
Speaker 1: by the way, there's a there's another paper and paper.
Speaker 1: It was also from drink Us from Seen, in which
Speaker 1: he and his team found an old, older Neanderthal from
Speaker 1: about fifty thousand years ago who had suffered multiple injuries
Speaker 1: and become deaf. As such, he argued that the elder
Speaker 1: must have relied on the help of others to avoid
Speaker 1: prey and survive well into his forties. So, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like sandwiching these two separate studies together, it
Speaker 1: like it kind of paints this picture, you know, of
Speaker 1: these you know, these these these Neanderthals of foraging in
Speaker 1: the cold waters, diving down for mala's, going after these
Speaker 1: uh uh, these other marine creatures, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: like the the the older members of the society, at
Speaker 1: least the ones that are that are engaged in the
Speaker 1: aquatic foraging, uh you know, going death and then having
Speaker 1: to depend on other members of their society to survive.
Speaker 1: So I know you've been picturing them as Patrick Swayze,
Speaker 1: the entire time. Well no, but but for some reason,
Speaker 1: when I first read the headline, like last week or
Speaker 1: the week before, my my mind instantly went to point break.
Speaker 1: It is the surfing movie. Uh par excellence. Wait what
Speaker 1: about what about Surf Ninja's. I've never seen Surf Ninjas
Speaker 1: can't vouch for it, I have anything. I guess we'll
Speaker 1: have to come back and check out Surf ninja Is.
Speaker 1: I just looked it up. Oh it has Rob Schneider
Speaker 1: in it. One don't know, uh not that I can
Speaker 1: see right here, and unletus he's a cameo. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: goot Leslie Nielsen, tone Loke, Rob Schneider, Ernie Reyes Jr.
Speaker 1: And All Star Gas. All right, well we'll have to
Speaker 1: leave it there. But you know again, Neanderthal's continue to
Speaker 1: be a topic of interest, and they're just there's always
Speaker 1: so many. There are always so many great, uh potentially
Speaker 1: interesting studies that are coming out about them. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll come back to the world at the end
Speaker 1: at Alls in the future on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over
Speaker 1: to Stuff to blow your Mind dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find our other show, Invention at invention pod dot com. UH.
Speaker 1: That's our our journey through human techno history looking at
Speaker 1: various inventions. We haven't done one on the surfboard, but
Speaker 1: that's exactly the kind of thing we could do because
Speaker 1: we try, and we've been trying to cover a wide
Speaker 1: variety of inventions, from like major recent technologies to ancient
Speaker 1: in inventions that are lost to time, from you know,
Speaker 1: from the the advanced and the and and the to
Speaker 1: the simple, from the obvious, uh, to the to the
Speaker 1: far less obvious. So check out that show if you
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Maya Cole.
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Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
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