Speaker 1: During the earliest days of this millennium, I took part
Speaker 1: in a kind of history series, an ambitious survey that
Speaker 1: explored milestones in American culture decade by decade. Of course
Speaker 1: I'm talking about and after. I loved the apies there was,
Speaker 1: and really who could forget What made Dynasty work was
Speaker 1: the camp fights. Yeah, he went from John Cougar to
Speaker 1: John Cougar Mellencamp and I thought, did he get married?
Speaker 1: John Travolta's asked Urban Cowboy is if there should be
Speaker 1: a shrine Delta. It was a classy show featuring a
Speaker 1: panoply of commentators, and I was one of them, pondering
Speaker 1: complex topics like nineteen eighties hospital dramas, saying elsewhere it
Speaker 1: was and our long drama. It starred Mark Harman as
Speaker 1: doctor Bobby Caldwell. Comedian and actor Michael Ian Black was
Speaker 1: another contributor. I thought, if anything, the title That's Incredible,
Speaker 1: it was an understatement of how incredible the things on
Speaker 1: That's incredible work. We didn't really know each other back then,
Speaker 1: but I distinctly remember his take on the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one Neanderthal epic Quest for Fire. While most of us
Speaker 1: were obsessed with the film's nudity, Michael took the high road.
Speaker 1: I was really looking at it more from an anthropological
Speaker 1: point of view than to see ray Don Jones tatas.
Speaker 1: And it's that prehistory that's our subject this episode. Since
Speaker 1: Quest for Fire, we've learned some stunning truths about Neanderthals,
Speaker 1: and I knew who. I wanted to discuss this topic
Speaker 1: with my friend Michael ian Black back when we were
Speaker 1: loving the eighties. Neither of us knew just how connected
Speaker 1: he is to our human cousins of four thousand decades ago.
Speaker 1: If they had told me only how much Neanderthal I am,
Speaker 1: I would have paid twice the amount for the test.
Speaker 1: I'm mo Rocca. And this is mobituaries. This mobit Neanderthals
Speaker 1: circa forty thousand years ago, death of a human species. Okay, first,
Speaker 1: let's take care of some basics. The name Neanderthal comes
Speaker 1: from the neander Valley in Germany, where one of the
Speaker 1: first Neanderthal skulls was found in eighteen fifty six. At
Speaker 1: the time, the fossil was misidentified as the skull of
Speaker 1: a Cossack soldier from the Napoleonic Wars. They were only
Speaker 1: off by a few tens of thousands of years now,
Speaker 1: Neanderthals were also human, but a separate species Homo sapiens.
Speaker 1: That's us and Neanderthals did share a common ancestor over
Speaker 1: half a million years ago. Almo sapiens would go on
Speaker 1: to flourish in Africa, while Neanderthals roamed across Europe and Asia,
Speaker 1: adapting to a cold or harsher climate. Eventually the two
Speaker 1: species did meet up. Then, about thirty to forty thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, Neanderthals disappeared without a trace, or so we thought,
Speaker 1: which brings me to my guest, Michael ian Black. So,
Speaker 1: Michael Ian Black, thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: for this whole episode. My pleasure. Let's get the promotion
Speaker 1: out of the way first, because it's deserved. Your podcast,
Speaker 1: How to Be Amazing is amazing. Yes, you can be
Speaker 1: on it. No, yes, I think that's where I was going.
Speaker 1: So years ago I interviewed you about your one of
Speaker 1: your books, Naval Gazing, and in it you talked about
Speaker 1: genetic testing and why did you go about investigating your
Speaker 1: genetic makeup? I think the same reason most people do,
Speaker 1: just curiosity. I just wanted to know genetically speaking, who
Speaker 1: I am. I had it in my head that I
Speaker 1: must be at least a pastiche of things, some kind
Speaker 1: of milange. I was hoping to find some African Americans,
Speaker 1: some Native American but the results were so disappointingly kind
Speaker 1: of exactly what I had been led to believe, which
Speaker 1: is that I am a hundred percent Ashkenazi Jew. I
Speaker 1: do think the food is better than Sephardic food. Delicious,
Speaker 1: delicious if you just take the gafiltha fish out of
Speaker 1: that which I have always associated and will always associate
Speaker 1: with just jellied cat turns. But but you say you
Speaker 1: found out you were one hundred percent Ashkenazic Jew. But
Speaker 1: that's not quite right. Well, it is in terms of ethicity.
Speaker 1: But there was also a marker which I didn't know
Speaker 1: till I got it back from the company that says
Speaker 1: it will also tell you your Neanderthal percentages. If they
Speaker 1: had told me only how much Neanderthal I am, I
Speaker 1: would have paid twice the amount for the test, because
Speaker 1: for some reason, that just really captured my imagination to think, oh,
Speaker 1: I may be part of an entirely different species. Right.
Speaker 1: That was thrilling to me, And I didn't know that
Speaker 1: they had developed the test, and I found out that
Speaker 1: I am two point nine percent Neanderthal, which is greater
Speaker 1: than the norm. The average is a two point seven percent. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a significant difference. I mean, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how delighted I was to hear this, because your listeners
Speaker 1: can't see me, but you can probably tell by the
Speaker 1: way I speak in the timber of my voice that
Speaker 1: I am not the most masculine of fellows. But I
Speaker 1: was going to say, I mean, I mean, I'm tolerant,
Speaker 1: but to a point. But just the popular image of
Speaker 1: the Neanderthal as a lumbering brute, as this strong survivor
Speaker 1: out on the steps end planes just thrilled me to
Speaker 1: no end. And so I was delighted. And I told
Speaker 1: my wife that I am above averagely Neanderthal, and she said,
Speaker 1: that's why you look like that, and she did not
Speaker 1: mean it as a compliment. And let me just say
Speaker 1: that Martha is highly evolved. She's basically Darryl Hannah and
Speaker 1: Clanta the Cave Bear, a highly evolved, leggy blonde. Yes
Speaker 1: she is, but wait, wait, hold on, When you describe
Speaker 1: Neanderthals as masculine, lumbering brutes. You're making certain assumptions, and
Speaker 1: we'll dispel some of these in this episode. For instance,
Speaker 1: how do we know there weren't cultured, epicy Neanderthals? Well,
Speaker 1: I think we do know now you are doing the research.
Speaker 1: And I'm just speaking off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: Now they were conness of fine wine, is my understanding.
Speaker 1: They did puppet shows. Oh, Michael, We've got some work
Speaker 1: to do. Think of me as your Henry Lewis Skates
Speaker 1: and this is finding your roots, or as your Lisa
Speaker 1: Kudrow and this is who do you think you are?
Speaker 1: I think that's her show. I want you to know
Speaker 1: that your Neanderthal ancestors were pretty darned special and not
Speaker 1: as different from us normal people as you may think.
Speaker 1: So how did they get such a bad rap? Let's
Speaker 1: find out. I grew up with so many classic TV
Speaker 1: shows and films about Neanderthals and cavemen, and they pretty
Speaker 1: much all got it wrong. In nineteen eighty one, there
Speaker 1: was the aforementioned Quest for Fire. The characters basically just
Speaker 1: plump through the whole movie, except when one of them
Speaker 1: gets beamed in the head by a rock and then
Speaker 1: everyone laughs. That same year, moviegoers were subjected to the
Speaker 1: ringo star vehicle Caveman. During the course of the movie,
Speaker 1: a bunch of bumbling cavemen discover fire, how to light
Speaker 1: farts on fire, and jam bands and who could forget
Speaker 1: the mel Blanc voiced cartoon character. But as far as
Speaker 1: portrayals of the primordial go the show that had the
Speaker 1: biggest impact on me was Land of the Lost. The
Speaker 1: theme song told the story of the series. It's about
Speaker 1: a family on a river rafting trip. During the ride,
Speaker 1: they go down a magical waterfall and enter a universe
Speaker 1: filled with dinosaurs and cave creatures. Hi, I'm Phil Paley
Speaker 1: and I played Chocca on the seventies show Land of
Speaker 1: the Lost. You were only nine years old when he
Speaker 1: got this role. Tell us about the character. Chaca was
Speaker 1: the youngest of the pacoony clan. What do you think
Speaker 1: he is? Who kind of a came in a monkey
Speaker 1: or what? Chaca? I wore a prosthetic headpiece, so it
Speaker 1: had a very prominent brow and forehead, so it did
Speaker 1: kind of look neanderthal ish. I guess back when I
Speaker 1: watched the show, I kind of assumed Chocca was a Neanderthal.
Speaker 1: But looking back at the clips. Now he seems more
Speaker 1: monkey boy free all over, except for his face. The
Speaker 1: suit was made out of like nylon pantyhose material with
Speaker 1: a real human hair hand sewn into it, so it
Speaker 1: made it kind of itchy. Luckily, there are some people
Speaker 1: who know the difference between Saturday Morning science fiction and
Speaker 1: real science. Anything that depicts Neanderthals as basically bad hair,
Speaker 1: that's what I laugh about. Professor John Hawks from the
Speaker 1: University of Wisconsin at o'claire is one of the world's
Speaker 1: leading experts on Neanderthals. Why have Neanderthals had such a
Speaker 1: bad reputation. The Neanderthals are a group that doesn't have
Speaker 1: an advocacy. They don't have a lobby. You know, there's
Speaker 1: there's not Neanderthal representatives calling their congressman and so as
Speaker 1: a consequence, if you thought something bad about the past,
Speaker 1: you know, they were a convenient group because they weren't
Speaker 1: going to complain. It's so easy to use Geico dot com.
Speaker 1: A caveman could do it. What not cool? I did
Speaker 1: not know you were there. The Neanderthals in those Geico
Speaker 1: commercials might be funny, but make no mistake, we're laughing
Speaker 1: at them. So how did this stereotyping of Meanderthals as brutish,
Speaker 1: howling and stupid get started? John Hawkes says it may
Speaker 1: have begun with a nineteenth century German biologist named Ernst Heckel,
Speaker 1: who attempted to map a genealogical tree of all living things.
Speaker 1: When he came to early versions of us, he had
Speaker 1: no fossils to study. It was pretty much just guesswork.
Speaker 1: He chose a rather insulting classification. The name that he
Speaker 1: had for the predecessor of humans that would be the
Speaker 1: Neanderthals basically was Homo stupidus. Yes, Homo stupidest. But it
Speaker 1: was the French who really gave Neanderthals a bad name.
Speaker 1: A nineteen oh eight, a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton was
Speaker 1: found in a cave in the town of La Chapelle.
Speaker 1: Ausan paleontologist Marcel Boule analyzed the remains of this individual
Speaker 1: and made sweeping and hugely influential assumptions about the entire species.
Speaker 1: The image that came of his work was hairy and
Speaker 1: pretty ape like, with splayed toes and a slouching, hunched posture.
Speaker 1: Kate Wong is a writer for Scientific American and what
Speaker 1: researchers later determined was that this was an older individual,
Speaker 1: this Nandertal, who had suffered from severe arthritis. So all
Speaker 1: of the sort of features that led Bull to assume
Speaker 1: that the species had these slouched, stooped traits were actually
Speaker 1: the result of disease. That is really hilarious to me,
Speaker 1: isn't it wild? And I've wondered about that before, Like,
Speaker 1: when you find an individual species of something, what if
Speaker 1: you're finding a weird member of that species and it
Speaker 1: turns out that's exactly what happened with the Neanderthals. Totally
Speaker 1: an agreement, fascinating and hilarious. But hold on, there's more.
Speaker 1: The old Man of La Chapelle, as he came to
Speaker 1: be known, became the public's picture of Neanderthals for generations.
Speaker 1: They were the arcotopical cave people, and that image unfold
Speaker 1: she has stuck with the Neandertos over one hundred years later.
Speaker 1: Professor Chris Stringer, the research leader at the Natural History
Speaker 1: Museum in London, tells me part of the problem was
Speaker 1: that in the early twentieth century we didn't understand how
Speaker 1: evolution worked. There was this rather simplistic idea that they
Speaker 1: would be missing links to be found in the story
Speaker 1: of human evolution. And it was because we were so
Speaker 1: fixated on the idea of a missing link that we
Speaker 1: typecast Neanderthals into the role of a half ap half
Speaker 1: human caveman duke. But thanks to the rapid advancement and
Speaker 1: the study of archaic humans, the image of the Neanderthal
Speaker 1: is finally changing. To be sure, Neanderthals were different from
Speaker 1: us in appearance. The pronounced brow ridge and sloping forehead
Speaker 1: in those Geico commercials weren't tramped up by make up.
Speaker 1: Our nests, so our brain case shape is rather globular,
Speaker 1: sometimes described as like a soccer ball. The Neanderthal cranial
Speaker 1: shape was longer and lower. In fact, the Neanderthal brain
Speaker 1: was bigger than ours, as was the Neanderthal schnaz. We
Speaker 1: guessed that the whole nose would have been broader. They
Speaker 1: certainly seem to have had a nose that was capable
Speaker 1: of very very heavy breathing. It may also have served
Speaker 1: a function of warming up and humidifying the air when
Speaker 1: they were living in relatively colder and drier conditions. They
Speaker 1: were starkier too, with rib cages that flared out and
Speaker 1: shorter limbs better for conserving heat. But recent studies on
Speaker 1: the Neanderthal thorax suggest that they might have walked even
Speaker 1: more upright than we do. As for what they sounded like,
Speaker 1: Neanderthal voices might have been higher pitched than ours. Listen
Speaker 1: to this simulation from the BBC. Let's just add a
Speaker 1: bit of nasal, now push into me. This is actually
Speaker 1: getting him right into his body. Now speak. No, that
Speaker 1: isn't a monty python sketch. It's a serious demonstration. But
Speaker 1: aside from the physical, what's really surprising is how on
Speaker 1: par Neanderthals were with us cognitively and creatively. They made
Speaker 1: a lot of the same kinds of tools they had fire,
Speaker 1: They decorated their bodies with jewelry made from shells, eagle talons,
Speaker 1: animal teeth, all sorts of fabulous accouterment. Some of these
Speaker 1: discoveries of them using feathers systematically and collecting predominantly the
Speaker 1: feathers of very dark black birds. We talk about it
Speaker 1: as Neanderthal goth because it seems like they preferred these
Speaker 1: dark raptors and dark crows and ravens and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Some signists speculate that Neanderthals saw power in
Speaker 1: these dark birds and thought they'd be imbued with that
Speaker 1: power if they wore those feathers. And if you're picturing
Speaker 1: share in Bob Backy at the nineteen eighty six Oscars,
Speaker 1: I am too. And within just the past few years
Speaker 1: researchers found the first ever Neanderthal cave paintings and etchings,
Speaker 1: which reveal in early interest in social media. There's a
Speaker 1: great place in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar that has this
Speaker 1: what we call the Neanderthal hashtag because it looks like
Speaker 1: that pound sign that is scratched onto the floor of
Speaker 1: the cave. What it means, what it meant to them,
Speaker 1: we have no idea, but it shows us some sign
Speaker 1: from the past that these were thinking beings. They were
Speaker 1: conveying something through their use of markings, through their use
Speaker 1: of ornaments, and that something was social. It was something
Speaker 1: about what they had to say to other individuals, what
Speaker 1: they had to communicate about themselves. And when it came
Speaker 1: to hunting, Neanderthals were pretty crafty. To attach tips to
Speaker 1: their spears, they made their own glue. In order to
Speaker 1: do that, you have to take birch bark and smoke
Speaker 1: it down, reduce it at high temperature so that the
Speaker 1: sap inside of it condenses into this sticky pitch and
Speaker 1: that in the end makes a very very tiny amount
Speaker 1: of this. So you've got to do this many times
Speaker 1: to concentrate it. Neanderthals managed that process. If I had
Speaker 1: to assign an engineering class to figure out how this
Speaker 1: was done, they would have a hard time of it.
Speaker 1: All to say that Neanderthals weren't the least bit stupidest,
Speaker 1: and neither was Choca. And the Pecuni had a language.
Speaker 1: It was developed by a UCLA language professor by the
Speaker 1: name of Victoria Frankin. After all these years, Philip Paley
Speaker 1: can still say some phrases in Paku. Well, these are
Speaker 1: classic ones. Bungu sarissa taka and that means beware of
Speaker 1: slee stack with an important warning very and uh. There's
Speaker 1: also oh ganza bisasa what does that mean? Big magic?
Speaker 1: I love? Who doesn't love big magic? And we're back
Speaker 1: with Michaele and Black talking about what it really means
Speaker 1: to be Meanderthal. But I mean they were capable of
Speaker 1: language that we we we learned that right right. I
Speaker 1: thought you were just belching. No, No, I was just
Speaker 1: grunting in the Neanderthal Neanderthal like way. Right. We should
Speaker 1: have done that at the top of the episode. So
Speaker 1: there are two different ways to do it. I like
Speaker 1: saying Meandrewthal. There are some people that will say Neandrew Tall.
Speaker 1: So you are welcome. You can go back and forth.
Speaker 1: You can switch over to neander Tall if you want.
Speaker 1: I am now forevermore going to pronounce it Neander Tall. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's this scud. We're going to do a split
Speaker 1: on this, and I'm going to stick with Neanderthal. You
Speaker 1: stick with me Andrew Tall, and then everybody will be satisfied. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you like Land of the Loss? I loved it.
Speaker 1: There were these sid and Marty Croft shows, and in
Speaker 1: my memory, that was the only tolerable one, Right, I
Speaker 1: loved it. Yeah. I'm older than you are, so when
Speaker 1: I watched it, I could tell it was pretty cheaply done.
Speaker 1: But I liked the opening credits. That's what I like,
Speaker 1: because it just seemed really exciting. Yeah, to me, there
Speaker 1: was nothing cheap about it. It was as real as well.
Speaker 1: Get rewatching a little bit of Captain Caveman that cartoon.
Speaker 1: I remember that I was kind of attracted to Captain Caveman.
Speaker 1: I there was something, maybe it was I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: And now when I go back and look at it,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of weird because he looks like
Speaker 1: a testicle basically. Well, then that explains your attraction. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So so, Michael. Now that we've established that Neanderthals were
Speaker 1: intelligent and surprisingly similar to modern humans, that raises the
Speaker 1: question why did Neanderthals go extinct? Now there are various
Speaker 1: theories on this. First up, Professor Michael stab Vasser from
Speaker 1: the University of Cologne in Germany. My speciality is a
Speaker 1: subject called isotope geochemistry. Oh, he's got my old position.
Speaker 1: That's what I did exactly. It is awkward for you. No, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean so I asked him what he actually does.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're a weatherman for the ancient times. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could say that. Yes, he didn't really like that line,
Speaker 1: as he could tell anyway. He thinks it's climate change
Speaker 1: that did in the Neanderthals. By studying stalagmites in caves,
Speaker 1: he determined that during their last fifty thousand years on Earth,
Speaker 1: the average temperature in the Danube Valley, one of the
Speaker 1: places where Neanderthals lived, was much colder than it is now.
Speaker 1: It was about thirty nine degrees fahrenheit. But and this
Speaker 1: is crucial, during that period, there were these cold snaps
Speaker 1: that would ultimately seal their fate. They lasted something between
Speaker 1: a century and a millennium on average. They usually led
Speaker 1: to temperature drops which could be up to let's say,
Speaker 1: six to eight degrees today. It may not sound drastic,
Speaker 1: but it makes the difference between being able to grow
Speaker 1: crops or not, and if you can't eat, you're going
Speaker 1: to die. And then as climate recovered, modern humans basically
Speaker 1: resetted an empty area more or less. So he isn't
Speaker 1: saying that modern humans were better adapted to these cold
Speaker 1: temperatures in the Neanderthals. I think the point he's making
Speaker 1: is that the extinction of Neanderthals was pretty much bad timing,
Speaker 1: wrong place, wrong time. But they had existed for millennia
Speaker 1: up until this point, and the average temperature as it's
Speaker 1: going down could have forced them south into warmer climates.
Speaker 1: But it seems like it didn't do that. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. This feels like a very dumb theory,
Speaker 1: which is why we have another theory for you on
Speaker 1: why Meanderthals died off. Okay, good, You remember Chris Stringer
Speaker 1: from the Natural History Museum in London. He thinks the
Speaker 1: small population of Neanderthals was essentially swallowed up by modern humans.
Speaker 1: Some experts estimate that atops there were only about fifteen
Speaker 1: nous in Neanderthals spread all across Eurasia. There just weren't
Speaker 1: that many of them. The Neandersals were relatively low in numbers,
Speaker 1: and I think that it probably wouldn't have taken much
Speaker 1: to push them over the edge to extinction, and maybe
Speaker 1: the appearance of modern humans as a competitor was sufficient
Speaker 1: to do that. But of course that's just a guess. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that just sounds like the most likely explanation. There was
Speaker 1: a sharknado of humans that came in and just wiped
Speaker 1: him out. I mean, we have a habit of doing that.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what we do. It's who we are.
Speaker 1: But who we are isn't who we used to think
Speaker 1: we are. Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo.
Speaker 1: Of course, Neanderthals aren't really gone. They live in you
Speaker 1: Michael and so many others. Let's find out what that
Speaker 1: means today. What does it mean to have within our
Speaker 1: genetic code a certain percentage of Neanderthal DNA? I wanted
Speaker 1: to find out, so I'm heading to New Jersey to
Speaker 1: talk to one of the foremost experts in the field.
Speaker 1: My name is Josh Aki, and I'm a professor in
Speaker 1: the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the Lewis
Speaker 1: Sigler Institute for integrif Genomics at Princeton University. And you
Speaker 1: do that all in one breath. With twenty three and me,
Speaker 1: we can discover where in the world your DNA comes from.
Speaker 1: An unforgettable gift my heritage DNA, What are your kid
Speaker 1: At ancestry dna dot com. I spoke to Professor Ak
Speaker 1: about what these DNA kits can tell us. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to find out that from one of these mail
Speaker 1: order things that you're ten percent Irish, ten percent Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: you know, five percent African. But to find out that
Speaker 1: your two point five percent Meandrethal, that's a whole other
Speaker 1: level of self discovery. We've always said that our genomes
Speaker 1: are a mosaic of different ancestors, and I think what
Speaker 1: we've learned more recently is it's a mosaic of both
Speaker 1: recent ancestors and very distantly related different types of human ancestors.
Speaker 1: Before we could get to know what Neanderthal DNA looked like,
Speaker 1: we had to truly understand our own DNA. More than
Speaker 1: a thousand researchers across six nations have revealed nearly all
Speaker 1: three billion letters of our miraculous a code. That was
Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton back in the year two thousand announcing
Speaker 1: the first time the human genome was sequenced. Then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Swedish scientist Savante Papa and his
Speaker 1: team embarked upon sequencing the Neanderthal genome in a positively
Speaker 1: Jurassic Parkian way. They were able to isolate ancient DNA
Speaker 1: directly from a Neanderthal femur bone. So they drill into
Speaker 1: the longbone and loud to a whole bunch of cleanup
Speaker 1: procedures to try to make sure that you're just getting
Speaker 1: Neanderthal DNA hall from this femur bone. Amazing. Once we
Speaker 1: sequenced the Neanderthal genome, we were able to recognize that
Speaker 1: we have what is called archaic DNA within our own genes.
Speaker 1: And this bombshell told us a lot about what Neanderthals
Speaker 1: and modern humans were doing with one another about forty
Speaker 1: to fifty thousand years ago. It's been interestingly one of
Speaker 1: the most hotly contested issues in science for thirty years,
Speaker 1: with people arguing either there was admixture that happened between
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and modern humans or there wasn't. He's talking about sex,
Speaker 1: and recent studies suggest that they add mixed a lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: So where did the modern humans in the Neanderthals end
Speaker 1: up hooking up? That's a great question and something we
Speaker 1: still don't know precisely. It seems to make most sense
Speaker 1: that the initial rounds of hybridization happened shortly after modern
Speaker 1: humans dispersed out of Africa. So maybe in Asia, minor
Speaker 1: like in Turkey, modern levront of like in Syria and Jordan. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so it was a Middle Eastern that's where they got together.
Speaker 1: That's yes. And I can't help but imagine it. I
Speaker 1: mean in kind of a literal way. I mean, fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, modern humans coming out of Africa and
Speaker 1: meeting a group of Neanderthals. Yeah, and what was that interaction?
Speaker 1: Like what was the interaction with did the modern human
Speaker 1: guy walk over to the female neanderthal and were they
Speaker 1: saying like, stop, no, don't do it, She's not our kind.
Speaker 1: There's so much we don't know, but we're learning more
Speaker 1: every day thanks to Professor Aiki and his team. He
Speaker 1: took me on a tour of their facility. So we're
Speaker 1: going to go look at the experimental and computational space
Speaker 1: in the Lewis Sigler Institute. You had to wear aaron
Speaker 1: at um. No, we're not going to be baking, but
Speaker 1: don't touch anything, okay. Mostly so these are my graduate
Speaker 1: students pretending like they're working. This is all right, nice
Speaker 1: to MITYA thesis project is on understanding how Neanderthal sequence
Speaker 1: is distributed across the human genome. When you walk down
Speaker 1: the street, do you ever sort of wonder the knee
Speaker 1: anderthal content of different people. I'm actually really good at
Speaker 1: picking that out just by looking at you. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: much Neanderthal do you think is in me? Brush back
Speaker 1: your hair a little bit. I think you're about one percent. Okay,
Speaker 1: So my friend Michael Ian Black is two point nine
Speaker 1: percent Neanderthal. He's an exceptional case. It's amazing had a picture. Wait,
Speaker 1: let me just show you a picture of it. Look
Speaker 1: at that to look at him, Yeah, I can definitely
Speaker 1: see yeah, because he's got a small chin, and Neanderthals
Speaker 1: are known for being relatively chinless, which is why I
Speaker 1: think you're a lower because you have a nice, strong chin,
Speaker 1: thank you. And he also has this sort of backward
Speaker 1: sloping foreheads, which is also very um yeah, what we're
Speaker 1: referred to as like archic. I don't feel like I
Speaker 1: have a very weak chin. I don't have a we
Speaker 1: don't have a clapped to deskue chin. I've never felt
Speaker 1: the need to beard myself. You objectively do not have
Speaker 1: a weak chin. But I do have a reverse sloping forehead.
Speaker 1: He was right about that. But Tode's Roger Stone and
Speaker 1: he's gorgeous. All right, all right, one out of two.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the beast. After meeting with grad
Speaker 1: student Aaron, Professor Age set the record straight. Just because
Speaker 1: someone has a lot of Neanderthal DNA doesn't mean his
Speaker 1: or her physical appearance will reflect this. One of the
Speaker 1: dirty secrets still about genetics is that we are not
Speaker 1: very good at interpreting DNA sequence variation. So if I
Speaker 1: look at my friend Michael and I see certain features
Speaker 1: that may look like a rendering of a Neanderthal. That's
Speaker 1: just a coincidence. It is most likely just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Most like you're leaving a little bit of room there.
Speaker 1: We can never say things with a certainty and science
Speaker 1: that's hysterical. All right, let's go downstairs because that's where
Speaker 1: the fun toys are. This feels like the movie Coma,
Speaker 1: Remember Coma. This is an aluminum high twenty five hundred instruments.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the class of next generation sequencers.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have large, intact fragments of DNA.
Speaker 1: You can sequence from the small degraded fragments that most
Speaker 1: Neanderthal ancient DNA exists in because it degrades over time
Speaker 1: and you can sequence a lot of it. Knowing what
Speaker 1: we do about Neanderthal DNA put the science fiction part
Speaker 1: of my brain in full geek out mode. In our lifetime,
Speaker 1: will we be able to see, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a living, breathing Neanderthal that's created in a lab. The
Speaker 1: technology to do so arguably exist today. You can have
Speaker 1: like a version of Sturbridge Village or Williamsburg, Virginia, just
Speaker 1: a town with all Neanderthals building tools and grunting at
Speaker 1: each other. I think it will ultimately be decided that
Speaker 1: that's an unethical thing to do. Good, just because you
Speaker 1: can do something doesn't mean you should do something. But
Speaker 1: what does that Neanderthal DNA mean for us today? According
Speaker 1: to Professor Ake, one of the benefits modern humans got
Speaker 1: from mating with Neanderthals was it improved their immune systems.
Speaker 1: It was a very efficient way for our ancestors to
Speaker 1: quickly adapt to these new conditions was to have sex
Speaker 1: with the neanderthal and just pick up a few beneficial
Speaker 1: genes from the Anderthals. Great, okay, but you don't get
Speaker 1: the benefits just from the sacks off. Your kids will
Speaker 1: get it. Yes, yeah, it's a persistent benefit. I almost
Speaker 1: never get sick per neanderthal thing. Yes, almost never. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the last time I was sick. Wow, And
Speaker 1: you have kids, have kids and the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: never get the flu, I never get colds. I never
Speaker 1: really get anything that is interesting. But wait, there's more
Speaker 1: to the benefits of having Neanderthal DNA. There are a
Speaker 1: few genes that are clearly important in early formation of skin,
Speaker 1: like keratin proteins, and Neanderthals had nice nails. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: was nice nails or hair. My nails I think are fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like your nils thinks I don't think me yet.
Speaker 1: Your Neanderthal DNA does have some downsides. It may play
Speaker 1: a factor in depression, and it may have something to
Speaker 1: do with chain smoking. It just so happens that this
Speaker 1: sequence now influences your ability to stop smoking. Okay, never smoked.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing you've never smoked, because you'd find
Speaker 1: it harder to quit. I may just take up the
Speaker 1: habit just to see if it's right. Right, just contest
Speaker 1: this proposition. One of the most mind blowing things the
Speaker 1: field of archaic genomics has uncovered is that modern humans
Speaker 1: and Neanderthals weren't the only people around thirty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Forty thousand years ago, we walked around the Earth, we'd
Speaker 1: find modern humans Neanderthals. Denisovans that if we went to
Speaker 1: the island of Flores, we'd see the hobbit individuals. So
Speaker 1: there was hobbits, Homo florencias, so very small, diminutive archaic
Speaker 1: human types. So the world was a much more interesting place.
Speaker 1: Fifty thousand years ago and today, the only remnants that
Speaker 1: we see of these archaic forms of humans are the
Speaker 1: scattered remains of their DNA and the genomes of modern individuals.
Speaker 1: I may not only have Neanderthal DNA. I may have Denisovan, Hobbit,
Speaker 1: or who knows what. So I decided to take a test.
Speaker 1: Do you know one thing about myself? I wonder if
Speaker 1: my caveman ancestors were any better? Opening packages, a saliva
Speaker 1: collection kept and all right, no food or drink for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. So okay, spit to fill line. All right,
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's a lot of spit. Twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: my cup runneth over with saliva. I have to say
Speaker 1: this is bringing out a little bit of my competitive tendency.
Speaker 1: I'm a little jealous that Michael is so neanderthal h
Speaker 1: and I don't know. We'll see time to see who's
Speaker 1: the neanderthalist of them all. And so I actually have
Speaker 1: the result. I already looked, yet you haven't looked. I
Speaker 1: have not looked. So I as you heard, I spit
Speaker 1: in an envelope and sent it in, and I'm gonna look. Now,
Speaker 1: your DNA tells a story of who you are, and
Speaker 1: how you're connected to populations, trace your heritage through the
Speaker 1: centuries and uncovered Cleo one hundred percent. What does that mean? Cleo? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is Cleo? Gideon? Hey Mo, remember you were a
Speaker 1: little nervous about using your real name. I use the
Speaker 1: name of my cat. Oh that's the name of Gideon's cat.
Speaker 1: Is Cleo. I'm one hundred percent Cleo? He was like,
Speaker 1: So I thought maybe it meant, oh, you've got a
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of a mark for some disease that's
Speaker 1: going to kill you, the Cleo disease. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: it's already says our ancestry composition. Your DNA suggests your
Speaker 1: ancestry is forty point eight percent Iberian with ties to
Speaker 1: five other populations. And I'm going to view report. Wow,
Speaker 1: some over forty percent Spanish, okay, which is kind of sexy.
Speaker 1: And did you know that? Well, my mother's Colombian. Okay,
Speaker 1: so thirty point two percent Italian Italy. I'm point three
Speaker 1: percent Ashkenazi Jewish? Are you yes? I It's interesting because
Speaker 1: a cab driver the other day, asset, are you Jewish?
Speaker 1: Said to you, are you Jewish? Yeah? And now you
Speaker 1: can answer in the affirmative. Hell yes, I am yeah,
Speaker 1: Hell yes, Okay, I'm three point five percent East Asian
Speaker 1: and Native American. Oh that's what I was looking for.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I have it. Congrats, Thank you, God,
Speaker 1: don't be jealous. Okay, two two point seven percent Native American, Columbia,
Speaker 1: Venezuela plus three more, Goobab, Brazil and Maica. That's great.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. So where do I find my Neanderthal?
Speaker 1: It was on a separate tab as far as I recall.
Speaker 1: So it looks like I have only only two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six Neanderthal variants, which puts me in the
Speaker 1: bottom eleven percent in terms of Neanderthal content. Well, it
Speaker 1: sounds like that researcher was right that you have less
Speaker 1: Neanderthal than the average person. If you have less than
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of twenty three and ME customers, that
Speaker 1: suggests to me you don't have very much at all. Right,
Speaker 1: I guess that's what it means anyway. So okay, so
Speaker 1: we can conclude I have virtually no Neanderthal, hence our
Speaker 1: different pronunciations of Neanderthal. Yes, but you do have a
Speaker 1: real smorgas board of all everything that I wanted, so
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's a tie. I would say you're
Speaker 1: slightly ahead. And the genetic lottery, you said a Samargus board,
Speaker 1: but I have no Northern Europeans, so that's why we
Speaker 1: should what would be something more Payea, which I love
Speaker 1: it so much. Well, Mike lean Black, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you, but you should really be thanking me because
Speaker 1: this was about finding your roots since I'm basically zero
Speaker 1: present Neanderthal. Well, thank you. I mean I really feel
Speaker 1: like I learned a lot about myself, about my family.
Speaker 1: I now know more about you and simultaneously think less
Speaker 1: of you because you are not of my species. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a blast. Before we close, a word from
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin's John Hawks on his predecessors in
Speaker 1: Neanderthal research, those people whose early analysis set the stage
Speaker 1: for how Neanderthals were seen for so long. When we
Speaker 1: look at the scientific world of the Victorian era, you're
Speaker 1: looking at people who became aware of human variation around
Speaker 1: the world, but they interpreted it in a very culturally
Speaker 1: insensitive way. You look at the past and think, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I can't believe that they said that. But
Speaker 1: that was the way that they approached their science. Today
Speaker 1: we look at things totally differently, and when we look
Speaker 1: at extinct human groups, they had their own ways of
Speaker 1: living in the world. You have to appreciate they're not us,
Speaker 1: but they lived at a time with incredible challenges and
Speaker 1: they overcame those challenges, and that is something really fundamentally
Speaker 1: similar that we share with them today. We're all experts.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can just spit in an envelope and
Speaker 1: get all the answers right. Far from it. Let's all
Speaker 1: hope that science and technology will allow us one day
Speaker 1: to understand why a species of humans is advanced as
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals disappeared from the planet, so that maybe, just
Speaker 1: maybe we don't disappear, at least not before our next
Speaker 1: episode of Mobituaries featuring the incomparable Sammy Davis Junior. I
Speaker 1: certainly hope you enjoyed this episode and if you would,
Speaker 1: please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow
Speaker 1: Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Morocca tell me how Neanderthal you are.
Speaker 1: For more great content, please visit mobituaries dot com. You
Speaker 1: can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This
Speaker 1: episode of Mobituaries was produced by Gideon Evans. Our team
Speaker 1: of producers also includes Megan Marcus, Keith mccauliffe, Megan Dietree,
Speaker 1: and me Morocca. It was edited by David Fox and
Speaker 1: neared by Dan de Zula. Indispensable support from Justin Ader, Genius, Dineski, Kiera, Wardlow,
Speaker 1: Zach Gilcrest, the team at CBS News Radio, and Richard Rohrer.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Special thanks
Speaker 1: du Gary Purdue, Ainara Sistiaga and London's Natural History Museum,
Speaker 1: and has always undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John
Speaker 1: carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you to
Speaker 1: check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of stories
Speaker 1: not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts on
Speaker 1: the line, sports teams that threw in the towel for good,
Speaker 1: forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses, presidential candidacies that cratered, whole countries
Speaker 1: that went caput. And dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People
Speaker 1: used to believe the dragons will reel until just get
Speaker 1: the book. You can order Mobituaries the book from any
Speaker 1: online bookseller, or stop by your local bookstore and look
Speaker 1: for me when I come to your city. Tour information
Speaker 1: and lots more at mobituaries dot com