Speaker 1: During the earliest days of this millennium, I took part
Speaker 1: in the 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 eighties there
Speaker 1: was and really who could forget? What made Dynasty wick
Speaker 1: was the campfights. Yeah, he went from John Cougar to
Speaker 1: John Cougar Mellencamp and I thought, did he get married?
Speaker 2: John Travolta's asked Urban Cowboy is that there should be
Speaker 2: a shrine built too.
Speaker 1: It was a classy show featuring a panoply of commentators,
Speaker 1: and I was one of them, pondering complex topics like
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties hospit dramas.
Speaker 3: Saying elsewhere.
Speaker 1: It was an hour long drama. It starred Mark Harman
Speaker 1: as doctor Bobby Caldwell. Comedian and actor Michael Ian Black
Speaker 1: was another contributor.
Speaker 2: I thought, if anything, the title That's Incredible was an
Speaker 2: understatement of how incredible the things on That's Incredible were.
Speaker 1: We didn't really know each other back then, but I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember his take on the nineteen eighty one Neanderthal
Speaker 1: epic Quest for Fire. While most of us were obsessed
Speaker 1: with the film's nudity. Michael took the high road.
Speaker 2: I was really looking at it more from an anthropological
Speaker 2: point of view than to see Raydon Jones.
Speaker 1: Tataz And it's that prehistory that's our subject to this episode.
Speaker 1: Since 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 2: If they had told me only how much Neanderthal I am,
Speaker 2: I would have paid twice the amount for the test.
Speaker 1: I'm Morocca. And this is mobituaries, This mobid Neanderthals circa
Speaker 1: 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. Homo sapiens would go on
Speaker 1: to flourish in Africa, while Neanderthals roamed across Europe and Asia,
Speaker 1: adapting to a colder, harsher climate. Eventually the two species
Speaker 1: did meet up. Then, about thirty to forty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: Neanderthals disappeared without a trace, or so we thought, which
Speaker 1: brings me to my guest, Michael Ian Black. So, Michael
Speaker 1: Ian Black, thank you so much for joining me for
Speaker 1: this whole episode.
Speaker 2: My pleasure.
Speaker 1: Let's get the promotion out of the way first, because
Speaker 1: it's deserved. Your podcast, How to Be Amazing is amazing.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can be on it, mo, Yes, that's where
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 2: I think the same reason most people do, just curiosity.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to know genetically speaking who I am.
Speaker 2: I had it in my head that I must be
Speaker 2: at least a pastiche of things, some kind of milange.
Speaker 2: I was hoping to find some African American, some Native American,
Speaker 2: but the results were so disappointingly kind of exactly what
Speaker 2: I had been led to believe, which is that I
Speaker 2: am a one hundred percent Ashkanazi Jew.
Speaker 1: I do think the food is better than Sephardic food.
Speaker 2: Delicious, delicious if you just take the gefilter fish out
Speaker 2: of that which I have always associated and will always
Speaker 2: associate with just jellied cat turns.
Speaker 1: But you say you found out you were one hundred
Speaker 1: percent Ashkanazi Jew, But that's not quite right.
Speaker 2: Well, it is in terms of ethicity, But there was
Speaker 2: also a which I didn't know till I got it
Speaker 2: back from the company, that says it will also tell
Speaker 2: you your Neanderthal percentages. If they had told me only
Speaker 2: how much Neanderthal I am, I would have paid twice
Speaker 2: the amount for the test, because for some reason, that
Speaker 2: just really captured my imagination to think, oh, I may
Speaker 2: be part of an entirely different species. That was thrilling
Speaker 2: to me. And I didn't know that they had developed
Speaker 2: the test, and I found out that I am two
Speaker 2: point nine percent Neanderthal, which is greater than the norm.
Speaker 2: The average is a two point seven percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a significant difference.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't tell you how delighted I was
Speaker 2: to hear this, because your listeners can't see me, but
Speaker 2: you can probably tell by the way I speak and
Speaker 2: the timber of my voice that I am not the
Speaker 2: most masculine of fellows.
Speaker 4: But I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I mean, I'm tolerant, but to a point.
Speaker 2: But just the popular image of the Neanderthal as a
Speaker 2: lumbering brute, as this strong survivor out on the steps
Speaker 2: in planes just thrilled me to no end. And so
Speaker 2: I was delighted. And I told my wife that I
Speaker 2: am above averagely Neanderthal, and she said, that's why you
Speaker 2: look like that, and she did not mean it as
Speaker 2: a compliment.
Speaker 1: And let me just say that Martha is highly evolved.
Speaker 1: She's basically Daryl Hannah and Clana the cave bear. I mean,
Speaker 1: a highly evalved, leggy blonde.
Speaker 2: Yes she is.
Speaker 1: But wait, wait, hold on. When you describe Neanderthals as
Speaker 1: masculine lumbering brutes, you're making certain assumptions and we'll dispel
Speaker 1: some of these in this episode. For instance, how do
Speaker 1: we know there weren't cultured episcene Neanderthals.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we do know, now you are doing
Speaker 2: the research, and I'm just speaking off the top of
Speaker 2: my head. Now they were kindessurs of fine wine. Is
Speaker 2: my understanding. They did puppet shows.
Speaker 1: Oh, Michael, we've got some work to do. Think of
Speaker 1: me as your Henry Lewis Gates and this is finding
Speaker 1: your roots, or as Lisa Caudreaux and this is who
Speaker 1: do you think you are? I think that's her show.
Speaker 1: I want you to know that your Neanderthal ancestors were
Speaker 1: pretty darn special and not as different from us normal
Speaker 1: people as you may think. So how did they get
Speaker 1: such a bad rap? Let's find out. I grew up
Speaker 1: with so many classic TV shows and films about Neanderthals
Speaker 1: and cavemen, and they pretty much all got it wrong.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, there was the aforementioned Quest for Fire.
Speaker 1: The characters basically just plump through the whole movie, except
Speaker 1: when one of them gets beamed in the head by
Speaker 1: a rock and then everyone laughs. That same year, moviegoers
Speaker 1: were subjected to the Ringo Star vehicle caveman Bobo Bobo.
Speaker 1: During the course of the movie, a bunch of bumbling
Speaker 1: cavemen discover fire, how to light farts on fire, and
Speaker 1: jam bands and who could forget the mel blank voiced
Speaker 1: cartoon character. But as far as portrayals of the primordial
Speaker 1: go the show that had the biggest impact on me
Speaker 1: was Land of the Lost. The theme song told the
Speaker 1: story of the series. It's about a family on a
Speaker 1: river rafting trip. During the ride, they go down a
Speaker 1: magical waterfall and enter a universe filled with dinosaurs and
Speaker 1: cave creatures.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Phil Paley and I played Chaka on the
Speaker 3: seventies show Land of the Lost.
Speaker 1: You were only nine years old when he got this role.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the character.
Speaker 3: Chaka was the youngest of the Pakuni clan. What do
Speaker 3: you think he is.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a Cayman, a monkey or what Chakkaka.
Speaker 3: I wore a prosthetic head piece, so it had a
Speaker 3: very prominent brow and forehead, so it did kind of
Speaker 3: look neanderthal ish.
Speaker 1: I guess back when I watched the show, I kind
Speaker 1: of assumed Chaka was a Neanderthal, But looking back at
Speaker 1: the clips now he seems more monkey boy free all over,
Speaker 1: except for his face.
Speaker 3: The suit was made out of like nylon pantihose material
Speaker 3: with a real human hair hands sewn into it, so
Speaker 3: it made it kind of itchy.
Speaker 1: Luckily, there are some people who know the difference between
Speaker 1: Saturday morning science fiction and real science.
Speaker 5: Anything that depicts Neanderthals as basically bad hair, that's what
Speaker 5: I laugh about.
Speaker 1: Professor John Hawks from the University of Wisconsin at eau
Speaker 1: Claire is one of the world's leading experts on Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: Why have Neanderthals had such a bad reputation.
Speaker 5: The Neanderthals are a group that doesn't have an advocacy.
Speaker 5: They don't have a lobby. You know, there's there's not
Speaker 5: Neanderthal representatives calling their congressmen and so as a consequence,
Speaker 5: if you thought something bad about the past, you know,
Speaker 5: they were a convenient group because they weren't going to complain.
Speaker 3: It's so easy to use Geico dot com. A caveman
Speaker 3: could do it.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm not cool.
Speaker 6: I did not know you were there.
Speaker 1: The Neanderthals in those Geico commercials might be funny, but
Speaker 1: make no mistake, we're laughing at them. So how did
Speaker 1: this stereotyping of me Anderthals as a brutish, howling and
Speaker 1: stupid get started. John Hawkes says it may have begun
Speaker 1: with a nineteenth century German biologist named Ernst Heckel, who
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 5: The name that he had for the predecessor of humans
Speaker 5: that would be the Neanderthals basically was Homo's stupidness.
Speaker 1: Yes, Homo's stupidness, But it was the French who really
Speaker 1: gave Neanderthals a bad name. In nineteen oh eight, a
Speaker 1: nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton was found in a cave in
Speaker 1: the town of La Chapelle au Saine. Paleontologist Marcel Bull
Speaker 1: analyzed the remains of this individual and made sweeping and
Speaker 1: hugely influential assumptions about the entire species.
Speaker 4: The image that came out of his work was hairy
Speaker 4: and pretty ape like, with displayed toes and a slouching,
Speaker 4: hunched posture.
Speaker 1: Kate Wong is a writer for Scientific American, And what.
Speaker 4: Researchers later determined was that this was an older individual,
Speaker 4: this Neanderthal, who had suffered from severe arthritis. So all
Speaker 4: of the sort of features that led Bull to assume
Speaker 4: that the species had these slouched, stooped traits were actually
Speaker 4: the result of disease.
Speaker 2: That is really hilarious to me, isn't it wild? And
Speaker 2: I've wondered about that before, Like, when you find an
Speaker 2: individual species of something, what if you're finding a weird
Speaker 2: member of that species and it turns out that's exactly
Speaker 2: what happened with the Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: Totally an agreement of fascinating and hilarious. But hold on,
Speaker 1: there's more. The old Man of La Chappelle, as he
Speaker 1: came to be known, became the public's picture of neanders
Speaker 1: for generations.
Speaker 7: They were the archetypal cave people, and that image, unfortunate,
Speaker 7: has stuck with the Neanderthals 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.
Speaker 7: There was this rather simplistic idea that they would be
Speaker 7: missing links to be found in the story of human evolution.
Speaker 1: And it was because we were so fixated on the
Speaker 1: idea of a missing link that we typecast Neanderthals into
Speaker 1: the role of a half ape, half human caveman lah
Speaker 1: atuk lor. But thanks to the rapid advancement and the
Speaker 1: study of archaic humans, the image of the Neanderthal is
Speaker 1: finally changing. To be sure, Neanderthals were different from us
Speaker 1: in appearance. The pronounced brow ridge and sloping forehead in
Speaker 1: those Geico commercials weren't tramped up by making up artists.
Speaker 7: So our brain case shape is rather globular, sometimes described
Speaker 7: as like a sockaball. The Neanderthal cranial shape was longer
Speaker 7: and lower.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Neanderthal brain was bigger than ours, as
Speaker 1: was the Neanderthal schnarz.
Speaker 7: We guess that the whole nose would have been broader.
Speaker 7: They certainly seem to have had a nose that was
Speaker 7: capable of very very heavy breathing. It may also have
Speaker 7: served a function of warming up and humidifying the air
Speaker 7: when they were living in relatively colder and drier conditions.
Speaker 1: They were stockier too, with rib cages that flared out
Speaker 1: and shorter limbs better for conserving heat. But recent studies
Speaker 1: on the Neanderthal thorax suggest that they might have walked
Speaker 1: even more upright than we do. As for what they
Speaker 1: sounded like, Neanderthal voices might have been higher pitched than ours.
Speaker 1: Listen to this simulation from the BBC.
Speaker 4: Let's just add a bit of nasal, now.
Speaker 2: Push into me.
Speaker 4: This is actually getting him right into his body, now speak.
Speaker 1: No, that isn't a monty bygone sketch. It's a serious demonstration.
Speaker 1: But aside from the physical, what's really surprising is how
Speaker 1: on par Neanderthals were with us cognitively and creatively.
Speaker 4: They made a lot of the same kinds of tools
Speaker 4: they had fire, They decorated their bodies with jewelry made
Speaker 4: from shells, eagle talons, animal teeth, all sorts of fabulous accouterment.
Speaker 5: Some of these discoveries of them using feathers systematically and
Speaker 5: collecting predominantly the feathers of very dark black birds. We
Speaker 5: talk about it as Neanderthal goth because it seems like
Speaker 5: they preferred these dark raptors and dark crows and ravens
Speaker 5: and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Some scientists speculate that underthals saw power in these dark
Speaker 1: birds and thought they'd be imbued with that power if
Speaker 1: they wore those feathers. And if you're picturing share in
Speaker 1: bob ackeye at the nineteen eighty six oscars, I am too.
Speaker 1: And within just the past few years researchers found the
Speaker 1: first ever Neanderthal cave paintings and etchings, which reveal inn
Speaker 1: early interest in social media.
Speaker 5: There's a great place in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar that
Speaker 5: has this what we call the Neanderthal hashtag because it
Speaker 5: looks like that pound sign that is scratched onto the
Speaker 5: floor of the cave. What it means, what it meant
Speaker 5: to them, we have no idea, but it shows us
Speaker 5: some sign from the past that these were thinking beings.
Speaker 5: They were conveying something through their use of markings, through
Speaker 5: the use of ornaments, and that something was social. It
Speaker 5: was something about what they had to say to other individuals,
Speaker 5: what they had to communicate about themselves.
Speaker 1: And when it came to hunting, Neanderthals were pretty crafty.
Speaker 1: To attach tips to their spears, they made their own glue.
Speaker 5: In order to do that, you have to take birch
Speaker 5: bark and smoke it down, reduce it at high temperature
Speaker 5: so that the sap inside of it condenses into the
Speaker 5: sticky pitch, and that in the end makes a very
Speaker 5: very tiny amount of this. So you've got to do
Speaker 5: this many times to concentrate it. Neanderthals managed that process.
Speaker 5: If I had to assign an engineering class to figure
Speaker 5: out how this was done, they would have a hard
Speaker 5: time of it.
Speaker 1: All to say that Neanderthals weren't the least bit stupidous,
Speaker 1: and neither was Chaka. And the Pecuni had a language.
Speaker 3: It was developed by a UCLA language professor by the
Speaker 3: name of Victoria Frompkin.
Speaker 1: After all these years, Philip Paley can still say some
Speaker 1: phrases in Paku.
Speaker 3: Well, these are classic ones. Mangou sarisa taka and that
Speaker 3: means beware of sleestak.
Speaker 1: With an important warning.
Speaker 3: Very and uh, there's also oh gunza bisasa what does
Speaker 3: that mean? Big magic?
Speaker 1: I love? Who doesn't love big magic? We're back with
Speaker 1: Michele and Black talking about what it really means to
Speaker 1: be Neanderthal.
Speaker 2: But I mean they were capable of language that we
Speaker 2: learned that right, right, But I thought you were just belging. No, No,
Speaker 2: I was just grunting in the Neanderthal Neanderthal like way.
Speaker 1: We should have done that at the top of the episode.
Speaker 1: So there are two different ways to do it. I
Speaker 1: like saying Neanderthal. There are some people that will say
Speaker 1: neander Tal. So you are welcome. You can go back
Speaker 1: and forth. You can switch over to Neanderthal if you want.
Speaker 2: I am now forever more going to pronounce it neander Tall.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's this scud. We're going to do a
Speaker 1: split on this, and I'm going to stick with Neanderthal.
Speaker 1: You stick with meandertall, and then everybody will be satisfied. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you like Land of the Loss?
Speaker 2: Loved it. There were these uh sid and Marty Croft shows,
Speaker 2: and in my memory, that was the only tolerable one, Right,
Speaker 2: I loved it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm older than you are, so when I watched it,
Speaker 1: I could tell it was pretty cheaply done. But I
Speaker 1: like the opening credits. That's what I like because it
Speaker 1: just seemed really exciting.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, to me, there was nothing cheap about it.
Speaker 2: It was as real as real.
Speaker 1: Gets 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 just there was something. Maybe it was I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway, And now would I go back and look
Speaker 1: at it. I think it's kind of weird because he
Speaker 1: looks like a testicle basically.
Speaker 2: Well, then that explains your attraction.
Speaker 7: 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 Stabwasser from the
Speaker 1: University of Cologne in Germany.
Speaker 6: My specialty is a subject called isotope geochemistry.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's got my old position. That's what I did before.
Speaker 1: Exactly Is this awkward for you?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, okay, I mean you know, so I asked
Speaker 1: him what he actually does. It's almost like you're a
Speaker 1: weatherman for the ancient times.
Speaker 6: Yes, you could say that.
Speaker 1: Yes, he didn't really like that line, as it could
Speaker 1: tell anyway. He thinks it's climate change that did in
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals. By studying stalagmites in caves, he determined that
Speaker 1: during their last fifty thousand years on Earth, the average
Speaker 1: temperature in the Danube Valley, one of the places where
Speaker 1: Neanderthals lived, was much colder than it is now. It
Speaker 1: was about thirty nine degrees fahrenheit. But and this is crucial,
Speaker 1: during that period there were these cold snaps that would
Speaker 1: ultimately seal their fate.
Speaker 6: They lasted something between a century and a millennium on average.
Speaker 6: They usually led to temperature jobs which could be up
Speaker 6: to let's say, six to eight degrees today. It may
Speaker 6: not sound drastic, but it makes the difference between being
Speaker 6: able to grow crops or not.
Speaker 1: And if you can't eat, you're going to die.
Speaker 6: And then as climate recovered, modern humans basically resettled an
Speaker 6: empty area more or less.
Speaker 1: So he isn't saying that modern humans were better adapted
Speaker 1: to these cold temperatures than the Neanderthals. I think the
Speaker 1: point he's making is that the extinction of Neanderthals was
Speaker 1: pretty much bad timing, wrong place, wrong time.
Speaker 2: But they had existed for millennia up until this point
Speaker 2: in the average temperature as it's going down could have
Speaker 2: forced them south into warmer climates, but it seems like
Speaker 2: it didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I know, I don't know why.
Speaker 2: This feels like a very.
Speaker 1: Dumb theory, which is why we have another theory for
Speaker 1: you on why me Anderthals died off.
Speaker 2: Okay, good.
Speaker 1: You remember Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London.
Speaker 1: He thinks the small population of Neanderthals was essentially swallowed
Speaker 1: up by modern humans. Some experts estimate that at tops
Speaker 1: there were only about fifty thousand Neanderthals spread all across
Speaker 1: the Eurasia. There just weren't that many of them.
Speaker 7: The Neanderthals were relatively low in numbers, and I think
Speaker 7: that it probably wouldn't have taken much to push them
Speaker 7: over the edge to extinction, and maybe the appearance of
Speaker 7: modern humans as a competitor was sufficient to do that.
Speaker 7: But of course that's just a guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that sound that just sounds like the most
Speaker 2: likely explanation. There was a sharknado of humans that came
Speaker 2: in and just wiped them out. I mean, we have
Speaker 2: a habit of doing that. That's kind of what we do.
Speaker 1: It's who we are. But who we are isn't who
Speaker 1: we used to think we are. Of course, Neanderthals aren't
Speaker 1: really gone. They live in you, Michael and so many others.
Speaker 1: Let's find out what that means today. What does it
Speaker 1: mean to have within our genetic code a certain percentage
Speaker 1: of Neanderthal DNA? I wanted to find out, so I'm
Speaker 1: heading to New Jersey to talk to one of the
Speaker 1: foremost experts in the field.
Speaker 8: My name is josh Aiky and I'm a professor in
Speaker 8: the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the Lewis
Speaker 8: Zigler Institute for integrit Genomics at Princeton University.
Speaker 1: And you did that all in one breath.
Speaker 2: With twenty three and meters, you can discover where in
Speaker 2: the world your DNA comes from.
Speaker 1: An unforgettable gift. My heritage DNA order your kid.
Speaker 2: At AncestryDNA dot com.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Professor Ake about what these DNA kits
Speaker 1: can tell us. It's one thing to find out that
Speaker 1: from one of these mail order things that you're ten
Speaker 1: percent Irish, ten percent Mediterranean, you know, five percent African.
Speaker 1: But to find out that your two point five percent Neanderthal,
Speaker 1: that's a whole other level of self discovery.
Speaker 8: We've always said that our genomes are a mosaic of
Speaker 8: different ancestors, and I think what we've learned more recently
Speaker 8: is it's a mosaic of both recent ancestors and very
Speaker 8: 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.
Speaker 7: More than a thousand researchers across six nations have.
Speaker 4: Revealed nearly all three billion letters of our miraculous code.
Speaker 1: That was President Bill Clinton back in the year two
Speaker 1: thousand announcing the first time the human genome was sequenced.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand and six, Swedish scientist Savante Papa
Speaker 1: and his team embarked upon sequencing the Neanderthal genome in
Speaker 1: a positively Jurassic Parkian way.
Speaker 8: They were able to isolate ancient DNA directly from a
Speaker 8: Neanderthal femur bone. So they drill into the long bone
Speaker 8: and to a whole bunch of cleanup procedures to try
Speaker 8: to make sure that you're just getting Neanderthal DNA.
Speaker 1: All from this femur bone. Amazing. Once we sequenced the
Speaker 1: Neanderthal genome, we were able to recognize that we have
Speaker 1: what is called archaic DNA within our own genes, and
Speaker 1: this bombshell told us a lot about what Neanderthals and
Speaker 1: modern humans were doing with one another about forty to
Speaker 1: fifty thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 8: It's been interestingly one of the most hotly contested issues
Speaker 8: in science for thirty years, with people arguing either there
Speaker 8: was admixture that happened between Neanderthals and modern humans or
Speaker 8: there wasn't.
Speaker 1: He's talking about sex, and recent studies suggest that they
Speaker 1: add mixed a lot. Okay, So where did the modern
Speaker 1: humans in the Neanderthals end up hooking up?
Speaker 8: That's a great question and something we still don't know precisely.
Speaker 8: It seems to make most sense that the initial rounds
Speaker 8: of hybridization happened shortly after modern humans dispersed out of Africa.
Speaker 1: So maybe an Asia minor like in Turkey, Levante, of
Speaker 1: like in Syria and Jordan. Okay, so it was a
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern that's where they got together.
Speaker 8: That's yes.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but imagine it. I mean in
Speaker 1: kind of a literal way. I mean fifty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: modern humans coming out of Africa and meeting a group
Speaker 1: of Neanderthals.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and what was that interaction, like, what was that
Speaker 8: interaction with it?
Speaker 1: Did the modern human guy walk over to the female
Speaker 1: Neanderthal and were they saying like, stop, no, don't do it,
Speaker 1: She's not our kind. There's so much we don't know,
Speaker 1: but we're learning more every day thanks to Professor Aikey
Speaker 1: and his team. He took me on a tour of
Speaker 1: their facility.
Speaker 8: So we're going to go look at the experimental and
Speaker 8: computational space in the Lewis Sigler Institute. You had to
Speaker 8: wear air in at No, we're not going to be baking,
Speaker 8: but don't touch anything, okay, mostly for your s So
Speaker 8: these are my graduate students pretending like they're working. This
Speaker 8: is mor nice to meet you. A thesis project is
Speaker 8: on understanding how Neanderthal sequence is distributed across the human genome.
Speaker 1: When you walk down the street, do you ever sort
Speaker 1: of wonder the knee underthal content of different people.
Speaker 9: I'm actually really good at picking that out just by
Speaker 9: looking at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much Neanderthal do you think is in me?
Speaker 2: Brush back your hair a little bit.
Speaker 9: I think you're about one percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, So my friend Mike Liam Black is two point
Speaker 1: nine percent Neanderthal. He's an exceptional case. It's amazing. Had
Speaker 1: a picture. Wait, let me just show you a picture
Speaker 1: of that. Look at that, Look at him.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I can definitely see yeah, because he's got a
Speaker 9: small chin, and Neanderthals are known for being relatively chinless,
Speaker 9: which is why I think you're lower, because you have
Speaker 9: a nice, strong chin.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 9: And he also has this sort of backward sloping foreheads,
Speaker 9: which is also very Yeah, what were referred to as
Speaker 9: like archaic.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like I have a very weak chin.
Speaker 2: I don't have a weak don't have a clapped esque chin.
Speaker 2: I've never felt the need to beard myself.
Speaker 1: You objectively do not have a weak chin.
Speaker 2: But I do have a reverse sloping forehead. He was
Speaker 2: right about that, But so does Roger Stone. And he's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, one out of two. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to the best. After meeting with grad student Aaron,
Speaker 1: Professor Age set the record straight. Just because someone has
Speaker 1: a lot of Neanderthal DNA doesn't mean his or her
Speaker 1: physical appearance will reflect this.
Speaker 8: One of the dirty secrets still about genetics is that
Speaker 8: we are not very good at interpreting DNA sequence variation.
Speaker 1: So if I look at my friend Michael and I
Speaker 1: see certain features that may look like a rendering of
Speaker 1: a Neanderthal. That's just a coincidence.
Speaker 8: It is most likely just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Most like you're leaving a little bit of room there.
Speaker 8: We can never say things with one hundred percent certainty
Speaker 8: and science.
Speaker 1: That's hysterical.
Speaker 8: All right, let's go downstairs because that's where the fun
Speaker 8: toys are.
Speaker 1: This feels like the movie Coma, Remember Coma.
Speaker 8: This is an alumina H twenty five hundred instruments. So
Speaker 8: this is one of the class of next generation sequencers.
Speaker 8: You don't have to have large, intact fragments of DNA.
Speaker 8: You can sequence from the small degraded fragments that most
Speaker 8: Neanderthal ancient DNA exists in because it degrades over time
Speaker 8: and you can sequence a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Knowing what we do about Neanderthal DNA put the science
Speaker 1: fiction part of my brain in full geek out mode.
Speaker 1: In our lifetime, will we be able to see, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a living, breathing Neanderthal that's created in a lab.
Speaker 8: The technology to do so arguably exists today.
Speaker 1: You can have like a version of Sturbridge Village or Williamsburg, Virginia,
Speaker 1: just a town with all Neanderthals, building tools and grunting
Speaker 1: at each other.
Speaker 8: I think it will ultimately be decided that that's an
Speaker 8: unethical thing to do. You know what, good just because
Speaker 8: you can do something doesn't mean you should do something.
Speaker 1: But what does that Neanderthal DNA mean for us today?
Speaker 1: According to Professor Aik, one of the benefits modern humans
Speaker 1: got from mating with Neanderthals was it improved their immune systems.
Speaker 8: It was a very efficient way for our ancestors to
Speaker 8: quickly adapt to these new conditions was to have sex
Speaker 8: with the Neanderthals and just pick up a few beneficial
Speaker 8: genes from Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: Great, okay, but you don't get the benefits just from
Speaker 1: the sacks of your kids, will get it?
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, it's a persistent benefit.
Speaker 2: I almost never get sick, per the Neanderthal thing. Yes,
Speaker 2: almost never. I can't remember the last time I was sick.
Speaker 1: Wow, and you have kids and I had.
Speaker 2: Kids and the whole thing. I never get the flu,
Speaker 2: I never get colds. I never really get anything.
Speaker 1: That is interesting. But wait, there's more to the benefits
Speaker 1: of having Neanderthal DNA.
Speaker 8: There are a few genes that are clearly important in
Speaker 8: early formation of skin, like keratin, proteins.
Speaker 1: Neanderthals had nice nails.
Speaker 8: Perhaps it was nice nails, our hair.
Speaker 2: My nails I think are fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, thanks, don't think me yet. Your Neanderthal
Speaker 1: DNA does have some downsides. It may play a factoring depression,
Speaker 1: and it may have something to do with chain smoking.
Speaker 8: It just so happens that this sequence now influences your
Speaker 8: ability to stop smoking.
Speaker 2: Okay, never smoked.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing you've never smoked, because you fined
Speaker 1: it harder to quit.
Speaker 2: I may just take up the habit just to see
Speaker 2: if it's right right, just to test this proposition.
Speaker 1: One of the most mind blowing things the field of
Speaker 1: archaic genomics hasn't covered is that modern humans and Neanderthals
Speaker 1: weren't the only people around.
Speaker 8: Thirty thousand years ago. Forty thousand years ago, we walked
Speaker 8: around the Earth, we'd find modern humans Neanderthals. Denisovans that
Speaker 8: if we went to the island of Flores, we'd see
Speaker 8: the hobbit individuals. So there was hobbits Homo florencias, so
Speaker 8: very small, diminutive archaic human types. So the world was
Speaker 8: a much more interesting place fifty thousand years ago and
Speaker 8: today the only remnants that we see of these archaic
Speaker 8: forms of humans are the scattered remains of their DNA
Speaker 8: 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 at opening packages? A
Speaker 1: saliva collection kept and right, no food or drink for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. Okay, spit to fill mine all right, here
Speaker 1: we go. Oh god, that's a lot of spit. Twenty
Speaker 1: minutes later, my cup runneth over with saliva. I have
Speaker 1: to say this is bringing out a little bit of
Speaker 1: my competitive tendency. I'm a little jealous that Michael is
Speaker 1: so neanderthal and uh and I don't know. We'll see
Speaker 1: time to see who's the neanderthalist of them all. And
Speaker 1: so I actually have the result.
Speaker 2: I looked yet, but you haven't looked.
Speaker 1: I have not looked. So I as you heard, I
Speaker 1: spit in an envelope and sent it in and I'm
Speaker 1: going to look. Now. Your DNA tells a story of
Speaker 1: who you are and how you're connected to populations, trace
Speaker 1: your heritage through the Century's an un covered Cleo one
Speaker 1: hundred percent.
Speaker 2: What does that mean, Cleo?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What is Cleo? Gideon?
Speaker 9: Hey, Moe, Remember you were a little nervous about using
Speaker 9: your real name.
Speaker 2: I use the name of my cat.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the name of Gideon's cat. Is Cleo.
Speaker 2: I'm one hundred percent Khalio.
Speaker 1: It was like so week.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe it meant, oh, you've got one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of a mark for some disease that's going to
Speaker 2: kill you.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Cleo disease. Okay, all right, it's already says
Speaker 1: our ancestry composition. Your DNA suggests your ancestry is forty
Speaker 1: point eight percent Iberian with ties to five other populations.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to view report. Wow, some over forty
Speaker 1: percent Spanish, okay, which is kind of sexy.
Speaker 2: And did you know that?
Speaker 1: Well, my mother's Colombian. Okay, so thirty point two percent
Speaker 1: Italian Italy, I'm point three percent Ashkenazi Jewish?
Speaker 2: Are you yes, welcome?
Speaker 1: I It's interesting because a cab driver the other day
Speaker 1: as said, are you Jewish?
Speaker 2: Said to you, are you Jewish?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And now you can answer in the affirmative. Hell, yes,
Speaker 2: I am, Hell.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, I'm three point five percent East Asian and
Speaker 1: Native American.
Speaker 2: That's what I was looking for. Oh my god, I
Speaker 2: have it.
Speaker 1: Congrats, Thank you, God, don't be jealous. Okay, two point
Speaker 1: seven percent Native American, Colombia, Venezuela plus three more goubab
Speaker 1: Brasil and Maica. That's great. I'm so excited. So where
Speaker 1: do I find my Neanderthal?
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like that researcher was right that you
Speaker 2: have less Neanderthal than the average person. If you have
Speaker 2: less than eighty nine percent of twenty three and meter customers,
Speaker 2: that suggests to me you don't have very much at all.
Speaker 1: Right, I guess that's what it means anyway. So okay,
Speaker 1: so we can conclude I have virtually no Neanderthal hence
Speaker 1: are different pronunciations of Neanderthal.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you do have a real s'mortisboard of all
Speaker 2: everything that I wanted, so I wouldn't say it's a tie.
Speaker 2: I would say you're slightly ahead in the genetic lottery.
Speaker 1: You said Asmargus board, But I have no Northern Europeans,
Speaker 1: so that's why we should what would be something more?
Speaker 1: Payea much? I love it so much. Well, mich Leean Black,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you, but you should really be
Speaker 1: thanking me because this was about finding your roots since
Speaker 1: I'm basically zero percent Neanderthal.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I mean I really feel like I
Speaker 2: learned a lot about myself, about my family. I now
Speaker 2: know more about you and simultaneously think less of you
Speaker 2: because you are not of my species. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: was a blast.
Speaker 1: Before we close, a word from the University of Wisconsin's
Speaker 1: John Hawkes on his predecessors in Neanderthal research, those people
Speaker 1: whose early analysis set the stage for how Neanderthals were
Speaker 1: seen for so long.
Speaker 5: When we look at the scientific world of the Victorian era,
Speaker 5: you're looking at people who became aware of human variation
Speaker 5: around the world, but they interpreted it in a very
Speaker 5: culturally insensitive way. You look at the past and think,
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, I can't believe that they said that,
Speaker 5: But that was the way that they approached their science.
Speaker 5: Today we look at things totally differently, and when we
Speaker 5: look at extinct human groups, they had their own ways
Speaker 5: of living in the world. You have to appreciate they're
Speaker 5: not us, but they lived at a time with incredible
Speaker 5: challenges and they overcame those challenges, and that is something
Speaker 5: really fundamentally similar that we share.
Speaker 1: With them today. We're all experts. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: just spit in an envelope and get all the answers right.
Speaker 1: Far from it. Let's all hope that science and technology
Speaker 1: will allow us, one day to understand why a species
Speaker 1: of humans as advance anst as the Neanderthals, disappeared from
Speaker 1: the planet, so that maybe, just maybe we don't disappear,
Speaker 1: at least not before our next episode of Mobituaries featuring
Speaker 1: the incomparable Sammy Davis Junior. I certainly hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode and if you would, please rate and review
Speaker 1: our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca tell
Speaker 1: me how Neanderthal you are. For more great content, please
Speaker 1: visit mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was produced
Speaker 1: by Gideon Evans. Our team of producers also includes Megan Marcus,
Speaker 1: Kate mccaulliff, Megan Detri and me Moroka. It was edited
Speaker 1: by David Fox and in neared by Dan de Zula.
Speaker 1: Indispensable support from Justin had Genius, Deneski, Kira Wardlow, Zach Gilcrest,
Speaker 1: the team at CBS News Radio, and Richard Rarer. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Gary Perdue, Minora Sistiaga and London's Natural History Museum, and
Speaker 1: as always, undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp
Speaker 1: without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're
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