Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas, And
Speaker 1: you know Julie. In the in science fiction, we we
Speaker 1: keep coming back to this idea of like humans going
Speaker 1: out into the into the void and encountering another another
Speaker 1: intelligent species and then figuring out what's going to go down,
Speaker 1: and it's just you know, it's just throughout the genre.
Speaker 1: But the trope, it's it's definitely a trope. It's all.
Speaker 1: It's it's trophy even um but U. But that the
Speaker 1: really fastinating thing to me is to is to look
Speaker 1: backwards in time and and think about humans and uh
Speaker 1: and their interactions with other human like beings, such as
Speaker 1: most famously the Neanderthal. Yeah, the neanderthal, which is typically
Speaker 1: spelled I mean, it's spelled like it's neanderthal, and I've
Speaker 1: I've been saying it wrong for ages. But but of course,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, comes from the Germans, so it's neanderthal.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to say that it's yeah, it
Speaker 1: rolls off the tongue a lot easier if you just
Speaker 1: go ahead and and use the fig German accent that
Speaker 1: we all have have gotten off of the television and
Speaker 1: just say neandertal. But we can't do the entire podcast
Speaker 1: in that voice. Oh my god, you sound eerily like
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. See. I think I was listening
Speaker 1: to a mix recently. They had a bunch of Arnold
Speaker 1: like fitness samples. That was probably what did it. But anyway, Neanderthal,
Speaker 1: hopefully that pronunciation won't annoy you too much, uh in
Speaker 1: this podcast likewise, we're going to steer largely clear of
Speaker 1: another problem the encounter when you start reading about Neanderthal
Speaker 1: in Neanderthals or any any any topics concerning the ascension
Speaker 1: of man and human evolution, and that is that you
Speaker 1: almost all always get bogged down in discussion of dig
Speaker 1: sites and all these Latin names to the different fossils,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's all very important to a larger understanding.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna try and steer clear of a lot
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, because it's like the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It becomes like and then Homo epercatus
Speaker 1: emerge from Homo elliptus, and we don't know where Homo
Speaker 1: capacatas fits. You know, it just gets it gets a
Speaker 1: little dry, you know, even even for me and I've
Speaker 1: I've written some articles about this before and it just
Speaker 1: you know, kind of stunned your brain after a while.
Speaker 1: But for our purposes, but yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: sort of blow through some of that. But but there
Speaker 1: are lots of great resources out there, um that that'll
Speaker 1: that'll kill you with the Latin names if you like.
Speaker 1: But to uh, to really put us in more of
Speaker 1: a time and place. Um, but let's talk about what
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals were all right, Um, they first they were
Speaker 1: there hominids there, they would have looked very much like
Speaker 1: people on like modern humans. Even like if you get
Speaker 1: in your mind this sort of idea of like a
Speaker 1: troll like um uh bron Pearlman esque hulking thing uh
Speaker 1: um or Tom Waits, you can put that in as well. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that's not necessarily a good model
Speaker 1: to have, and it's a really hard one to kick.
Speaker 1: Like when I think Neanderthal, it's it's really hard to
Speaker 1: kick that idea of this hulking brute that's stomping through
Speaker 1: the undergroad the cartoon caveman with a club thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um and uh and it's hard to get past that that,
Speaker 1: but these guys would have looked more or less like
Speaker 1: modern humans, only shorter, heavier built, um stronger, particularly in
Speaker 1: the arms and hands. So they were they were kind
Speaker 1: of thick. Uh and and you know, muscily dudes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually I read somewhere too that their rib cages are
Speaker 1: really large and they didn't have much of a waste, yeah,
Speaker 1: which was sort of like that gives you this idea
Speaker 1: of these barrel chested, really compact muscular beings. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like I guess, kind of like
Speaker 1: a stumpy wrestler physique. And to a certain extent um
Speaker 1: they the skull evidence we have show that they didn't
Speaker 1: have much of its hin uh and their forehead fourheads
Speaker 1: were kind of sloped backwards. Uh. Their brain case was
Speaker 1: lower but felt longer, and it housed a slightly larger
Speaker 1: brain than what we're carrying around today, right, which was
Speaker 1: really great for them help them survive for a very
Speaker 1: long time, but also, as we'll get into later, may
Speaker 1: have contributed a bit to their downfall as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these guys first showed up in Europe as early
Speaker 1: as six hundred thousand UM or three fifty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: We're a little you know, again, anytime you deal with
Speaker 1: the fossil record, you're dealing with bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: the jigsaw puzzle, and many of the pieces will just
Speaker 1: never have So it's it's always a little touch and go,
Speaker 1: and it's it's and if you don't understand that, it
Speaker 1: can be a little frustrating. We're like, how can we
Speaker 1: not know? Like, how can we just dig up some
Speaker 1: more bones? Well, not all bones survive, not all bones
Speaker 1: become fossils. Yeah, that's the game of chance, right, Like
Speaker 1: even the neanderthalman who was discovered it was sort of
Speaker 1: by chance because the guy who who saw it was
Speaker 1: about to pitch it and then he thought, well, maybe
Speaker 1: that's a bear school, and he was collecting um animal
Speaker 1: schools and ended up keeping it. And then they found
Speaker 1: out later that no, this is not at your school.
Speaker 1: So again, I mean, our knowledge would have been so
Speaker 1: incomplete if he hadn't had that chance encounter. So these
Speaker 1: guys pretty much ruled Eurasia for two hundred thousand years,
Speaker 1: roaming around, uh doing their thing, and even at the
Speaker 1: height of their occupation of a Western Europe, scientists think
Speaker 1: that they probably never really exceeded say, fifteen thousand total.
Speaker 1: So even so, you know, we we're not dealing with
Speaker 1: modern population levels of human like today, humans are really
Speaker 1: off the chart, you know, I mean, we're an exceedingly
Speaker 1: successful species or where you can argue were an invasive
Speaker 1: species pretty much everywhere. But but this was a time
Speaker 1: when populations could not really reached the unsustainable levels that
Speaker 1: we've managed to achieve to right, and from fossil records,
Speaker 1: what we do know is that at the time that
Speaker 1: um Neanderthals went extinct, humans were really homeless sapiens were
Speaker 1: really starting to make great gains. So of course that's
Speaker 1: where we that idea developed where we just vanquished the
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and ate them and made it with them and
Speaker 1: left them in the dirt. And that's not really true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like to uh, this will probably the
Speaker 1: only time I use a Will Smith quote. But but
Speaker 1: there's this idea that the Neanderthals were old and busted
Speaker 1: and the humans were the new hotness, and that we
Speaker 1: just eradicated the old and busted and thoughts. So it's
Speaker 1: just they were just a you know, this was the
Speaker 1: old model. The new models so much better. So of
Speaker 1: course the old model is going to die, right, right,
Speaker 1: But the more you really look at it, the more
Speaker 1: it becomes in a situation where you have two really
Speaker 1: good models. I mean, it's it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: idea that I think it was actually Ricky Gervei who
Speaker 1: pointed out that like the garden slug may look disgusting,
Speaker 1: we may hate it, but the garden slug is perfect,
Speaker 1: like nature has filled that that niche with something that
Speaker 1: really works. Well. So like nature does by and large
Speaker 1: doesn't create, uh, you know, evolution does not lead to
Speaker 1: ineffective designs. It's like this is the pinnacle. This is
Speaker 1: a a great design. So the more you look at it,
Speaker 1: you have a situation where the neander doll is a
Speaker 1: is a killer design, but circumstances ended up having this
Speaker 1: other design, this human design, be the one that's going
Speaker 1: to take take the lead, become the dominant force. And
Speaker 1: all that had to do with climate, right Like at
Speaker 1: the time that they were flourishing neandertals, they had adapted
Speaker 1: to their environment really well yeah, but I'm jumping ahead here, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: two other key things to mention is that another there's
Speaker 1: a really old, outdated idea that's still probably kicking around
Speaker 1: and a lot of people's heads, and that is that
Speaker 1: we evolved from neander tal and that's that's completely not true. Um. Rather,
Speaker 1: we share a common relative um, a common ancestor. So
Speaker 1: if you were to follow the chart back, you'd say, hey,
Speaker 1: here's this particular of species um and and at this
Speaker 1: point it diverged and there's uh, and it's its ancestors
Speaker 1: became Neanderthals and became humans. Right, So there's Homo erect us, right,
Speaker 1: and then that's the branch of Homo Heidelberg genis saying that, right,
Speaker 1: which I just picture a caveman in uh edohosen, I
Speaker 1: know that's Heiderberg. Uh. And then of course that evolved
Speaker 1: that that species evolved into neander tools right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like the same thing that we like, we share
Speaker 1: common ancestors with the champion chimpanzee, but we did not
Speaker 1: evolve from a chimpanzee. So if you had any of
Speaker 1: that kicking around your head, get rid of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our genetic material is shared with Neanderthals, yes, uh. And
Speaker 1: another interesting fact to keep in mind is that is
Speaker 1: that again we we coexisted with Neanderthals for for for
Speaker 1: for a brief period of time as far as as
Speaker 1: evolutionary history goes. But but but we did coexist, right.
Speaker 1: They became extinct about thirty thousand years ago. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they may have survived in in some very remote areas
Speaker 1: for perhaps up to twenty four thousand years ago. And
Speaker 1: that's a specifically Gibraltar. You know, in the Strait of Gibraltar. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a site there called Gorman's Cave that people have
Speaker 1: studied a lot. So this is an isolated area that
Speaker 1: that you know sits an island. They end up there
Speaker 1: and they end up holding out there for a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually, um, they're out injeri In. But what I
Speaker 1: find really interesting is that neanderthal has got a bad
Speaker 1: rap because they weren't these great bedazzlers. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're like, well, where are their cave drawings? Where there
Speaker 1: are their beads and their where's their jewelry? So but
Speaker 1: at that time that was the litmus test of whether
Speaker 1: or not you were um sophisticated enough to be thought
Speaker 1: of as as cool as Homo sapiens, right, and so
Speaker 1: that really did contribute to this idea of them as
Speaker 1: knuckle drivers, actually, which is unfortunate because they are so
Speaker 1: much more nuanced than um than that, and in fact
Speaker 1: um it reminds me of Kazuo Shigaros. Never let me
Speaker 1: go the novel. But the children, Yes, this is the
Speaker 1: My wife read this for a book club, and it's
Speaker 1: basically the same plot as the old sci fi film
Speaker 1: parts the Clonus Hare, which they did for MST. Three K.
Speaker 1: And also there was some what was that the Island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically you know the idea of like, oh, let's let's
Speaker 1: have clones of ourselves, so we can have spare parts, right,
Speaker 1: so we can just pick up this organ from this person.
Speaker 1: But one of the central um topics in the book
Speaker 1: is that the children must produce artwork to prove their
Speaker 1: own humanity. And so I was thinking about that. I
Speaker 1: was thinking, well, that's the same case with Neanderthals. Is
Speaker 1: that we thought, well, we don't see any cave paintings,
Speaker 1: therefore they must have been brutes, they must have been
Speaker 1: without sympathy or you know, these these higher ideas of
Speaker 1: our emotions in our humanity. But we'll find this out later.
Speaker 1: It's that's not the case at all. Yeah. Well, also
Speaker 1: it's it's important to note that some of the early
Speaker 1: cave drawings that you counter like pictures of our pictures
Speaker 1: of animals, you know, pictures of prey, and and they
Speaker 1: think that a lot of that is probably used to
Speaker 1: to teach. This presentation is brought to you by Intel
Speaker 1: sponsors of tomorrow. So it's not like they were like
Speaker 1: they were like, Oh, I have free time, I must
Speaker 1: create some art. Let me draw an antelope. Isn't it beautiful? Now?
Speaker 1: It was probably more like, like, I'm really trying to
Speaker 1: drive home that you had a hunt and antelope, kid,
Speaker 1: let me draw one on the wall. Yeah, this isn't
Speaker 1: cubism here. Yeah. So so I think we can sort
Speaker 1: of get a little, uh, a little lofty about our
Speaker 1: ideas concerning early primitive artwork. Yeah. And you've touched on
Speaker 1: this too as well. Is it the superiority myth? This
Speaker 1: idea that Homo safetians are really the only cool kids
Speaker 1: in town because they mastered fire, um, just speak tools,
Speaker 1: agriculture or someone and so forth. Yeah, And it really
Speaker 1: kind of flows into sort of a manifest destiny that
Speaker 1: you know, this idea that we're special. We've got to
Speaker 1: be special. Um, you know, we're we're here where that
Speaker 1: we must be the superior design. There could not possibly
Speaker 1: be a better one, right, And that's the cool thing
Speaker 1: about looking at this UM and thinking about it in
Speaker 1: the context. We are the kid cool kids here right now.
Speaker 1: But you know, two thousand years from now, they'll be
Speaker 1: looking back at us saying, what in the world were
Speaker 1: they doing? Yeah? We um and Neandertals first met our
Speaker 1: human ancestors in the Middle East about a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty thousand years ago. Uh and perhaps uh, perhaps after
Speaker 1: about a half million years of separation when they split
Speaker 1: off from that common ancestor, then they contacted each other
Speaker 1: again in Eurasia roughly forty five thousand years ago. And
Speaker 1: and this is where we end up, you know. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions about what these contacts
Speaker 1: consisted of. Uh. For one thing, you know, those cave
Speaker 1: drawings that we've mentioned, you don't see any cave drawings
Speaker 1: of Neanderthals, So it's it's not like they were just
Speaker 1: running into each other the supermarket all the time. Again,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with small populations of people, people that moved
Speaker 1: around for the most part, So yeah, nomadic people. So
Speaker 1: it's not again, it's not like people run into each
Speaker 1: other all the time. And even human populations are were
Speaker 1: likely to be running into you run into a group
Speaker 1: that speaks differently that that are that are very alien
Speaker 1: from you, there may be just as alien from you
Speaker 1: as these uh, slightly heavy set guys who who look
Speaker 1: pretty intimidating and look like they could really take you
Speaker 1: down with the tackle if need be. But we know
Speaker 1: know that that we humans tangled with neander tolls and
Speaker 1: when by tangling mean they had sex with each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least some like it. It apparently happens. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: genetic evidence is there. Did it happen all the time? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's not the kind of thing it's
Speaker 1: happening all the time. No, And in fact, if that
Speaker 1: were the case, then, um, we would have a lot
Speaker 1: more evidence in our own DNA. Right right now, we've
Speaker 1: got traces of two to of Neanderthals and the modern
Speaker 1: human genome in populations outside of Africa, which is interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know there's some evidence there that again they
Speaker 1: tangoed um and this we learned from the Max Planck
Speaker 1: Institute because they sequenced the Neanderthal genoa. And they also
Speaker 1: found out that they were pale skinned and they had
Speaker 1: a range of colors including red hair. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: they shared the language gene with us, Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: fox P two right, Yeah, that's that's the one there.
Speaker 1: In fact, there have been some some arguments that they
Speaker 1: may have uh, they have may have communicated musically. You
Speaker 1: remember this from from our research for the Music Healing
Speaker 1: the Mind. Yeah, music, can music rebuild your brain? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it was the bone flute yeah yeah, um, and
Speaker 1: that was something like I don't know it was fifty
Speaker 1: years ago or I fix thousand year old instrument. That
Speaker 1: is clearly it's it's intentional and it's marking. Some people
Speaker 1: have said, oh, animals made the holes in the bone,
Speaker 1: but if you look at the pictures of it, like
Speaker 1: the holes are pretty exact. Um, so it's not too
Speaker 1: far off to think that they'd be able to to
Speaker 1: use it as a musical instrument. They're also you also
Speaker 1: see different examples of cannibalistic or well, okay, there's some
Speaker 1: examples of cannibal possible cannibalism among the neandertals and also uh,
Speaker 1: some evidence and with the bones to suggest that humans
Speaker 1: may have eaten neanderthals at different times and possibly made
Speaker 1: necklaces out of their children's teeth. Yeah, which is just
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I mean, and you know, to call back
Speaker 1: to another podcast, we have the Whole Cannibalism podcast where
Speaker 1: we dealt primarily with cannibalism in nature. So if you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to that one, if you were like my wife,
Speaker 1: you were scared off from it thinking it was gonna
Speaker 1: be about mainly about people eating other people. It's really
Speaker 1: mostly about uh, about animals eating their own type praying
Speaker 1: mances offering themselves up and a love victual to get
Speaker 1: their heads. Been on lots of sexual cannibalism of that
Speaker 1: kind of thing in that podcast. But one of the
Speaker 1: things we really drove tried to drive drive home in
Speaker 1: that was that cannibalism, when you strip away all of
Speaker 1: the the the modern human taboos and all, it really
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. So it's just the idea
Speaker 1: that you would encounter it. That doesn't mean that we're
Speaker 1: suggesting to do it, but no, no, in the context
Speaker 1: of when it happened, it made sense, right, because they're
Speaker 1: hardy protein sources. Yeah, yeah, And you know it's otherwise
Speaker 1: that that stuff is going to go to waste and
Speaker 1: you might starve to death, so of course you eat it.
Speaker 1: There are also some arguments out there that these early groups,
Speaker 1: including the andertal Is, also partook of some scavenging. So
Speaker 1: it's also in a situation where there's some war dead
Speaker 1: either on your from your own tribe, but from this
Speaker 1: group that you just had a little um miscommunication with. Again,
Speaker 1: why I let that, Why I let the vultures have that?
Speaker 1: When that's those are some some vital nutrients that could
Speaker 1: sustain you as you continue to to scour the landscape
Speaker 1: for for what will hopefully be your next meal. Right,
Speaker 1: And talking about miss communication or communication makes me again
Speaker 1: think of the speech gene and the fact that because
Speaker 1: they had the large brains and they had that gene,
Speaker 1: and because they also had a tiny bone in the
Speaker 1: throat called the highoid um, which supports the soft tissue
Speaker 1: of the throat and it holds the root of the
Speaker 1: tongue in place, which is a requirement for speech, makes
Speaker 1: me think that Um and and many others, that they
Speaker 1: did have some sort of language what we do know
Speaker 1: is that their lantn x is much higher in their
Speaker 1: throat than humans, which would have limited some of their speech.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a it's good to note that because
Speaker 1: again that that would have helped them to have survived,
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate with one another, but in
Speaker 1: the long run that it may have actually um contributed
Speaker 1: to their demise interests of Homo sapiens well, and also
Speaker 1: we've seen plenty of evidence that just because i mean
Speaker 1: even just among Homo sapiens, just because one group can
Speaker 1: talk to the other, doesn't any other group isn't going
Speaker 1: to attempt to wipe them out, you know, No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's it was more in the well, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it later, but it was more in the context
Speaker 1: of is it are you better suited to survive if
Speaker 1: you can communicate really well with each other? Um. But
Speaker 1: another thing about Neanderthals that has been that the veil
Speaker 1: has been lifted on is toolmaking and some other school
Speaker 1: skills and things that they've done. Again, it was thought
Speaker 1: that humans had the upper hand with tools, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that Neanderthals were just as sophisticated with their
Speaker 1: tools and in some cases. Um, the shales or the
Speaker 1: blades were a lot more effective than the homosapiene Homo
Speaker 1: sapiens um. So there you go. Mad skills. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: guys were hunters. Um. These guys make glue, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is just pretty amazing. It's yeah, do you mind if
Speaker 1: I talk about it? So amazed by this? Uh, it's
Speaker 1: the glue is made from tightly rolled strips of birch bark,
Speaker 1: and it's deposited into a hole in the ground and
Speaker 1: then they cover that with earth and they see at oxygen.
Speaker 1: Then they take a small holdering stick put that in there,
Speaker 1: and because the birch is deprived of oxygen, it sweats
Speaker 1: out pitch and so when it cools, it can be
Speaker 1: used in tools to bond materials together. And the even
Speaker 1: cooler thing about it is that you can take that
Speaker 1: piece of cooled pitch and take it anywhere. Of course,
Speaker 1: thematic right, so they're gonna they're gonna bring it with them,
Speaker 1: and then all you have to do is reheat it,
Speaker 1: uh to use it again. And the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 1: this up is because the I don't can't remember those
Speaker 1: as a PBS special. I'll have to look at my
Speaker 1: research notes. But the video clip that I saw this,
Speaker 1: it was really difficult for them to do and to
Speaker 1: do right. So it took a lot of skill, and
Speaker 1: it took a lot of trial and air and even
Speaker 1: in this day and age, for you and I to
Speaker 1: try to do this, and I'm sure that would be
Speaker 1: a lot of expletives flying. You know, there'll be a
Speaker 1: steep learning curve. So for them to be able to
Speaker 1: do this is amazing. Yeah. I can't can barely cook
Speaker 1: dinner for myself without resorting the cursing, So I can't
Speaker 1: imagine making glue in my backyard. I know, I remember
Speaker 1: your risotto st technique needed some observation by a second party.
Speaker 1: So yes, um, I cook best when I'm I'm helping,
Speaker 1: not taking the lead. You're more of a chef. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no shame in that chef. That's an important rule.
Speaker 1: But they also used pollen. A lot of pollen was
Speaker 1: found in the caves, and that's used as an antiseptic
Speaker 1: and a salve. And speaking of of pollen, it's it's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that they were not specifically carnivorous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like meat was a big part of their diet.
Speaker 1: They were. They were probably steak fans and would have
Speaker 1: been found frequenting out back if they were around today.
Speaker 1: But but they did eat vegetable matter. They did when
Speaker 1: they did the scavenge for seeds. When when that when
Speaker 1: when they when they were available? Yeah, and they yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, they found some plant plant matter and the
Speaker 1: molars um. And again here you have this idea of
Speaker 1: them as being these you know, cavemen who were just
Speaker 1: you know, and of course they were were taking down
Speaker 1: some large animals, but they weren't, you know, primarily carnivorous. Um.
Speaker 1: So this idea they invented the blooming onion. Actually people
Speaker 1: really know that, but oh yeah they did. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: you just threw me there. I'm like, now I'm imagining
Speaker 1: them over the fire with their blooming onions. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: salivating a little bit. And that's just so wrong. But
Speaker 1: the other thing is a lot of people thought of
Speaker 1: them is sort of like the dirty hippies too, of hominids. Um.
Speaker 1: But in fact, the hygiene thing has been brought up
Speaker 1: before that their teeth has shown very little decay, so
Speaker 1: they were taking care of their their teeth in some manner. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's it's also a lot easier to take care
Speaker 1: of your teeth if you don't have a huge sugar
Speaker 1: um diet. So um. You know these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: aside from some nuts and berries here and there, you know,
Speaker 1: they're probably not, uh, you know, sucking down as much
Speaker 1: sugar as modern humans do. Yeah. Yeah, they're probably whittling
Speaker 1: their own little toothpicks too. Yeah. Actually you know how
Speaker 1: many evidence of that? But I'd like to um so
Speaker 1: in in in thinking about like how how a this
Speaker 1: human or humanlike population grew and expanded and eventually dwindled
Speaker 1: and disappeared, you you really have to think of it
Speaker 1: in terms of geology, climate, and resources. Um, because we're
Speaker 1: talking about long stretches of time, your hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of years during which the Earth's climate kind of whopped
Speaker 1: around back and forth, kind of like a ping pong
Speaker 1: ball where you had you had periods of cooling, you
Speaker 1: had and you had periods of heat, you had some
Speaker 1: some glacial stuff mixed in there, and uh and and
Speaker 1: when the weather changes, it changes the the geology. And
Speaker 1: when yeah, and when and over long periods of times
Speaker 1: of the course of geology changes, it changes the weather.
Speaker 1: So these are all things that are in flux and
Speaker 1: they force in the same way that that you see
Speaker 1: like populations of birds moving around. Uh. Um, you know
Speaker 1: it's like oh, you know people and looking at say,
Speaker 1: you know, global global warming and climate change. You know,
Speaker 1: you see how populations of animals are are are affected.
Speaker 1: And at this time, I mean, the humans were very
Speaker 1: much uh. I mean humans are are susceptible to this
Speaker 1: even now, but at the time, you know, if animals
Speaker 1: had to move to a different geographical location, than the
Speaker 1: humans were forced into that area as well, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: and just to put it into context, to the global
Speaker 1: warming that we experienced now is different from what they
Speaker 1: were experiencing in terms of extreme climate changes. So the Neanderthals,
Speaker 1: they survived the ice age, they did really well with that.
Speaker 1: It became very compact and muscular, right. Um. But but
Speaker 1: then at some point, um, the climates kept changing very
Speaker 1: quick and within you know, a span of a lifetime,
Speaker 1: a lot of their landscape could have changed, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we know it changed. So the force that they relied
Speaker 1: on they have receded, and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: have less area to hunt in. Yeah, and uh yeah
Speaker 1: to this really bois done to two areas that really
Speaker 1: stuck out to me, um about how how this these
Speaker 1: changes in climate affected them. Um alright, one key thing
Speaker 1: to look at is that Neanderthals, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: never took to farming, never took up our agriculture, which
Speaker 1: of course is just was a was and continued to
Speaker 1: be a vital part of modern humanity. Yeah and keep
Speaker 1: in mind or aromatic too. Yeah, yeah, they're nomadic. Um
Speaker 1: and again and again. Agriculture is the thing that you
Speaker 1: know made us settle down that and then ultimately lead
Speaker 1: to uh, to the to the construction of villages and
Speaker 1: cities that gave us the free time to specialize in
Speaker 1: different skills and allowed like you know, one old dude
Speaker 1: to just set around the village all day painting stuff, Um,
Speaker 1: making those cool cave painting. Yeah. Yeah, we're making you know,
Speaker 1: making little gold frogs or something. But Neanderthals never took
Speaker 1: to the agricultural way of life. For the greater part
Speaker 1: of their Eurasian dominance. Uh, the climate was harsher and
Speaker 1: more sporadic than it was today. So it just wasn't
Speaker 1: good a good time to get into farming. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: even if even if they wanted to. They were smart
Speaker 1: enough to. They were skilled enough too, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a situation where they would have been like, what is carrot?
Speaker 1: How me plan? You know, it wouldn't have been a
Speaker 1: situation like that. But that the time was not right
Speaker 1: for the agricultural leap right, and well that they were
Speaker 1: so tethered to their own physicality to right. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and when conditions improved, when it did get become farming time, Um,
Speaker 1: there wasn't that much really pushing them to leave behind
Speaker 1: these honey and gathering techniques that worked well for them, right,
Speaker 1: Because I was thinking about it that they they put
Speaker 1: scientists put that the extreme climate changes about forty years ago.
Speaker 1: They became extinct about years so for fifteen thousand years
Speaker 1: and in crazy climates they they still have toe hold
Speaker 1: in it, right, they were still existing. But eventually you're
Speaker 1: going to die off, and you know you're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're gonna lose that to toe hold and um, those
Speaker 1: great stocking limbs that you had are going to be
Speaker 1: problems on it because they require more calories to up
Speaker 1: keep and there's less protein sources around. And that body
Speaker 1: style that they had, that that meaty tough, you know,
Speaker 1: wrestler build um. The main way that this suited them
Speaker 1: u was in ambushing their prey. They were used to
Speaker 1: dealing with with wooded or semi wooded area somewhere you know,
Speaker 1: they can hide and cover, wait till that deer, that
Speaker 1: ibex um you know, or that that bloomin onion comes
Speaker 1: in close enough, you know, wait in the wait in
Speaker 1: the cover, and then leap out and uh and really
Speaker 1: throw down with that deer. So it was like a
Speaker 1: wrestler on the ropes, right, yeah, come down. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like he's on the ropes, let's get him. And then
Speaker 1: they you know, just beat the crap out of the deer.
Speaker 1: Or they were more like you know, they do spears
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But they've also they've also found injuries and
Speaker 1: some of the new their tolls that that they say
Speaker 1: resemble rodeo rider um um injuries. So it's which you know,
Speaker 1: so just imagine it's like you have a pretty dangerous
Speaker 1: animal probably probably perhaps with big horns or antlers and
Speaker 1: uh and these guy and again they probably would probably
Speaker 1: they probably would not go after some of the larger
Speaker 1: like megafauna. You know, they probably would not be hunting
Speaker 1: rhinoceros or something like that, but something like a deer
Speaker 1: and ibex. So they hide, it comes into into range,
Speaker 1: they jump out, they surround it, and they just start.
Speaker 1: They are a clown in this scenario, I hope. So
Speaker 1: I hope that there was like a neandertal early clowning.
Speaker 1: That's why they didn't paint rocks there. They their art
Speaker 1: was many performance artists. Um. But yeah, that's interesting that
Speaker 1: you bring up the injury too, because I remember reading
Speaker 1: that those injuries were often times sustained when they were
Speaker 1: much younger, and so it's for some of them it
Speaker 1: could really limit their range of motion. And this is
Speaker 1: where the community really comes into play, because those with
Speaker 1: the elderly in the infirm were obviously taken care of
Speaker 1: by the group, which is another factor of this of them,
Speaker 1: you know, yea some sort of culture, so it's not
Speaker 1: just like, oh, that one's hurt, we're going to leave
Speaker 1: him behind. Yeah, we'll eat you later. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: can easily imagine too, like a system where it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, the young guys, you guys haven't had your
Speaker 1: legs broken yet, so you're the ones who leap onto
Speaker 1: the ibex is back and uh, your father and grandpa
Speaker 1: are going to stand back with the spears. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's I'm just sort of imagining things. But but
Speaker 1: but it's easy to to see how the system like
Speaker 1: this might work. Now. What happens though when climate change
Speaker 1: causes your forests to shrink and it ends up creating this, uh,
Speaker 1: this step tundra environment where suddenly you have more and
Speaker 1: more just vast empty stretches of of you know, no
Speaker 1: cover where you see you can see the herds of
Speaker 1: reindeer or or or you know, ibex or whatever, but
Speaker 1: they're off in the distance. It's like, how are you
Speaker 1: gonna how are you gonna get that? So you see
Speaker 1: there's a lot of competition for that, right, and you
Speaker 1: see the emergence of persistence hunting, which there's a there's
Speaker 1: an excellent sequence in the BBC Discovery documentary of the
Speaker 1: Life of Mammals where they show because the final episode
Speaker 1: that you know, they get up to the mammal humans
Speaker 1: and they they they deal with sand people of the
Speaker 1: Kalahari Desert, the last tribes supposedly on Earth to use
Speaker 1: this ancient technique and this is where humans use running
Speaker 1: and tracking to pursue prey just to the point of exhaustion.
Speaker 1: See as humans, we of course can sweat um and
Speaker 1: we you know, it reduces our body heat. But if
Speaker 1: you're chasing some sort of quadruped uh, this particular prey
Speaker 1: animal probably needs to slow down from a gallop to
Speaker 1: a pand so it's the it's like the I kind
Speaker 1: of think of it as the terminator method of hunting,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's just like slow, you're never you're
Speaker 1: not gonna actually outrun the gazelle or whatever. You're gonna
Speaker 1: You're just not gonna stop. You're just gonna follow it,
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna lose your trail, and you're just
Speaker 1: gonna keep on and keep on until it literally falls down.
Speaker 1: You see the videos of this is the animal just
Speaker 1: eventually collapses and then the humans just walk up and
Speaker 1: finish it off. So the Neanderthals, we're not we're not
Speaker 1: built for this like this, this skill becomes the survival technique,
Speaker 1: and they're they're just physically generally not able to carry
Speaker 1: it out. There are also probably a lot of human
Speaker 1: populations around this time that we're equally unsuited for this
Speaker 1: new way of life, and they also went the way
Speaker 1: of any other space. It's not just the Neanderthals we're
Speaker 1: talking about, right, We're talking about a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: it's like like any kind of like changes in an
Speaker 1: economic situation, you know, like the economy changes. Oh suddenly
Speaker 1: big bloated businesses can't survive and you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: little guys are going to do better. This is I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the same thing with the physicality, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there are other uh Homorectus types out there
Speaker 1: at the same time. We're just focusing again, we're just
Speaker 1: focusing on Neanderthals, but there are other species existing out
Speaker 1: there at this time period, um that that aren't making
Speaker 1: the cut either. Yeah, and and also and again it
Speaker 1: comes under resources to this. It's not a situation where
Speaker 1: humans were like, all right, we're here, now, let's kill
Speaker 1: all the Neanderthals. You're talking about generations and generations of
Speaker 1: of the landscape of of human and human void populations changing,
Speaker 1: where where the humans gradually outcompete the Neanderthals for resources.
Speaker 1: The Neanderthals end up being isolated in smaller and smaller areas,
Speaker 1: um in more isolated areas, until they are eventually a
Speaker 1: uh to uh to steal a phrase from from a
Speaker 1: book we were just reading, um Finlayson. Yeah, they become
Speaker 1: the living debt, like a panda or a tire, though
Speaker 1: in my opinion, far more interesting in panda. But you know,
Speaker 1: they reached the point and where well that you don't know,
Speaker 1: Neanderthals could have been could have been very cut like. Actually,
Speaker 1: what I think it's funny about this is early depictions
Speaker 1: of them made them look so caveman man apish, and
Speaker 1: now that we've had this understanding of them, much fuller
Speaker 1: understanding the last five ten years, they look so much
Speaker 1: more human. Like. Yeah, they have like our different wax
Speaker 1: depictions of them. They've gone from like you know, from
Speaker 1: again like you know, you know, slope faced beast man
Speaker 1: to looking like just somebody you'd encounter, you know, the street. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that depictions have like little bow ties on them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like fashion shoots and I like that.
Speaker 1: You need to tell a w magazine about that. So
Speaker 1: why us Why didn't Why did we persist? Uh? It
Speaker 1: largely comes down to a situation of we were It
Speaker 1: was just we were in the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time. Really, we were better suited to roll with
Speaker 1: some of the changes that were coming down the pike.
Speaker 1: If the changes have been a little different, occurred at
Speaker 1: a different time, it could have gone the other way
Speaker 1: and we could cover more territory. Right, So we weren't
Speaker 1: a stocky or muscular Yeah, we were. We were better
Speaker 1: suited to persistence hunting. We we took to agriculture, we
Speaker 1: um and we also, I mean we we also eventually
Speaker 1: just got a better foothold on on our population because again,
Speaker 1: you know, the Neanderthal population never got above like probably
Speaker 1: fifteen thou So a smaller population is always going to
Speaker 1: be more susceptible to extinction. Um. And once you reach
Speaker 1: a certain size, and and in our case, when you
Speaker 1: reach a certain sophistication, you're really not going to deal
Speaker 1: with that as much, unless, of course, you engineer your
Speaker 1: own extinction through any number of ways that were actually Leaky,
Speaker 1: the granddaughter of Mary Leaky, has an interesting ted talk
Speaker 1: and she talks about that. She says, hey, like, don't
Speaker 1: get too much on your high horse, Homo sapiens, because
Speaker 1: we've only got two hundred thousand years of skin in
Speaker 1: the game, and you know, look at our how our
Speaker 1: population has gone nuts and the resources that are dwindling.
Speaker 1: So don't get too excited here about the old continuation
Speaker 1: of of our species. Yeah yeah, because there's again at
Speaker 1: all a lot of it comes down to geography, climate,
Speaker 1: and resources. And if you look at the state of
Speaker 1: human civilization, you can find some red flags really in
Speaker 1: all three of those areas. And uh, yeah, how are
Speaker 1: we going to roll with the changes? Yeah? I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, we have a dropped learnings and it
Speaker 1: allows us to communicate in a more nuanced way, and
Speaker 1: we can teach each other in a more effective way
Speaker 1: than the nder tools. But yeah, what about what about
Speaker 1: climate change? What about small yeah? Or onions and and
Speaker 1: of course you know, there's always a chance that we may,
Speaker 1: you know, eradicate ourselves with the with nuclear weapons. We
Speaker 1: I don't think that's entirely off the table yet, um
Speaker 1: as as much as we would like to hope. So
Speaker 1: but hey, there you go, Nanderthals, Yeah, planet Neanderthal. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope you you might look at them
Speaker 1: a little differently the next time somebody mentioned it, and
Speaker 1: the next time somebody slurs with them, you know, stand
Speaker 1: up for your your evolutionary brother. Yeah, yeah, get and
Speaker 1: check out if you'd like the Max Planck Institute. They've
Speaker 1: got some really interesting information on the Neanderthal genome and
Speaker 1: they have a really great video called the Neanderthal in Us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like tobiaspoon Case The Man Inside Me. That's right. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: we got some listener mail. Here's which I think I'll
Speaker 1: fly through here real quick. Our listener Eric writes in
Speaker 1: and and uh, he's responding to our our podcast the
Speaker 1: Werewolf Principle engineering teams for outer space, which is one
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed to do. And he says it was
Speaker 1: interesting to hear about modifications to the body that might
Speaker 1: be made to help people fly in space. But you
Speaker 1: made two mistakes. First, deaf people would have would be
Speaker 1: able to use the radio, something that was a little
Speaker 1: bit critical to space. Why. And I believe here he's
Speaker 1: referring to something we corrected in a or well clarified
Speaker 1: and the previous listener mail, and that is that there
Speaker 1: are various forms of deafness and only one really falls
Speaker 1: under the under the model that was discussed in that podcast,
Speaker 1: which is to say not all deaf people would yes
Speaker 1: not suffer from from yet from motion. Uh. Weirdness in
Speaker 1: the space, but Eric goes into them to to add
Speaker 1: some some really interesting stuff here. He says, you also
Speaker 1: missed a rather obviously at least to me point. Every
Speaker 1: person who has flown in space has carried forty or
Speaker 1: fifty pounds of equipment with him that is not only
Speaker 1: completely useless in microgravity, but can even get in the
Speaker 1: way their legs. A human leg from hip to flop
Speaker 1: including the foot, weighs about twenty to thirty pounds, and
Speaker 1: a person in reasonable shape as an ampute myself, I
Speaker 1: think amputees have been overlooked as astronauts, though I am
Speaker 1: not sure I'd be willing to have what's left of
Speaker 1: my legs removed for a chance to fly in space.
Speaker 1: I'm an s p k AMT two anyway, great program,
Speaker 1: uh Art, So that was that was some really interesting insight.
Speaker 1: I really had not thought as much about that about,
Speaker 1: you know, because you see shots of astronauts floating around,
Speaker 1: and indeed it's not like they're using their toes to
Speaker 1: manipulate things. Here's a brief note from listener Chris. He says,
Speaker 1: in reference to your podcast Underground Robotic Highway, you stated
Speaker 1: that the driverless Google cars drove around San Francisco driverless wall.
Speaker 1: Technically that is true. There was a driver in the
Speaker 1: car to take control if needed. Left the podcast, keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, um. And indeed, just to clarify,
Speaker 1: there was a driver and these things were not just
Speaker 1: rolling around unattended. There was you know, you can think
Speaker 1: of it like a driver's ad class, where as a
Speaker 1: human there in case something goes crazy. Although I love
Speaker 1: the idea of you know, he's going around like Lombard Street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's kind of like unattended? Like? Is it? I believe
Speaker 1: David Sadarris pointed out that is it Michigan where blind
Speaker 1: hunters can go out hunting alone? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that sounds very Michigan as a Michigan
Speaker 1: so this is sort of like that. UM. I have
Speaker 1: another one here from listener Jane. Jane says, I listen
Speaker 1: to your podcast about the curies, uh, and this is
Speaker 1: about scientists and love and wanted to say thanks for
Speaker 1: a great show. My husband and I met as undergraduates
Speaker 1: at a nuclear and radio chemistry summer school put on
Speaker 1: by the Durent Department of Energy, and I'm now working
Speaker 1: to finish my PhD in radio chemistry, and my husband
Speaker 1: is working as the reactor supervisor at our university's nuclear reactor.
Speaker 1: He has a master's degree in chemistry, and when I
Speaker 1: finished my time here, he will get his PhD. Considering
Speaker 1: how I met my husband, I've always loved the story
Speaker 1: of Marie and Verry Pierre Curie. It was great to
Speaker 1: hear more personal side to their amazing scientific contributions. I
Speaker 1: love y'all show. So there we go. There's a nice
Speaker 1: stuff feedback from us some listeners I know, and that
Speaker 1: just made me think I would love to see some
Speaker 1: m r I scans of scientists and love and compare
Speaker 1: them to the general population. I think that works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would that would actually be a great like a
Speaker 1: great art excipt. I would go suggest, all right, someone
Speaker 1: out there there you go, so, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to come see what we're up to, what we're thinking about,
Speaker 1: what we're writing about, what we're podcasting about. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and you can also drop us a line at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
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