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Selects: What Happened to the Neanderthals? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hi friends, this is Josh and for this week's Select
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Speaker 1: I chose our episode on Neanderthals mayhaps the most misunderstood
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Speaker 1: hominin of all time. We long tended to think of
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Speaker 1: Neanderthals as loping dummies, but recent research questions that view,
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Speaker 1: and Chuck and I swoop in to defend them with
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Speaker 1: all our might leave the Neanderthals alone. Welcome to Stuff
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Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:37
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
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Speaker 1: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and um,
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Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know, Stuff you should Nizzo.
0:49
Speaker 1: I'm excited about this one. This just feels like classic
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Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck. I think so too. Took Took's gonna
0:56
Speaker 1: make an appearance. Took Took, Mike make sweet of Hm,
1:01
Speaker 1: which is always fun. And yeah, we like to watch
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Speaker 1: He's surprisingly tender, he is. I'm sorry. All the third
1:12
Speaker 1: graders are actually, more to the point, the third grade
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Speaker 1: teachers who are standing there right now at the head
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Speaker 1: of class, They're like, oh, what happened to the Neanderthals?
1:19
Speaker 1: Perfect for the classroom, right, So yeah, this is very Uh,
1:23
Speaker 1: I thought this is very cool. I love this. But
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Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about Neanderthals in the past
1:27
Speaker 1: and Homo sapiens and uh, Dennis Snovin's and that's right, right,
1:34
Speaker 1: there's an extra in in there. I think Dennis Stovan's
1:38
Speaker 1: Dennis Snoven sounds like a dude, like he manages ice
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Speaker 1: cream factory, right, Snovin, Dennis Snovin. Uh, this is good
1:48
Speaker 1: stuff though, So let's let's treat everyone so all right,
1:52
Speaker 1: we'll do our best. Put the pressure on. So neander
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Speaker 1: Neanderthals it really so? Then correct pronunciation is tall by
2:01
Speaker 1: the way, Yeah, I had a teacher point that out,
2:03
Speaker 1: remember very specifically in the in the ninth grade. Right,
2:07
Speaker 1: but when you're being correct, you're actually speaking in Old German,
2:13
Speaker 1: not even modern German. So it's really just a question
2:16
Speaker 1: of how you want to say it. Either one's acceptable, no,
2:18
Speaker 1: I mean the pronunciation would still be that in modern
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Speaker 1: German neander Tal Yeah, okay, because I saw it spelled
2:25
Speaker 1: t a L two. Oh really yeah, let's get it
2:28
Speaker 1: to that, h okay. I kind of like it. I
2:31
Speaker 1: like how it looks, but I think it's up to
2:33
Speaker 1: the individuals say taller thal. Okay, but the correct way
2:36
Speaker 1: is neander tal, right, okay, and neander talls. I'm probably
2:41
Speaker 1: gonna just switch back and forth. That's okay with everybody.
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Speaker 1: That is our way. Not to make a big deal
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Speaker 1: out of it or anything, but um, neander talls, uh
2:51
Speaker 1: or thals, depending on who you are. They were a
2:56
Speaker 1: species of human, beings of humans. Like, if you think
3:00
Speaker 1: about it, chuck you, jerry me, everybody out there sometimes
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Speaker 1: nol Yeah, same species, one species of human. That's it.
3:12
Speaker 1: Like you just don't really kind of think about that.
3:14
Speaker 1: But if you dialed back a little bit, if we
3:16
Speaker 1: got on the way back machine and went back just
3:18
Speaker 1: like forty thousand years, there'll be at least one other
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Speaker 1: species of human running around on Earth. They would be
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Speaker 1: the Neanderthals. So we didn't even know that there was
3:30
Speaker 1: another such thing as another human species until the eighteen
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Speaker 1: fifties because there was a forty year gap separating us
3:36
Speaker 1: and then that's right, So the very first fossils of
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Speaker 1: a Neanderthal was found in eighteen twenty nine in Belgium
3:43
Speaker 1: and then again in Gibraltar in eight But that kind
3:47
Speaker 1: of were just like, oh cool, look at these old bones.
3:49
Speaker 1: Wasn't a big deal. Wat's how easy they snapped on
3:51
Speaker 1: my knee, right, they didn't know what they were. No.
3:54
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen fifty six in Germany something pretty
3:57
Speaker 1: significant happened. Uh. They found some pretty substantial fossils. I
4:02
Speaker 1: think a whole skeleton. Actually, yeah, well they definitely found
4:05
Speaker 1: a whole skull. Um. This was in four or five
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Speaker 1: ft of clay at in a limestone quarry cave in
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Speaker 1: a site called felt so Glad. And this is in
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Speaker 1: the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf. And this is where it
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Speaker 1: all comes around. If you hear the word Neanderthal or
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Speaker 1: at all um t h a l and Old German
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Speaker 1: means valley. And so the scientific name Homo neander tollensus
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Speaker 1: means humans from the Neander Valley. Yes, because that's where
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Speaker 1: the first one that we realized, Um, wait a minute,
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Speaker 1: this is This isn't a cave bear, this isn't like
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Speaker 1: some some dead person. This is a different species of human. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: They saw that the what we now know is classic
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Speaker 1: Neanderthal oval shape, that that big thick, low receding forehead
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Speaker 1: and brow very thick owns this. Uh, that was brought
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Speaker 1: to the query foreman, and he said it's a cave bear.
5:06
Speaker 1: I guess he came over from Alabama. But he said,
5:10
Speaker 1: but I do know a teacher and a guy who's
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Speaker 1: really into fossils. His name is Johann Karl full Wrought,
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Speaker 1: and here you can have these bones. He got them,
5:19
Speaker 1: did some impressions. He went, what uh, did some castings
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Speaker 1: of these and sent those two Hermann uh Schaffhausen, a professor.
5:30
Speaker 1: I don't know why German is so funny to you.
5:32
Speaker 1: I don't either, but coming out of your mouth, it's
5:34
Speaker 1: like it's just hilarious. After all these years. He's a professor,
5:39
Speaker 1: was a professor of anatomy at the University of Bonn.
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Speaker 1: And they both were like, hey, this is significant because
5:45
Speaker 1: this ain't no human uh, no Homo sapien. But it's
5:49
Speaker 1: a human, right, we think, right, it's some other kind
5:52
Speaker 1: of human, some other kind of hominid that we just
5:56
Speaker 1: didn't understand before. So they presented their findings in the world.
5:59
Speaker 1: He said like this, everybody get a load of this.
6:02
Speaker 1: And there was an immediate problem with Neanderthals there there's
6:07
Speaker 1: so this is eighteen fifties, eighteen fifty seven when they
6:11
Speaker 1: prevented presented their fightings. And that was before on the
6:14
Speaker 1: origin of the species. So before Darwin, it was like
6:18
Speaker 1: God created all this, God created you, God created the panther,
6:23
Speaker 1: God created the monkeys separately, like all this stuff was
6:25
Speaker 1: all separate. And then Darwin came along and said, no,
6:28
Speaker 1: all this stuff is actually related, and if you trace
6:30
Speaker 1: everything far enough back, you're gonna find a last common
6:33
Speaker 1: ancestor between two things that don't look anything alike, um,
6:37
Speaker 1: including humans and apes. And so this was before that,
6:43
Speaker 1: so it didn't fit into the Christian creation story. But
6:46
Speaker 1: then even after Darwin came along, it just so happened
6:50
Speaker 1: that Neanderthals were discovered and analyzed and and it was
6:53
Speaker 1: realized that they were in different species of human at
6:56
Speaker 1: a time when biological anthropology was around. Yeah, for oology
7:00
Speaker 1: and the you know, we've talked about it on the
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Speaker 1: show a little bit, the very sort of racist practice
7:05
Speaker 1: of um categorizing humans and their inferiority of races by
7:12
Speaker 1: the shapes of their skull. Right, look at this skull. Um,
7:16
Speaker 1: well there it's not not basically Western and European shaped.
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Speaker 1: We think it has some weird ridge. Um, so they're
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Speaker 1: an inferior race. They extended all that onto Neanderthals because
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Speaker 1: if you think, you know, if you're if you're comparing
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Speaker 1: like human Homo sapiens skulls to one another and somehow
7:35
Speaker 1: finding inferiority or superiority in that in the shapes of
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Speaker 1: those When you compare a Neanderthal skull to a human skull,
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Speaker 1: clearly that human skull is much more refined and developed.
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Speaker 1: Neanderthals must have been these dim witted brutes the caveman. Like.
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Speaker 1: The whole reason we think of the caveman and Neanderthals
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Speaker 1: is big dummies and and oaths. It is because they
7:58
Speaker 1: were discovered during a time of racist science. Yeah, and
8:02
Speaker 1: that was the view that was held, and it's still
8:05
Speaker 1: held by some people who don't know better. This is
8:08
Speaker 1: why we're doing that, you know, one reason why we're
8:09
Speaker 1: doing this episode. But it was held for a couple
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Speaker 1: of hundred years. But in the recent decades things have changed.
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Speaker 1: Our picture of the Neanderthal has changed because of science
8:22
Speaker 1: and research, and we now know that, uh, well, a
8:26
Speaker 1: lot of cool things. I don't want to spoil it yet, Okay, Yeah,
8:28
Speaker 1: I was wondering if that was too much of the
8:30
Speaker 1: beans getting out. I think so let's tease that out.
8:34
Speaker 1: That's fine with Uh, we'll just sit here quietly for
8:37
Speaker 1: a second as we go past this. Okay, all right,
8:40
Speaker 1: we ready, yeah, alright. So the current story, like the
8:45
Speaker 1: simple version of the current story, is the Neanderthal and
8:49
Speaker 1: the I mean, should we just say the modern human
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Speaker 1: or that's how I was like, wow, because they're both humans. Yeah,
8:56
Speaker 1: but they're just two different species of human sapience neandertal
8:59
Speaker 1: and sapience. All right, So they separated between a half
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Speaker 1: a million and about six dred and fifty thousand years ago,
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Speaker 1: and they both diverge from a common branch um H.
9:10
Speaker 1: Heidel bir Genesis virgensis. I think the g is hard.
9:16
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's right. H. Heidelbergensis. Yeah, all right,
9:19
Speaker 1: that sounds right. Yeah, And this was in Africa, right,
9:22
Speaker 1: that's where the divergence happened. That's right. Um. Then, so
9:27
Speaker 1: either the division the divergence happened in Africa or some
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Speaker 1: Heidelbergensis state in Africa, and some spread out of Africa, yeah,
9:38
Speaker 1: into the Old World in Asia, and over time, because
9:43
Speaker 1: of the separation, these groups of humans started branching out
9:48
Speaker 1: and developing into distinct species. One of the species. The
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Speaker 1: first one to develop into a distinct species from this
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Speaker 1: branch was Neanderthals, and by at least four hundred thousand
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Speaker 1: years ago, there were Neanderthals running around like distinct species
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Speaker 1: of humans called Neanderthals. Yeah, and they were developing independently
10:10
Speaker 1: because they were very far from each other and they
10:12
Speaker 1: didn't for a very long time, did not have very much,
10:15
Speaker 1: if any, contact with one another. Yeah. Remember we did
10:18
Speaker 1: an episode on speciation where like brown bears and polar
10:23
Speaker 1: bears used to be the same bear, but the polar
10:25
Speaker 1: bears started drifting further and further north, and they're actually
10:29
Speaker 1: adapted to a different climate, different habitat, so much so
10:33
Speaker 1: that they became a different species. That's the exact same
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Speaker 1: thing that we're talking about. Heidelberg ansis drifted into two
10:39
Speaker 1: different parts of Africa and Europe, and the climate and
10:43
Speaker 1: the habitat was different enough that it split into two
10:46
Speaker 1: different species. Yeah. So what you've got in Eurasia is
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Speaker 1: a range from like Portugal and Wales in the west
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Speaker 1: over to like Siberia. This is for Neanderthals, right, yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: in the east. So that was their range in general,
10:59
Speaker 1: and all the way down to the Middle East. Yeah,
11:02
Speaker 1: it was a huge range, very big range. Um, the biggest. Uh.
11:09
Speaker 1: They were shorter than sapiens that we're still in Africa.
11:13
Speaker 1: They were kind of stockier, They had bigger brains. They
11:17
Speaker 1: were by most accounts, stronger, more muscular, had wider hips
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Speaker 1: and shoulders, sturdier bones, very sturdy, just stocky, robust thing.
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Speaker 1: You would not want to mess with the Neanderthal. No,
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Speaker 1: and they were very adaptable. They they lived in very
11:31
Speaker 1: cold environments. Uh, they lived in very sort of warm,
11:34
Speaker 1: temperate environments. So it depends on the time. This is
11:38
Speaker 1: what they think. They think that that range that was
11:41
Speaker 1: so huge for the Neanderthals, there wasn't necessarily Neanderthals living
11:46
Speaker 1: in all parts of that range at the same time
11:49
Speaker 1: for four hundred thousand years or three fifty thousand years.
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Speaker 1: They think that over time, some Neanderthal populations died and
11:56
Speaker 1: others came along and replaced them, and then some of
12:00
Speaker 1: them moved down here and some of them were over here.
12:02
Speaker 1: That they may have lived in different parts of the
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Speaker 1: world at the same time, but not necessarily their entire
12:08
Speaker 1: range all at once for the whole three fifty thousand years.
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Speaker 1: They moved a lot, and nor did they move all
12:15
Speaker 1: together as whole populations. There's a lot of local extinctions
12:19
Speaker 1: and recolonizations going on right exactly. So it's almost like
12:23
Speaker 1: if you could look at the map of eur Asia
12:26
Speaker 1: on a time lapse over three fifty thousand years that
12:29
Speaker 1: Neanderthals were around in the area, you would just kind
12:32
Speaker 1: of see these little populations kind of growing and popping
12:35
Speaker 1: and dissolving and then picking up again. And these are
12:38
Speaker 1: actually new groups going into areas, becoming like dying out
12:43
Speaker 1: for one reason or another. And then a thousand or
12:46
Speaker 1: ten thousand years later, there's another group that says, oh,
12:48
Speaker 1: this is a great spot and showing up kind of
12:51
Speaker 1: like our real Atlantis episode. Remember there's like like twelve
12:56
Speaker 1: feet of like fifty different settlements over a thousands and
13:00
Speaker 1: thousands of years, because they're just like, this is a
13:02
Speaker 1: great place to settle, but each one had no idea
13:04
Speaker 1: that the last one was there. Same thing with the
13:07
Speaker 1: Neanderthal range. So the Neanderthals are doing their thing all
13:11
Speaker 1: over eur Asia. Meanwhile back in Africa and East Africa,
13:15
Speaker 1: you've got the Sapien doing their thing, and then they
13:18
Speaker 1: start to radiate out a little bit the sapiens and
13:21
Speaker 1: then get obviously the Middle East would be a pretty
13:24
Speaker 1: logical next place to go from Africa, and they happened
13:28
Speaker 1: upon the Neanderthal and they're like wow, we wow, who
13:33
Speaker 1: are you? And then they were all of a sudden
13:36
Speaker 1: sharing space together, right, starting about a hundred thousand years
13:40
Speaker 1: ago in the Middle East. In the Middle East and
13:42
Speaker 1: then in Europe, they shared space for two hundred to
13:45
Speaker 1: five hundred generations. Yeah, they just like the Neanderthals spread out.
13:49
Speaker 1: The sapiens basically followed the same path. But they were
13:53
Speaker 1: already people there. It was Neanderthals and um, yeah, two
13:57
Speaker 1: hundred generations, five hundred generations between fourth isn't in ten
14:00
Speaker 1: thousand years a very long time to share space. It
14:02
Speaker 1: really is like that many generations that that of just
14:07
Speaker 1: living in the same place. The thing is is over
14:11
Speaker 1: the lifespan of the Neanderthals, fifty thousand years, four thousand
14:17
Speaker 1: years is nothing. It's the blink of an eye. And
14:20
Speaker 1: around the time about so say, humans or sapiens showed
14:24
Speaker 1: up in Europe about forty two thousand years ago, about
14:28
Speaker 1: forty thousand years ago something give or take a few
14:31
Speaker 1: thousand years Neanderthals just vanished. Did they melt? We don't
14:37
Speaker 1: remember that old theory. That's right, they've melted like nine
14:42
Speaker 1: years ago. That was great. Good, So I think that's
14:45
Speaker 1: a good place for a break. Yeah, we'll talk about
14:48
Speaker 1: what happened right after this. Well, now we're on the road,
14:52
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
14:54
Speaker 1: two from Josh Chuck stuff you should know? All right?
15:13
Speaker 1: All right? So, uh appearance of of sapiens in Europe
15:18
Speaker 1: before this um disappearance of Neanderthals. For a very long time,
15:23
Speaker 1: everyone basically just had one of two theories, either that
15:27
Speaker 1: sapiens killed them off, or that they were just so
15:31
Speaker 1: smart that they out competed them for resources and they
15:35
Speaker 1: went away. And that was It's known as the replacement
15:38
Speaker 1: model or the recent African origin model, and people were
15:42
Speaker 1: all on that train. If some people still very much
15:45
Speaker 1: are really oh yeah, in academia, not just not just
15:48
Speaker 1: you know, general public, I say boo to that. I agree,
15:51
Speaker 1: And it seems like there are people who are kind
15:53
Speaker 1: of chipping away at that. But I believe the replacement
15:56
Speaker 1: model is the dominant model for what happened to the Neanderthals.
15:59
Speaker 1: It basically as humans, Homo sapiens came along and our
16:03
Speaker 1: brains are so much smarter. We were capable of things
16:05
Speaker 1: that Neanderthals couldn't even dream of. Um, things like culture
16:10
Speaker 1: and art and all sorts of nication, right, um language
16:14
Speaker 1: probably um that the Neanderthals just didn't stand a chance.
16:17
Speaker 1: Once the sapience showed up, it was like progresses here,
16:20
Speaker 1: go ahead and die and either directly by killing them
16:23
Speaker 1: via warfare or like you said, just out competing them.
16:26
Speaker 1: That was it for the Neanderthals. And the timing is
16:29
Speaker 1: definitely well suspect, you know, like, and I think that's
16:33
Speaker 1: what a lot of people have clamped onto is humans
16:36
Speaker 1: show up a couple of thousand years, Neanderthals are gone. Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: it makes sense, um on the surface. But in two
16:44
Speaker 1: thousand ten there was some pretty startling discovery. Um, they
16:48
Speaker 1: fully sequenced Neanderthal genome, which is amazing, super amazing, and
16:53
Speaker 1: we found out wait a minute, us sapiens, some of
16:58
Speaker 1: us have Neanderthal DNA in our bodies. Are Neanderthals ourselves?
17:03
Speaker 1: Yeah about depending on where you're from in your ethnic background,
17:06
Speaker 1: but if you're European or Asian, you have pretty good
17:09
Speaker 1: likelihood of being wondered four percent in Neanderthal as far
17:12
Speaker 1: as your DNA goes um. In Sub Saharan Africa, there's
17:15
Speaker 1: not any obviously, because that's where the Sapiens were all, uh,
17:19
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out and doing their thing right. They
17:22
Speaker 1: hadn't migrated out and intermixed with the with the Neanderthals,
17:26
Speaker 1: So you know what that means. That means that time
17:29
Speaker 1: period where they were all sharing space, they're also sharing space.
17:33
Speaker 1: There was like a lot of you know what I'm saying,
17:35
Speaker 1: they were making love. Oh that yeah, took Took would
17:39
Speaker 1: make love and create little baby Tooktooks. We have to
17:43
Speaker 1: say for just to keep it crownded. We're not exactly
17:46
Speaker 1: sure what kind of uh circumstances that making love took. No,
17:52
Speaker 1: you're right, it could have been mistaken identity um. And
17:56
Speaker 1: obviously the brutal scenario, which is probably the most likely,
17:59
Speaker 1: is that they came in by force and that was
18:02
Speaker 1: like raping and pillaging going up. But the thing is,
18:04
Speaker 1: we don't know that that's necessarily likely. You know, I
18:06
Speaker 1: don't know. We honestly have such a little understandings for Neanderthal.
18:10
Speaker 1: We have no idea they might have been hippies, but
18:13
Speaker 1: we got to throw that out there, uh as one
18:16
Speaker 1: of the obvious possibilities. Yeah, as much as you want
18:18
Speaker 1: to just be like, oh, that's so awesome, the Neanderthals
18:21
Speaker 1: were there, the humans showed up, and rather than humans
18:24
Speaker 1: killing off Neanderthals saying get out of here, you old
18:27
Speaker 1: archaic humans, they said, let's get it on. Well, not
18:31
Speaker 1: only let's get on, let's let's let's share resources, let's
18:34
Speaker 1: teach each other things. Yeah, let's explore life together and
18:38
Speaker 1: let's try. Didn't go away. They just got absorbed. And
18:43
Speaker 1: because there were far more sapiens, uh, their traits just
18:47
Speaker 1: you know, sort of got weeded out over the years
18:49
Speaker 1: for the most part. So this is the rival to
18:52
Speaker 1: that replacement model that's the dominant model. This is called
18:56
Speaker 1: the multi regional evolution model. And it says basic me
19:00
Speaker 1: what you just said, that Neanderthals and humans did it
19:03
Speaker 1: so much that the hybrid human Neanderthals that were um
19:08
Speaker 1: that were born as offspring um, they they mated with
19:14
Speaker 1: other Neanderthals or other humans. But because there were more
19:17
Speaker 1: sapiens I'm sorry, more sapiens than there were Neanderthals, the
19:21
Speaker 1: likelihood was that a hybrid would be much more likely
19:24
Speaker 1: to mate with a sapient and then that hybrid would
19:27
Speaker 1: be even more watered down neanderthal And then over time
19:31
Speaker 1: because of exactly and Neanderthals didn't die off, they didn't
19:37
Speaker 1: get chased out, they just became part of that larger
19:40
Speaker 1: human genome. So there's another theory too that's interesting, or
19:44
Speaker 1: another interpretation. I guess it's not a theory. And this
19:48
Speaker 1: has to do with climate change. Um. They did a
19:51
Speaker 1: study into and well this year actually two thousand nineteen
19:55
Speaker 1: in France, and they discovered that all you need over
19:58
Speaker 1: the course of about ten thousand years is about a
20:02
Speaker 1: two point seven decrease in fertility rates UM to go
20:06
Speaker 1: bye by ten tho years for a decrease in UM
20:10
Speaker 1: first time young neandertal mothers that population, and they said
20:16
Speaker 1: cut that in half basically are close to it. Within
20:19
Speaker 1: four thousand years, you would need only an eight percent
20:21
Speaker 1: decrease in fertility and that same group. So it's very Uh,
20:26
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense that with a little
20:29
Speaker 1: bit of climate change and a little bit of scarcity
20:32
Speaker 1: and just uh, it didn't have to be anything drastic,
20:36
Speaker 1: but over that amount of time, if you don't have
20:39
Speaker 1: any as many calories going into your body in your
20:41
Speaker 1: first time under twenty year old, uh Neanderthal mother, you're
20:45
Speaker 1: not going to be successful and you're not gonna be
20:46
Speaker 1: as fertile. And then over time that just means you
20:50
Speaker 1: kind of very quietly and slowly go away. Yeah, I
20:52
Speaker 1: got this. I think I found this article from Live Science,
20:55
Speaker 1: and in it they say, by the way, um, if
20:59
Speaker 1: the human replace meant rate dropped to one point three
21:02
Speaker 1: babies per mother, we'd be gone in three hundred years.
21:06
Speaker 1: So so just a very slight drop among the neandertals
21:09
Speaker 1: could have accounted for that four thousand to ten thousand
21:13
Speaker 1: year process of just suddenly disappearing. And again in this
21:18
Speaker 1: this interpretation, humans didn't do anything. We didn't war with them,
21:22
Speaker 1: we didn't outcompete them, we didn't do anything. It was
21:25
Speaker 1: just something happened to the environment and it was just
21:29
Speaker 1: harder to be fertile. And it wasn't all at once.
21:32
Speaker 1: Maybe it might have been staggered in different parts of
21:34
Speaker 1: the world exactly over over four thousand to ten thousand years.
21:37
Speaker 1: And the reason it wasn't that Neanderthals couldn't compete, that
21:41
Speaker 1: they couldn't survive um whereas humans could. Because Neanderthals, again,
21:46
Speaker 1: their lifespan was three hundred fifty thousand years. Modern humans
21:50
Speaker 1: have only been around for fifty to a hundred thousand years,
21:52
Speaker 1: maybe two hundred at the outside. So Neanderthals had been
21:56
Speaker 1: around for a very long time, had been very good
21:58
Speaker 1: at adapting to a changing climate basically the whole time
22:02
Speaker 1: that they were around. So it's not like they couldn't
22:04
Speaker 1: compete or couldn't adapt and humans could. What they think
22:07
Speaker 1: is that they were just way more humans, and so
22:11
Speaker 1: our numbers probably dropped at the same rate that Neanderthal
22:14
Speaker 1: numbers did. There was just more of us to survive
22:16
Speaker 1: and carry on after things got better. Yeah, and in
22:20
Speaker 1: more varied ranges in parts of the world too. That
22:23
Speaker 1: all kind of makes sense to me. I suppose it
22:26
Speaker 1: could be uh, both of those, climate change and lovemaking
22:31
Speaker 1: right right, very easily. Yeah, they definitely go hand in hand.
22:34
Speaker 1: Like er, should we take another break? All right, We'll
22:38
Speaker 1: take another break and talk about what we now the
22:42
Speaker 1: sort of current understanding of the picture of what the
22:44
Speaker 1: Neanderthal was. Right after this, Well, now we're on the
22:48
Speaker 1: road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
22:51
Speaker 1: or two from Josh can chuck stuff. You should know,
22:58
Speaker 1: all right. Mh. By the way, have you seen or
23:12
Speaker 1: heard of that movie William? Uh? It was out in April,
23:19
Speaker 1: did not do well, was not reviewed well. But it
23:23
Speaker 1: is basically a sort of mad scientist. Not a mad scientist,
23:27
Speaker 1: but a scientist with a mad idea. Uh. There's a
23:33
Speaker 1: human Neanderthal born. They get the d n A impregnate
23:37
Speaker 1: a modern sapient woman and she has a a Neanderthal boy, William,
23:43
Speaker 1: and he goes to high school. I did not see that.
23:47
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that movie. Yeah, just check
23:49
Speaker 1: out the trailer. Oh, I don't haven't seen it. It's
23:52
Speaker 1: not supposed to be very good, and it did not
23:53
Speaker 1: look very good. But it was very much like, you know,
23:57
Speaker 1: I just want to fit in, and he's you know,
23:59
Speaker 1: he's he's in the andertal. He's got the regular haircut,
24:02
Speaker 1: in the vans and the jeans and the T shirt.
24:05
Speaker 1: He's got the big forehead and the thick man. It
24:09
Speaker 1: does it does, and it looks like it could be
24:13
Speaker 1: a joke, but it's real. Was there that I feel
24:16
Speaker 1: good in the middle of the trailer suddenly or that
24:20
Speaker 1: scene where like like a teen wolf or something where
24:23
Speaker 1: he's really good at sports or something. Yeah, Man William, Yeah,
24:30
Speaker 1: there's a weekend for you right there. Much. I'm not
24:33
Speaker 1: gonna watch it, but I just thought it would be
24:35
Speaker 1: it'd be worth mentioning before the emails come in. So, uh,
24:39
Speaker 1: the image we're on a quest. I think UM and
24:43
Speaker 1: sciences on a quest to sort of rehabilitate that's when
24:47
Speaker 1: you mentioned that. But to rehabilitate the image of the
24:50
Speaker 1: Neanderthal is this hunched over brute. Part of the problem is, uh,
24:57
Speaker 1: they sort of based in an entire EC's on this
25:01
Speaker 1: one hunched over uh dude, skeleton skeleton, and they're like,
25:07
Speaker 1: look at them that they're all hunched over oaths shambling
25:10
Speaker 1: And now they're like, oh, actually that individual may have
25:13
Speaker 1: had a degenerative bone disease. And what we now think
25:17
Speaker 1: is they just walked around like we do and probably
25:19
Speaker 1: looked a lot like we do. Um. They think that
25:22
Speaker 1: from like sequencing the Neanderthal genome, they think that at
25:26
Speaker 1: least some of them had red hair and light colored skin, which,
25:31
Speaker 1: by the way, by interbreeding UM with Neanderthals recent arrivals
25:36
Speaker 1: from Africa, their hybrid offspring would have been conferred with UM, thicker,
25:42
Speaker 1: straighter hair, a smaller compact frame, all sorts of stuff
25:46
Speaker 1: that you would need UM in this colder climate of
25:49
Speaker 1: eur Asia from having just come up from Africa over
25:52
Speaker 1: the last few generations. So there was good stuff, there
25:55
Speaker 1: was also bad. So they think some of the disease
25:58
Speaker 1: that we suffer from h is is actually related to
26:02
Speaker 1: Neanderthal DNA that doesn't have a context or a point
26:06
Speaker 1: or a function like it used to, and that that
26:08
Speaker 1: now it's actually producing disease in us. Yeah, like the
26:11
Speaker 1: same d NA, Like they could have had the same
26:15
Speaker 1: things that we associate with diabetes and crones, but they
26:18
Speaker 1: would have didn't affect them like it does us because
26:21
Speaker 1: lifestyle and everything that how we diverged precisely really interesting.
26:25
Speaker 1: I think there's actually that's the alternative explanation for the
26:29
Speaker 1: hygiene hypothesis. I did these these both sort of linked
26:34
Speaker 1: in some ways right there. So behaviorally, it's, uh, we're
26:39
Speaker 1: again we're trying to get away from this idea of
26:41
Speaker 1: caveman uh and things that we thought were strictly sapient.
26:46
Speaker 1: Over the years, it turns out that Neanderthals were actually
26:49
Speaker 1: good at like making tools. Uh, and this really interesting technique, uh,
26:55
Speaker 1: the Leva leva loire technique, which is basically, I am
27:00
Speaker 1: in the area where I have the resources to make
27:03
Speaker 1: all the tools, but we got to pack up and leave,
27:06
Speaker 1: and we don't know if we're going to have this
27:07
Speaker 1: stuff there. Yeah, there's some dinosaurs after us. Yeah. So
27:10
Speaker 1: like the very like raw resource, like let's say it's
27:13
Speaker 1: just a certain type of stone. So we're gonna pre
27:16
Speaker 1: shape all these things into it's sort of a rudimentary uh,
27:20
Speaker 1: a rudimentary tool that we can later make into a
27:22
Speaker 1: hammer or a chisel, like, depending on what we need.
27:25
Speaker 1: But we're gonna kind of sort of pre shape them here,
27:28
Speaker 1: pack them up, and take them all with us, so
27:30
Speaker 1: we'll have this little factory that we can set up
27:32
Speaker 1: anywhere we want, depending what we need. That's smart it is,
27:35
Speaker 1: and it's a technological innovation that is definitely attributed to
27:39
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals, like they came up with. It's awesome. Um
27:42
Speaker 1: and tool making, Like we knew that older archaic humans
27:46
Speaker 1: were good with tools, going back probably a million or
27:49
Speaker 1: so years. Chimps use tools, they use termmite sticks. So
27:53
Speaker 1: people are saying like great, like the Neanderthals like created
27:56
Speaker 1: some sort of like new technology, some new tool called sure. Um,
28:01
Speaker 1: who cares. It still doesn't make them smart. But there's
28:03
Speaker 1: other stuff we found out about Neanderthals that we started
28:07
Speaker 1: that have really kind of changed our view of them
28:10
Speaker 1: because they're doing things or they we found out they're
28:12
Speaker 1: capable of things that that they are supposed to Those
28:15
Speaker 1: are the things that make humans humans like Neanderthals aren't
28:18
Speaker 1: supposed to have been doing this. But the more evidence
28:21
Speaker 1: we're getting, the with the fresher eyes were looking at
28:24
Speaker 1: existing evidence, it's starting to look like they were behaviorally
28:28
Speaker 1: modern like humans, or there's a really good chance that
28:31
Speaker 1: they were Yeah like the sapes. Uh, they could they
28:34
Speaker 1: could spark fire, So the old notion like quest for fire,
28:37
Speaker 1: that they just had to sit around and wait for
28:38
Speaker 1: lightning to strike a bush is not true. They use
28:42
Speaker 1: that fire to cook food, they think, they think, which
28:45
Speaker 1: is a big deal. It's open to interpretation stuff. Um.
28:48
Speaker 1: What else they know from studying the injuries on the
28:53
Speaker 1: animals that they hunted, that they were very intelligent hunters
28:56
Speaker 1: and they killed big, big animals at close range, which
29:00
Speaker 1: meant that they were skilled, that they understood risk that
29:04
Speaker 1: they were brave and that they will get into communication more.
29:07
Speaker 1: But you've got to be communicating to to do something
29:09
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, because they would hunt in packs, but
29:11
Speaker 1: they would do it in close range. And I was
29:15
Speaker 1: at the Velociraptor. Oh I think so Jurassic Park. Uh
29:20
Speaker 1: the uh while they threw me off? Sorry, do you
29:23
Speaker 1: think I'd be expecting in this episode? Though? You know
29:26
Speaker 1: it wasn't they do hunting packs? Though? It was. I
29:29
Speaker 1: was just appropriating that line. But what was it? Oh man,
29:33
Speaker 1: they do travel in they do pack lightly, Yeah, that
29:37
Speaker 1: was it? Okay? So Um, the fact that these guys
29:40
Speaker 1: would take on reindeer and bison and mammoths at close
29:46
Speaker 1: range with like spears and javelins and like, you know,
29:49
Speaker 1: some some hand to hand combat type stuff has really
29:54
Speaker 1: kind of undermined that that replacement model idea that humans
29:58
Speaker 1: came in and just killed off all the Neanderthals, right
30:01
Speaker 1: because they just stood no chance. They right, Neanderthals were tough,
30:05
Speaker 1: tough mos. Yes, most um one of the big ones here.
30:11
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets super interesting, I think
30:13
Speaker 1: to me is the use of symbols. That is something
30:18
Speaker 1: that we thought was very much sapien very sapey, right,
30:22
Speaker 1: if if they can, if they we can show that
30:25
Speaker 1: Neanderthals understood symbols and had that kind of higher thought
30:30
Speaker 1: that would make them behaviorally equivalent to humans. Yeah, and
30:34
Speaker 1: we're talking like anything sen Yeah, the sapes. We're talking
30:38
Speaker 1: anything from making a like a necklace out of beads
30:41
Speaker 1: to wear like an adornments, to using like pigments on
30:45
Speaker 1: the face like the precursor to make up and stuff
30:48
Speaker 1: like that. And humans have been shown to UM to
30:51
Speaker 1: have been doing that at least for the last eighty
30:53
Speaker 1: thousand years SAPs. And I don't know why I can't
30:56
Speaker 1: get that UM sapes have been doing that is the
31:00
Speaker 1: earliest evidences at two sites in Ethiopia. And this is
31:04
Speaker 1: they think it was like for you know, identity or
31:07
Speaker 1: jewelry or something like that, but it is like that's
31:11
Speaker 1: not something you just do like this is there's a
31:14
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily a practical function to it, and it's
31:18
Speaker 1: a form of art. And there's ambiguous evidence that Neanderthals
31:24
Speaker 1: did this too, that there was body adornment, that there
31:28
Speaker 1: was that they would color themselves and pigments put on
31:31
Speaker 1: makeup basically, right, So here's the thing question. So that
31:35
Speaker 1: would suggest that Okay, if Neanderthals do that and humans
31:38
Speaker 1: did that too, then that makes Neanderthals equivalent to humans behaviorally.
31:44
Speaker 1: But the people who are big time into the replacement
31:46
Speaker 1: model that the Neandertals were actually kind of stupid and
31:49
Speaker 1: humans are the pinnacle and the first example of higher intelligence. UM.
31:54
Speaker 1: They say, well, if you really kind of date some
31:57
Speaker 1: of this stuff that the Neanderthals may, it's probably around
32:01
Speaker 1: the time that humans showed up. And it's really just
32:03
Speaker 1: Neanderthals copying what they saw humans doing. But there's no
32:07
Speaker 1: symbol symbolism to it in that like they could copy
32:11
Speaker 1: a shell as an ornament, but there they didn't have
32:14
Speaker 1: any meaning. Yeah, which is a really sort of a
32:17
Speaker 1: snotty approach, I think so too. Well, they might have
32:20
Speaker 1: done it, but they were just copying, no copying. Remember
32:26
Speaker 1: that kid, you know the kids doing now he or
32:31
Speaker 1: she is running the company? Is that Dennis Snoven ice
32:36
Speaker 1: cream man manager, ice cream factory manager. So, uh, cave art.
32:42
Speaker 1: Let's talk about cave art because this is this is
32:44
Speaker 1: the one thing that UM to make art is the
32:48
Speaker 1: one thing that traditionally have always separated sapes from everyone else, right, Like,
32:53
Speaker 1: if everybody's saying, okay, even if Neanderthals came up with
32:57
Speaker 1: body adornments, that's not art, we're gonna raise the bar, right,
33:02
Speaker 1: this is what the poo poers say, that doesn't really
33:05
Speaker 1: qualify as art. Cave art is where it's at. If
33:09
Speaker 1: you could show me Neanderthals that created cave art, I
33:12
Speaker 1: will agree that they are behaviorally equivalent to modern humans
33:16
Speaker 1: of their era. Yeah, and they found cave art modern
33:18
Speaker 1: sas man. They found cave art at the same time
33:22
Speaker 1: that there were Neanderthals around caves. But um, again, there
33:27
Speaker 1: was just like, oh, well that was the sapes, right,
33:30
Speaker 1: That wasn't the Neanderthals doing that? Right? They think that
33:33
Speaker 1: the sapiens came in and made that cave art, right, Like,
33:36
Speaker 1: we need an ambiguous proof at this point. Here's the problem.
33:40
Speaker 1: Radio carbon dating gets unreliable after forty years, and it
33:45
Speaker 1: requires organic material to date these pigments. They're using mineral pigments,
33:49
Speaker 1: not organic ones, so that was a problem. But and
33:53
Speaker 1: this is kind of mind blowing. In two thousand eighteen,
33:55
Speaker 1: they discovered or I guess perfected a dating technique that
34:00
Speaker 1: measures the rate of decay of uranium atoms and calcite deposits.
34:05
Speaker 1: So that's what makes up stalactites and stalagmites in limestone case. Yeah.
34:09
Speaker 1: So the idea is if you find cave art's sort
34:11
Speaker 1: of like the mosquito called an amber, it's a time stamp.
34:15
Speaker 1: If you find cave art that's underneath uh some of
34:19
Speaker 1: this deposits that have dripped down over it and encased it,
34:22
Speaker 1: you can date that. Then you know how old that
34:24
Speaker 1: cave art is. Yeah, because the cave arts under the calsite,
34:27
Speaker 1: you know how old the ca the cal site is,
34:29
Speaker 1: then the cave art has to be at least as
34:31
Speaker 1: old or slightly older than the earliest deposit of calcite.
34:35
Speaker 1: What's what's the big secret? Well, there was sped There
34:37
Speaker 1: was a study in two thousand and eighteen that found
34:40
Speaker 1: that some cave art in in a cave in Spain
34:43
Speaker 1: was created sixty four thousand years ago, a full twenty
34:47
Speaker 1: thousand plus years before Homo sapiens showed up in the area,
34:52
Speaker 1: which means that it had to have been Neanderthals that
34:55
Speaker 1: created this cave art. Do you know what the Brewers said?
34:59
Speaker 1: What that's not really art? What swear to god, are
35:02
Speaker 1: you serious? He's like some hand stencils and some dots
35:05
Speaker 1: on the wall. That doesn't count. That's the first art,
35:08
Speaker 1: yea tracing their hand to make a turkey. They are
35:11
Speaker 1: really holding on for dear life. But it's it's some
35:14
Speaker 1: people are really swimming against this current, like they do
35:17
Speaker 1: not want the idea that humans are not uniquely um
35:22
Speaker 1: uh special. I guess in that sense that people have
35:27
Speaker 1: been thinking that it was humans and Homo sapiens that
35:31
Speaker 1: have the ability to create art and think symbolically. Um.
35:34
Speaker 1: And it's starting to look like that's not the case.
35:36
Speaker 1: Not only that that not it's not just humans, and
35:40
Speaker 1: that maybe Neanderstals did too, But that's possible that this
35:43
Speaker 1: kind of stuff evolved even further back, and that Heidelberg
35:46
Speaker 1: INSTIs are less common ancestor running around seven thousand years
35:50
Speaker 1: ago may have created art and may have been doing
35:53
Speaker 1: all this other stuff too that makes us uniquely human. Well. Um.
35:58
Speaker 1: Another one is music. They have found bones from cave
36:03
Speaker 1: bears in Southeast Europe that had these holes and they're like, hey,
36:07
Speaker 1: looks like a flute to me, And he's like a flute.
36:10
Speaker 1: It sounds like a flute. Um. So it's Jethro Tull. Uh.
36:16
Speaker 1: That's so. I'm so glad that they added flute to
36:19
Speaker 1: their outfit. Not many groups Marshall Tucker band had the flute.
36:25
Speaker 1: And here's a little something for you. I mean I
36:27
Speaker 1: told the story, but I was in our little local
36:30
Speaker 1: market getting some food about two years ago, remember that,
36:33
Speaker 1: and there was a guy in a band, clearly and
36:36
Speaker 1: he was like a play flute for Marshall Tucker. It's like,
36:39
Speaker 1: are you kidding? No, I'm not sorry, Like you're one
36:42
Speaker 1: of the two most famous flutists in rock music. But
36:45
Speaker 1: it wasn't. The original guy I found out still plays
36:48
Speaker 1: flute from Marshall Tuck agreed. Just because he didn't write
36:51
Speaker 1: those flute parts doesn't make him any less of a flutist.
36:54
Speaker 1: He could still play. Yeah. So uh, anyway, they the
36:59
Speaker 1: naysayer with the flute or just like, oh no, man,
37:02
Speaker 1: those are just they were bones chomped on by hyena teeth. Yeah,
37:07
Speaker 1: the the flute holes, the finger holes are teeth teeth marks. Yeah,
37:11
Speaker 1: and sure you can play aqualong on it, but that's
37:14
Speaker 1: just because the hyenas in their teeth marks. Right. Um,
37:19
Speaker 1: there's a there's also really good evidence, cumulative evidence. There's
37:24
Speaker 1: one other thing about the cave art that we didn't say, sculpture.
37:28
Speaker 1: Uh well, that was one thing that they found what
37:30
Speaker 1: looks to be stalactite, like purposeful arrangements of stalactites in
37:35
Speaker 1: a cave. That's from a hundred and seventy six thou right, Um,
37:40
Speaker 1: But no, there are other similar cave art paintings in
37:45
Speaker 1: Spanish caves um are in different places. So they think
37:49
Speaker 1: it was an actual part of Neandertal culture. There wasn't
37:52
Speaker 1: one particularly imaginative Neanderthal who happened to leave it behind. Yes,
37:56
Speaker 1: and it even said this is art love tuk tuk right,
38:03
Speaker 1: find me on insta at took took oh if only? Um? So.
38:09
Speaker 1: The the other thing that there's a lot of a
38:11
Speaker 1: mass evidence for is that Neanderthals appeared to have buried
38:17
Speaker 1: they're dead. This is pretty cool. This is enormous because Okay,
38:20
Speaker 1: not only can they think symbolically and like art and
38:23
Speaker 1: creating representations of things that may or may not exist,
38:26
Speaker 1: they can they're thinking about something coming after this. You
38:30
Speaker 1: don't just bury a corpse for many reasons other than
38:37
Speaker 1: um spiritual reasons. I mean, you can to keep like
38:40
Speaker 1: you know, the wolves away because you're going to camp
38:43
Speaker 1: near the corpse. But if you're a hunter gather, you
38:46
Speaker 1: just move camp and you can leave the person laying
38:49
Speaker 1: out there in the bush by for the wolves to take.
38:52
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter because there's no afterlife. If you bury somebody,
38:55
Speaker 1: it indicates you're thinking about something beyond this life, and
38:58
Speaker 1: that is definitely higher level thing. King. Yeah, and when
39:00
Speaker 1: we say Barry, we don't mean they just found this
39:02
Speaker 1: body like on the floor of a deep cave, like
39:05
Speaker 1: they dug a hole and placed a body in their
39:08
Speaker 1: positioned them in a specific way they found Yeah, different
39:12
Speaker 1: like grave sites basically like cemeteries of bodies buried in
39:15
Speaker 1: the same manner. And they even found in Northern Iraq
39:20
Speaker 1: pollen flower pollen, which clearly suggests that they buried them
39:25
Speaker 1: with flowers. They definitely seems to that's like, that's a funerary, right,
39:30
Speaker 1: unless it was just an accident and they just dropped
39:32
Speaker 1: a bunch of flowers on the way up, which I mean,
39:34
Speaker 1: it's possible, but it seems unlikely. I don't know if
39:37
Speaker 1: I'm being naive, but I really want to believe this. Yeah, well,
39:40
Speaker 1: it's nice, it's refreshing to think about. You know, humans
39:44
Speaker 1: don't have to have for sapiens don't have to have
39:47
Speaker 1: the market corner. We can share the humanity. Yeah, here's
39:50
Speaker 1: another one. Um, if they were just brutes who you know,
39:56
Speaker 1: who didn't have any capacity to understand things take care
40:00
Speaker 1: of one another. They found individuals and one in particular
40:05
Speaker 1: that was deaf, likely visually impaired because of a blow
40:09
Speaker 1: to the head from as a ute, probably from a sapien,
40:13
Speaker 1: maybe was missing his right hand, and then suffered a
40:17
Speaker 1: disease that reduced his mobility. And they found this person
40:21
Speaker 1: lived into his forties, maybe up to fifty. Yeah, which
40:25
Speaker 1: there's no way this person would have survived without a
40:28
Speaker 1: community of people taking care of and making sure that
40:32
Speaker 1: this person survived and ate and got around and moved
40:35
Speaker 1: along with them. Yeah, because they cared for one another
40:37
Speaker 1: and tried to heal one another. Right, Yeah, they took
40:40
Speaker 1: care of their sick. They're injured, they're they're disabled, they're ill.
40:44
Speaker 1: Um they like, they took they shared resources with them.
40:47
Speaker 1: People who couldn't necessarily contribute still got stuff from the
40:51
Speaker 1: from the community, which suggests this as tight knit social
40:55
Speaker 1: group that cared for one another. And then what about language?
40:58
Speaker 1: So this one just knocked my socks off. There are
41:01
Speaker 1: these Dutch researchers who wrote a paper that argued that, um,
41:07
Speaker 1: Neanderthals almost certainly spoke a nuanced language that we would
41:12
Speaker 1: recognize as a modern language. UM. And that not only
41:17
Speaker 1: did Neanderthals speak this speak their own language, probably Heidelbergensis
41:22
Speaker 1: and maybe even further back in our archaic family line
41:26
Speaker 1: spoke language too, And that if that's true. If that's
41:30
Speaker 1: the case, Neanderthals had their own language, and human humans
41:35
Speaker 1: absorbed Neanderthal's both culturally and genetically, it's entirely possible that
41:39
Speaker 1: there are traces of Neanderthal language that still appear in
41:43
Speaker 1: our languages that are spoken around the world today unbeknownst
41:47
Speaker 1: to us. Man, if they could find out those words,
41:50
Speaker 1: isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love that.
41:54
Speaker 1: I like all this. I love you Neanderthals, love you
41:57
Speaker 1: Sapien Tuck and uh, I think I used to just
42:01
Speaker 1: throw tuk Took around in various ways, but then you
42:05
Speaker 1: developed a taste for watching him make luck. That's right.
42:08
Speaker 1: But let me just from this point forward, took Took
42:11
Speaker 1: is clearly uh deep No, clearly Neanderthal. Oh I think
42:17
Speaker 1: I kind of just threw Took Took's name around as
42:20
Speaker 1: any kind of early man. Yeah, he could have been
42:22
Speaker 1: Captain Caveman. He could have been the Geigo Caveman. But
42:26
Speaker 1: he could be William for all I know. You know,
42:28
Speaker 1: I thought about I thought about it. The so Tuk
42:31
Speaker 1: Took is officially Neanderthal, yes, okay, Um, the Geico Caveman
42:36
Speaker 1: is actually a really good for the struggle between the
42:41
Speaker 1: interpretation of Neanderthals today, Like everybody's like it's so easy
42:45
Speaker 1: a caveman could do it, and this guy is playing
42:47
Speaker 1: like squash and driving a Porsche. Yeah. Do you remember
42:51
Speaker 1: that there their short lived TV show. I remember that
42:54
Speaker 1: it existed, but I never saw it. They drove one
42:56
Speaker 1: of them drove a Porsche. Yeah, and now a word
42:58
Speaker 1: from Geico. Uh okay. Well, if you want to know
43:02
Speaker 1: more about Neanderthals, start reading up about it. And there's
43:05
Speaker 1: a pretty amazing exhibit funded by one of the Koke
43:08
Speaker 1: brothers if I'm not mistaken, at the Smithsonian where you
43:10
Speaker 1: can see a real live Neanderthal skeleton. Really pretty beautiful. Um,
43:17
Speaker 1: what's their angle right something? Maybe maybe they're trying to
43:22
Speaker 1: rehabilitate neandertals for some reason to bring him back his
43:25
Speaker 1: exploited workers. And since I just said something about the
43:29
Speaker 1: Koke Brothers, time for go ahead administrative. Okay, Chuck, as
43:44
Speaker 1: I said, it's time for administrative. Is this like a
43:52
Speaker 1: family guy where you're just gonna do that? All right,
43:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna start this one off. This is when we
43:57
Speaker 1: thank listeners for sending in kindness is to us and
44:02
Speaker 1: Michelle from Crown Royal. Oh, yes, once again the booze
44:07
Speaker 1: company that just keeps giving I know, they just keep
44:09
Speaker 1: us in booze. Thanks a lot for that. And I
44:12
Speaker 1: just wrote down more booze. But we'll go ahead and
44:15
Speaker 1: plug the Crown Royal rye. What about those, um, those
44:18
Speaker 1: glasses they gave us, so they're like these the rocks
44:22
Speaker 1: classes tumblers. Um, got a good hef to them, nice shape,
44:26
Speaker 1: size bottom and then yeah in that thick bottom th
44:29
Speaker 1: h I C C bottom. Um, there is a laser
44:33
Speaker 1: etched CROWMB Royal three D logo which is like so classy.
44:38
Speaker 1: Your pinky can't touch the glasses physically impossible. Yeah, it
44:42
Speaker 1: just sticks straight up in the air when you're drinking
44:44
Speaker 1: out of these glass Oh, A lot of research went
44:47
Speaker 1: into that design, you know, to make sure that pinky
44:50
Speaker 1: was nowhere near the box. Um. Aaron Clark, Speaking of pinkies,
44:55
Speaker 1: Aaron Clark sent us a Twinkie the kids statue. Thanks Aaron,
44:59
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. Monica and kam A in Fukushima, Japan
45:06
Speaker 1: said it's a nice, very nice handwritten letter and some
45:09
Speaker 1: fuku stuff pin stickers, calendars, magazine where uh it's I
45:13
Speaker 1: got at the desk. I didn't share that with you
45:16
Speaker 1: and they said, uh, things are much better now good.
45:20
Speaker 1: That's cryptic, but yes, I'm glad. Um so we haven't
45:25
Speaker 1: done this in a little while. I want to say
45:27
Speaker 1: thank you very much for the Christmas cards from Heather
45:30
Speaker 1: k and Sri Lanka and one from Renee and Eric Chester.
45:35
Speaker 1: It's very kind of you, guys. Here's one maybe the
45:37
Speaker 1: weirdest thing we've ever gotten, but one of the most awesome.
45:41
Speaker 1: Scott Borderlan remember our Wendy's Chili Finger episode. He sent
45:46
Speaker 1: us Wendy's Chili from that Wendy's Wow, I think you're
45:52
Speaker 1: out of town. Yeah, it obviously was no good by
45:55
Speaker 1: the time it got to me even and he was like,
45:57
Speaker 1: I know, this is not I'm not expecting you to eat.
45:59
Speaker 1: This would eat. But he taped it up and he
46:01
Speaker 1: was like, this is chili from that very Wendy's. That's amazing.
46:04
Speaker 1: He just thought it would be kind of fun. You
46:08
Speaker 1: may be right, that may be the weirdest thing Withishiyah,
46:11
Speaker 1: but not even freeze dried. And then there's Brooke Bergen.
46:16
Speaker 1: Send a T shirt and stickers of his work and
46:18
Speaker 1: you can check out its very very awesome work. I
46:21
Speaker 1: believe his it could be a girl um and you
46:24
Speaker 1: can check out they're awesome work at Brooks Bergen b
46:29
Speaker 1: r O O K S b U r G A
46:31
Speaker 1: and dot com. That's right. That raises a point. If
46:35
Speaker 1: you want to send us the pronoun you identify with,
46:38
Speaker 1: we are more than happy to abide by that. Claire
46:41
Speaker 1: Sanchez and his skincakes, Oh yeah, very simple, delicious. Teresa
46:47
Speaker 1: sent us really awesome quilted hand quilted postcards. That's yeah, beautiful. Again,
46:54
Speaker 1: we haven't done this in a while. Sorry for everybody
46:56
Speaker 1: who's been sitting around waiting having to listen to every
46:58
Speaker 1: episode just on the off chance that administrative details is on.
47:02
Speaker 1: So everyone, Jerry just stopped us right in the middle
47:05
Speaker 1: and said I have one. We always go on and
47:08
Speaker 1: on about Jerry and her miso. Uh, big ups to
47:13
Speaker 1: Adam Brenton in Japan sent Jerry so miso, how about
47:18
Speaker 1: that way to go, Adam. Jerry got her own gift
47:21
Speaker 1: after eleven years, after all this time, our very own
47:23
Speaker 1: gift and meaning we didn't also get me so and
47:27
Speaker 1: we even asked him she's hoarding it? Yeah, because we
47:29
Speaker 1: share with Jerry. She didn't didn't go both ways. We
47:32
Speaker 1: tried to. Yeah. Uh, so let's see Joanna send us
47:36
Speaker 1: delicious beer chocolates. Remember those? Um she brought him to
47:39
Speaker 1: our Portland's show I believe, Yeah, yeah, and they were awesome.
47:44
Speaker 1: So thanks a lot, Tina, you don't remember him because
47:47
Speaker 1: they were beer chocolates. Tammy and Justin send us miniature
47:50
Speaker 1: clay figures handpainted, which is very very sweet, along with
47:53
Speaker 1: a very nice letter. We got a postcard from Vienna,
47:57
Speaker 1: probably not Voyanna Georgia. I think it was v Austria,
48:00
Speaker 1: like the real one from Pauline. Thanks a lot, Pauline,
48:04
Speaker 1: Michelle and Nevin of Smithtown, New York. Sin us wedding
48:08
Speaker 1: imitation um, happy marriage, guys, mozl tov uh and then
48:12
Speaker 1: we gotta thank you note from Mitch m I C H.
48:15
Speaker 1: But it rhymes with rich, So thank you for the
48:18
Speaker 1: thank you note. Mitch Lowell Hutchinson sent us some uh oh,
48:22
Speaker 1: these are wonderful. There some hand lathed pins. Remember Lowells
48:25
Speaker 1: the one who sponsored are She's one of our elephant sponsors. Yeah, yeah,
48:29
Speaker 1: hand painted wood lathed pins. Yeah, man, very very beautiful.
48:35
Speaker 1: And on that note, we actually got a lot of pins,
48:37
Speaker 1: and I don't think I wrote all of them down
48:38
Speaker 1: because we did our episode on pens and people felt
48:41
Speaker 1: compelled to send us their favorite pen and spread the
48:44
Speaker 1: pen love. So if we forgot your pen, big apologies.
48:49
Speaker 1: Yeah for real, that was very nice. And by the way,
48:52
Speaker 1: also again um, you can check out Lowell's turned wood
48:57
Speaker 1: creations and by the way, she donates of all sales
49:00
Speaker 1: to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust too, So go to
49:04
Speaker 1: at c dot com slash shop slash l O W
49:07
Speaker 1: E L L h U T C H D E
49:10
Speaker 1: S I G N S wonderful Joe gather Coles and
49:14
Speaker 1: his T shirts and c d s from his horror
49:16
Speaker 1: punk band Headstone Horrors. It's a great name. Yeah. Uh
49:21
Speaker 1: And then let's see I've only got I got three more. Okay,
49:24
Speaker 1: I've got a book from Nick Kemper. Thanks a lot
49:27
Speaker 1: for the book. Nick. That is beautiful of you. Mike
49:29
Speaker 1: n s. And it's a box of coffee crisps and
49:32
Speaker 1: they are delicious and they are long gone. Yeah, I
49:35
Speaker 1: can attest they are very yummy. Thanks Mike. And then uh,
49:38
Speaker 1: we got a an amazing illustration of us with a
49:41
Speaker 1: peacock by Cali. Thanks for that. It's a great one.
49:45
Speaker 1: All right. I got two more um adam Resus and
49:48
Speaker 1: s Megalodon teeth. Yes for pretty awesome. Yeah, they are
49:53
Speaker 1: in large as you would expect. You got another one.
49:57
Speaker 1: I'm done, all right, my last one. Then, Kathy Hutton
50:00
Speaker 1: send us some dog collars. She works for a nonprofit
50:03
Speaker 1: spay and neuter clinic in Washington State. Curly Tailed Hawk
50:07
Speaker 1: is who makes these collars, and they donate a dollar
50:10
Speaker 1: from every collar that you can just go to Curly
50:12
Speaker 1: Tailed Hawk dot com and get your dog a new
50:15
Speaker 1: collar already, and some of that money will go to
50:19
Speaker 1: the spay and neuter clinic, which is great. There you go, Well,
50:22
Speaker 1: thank you everybody. If you want to get in touch
50:25
Speaker 1: with us, you don't have to send us anything. You
50:26
Speaker 1: can just say hi. Go on to our social networks
50:29
Speaker 1: and you can find all the links at stuff you
50:30
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. You can also send us an
50:32
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
50:39
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
50:41
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
50:45
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.