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What happened to the Neanderthals? · Stuff You Should Know

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