April 18, 2014 • 48 mins
We've all heard about Neanderthals -- but what else was out there? Join the guys as they take a closer look at the facts behind the folklore, digging deeper to see if there's any grain of truth to the legends of giants, gnomes and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Max and
I'm Ben, and today we're taking a journey, a journey
(00:23):
through our d n A and uh we're going back,
way back, way back. Yet this is a deep cut.
Today we are talking about the lost Races of man
Nope U Matt, you remember earlier, gosh is a long
time ago, we covered them, the belief in giants, right, oh, yes,
(00:46):
that was one of the earliest episodes we didn't and uh,
interesting thing that we found is that not only are
there quite a few hoaxes, especially in the days of photoshop,
and um, you know you've earlier than that, in the
days of disreputable would be scientists. And you've probably seen
these photos online, the photos of maybe it's paleontologists down
(01:12):
by some bones that and there happens to be a
giant human skull bone there as well. Right, that's ridiculously
out of proportion, and it will say, hey, real photos
of giants on it. Uh, we can assure you, uh,
those are photoshop. Those for sure photoshop, but amid all
those hoaxes and amid you know, both digital and analog,
(01:32):
I guess we have. We have also found that there
are quite a few unexplained things about early humanity in general.
And um, if you guys will sit through some folklore
with us, we can build a pretty fascinating case here. H.
First off, every single culture, I don't like generalities, but generalizations,
(01:56):
but it's true. Every single culture has legends of some
sort of human like entities. Right, Yeah, you've got some
that have the human like intelligence. Um, you think of
the fairies or maybe the gnomes, even giants, their legends
of these throughout many cultures, almost all cultures, and giants
are some of the original bad guys and a lot
(02:18):
of the epic tales of earlier empires, you know we have.
Of course, for most people in monotheistic faiths, Goliath would
be uh number one giant. The idea of the Nephelin
being giants was also present in early Old Testament stuff,
(02:40):
some of which made it into the thechanical canonical version
of the Bible and other stuff that's more on the
b sides. Uh. And then we know that there are
other myths and legends about creatures that are a blend
of animal and man. And this stuff is huge, and
of course it depends upon the types of animals present
in that culture's environment. Right. Yes, you wouldn't have a
(03:04):
giraffe uh in Native American culture, right if you just
wouldn't see it because it wasn't there. But you would
have um stuff like a sader in uh in Mediterranean
culture where goats are common, menatars centaurs. But then also, uh,
let's not forget things that can change into animals, like
(03:27):
the werewolf myths. Oh yeah, skin walkers and all the
There are a lot of myths, especially Native American myths
about that kind of stuff, and we have a whole
podcast about that too, Yes, we do, um and others.
Sometimes you've got kind of an angelic or a demonic
version of a human that isn't really human, so cool, um, yeah,
it's certainly cool. And these are you know, vampires, jin
(03:51):
the undead, that kind of stuff. Yeah, And most of
these legends are culturally specific. So what we mean by
that is that most of these legends have a very
specific type of elf belief or type of faye belief,
or very specific race of giants or animal near human people.
(04:14):
But there are some commonalities here in These commonalities are startling. First.
Pretty much every culture has some idea of little people,
whether these are little physical people or little spirits, you know,
a spirit of your home or something. Um, maybe it's
not fair to say every culture, every continent save Antarctica
(04:38):
has myths like this. And then giants are always around,
as we said, the original bad guys. And there's another
thing which I think we've we you and I referred
to as near men or almost men. Yeah, these are
apes sometimes, uh usually apes sasquatch things, yeah, orangutans that
(04:59):
just live in the forest, but they you know, if
you get a glimpse and you don't really know what
it is, Yeah, it could. I could imagine someone seeing, uh,
kind of an older orangutan with the long arms, just
this weird old man in the woods who's just hanging
out in the forest. It's his domain. Maybe he's magical.
I don't know. I'm freaked out just from here and
(05:20):
you tell this story. I've never seen that thing before, right, Yeah,
And that's that's a really good point map because some
of these legends have later proven to have a grain
of truth, right, especially the example that you just mentioned,
which is a rangutans. Well, yeah, it's a it's a
fairly strange looking creature and it's but it's very humanlike
(05:40):
as well. And for a long time, uh, the Europeans
who were invading or colonizing, depending on which side of
history you're on. Uh, for a long time, those uh,
the Europeans were saying, what is this weird monster you
guys are talking about? Who is the old man of
the forest? And nobody believed it until the discovery finger
(06:01):
quote discovery of the orangutang, which is is fascinating to me.
And we know that this has happened, you know, with
other ape populations. Guerrillas at one time were believed to
be largely fictitious by uh, by early colonizing Europeans. I
believe it was early colonizing Europeans. Somebody will fact check
(06:23):
me on that. But this brings us so we've walked
through the folklore. We've shown that in a few cases
the folklore does have some sort of grain of truth, right,
So it brings us to this, what about Homo sapiens.
Did we ever encounter early creatures one ones that actually
were like us. It's a good question. Well, if we
(06:46):
want to use natural selection as the kind of the
lens that we're looking through, then we absolutely had to
have Homo sapiens had to have experienced Neanderthals or at
least a version or I guess it would be closer
to the well, I mean talking out of my um
rear at the moment, but it would have to be.
(07:08):
You know, we split at some point, and it's not
it's not instantaneous, and you the other you know, once
you've split, whatever you turned into the other side just
doesn't disappear, right, Yeah, it's uh, it's sort of like
the old problem with um some theories about teleportation. It
reminds me a little bit by way of painful analogy
(07:30):
about a movie called The Prestige, And yeah, this is tangential.
This is also chock full of spoilers. So if you
have not seen The Prestige and you are one of
those people who will get upset at me, uh for
you listening to spoilers, then don't listen to this part. Uh. Anyway.
In The Prestige, David Bowie plays Nicola Tesla and does
(07:53):
a pretty good job considering they look nothing alike, and
he uh, he invents this teleportation machine with a huge drawback.
It doesn't so much teleport people as it makes copies
of objects, because actual teleportation is much more difficult than this,
(08:13):
this sort of mimicry or doubling. So there's a very
strange situation where one of the magicians, one of the
main characters in the Prestige, is continually killing earlier versions
of himself, which is which is hellish. And there's also
an Orson Scott card story about that that was great.
But I don't want to ruin that one for you either.
Movies all day long. I've done enough damage, you know,
(08:35):
I think. So we do know, we do know that
there are a lot of unanswered questions about the arrival
of modern man. Anyway, For for most of us, most
people in the West understand the out of Africa theory,
which is the prevalent modern the prevalent theory in the
(08:56):
modern time today. And we all know the story. So
home Sapien evolves in Africa and from Africa leaves via
you know, the Northwest Africa area to locations around the globe,
spreads out and civilization is founded, you know, somewhere in
(09:16):
the Near East Middle East in this valley. Um. Well,
that is also coming up for debate because there are
some ancient sites have been rediscovered. Yeah, older sites than
they should be. How do you pronounce it Cat's hole hill?
That I'm not I can't you know what? I know
exactly what you're talking to. Yeah, did you hear what
Ben said? Trying to figure out how to put that
(09:37):
into Google? And uh, look that up because it's really interesting. Okay, So, um,
but there are alternate theories. There are there. Perhaps there's
this one theory that there may have been another hominid
or humanoid um that had left Africa earlier and traveled
throughout the world. And in this theory, humanity evolved different
locations throughout the world separately. Um. And this is I
(10:02):
think it's called the multi regional theory. Yes, the multi
regional theory, which sounds can sound pretty strange to us.
If you look at the timeline of evolution of man
from what we know, the the errors, the margins of
error are huge, just the range of dates in which
(10:22):
these things could have occurred. Uh So, while there is
room to explore that, it's not and it's not treated
as um Importantly, in the West, but in some areas
of the world. In China, for instance, a version of
the multi regional evolutionary theory is incredibly popular. Really. Yeah,
(10:45):
and I'm gonna be honest with you. Uh, I've read
some accusations that it's because of racism. Well, unfortunately, that's
where my mind goes when I hear it. Uh, it could.
Here's the problem it it's possible. I can't discount it currently,
but at least that theory because I don't have the
tools to do the research. I know, I know what
(11:07):
the information is. Uh, anyway I can. That's where my
mind went when we began talking about that theory. Yeah,
it's strange because it makes um it makes a space
where you could say, well, you could easily see a
lot of people with tremendous prejudice saying, oh, yes, of
course we really are different to you know, insert group
(11:30):
we don't like here. Somebodys have beef with the Welsh
or something, and they say, uh, you know, and yes, guys,
Welsh listeners. I'm using the Welsh as an example of
racism because I'm pretty sure that it's not a serious thing.
And if I'm wrong, I'm I'm sorry, but I'm just
using it as an example that would be a terrible thing.
(11:52):
If that would be a terrible thing, Welsh prejudice. I
hope it's not around anymore. Point being, point being, there
is a space in there that people use intern for racism.
There's another similar theory that in earlier Hommed had left
Africa involved evolved into something like Homo Sapien. So maybe
you know the demo version of the full album that
(12:13):
will be Homo Sapien and then returns to Africa then
uh homecoming. Yeah, like an into Africa before out of Africa. Interesting,
But again, the most widely accepted theory by far and
large is the out of Africa theory, wherein Homo sapien
(12:34):
evolves on the African continent, departs, leaves later um starts
to have regional variants into the things that we recognize
as different parts of different human populations around the world today.
So you know, you and I have a lot of
freckles that happened, stuff like that, kind of those those
(12:59):
are a hominid ancestors. Gotta own it, man, yetta own it.
It's just too expensive to get all these things removed. Uh,
it's not cool. We can't even walk outside for very
long then, But it's all part of the mosaic that
is the human experience. Right, there are some cave dwellers,
our ancestors. I'm sorry, I'm harping on this, but hey man,
(13:21):
they lived. They must have been deep in those caves
um to. Yeah, and today, Homo sapien in general is
one of the most successful large life forms in Earth's history. Now,
we have talked before about what defines a successful life form,
like our insects. The most successful type of life as bacteria,
(13:44):
because God knows, they're a hell of a lot more
of them than there are humans. Yeah, but regardless of Ben,
there are billions of humans running around the Earth. And
that's a large number. Even though there are a lot
more of the others of insects and those things, there's
a whole lot of us. We're pretty big. But here's
the thing. Have we always been alone in this space
(14:06):
of the intelligent large creatures? What a great question. And
before we answer that that, I think it's time that
we have a word from our sponsor. All right, sounds good,
let's uh, let's go to it. Well, Hey there, Ben
(14:29):
uh me, Yes, you you have a look of fear
and terror about you. Oh jeez, I don't mean to him.
Is it my eyes? It's your eyes, it's your posture, it's, frankly,
your smell. Everything about you says that you are afraid
of giants. Oh well, I am afraid of giants, and
(14:51):
you should be. They are huge, they are dangerous. The
legends are true, my friend. You are one gigantic accidental
misstep away from being pulverized by an uncaring cyclops or
perhaps an oversized goliath. Well, I you know I haven't
seen one in a while. Yes, that's because I'm wearing
(15:13):
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(15:36):
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All right, now, I'm willing to go with you here
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you said that that sounds like a really bad day
hoo hoo. But honestly, yeah, gotta got a level with
(15:58):
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all we can finally answer the question, Matt. You know
(17:03):
the answer to this question. We have not been alone. Oh,
we have not been. The Neanderthals are the first group
of hominids that we need to talk about. They were
first discovered in Germany in the neander Valley, which is
a silly name anyway. Yeah, so they're they're usually classified
(17:24):
by paleontologists as the species Homo neanderthal talnus, and some
consider them to be kind of a the sub or
a subspecies of Homo sapiens um, Homo sapiens and neanderthalis um.
(17:45):
But anyway, yeah, so the question is if they're their
own species or if they're just a subspecies of modern man. Absolutely,
that's that is the question. So the first humans with
proto Neanderthal traits are believed to have existed in Europe
um roughly or as early as six hundred thousand to
(18:05):
three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, right, and so
this means that they became extinct during the time of
of modern man in terms, you know, in terms of anatomy. Right. Uh,
there's a another group that we should talk about that
you and I got pretty excited about when we first
heard of this, and those are the dennis Ovans Um
(18:27):
spoiler alert. Most of the early Man variations that we
find have names based only on where they were first discovered. Okay,
so the dennis Ovans, we don't have much to go
on with these folks. Uh. Fairly recently, researchers at the
(18:49):
dennis Ovan Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia found, uh,
just some tiny stuff like fingerbone, toe, a couple of toes,
fragments of skulls, and from this they were able to
look at the d NA and discover that there was
another either a completely different species of early Man or
(19:09):
a subspecies of Homo sapien. And here's the thing, Asia,
the entire continent is not very well mapped from an
evolutionary perspective, so we're not sure what's going on with
the Denisovans. We don't really know what they look like.
We we don't know where they came from. Well, yeah,
(19:29):
it's it's very new, the denisovi and the idea of
the Denisoan is very new, and we could have found
some stuff from earlier that was also a Denisovan example,
but just not recognized, right. Um. One one thing to
note here been is that it's I've seen them called
Asian Neanderthals or the denisovan uh Denizoans referred to as that,
(19:51):
and that doesn't appear to be accurate. Even though it
does appear that they bred with Neanderthals or interbred with
neanderthals um, seventeen of their DNA does it does seem
to be neandertal um, although they think maybe they also
(20:11):
perhaps bread with another unknown uh homaid variant. Weird, right,
And this is this fascinating because some Neanderthal bones were
found with Dennisouvan bones in the Altzhim Mountain cave and
it seems as though they might have been living together. Again,
(20:32):
we don't know what they look like because we only
found a little bit of stuff, but this, this fingerbone,
which is from a younger female, is uh way bigger
than it would be if she was a Homo sapien.
So based on that, the big assumption that we're making
is that they were probably what's a polite way to
(20:54):
say this, probably robust, you know, hardy. Maybe in a
video game they would be the tank. Oh totally yeah,
if that makes sense, they have a shield and a sword, right, Yeah,
they're bruisers for sure. At least they were larger than
Homo sapien probably maybe not taller. But research is ongoing,
(21:18):
so we're gonna learn more about Dennis Ovins as we continue.
Hopefully we'll be able to update our video episode with
some more information. This leads us to one of the
most exciting and controversial recent finds of early man Homo
floris sins, which I just totally that's the that's exactly
(21:43):
the way I wanted to pronounce it, but I I
wasn't gonna attempt it. So what are we talking about
when we say this? What are we talking We're talking
about a real well a real life hobbit. Okay, I
see the finger quotes there? All right, how do we
find out about this? All right? So there were nine
individuals discovered in Indonesia in two thousand three on an
(22:04):
island island called Florious, which again mispronouncing there. Um they
were standing about three and a half feet tall. Well,
they would be standing three and a half feet tall
if they could and we're alive. But but that was
the entire community. Wasn't just one or two that they
found nine individuals that were that at all, Right, and
(22:26):
we know a lot of modern news outlets just want
to run with a sexy headline. So a bunch of
scientists got their dander up when they saw these headlines
that said real live hobbits found in Indonesia, uh, and
immediately started trying to shoot holes in in the theory.
Was there a genetic problem somebody had said maybe this
was an isolated and the uh. The implication there will
(22:49):
be inbred population that had microcephaly, which is a very
debilitating condition wherein somebody's head is um much smaller than
it should be and it can affect intelligence as well.
Or maybe they had no thyroid for some reason. Another
another thing that's not the same but similar, is that
(23:12):
maybe they were a distinct community that had island dwarfism,
which is, you know, the the theory that animals who
end up being on islands also end up being growing
smaller over time their species for this to happen, and
(23:32):
they would have to be divergence here. But there's a
really weird part. They were around pretty recently, right, Yes,
these um they lived as recently as twelve thousand years ago,
which is well it's very recent from the span of
humanity um, and that means it was it was alive
(23:55):
during the time of modern man. So when human humanity
was around, Homo sapien, right, they were around as well.
That is crazy because especially considering that we're we as
a society are still trying to figure out what is
going on with the human brain, right, and we don't
(24:16):
understand the nature of intelligence. For a long time, we
thought that size of a brain was related to intelligence,
but the things that we're learning about very intelligent creatures
are proving that is probably not the case. And one
thing that we found is that, uh, these creatures were
(24:37):
a little bit based on their anatomy. They were a
little bit closer to apes than modern man, you know,
in terms of length of arm to length of lag.
And they have tiny, tiny heads, you know, in comparison
to us and Neanderthals, I'm sure. And despite all this,
they still built stone tools, so they had the intelligence
(24:58):
to make tools. And there's a really to go back
to folklore, there's this fascinating thing called the I'm gonna
mispronounced this one too, Okay, The Ebu Go Go myths
in Flores concern this race of small, little people who
are not that great at language, but they hunt and
(25:19):
they can play tricks, and they interact with the local population.
And it's funny that this pops up because we know
that Indonesia still has a lot of remote forests, although
they are increasingly being torn down for various industries. We
also know that these quote unquote real life hobbits are
(25:41):
the longest surviving non modern humans that we know of.
It's pretty awesome. It makes me gosh, it makes me
wonder if that was the last surviving family perhaps of
of of you know, the these mythological creatures that were
an actuality, a real thing. That's that's fascinating to think about.
(26:04):
I'd love to have that to that story told, you know,
and on a film or something, just to see that.
Darren Ronofsky, you're probably listening, let's be honest, it's time.
Uh yeah. Well there's some really interesting stuff here too,
because reports of these ebu go go linger well into
(26:26):
the Portuguese arrival in Indonesia, and even today. There's a
cryptid called the orong Pendic, which is described as a
very short, very strong, ape like creature, and there have
been numerous reports this but we still have yet to
find a body or a fossil, you know what I mean, Man,
(26:51):
I just want to go out and live in the
forest for a while with a bunch of cameras. Yeah.
Well again, anyone listening at Discovery or sign Channel Ben
and I will do these kinds of things. You just
you know, give us the money and the cameras and
we'll go. Yeah. Just the plane ticket, really, plane ticket
in the camera and you don't have to pay me.
I'll camp out in Indonesia. Sure, I mean all right.
(27:15):
So what's fascinating here is that the theories of how
these creatures arrived. Maybe it's not fair to call them creatures.
I think they're close enough that we should refer to
them as people. The theories of how these Homo fluorescencess
arrive on this island sort of requires them to have
(27:36):
a knowledge of rafting at the very least, to come
over on a bamboo boat or something, because the distance
is too far to swim. So this means that they
also at some point, whoever their ancestors were. Whomever their
ancestors were, those people were capable of building boats, which
(28:01):
makes us rethink a lot of the stuff that we
we think about because these these creatures are clearly not
Homo sapien the way that we would understand it. And
so is it possible that's just an isolated branch of
Homo sapien that over the years, over the centuries, over millennia,
(28:22):
became something that seems startlingly different. And that's not even
that's not even all of it. We just named the
three early man types early human types that we know of,
because there's more to the story, right, that's right. Then
there are a lot of known unknowns. Uh. We we
(28:43):
do know that both Dennis Ovans and Neanderthals they both
bred with another early unknown version of man, and we
don't know what that was at all, or well, at
least there are some ideas, but we we really don't know.
And we also if you also are look at the
gaps in the early record, it's also possible that we
(29:06):
may discover these other variations just from going at it
basically more digging and more searching. Um. But the biggest
thing are Okay, so if we if we want to
look at um, one of the most interesting things to
me are these mysterious graves that exist. Okay, yeah, there
(29:29):
are there are numerous anecdotal and proven accounts of mysterious
grave sites with near human or humanoid basically humanlike remains,
and they're often really old. Yeah, and some of those
are our hoaxes, like the photoshop giant pictures you mentioned earlier,
or like the pilt down man in England. Uh, they're
(29:51):
you know, there are cases where unscrupulous, often racist investigators
would take you know, like an ape's jaw bone and
put it on a human skull and things like that.
But those hoaxes aren't the only thing. They're also medical conditions, right, Yeah,
you've got agromeglia, dwarf is um um micro or also
(30:16):
hypo cephali. There's all kinds of genetic disorders like the
what's that what's that one been? The boscops man? Oh yeah, okay,
so this is this is interesting because we don't know
if it's exactly a genetic disorder yet. So there was
a series of skulls found in South Africa by some
(30:39):
farmers and they noticed, to their credit that these these
skulls fragments they were finding didn't seem to be what
you would expect from a human skull, and essentially what
they found were baby faced people with huge Craney ancient
(31:01):
too so in uh some of the fringe research sites.
And according to a very controversial study, this so called
bust scopes man most scopes man, if I'm pronouncing correctly,
is a highly evolved or highly intelligent variant of human
(31:25):
that somehow died out way in the past. And this
argument for a very high intelligence on the part of
these fossils is made based on the based on the
size of what their brain would have been, how much
how much brain they could have in their brain case.
And again going back to the earlier thing we pointed out,
(31:48):
what we have learned is that that is not necessarily
the deciding factor. The brain can be smaller and really intelligent.
I E. Ravens. Yeah, sure, they're all kinds. There's high
intelligence all over the place in the brain. I guess
it matters in the folds mostly right. It's it's also, yeah,
(32:09):
which regions of the brain are the most are the
most of all, they're the most sophisticated. So when we
when we look at this, of course we're wading through
a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation. We
have an earlier podcast on misinformation and disinformation. If you
want to know the difference, right, Um, but we also
(32:30):
know that despite the hoaxes, despite the things that may
clearly be medical conditions, we have social practices and then
we have some inexplicable stuff. So when we say social practices,
there are these skulls that have, um, that that have
sort of a cone head look, you know, very elongated. Yeah,
(32:54):
and it's because they were shaping their heads, right since
they were essentially since they're born, and they begin shaping
their heads the way they do it, and don't do
this to your children s, don't. But the way that
they do it is taking wet uh slats of wood
I don't know why I'm acting it out now into
podcast and and wrapping the wood tightly around the head
(33:19):
so that it's pressing. Now you remember, of course, that
a baby's skull is much more pliable than human skull.
The bones that you are born within your skull as
child don't fuse together until you know, later in life.
So they're able to make these things that look like
make these people that look like they have heads from
(33:41):
the alien films. Yeah, but then there are also other things, um,
the horned growths. I remember seeing pictures of this ben Um.
Is this was this something found in the skull or
is this something that was artificially done? We ah, yeah,
that's a good question. We know that there are a
(34:03):
lot of hoaxes about this kind of stuff too, but
we do know that people can grow horns um for
all intents and purposes. You can look up pictures of
people who have been alive, likely during your lifetime, who
due to one rare condition or another, have grown horns.
They're normal people. They're just normal people affected with something
(34:26):
the same way that you would be affected with a mole,
you know what I mean, growth on the bone. Uh. Yeah,
I don't know enough about this to really delve into
it yet, um, but I can definitely check it out.
We can do, you know, devil people. If it's not
gonna be too offensive, I'm gonna look into it. Yeah.
And also we know, because of confirmation bias, that a
(34:49):
lot of skulls have been found that are irregular, such
as the very popular star child skull. Remember that one.
Uh that these have these have been touted by people
who believe in ancient alien theories as evidence of alien
visitation or something else. It looks like in most cases,
(35:10):
those deformed skulls come either from a medical condition or
from a uh social practice, but they're inexplicable corpses. There
really are corpses that are There are bones, at least
skeletons that are eight feet tall that we find, and
they're freaky, but so far as we know, they're not
(35:31):
part of a large breeding population. We've only found a few.
But to me, the most interesting things that we find
that are the most difficult to explain would be anachronistic remains.
Anachronistic meaning something that is not in the time it
belongs in. And this would be stuff like Romans out
in western China at the wrong time. So they're finding
(35:52):
Caucasian corpses in the weirdest places. That's easily explained. Well,
it's just time travel, It's okay, Well that makes sense.
And also we're finding you know, an African or what
would normally be ascribed as African uh remains in South America.
And you know, we we we know that history is
(36:14):
a muddy story here, so I mean, like people still
are trying to figure out what's going on with the
Olmec civilization, right, So we've looked at all these ancient
discoveries or discoveries, but from from a long time ago.
The earliest was twelve thousand years ago. But here's the big,
the big question again, are we still today alone our
(36:38):
Homo sapiens the only hominid, the only version of human
that exists today walking around? Could you? Could you go
somewhere and find one, find another type of human? Well,
according to some studies that are a little bit controversial,
you and I might be talking to Neanderthal right now,
(37:01):
or Dennis Ovans right I could be in Neandertal. Yeah, totally.
Those freckles and our reddish hair dead giveaways. Man, we
are no we are no longer pure Homo sapien quality.
You know what, I'm okay with it. So, according to
some studies that continue today, including something with the neat
name of the Neanderthal Genome Project uh, all global populations
(37:26):
other than some parts of Africa like sub Saharan Africa
exhibit significant Neanderthal genes, and significant only in that they
are traceable. So through a whole genome sequencing, a two
thousand ten sequence of the Neanderthal genome revealed that Neanderthals
share more alleles with Eurasian populations. So this would be
(37:47):
like the French, the Han, Chinese, Papua New Guinea than
they did with Sub Saharan African populations. So they think
that people did the study that this means there was
a recent gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans after
the migration out of Africa, and that if you have
(38:08):
Eurasian heritage, that it could be up to one to
four of your geno. What this means, oh, and then
they lowered that percent in two thousand thirteen. What this
means is that people who are around there, according to
this study, people whose ancestry originates there have some sort
(38:32):
of evidence genetic evidence of Homo Sapian interbreeding with Neanderthal
The highest admixture, of course, UH would be you know, Eurasia,
East Asia, and the lowest being Sub Saharan Africa. And
they're not the only people that might still be in
the game. Because we mentioned dennis Ovans, right, Yeah, according
(38:53):
to UH, some of the some of this DNA evidence,
it appears that dennis Ovan DNA is found in Southeast
Asian populations even today. UM and notably you're looking at
Papua New Guinea populations. UM. And there are also UH,
there's also evidence of this in other I guess you'd
(39:14):
say oceanic areas of the world. So, uh, this would
be in islands in Indonesia, Malaysia. Uh. There. There's still
some studies out because they're still learning a lot about this.
But what this means is that denis Ovans were probably
all over East Asia for a time, and they were
(39:36):
interbreeding with modern man, they were interbreeding with Neanderthals. They
were checking off the bucket list. It's almost as though
they got pushed out and to see almost like they
were seafair, more seafaring, at least from what I've been
looking at. Oh yeah, yeah, there's or at least they
were good at it, right, or or their their descendants
(39:56):
were at the very least. Now we get to the
big one, Matt, what else is out there? We have
no idea. We have no idea that we have no
idea what we could find. Uh. We might well discover
that some of the legends about giants and little people
(40:18):
or alternate versions of near human things are indeed true.
We still haven't found a sasquatch. We still have not
found a sasquatch. We have found, of course, one of
the one of the interesting candidates for sasquatch is always
going to be a bear. But uh, but we have
(40:39):
found that polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed. We
have also found that, at least in the past, uh,
large animals could escape detection. For while, the discovery of
that massive collection of guerrillas in Africa a few years back,
the discovery of recent mammals like that that monkey with
(41:02):
no nos it still freaks me. I remember that thing?
How did Yeah? And then there's there's still so many
archaeological mysteries in play. Will leave you with one here,
and that's the Red Deer Cave People. As recently as
eleven thousand years ago. There's a community in Red Deer
(41:23):
Cave in China, and they have a unique mix of
early and modern human population uh characteristics. So I implore
you to go check out Red Deer Cave People and
read a very very interesting story. Also, I hope that
you will check out our video series on giants and
(41:46):
some what what else do we have on this? We
have the who are the Nomo? We have the Nomo,
the one about our humans evolving? Yeah. Still, and if
you want to, you can even go back to the
ancient Aliens content we've averard Um, there's this branches out
into it. Yeah, it's gonna go with him anyway. It
(42:07):
has a lot of branches this episode and UM. And
one thing we would I would like to say this,
this kind of topic lends itself towards UM, some of
the darker things in humanity, towards racism and some of
anytime you're talking about d n A and humanity, I
(42:27):
would just encourage you to fight any of those urges.
If you have any of those, uh, fight them off
with a stick. Please. Well, yeah, we we do know
that in most cases, think things like that are huge
impediments to science. They're not really helpful. They get in
the way. In our Human Experimentation episode, we talk about
(42:52):
the huge ethical dilemma of Nazi experimentation on people, and
we also note that one of the things that really
prevents a lot of this research from being as valuable
as it could have been was the underlying Yeah, the
underlying bias, the underlying ideological constraints of the experimenters. So so, yeah, Matt,
(43:17):
you and I are not. I think it's fairly clear
that you and I personally believe in in the out
of Africa theory rather than the multi regional hypothesis. Um.
I think that there are more early races of manner
and the word race is not really fair here. I
think they're more early versions of man that were around
(43:39):
and have a genetic legacy today. The contributions by the
way of Dennis Ovans, uh, Neanderthals and other archaic humans
appear to be if all this is true, if the
studies are true, Uh, these appear to be crucial parts
of our evolution in terms of immunity to pathogens. That
(43:59):
of all, after Homo sapien left Africa. So we're alive
in a weird way again, if this stuff is true,
because we have been saved by cave people. Awesome. Yeah,
also not fair because Homo sapiens total cave people for
a very long time. I've got We've got one more
surprise here before we head out. Instead of doing listener mail,
(44:23):
you and I didn't experiment on Twitter, right, Yes we did.
We just asked you if you wanted to hear your
name on a podcast. Yea. So guess what it's happening
right now? Okay, let's start checking out some people who
wrote to us or retweeted and asked for a shout out.
Kia Stacy. Hello there, don Tree, you are in the house.
(44:47):
I believe there's Joel Micah, Harris chet Lemon. I've seen
you around on Twitter. JP Wigened also seen your face
a lot. San Juan Underscore Puerto Rico. Interesting. So is
that a place that wants a shout out? Maybe it's
(45:09):
a person, it's like a representative of the place. That's
pretty fun. Well, just to cover our bases, let's also
give a shout out to the entire city of San Juan,
Puerto Rico, Rico Rico. We've also got uh, a very
interesting person named g PC. We also have no uh yeah,
(45:31):
there's a oh geez, I'm gonna try and do this right,
Keith Mastro Michal's shout out to Ellipses or dot dot dot. Well,
we'll come back to that one. We'll come back to
I think that's what that means. Um. We've also got
Joe von ax Man. That's a cool name. Oh yeah,
(45:52):
Jessica J Glover f congratulations, your name was just spoken
uh digitally on podcast. There's Jason R. Yeager seeing you
as well all over Twitter. One of the first people
to read tweet. That's right too, and that's not all
some of you wrote to us with uh responses here.
(46:16):
So Bobby Samuel replied to something that made me laugh, Matt,
I want to read it to you and see if
you see if you get this, it's more of a
visual thing conspiracy stuff. Can I get a shout out
for my friends? Nil wob neb and cured deer tam
Do you get it? No, I'd have to read it
nice our words? Yeah, yeah, yeah, got us there, um okay.
(46:42):
And Heather also wanted to shout out high Heather and
thank you for the very nice thing you said in
what you called your ill advised late night tweets. Uh.
We also have uh not mugan who just learned about
our audio podcast us. We hope you're checking out and
enjoying it. Uh j PC. You made us laugh, of
(47:04):
course when you said it will be a conspiracy if
I don't get a shout out. Well played, sir. And
we'd also like to return to our buddy who was
Ellipses or dot dot dot because we had an actual
conversation online about how to pronounce your name, my friend.
We wanted to make sure we got it. Right, because,
(47:26):
as we said, Americans on both continents alry cartoonishly bad
at pronouncing things. So shout out to you, Keith Lee,
I hope that we have done that correctly, and shout
out to everybody who's listening who has yet to follow
us on Twitter or check out our website Stuff they
don't want you to know dot com, where we have
all kinds of spooky, interesting stuff, and you can check
(47:50):
out our Facebook. We'd love to see you over there.
That's where we also ask for a lot of ideas
for upcoming episodes. We hope that you enjoyed this episode,
and we hope the check out our video series on
the Lost Races of Man. If you want to write
us an email, we read those as well. Our email
address is conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From one on
(48:17):
this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Max and
I'm Ben, and today we're taking a journey, a journey
(00:23):
through our d n A and uh we're going back,
way back, way back. Yet this is a deep cut.
Today we are talking about the lost Races of man
Nope U Matt, you remember earlier, gosh is a long
time ago, we covered them, the belief in giants, right, oh, yes,
(00:46):
that was one of the earliest episodes we didn't and uh,
interesting thing that we found is that not only are
there quite a few hoaxes, especially in the days of photoshop,
and um, you know you've earlier than that, in the
days of disreputable would be scientists. And you've probably seen
these photos online, the photos of maybe it's paleontologists down
(01:12):
by some bones that and there happens to be a
giant human skull bone there as well. Right, that's ridiculously
out of proportion, and it will say, hey, real photos
of giants on it. Uh, we can assure you, uh,
those are photoshop. Those for sure photoshop, but amid all
those hoaxes and amid you know, both digital and analog,
(01:32):
I guess we have. We have also found that there
are quite a few unexplained things about early humanity in general.
And um, if you guys will sit through some folklore
with us, we can build a pretty fascinating case here. H.
First off, every single culture, I don't like generalities, but generalizations,
(01:56):
but it's true. Every single culture has legends of some
sort of human like entities. Right, Yeah, you've got some
that have the human like intelligence. Um, you think of
the fairies or maybe the gnomes, even giants, their legends
of these throughout many cultures, almost all cultures, and giants
are some of the original bad guys and a lot
(02:18):
of the epic tales of earlier empires, you know we have.
Of course, for most people in monotheistic faiths, Goliath would
be uh number one giant. The idea of the Nephelin
being giants was also present in early Old Testament stuff,
(02:40):
some of which made it into the thechanical canonical version
of the Bible and other stuff that's more on the
b sides. Uh. And then we know that there are
other myths and legends about creatures that are a blend
of animal and man. And this stuff is huge, and
of course it depends upon the types of animals present
in that culture's environment. Right. Yes, you wouldn't have a
(03:04):
giraffe uh in Native American culture, right if you just
wouldn't see it because it wasn't there. But you would
have um stuff like a sader in uh in Mediterranean
culture where goats are common, menatars centaurs. But then also, uh,
let's not forget things that can change into animals, like
(03:27):
the werewolf myths. Oh yeah, skin walkers and all the
There are a lot of myths, especially Native American myths
about that kind of stuff, and we have a whole
podcast about that too, Yes, we do, um and others.
Sometimes you've got kind of an angelic or a demonic
version of a human that isn't really human, so cool, um, yeah,
it's certainly cool. And these are you know, vampires, jin
(03:51):
the undead, that kind of stuff. Yeah, And most of
these legends are culturally specific. So what we mean by
that is that most of these legends have a very
specific type of elf belief or type of faye belief,
or very specific race of giants or animal near human people.
(04:14):
But there are some commonalities here in These commonalities are startling. First.
Pretty much every culture has some idea of little people,
whether these are little physical people or little spirits, you know,
a spirit of your home or something. Um, maybe it's
not fair to say every culture, every continent save Antarctica
(04:38):
has myths like this. And then giants are always around,
as we said, the original bad guys. And there's another
thing which I think we've we you and I referred
to as near men or almost men. Yeah, these are
apes sometimes, uh usually apes sasquatch things, yeah, orangutans that
(04:59):
just live in the forest, but they you know, if
you get a glimpse and you don't really know what
it is, Yeah, it could. I could imagine someone seeing, uh,
kind of an older orangutan with the long arms, just
this weird old man in the woods who's just hanging
out in the forest. It's his domain. Maybe he's magical.
I don't know. I'm freaked out just from here and
(05:20):
you tell this story. I've never seen that thing before, right, Yeah,
And that's that's a really good point map because some
of these legends have later proven to have a grain
of truth, right, especially the example that you just mentioned,
which is a rangutans. Well, yeah, it's a it's a
fairly strange looking creature and it's but it's very humanlike
(05:40):
as well. And for a long time, uh, the Europeans
who were invading or colonizing, depending on which side of
history you're on. Uh, for a long time, those uh,
the Europeans were saying, what is this weird monster you
guys are talking about? Who is the old man of
the forest? And nobody believed it until the discovery finger
(06:01):
quote discovery of the orangutang, which is is fascinating to me.
And we know that this has happened, you know, with
other ape populations. Guerrillas at one time were believed to
be largely fictitious by uh, by early colonizing Europeans. I
believe it was early colonizing Europeans. Somebody will fact check
(06:23):
me on that. But this brings us so we've walked
through the folklore. We've shown that in a few cases
the folklore does have some sort of grain of truth, right,
So it brings us to this, what about Homo sapiens.
Did we ever encounter early creatures one ones that actually
were like us. It's a good question. Well, if we
(06:46):
want to use natural selection as the kind of the
lens that we're looking through, then we absolutely had to
have Homo sapiens had to have experienced Neanderthals or at
least a version or I guess it would be closer
to the well, I mean talking out of my um
rear at the moment, but it would have to be.
(07:08):
You know, we split at some point, and it's not
it's not instantaneous, and you the other you know, once
you've split, whatever you turned into the other side just
doesn't disappear, right, Yeah, it's uh, it's sort of like
the old problem with um some theories about teleportation. It
reminds me a little bit by way of painful analogy
(07:30):
about a movie called The Prestige, And yeah, this is tangential.
This is also chock full of spoilers. So if you
have not seen The Prestige and you are one of
those people who will get upset at me, uh for
you listening to spoilers, then don't listen to this part. Uh. Anyway.
In The Prestige, David Bowie plays Nicola Tesla and does
(07:53):
a pretty good job considering they look nothing alike, and
he uh, he invents this teleportation machine with a huge drawback.
It doesn't so much teleport people as it makes copies
of objects, because actual teleportation is much more difficult than this,
(08:13):
this sort of mimicry or doubling. So there's a very
strange situation where one of the magicians, one of the
main characters in the Prestige, is continually killing earlier versions
of himself, which is which is hellish. And there's also
an Orson Scott card story about that that was great.
But I don't want to ruin that one for you either.
Movies all day long. I've done enough damage, you know,
(08:35):
I think. So we do know, we do know that
there are a lot of unanswered questions about the arrival
of modern man. Anyway, For for most of us, most
people in the West understand the out of Africa theory,
which is the prevalent modern the prevalent theory in the
(08:56):
modern time today. And we all know the story. So
home Sapien evolves in Africa and from Africa leaves via
you know, the Northwest Africa area to locations around the globe,
spreads out and civilization is founded, you know, somewhere in
(09:16):
the Near East Middle East in this valley. Um. Well,
that is also coming up for debate because there are
some ancient sites have been rediscovered. Yeah, older sites than
they should be. How do you pronounce it Cat's hole hill?
That I'm not I can't you know what? I know
exactly what you're talking to. Yeah, did you hear what
Ben said? Trying to figure out how to put that
(09:37):
into Google? And uh, look that up because it's really interesting. Okay, So, um,
but there are alternate theories. There are there. Perhaps there's
this one theory that there may have been another hominid
or humanoid um that had left Africa earlier and traveled
throughout the world. And in this theory, humanity evolved different
locations throughout the world separately. Um. And this is I
(10:02):
think it's called the multi regional theory. Yes, the multi
regional theory, which sounds can sound pretty strange to us.
If you look at the timeline of evolution of man
from what we know, the the errors, the margins of
error are huge, just the range of dates in which
(10:22):
these things could have occurred. Uh So, while there is
room to explore that, it's not and it's not treated
as um Importantly, in the West, but in some areas
of the world. In China, for instance, a version of
the multi regional evolutionary theory is incredibly popular. Really. Yeah,
(10:45):
and I'm gonna be honest with you. Uh, I've read
some accusations that it's because of racism. Well, unfortunately, that's
where my mind goes when I hear it. Uh, it could.
Here's the problem it it's possible. I can't discount it currently,
but at least that theory because I don't have the
tools to do the research. I know, I know what
(11:07):
the information is. Uh, anyway I can. That's where my
mind went when we began talking about that theory. Yeah,
it's strange because it makes um it makes a space
where you could say, well, you could easily see a
lot of people with tremendous prejudice saying, oh, yes, of
course we really are different to you know, insert group
(11:30):
we don't like here. Somebodys have beef with the Welsh
or something, and they say, uh, you know, and yes, guys,
Welsh listeners. I'm using the Welsh as an example of
racism because I'm pretty sure that it's not a serious thing.
And if I'm wrong, I'm I'm sorry, but I'm just
using it as an example that would be a terrible thing.
(11:52):
If that would be a terrible thing, Welsh prejudice. I
hope it's not around anymore. Point being, point being, there
is a space in there that people use intern for racism.
There's another similar theory that in earlier Hommed had left
Africa involved evolved into something like Homo Sapien. So maybe
you know the demo version of the full album that
(12:13):
will be Homo Sapien and then returns to Africa then
uh homecoming. Yeah, like an into Africa before out of Africa. Interesting,
But again, the most widely accepted theory by far and
large is the out of Africa theory, wherein Homo sapien
(12:34):
evolves on the African continent, departs, leaves later um starts
to have regional variants into the things that we recognize
as different parts of different human populations around the world today.
So you know, you and I have a lot of
freckles that happened, stuff like that, kind of those those
(12:59):
are a hominid ancestors. Gotta own it, man, yetta own it.
It's just too expensive to get all these things removed. Uh,
it's not cool. We can't even walk outside for very
long then, But it's all part of the mosaic that
is the human experience. Right, there are some cave dwellers,
our ancestors. I'm sorry, I'm harping on this, but hey man,
(13:21):
they lived. They must have been deep in those caves
um to. Yeah, and today, Homo sapien in general is
one of the most successful large life forms in Earth's history. Now,
we have talked before about what defines a successful life form,
like our insects. The most successful type of life as bacteria,
(13:44):
because God knows, they're a hell of a lot more
of them than there are humans. Yeah, but regardless of Ben,
there are billions of humans running around the Earth. And
that's a large number. Even though there are a lot
more of the others of insects and those things, there's
a whole lot of us. We're pretty big. But here's
the thing. Have we always been alone in this space
(14:06):
of the intelligent large creatures? What a great question. And
before we answer that that, I think it's time that
we have a word from our sponsor. All right, sounds good,
let's uh, let's go to it. Well, Hey there, Ben
(14:29):
uh me, Yes, you you have a look of fear
and terror about you. Oh jeez, I don't mean to him.
Is it my eyes? It's your eyes, it's your posture, it's, frankly,
your smell. Everything about you says that you are afraid
of giants. Oh well, I am afraid of giants, and
(14:51):
you should be. They are huge, they are dangerous. The
legends are true, my friend. You are one gigantic accidental
misstep away from being pulverized by an uncaring cyclops or
perhaps an oversized goliath. Well, I you know I haven't
seen one in a while. Yes, that's because I'm wearing
(15:13):
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(15:36):
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your neck and it will emanate anti giant rays, which
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All right, now, I'm willing to go with you here
because I don't want to get stopped by cyclops Like
you said that that sounds like a really bad day
hoo hoo. But honestly, yeah, gotta got a level with
(15:58):
you here. You don't. For all my day, I have
never seen the giant Ah. Yes, of course. Well that's
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of illumination Global Unlimited and we are back. So now
all we can finally answer the question, Matt. You know
(17:03):
the answer to this question. We have not been alone. Oh,
we have not been. The Neanderthals are the first group
of hominids that we need to talk about. They were
first discovered in Germany in the neander Valley, which is
a silly name anyway. Yeah, so they're they're usually classified
(17:24):
by paleontologists as the species Homo neanderthal talnus, and some
consider them to be kind of a the sub or
a subspecies of Homo sapiens um, Homo sapiens and neanderthalis um.
(17:45):
But anyway, yeah, so the question is if they're their
own species or if they're just a subspecies of modern man. Absolutely,
that's that is the question. So the first humans with
proto Neanderthal traits are believed to have existed in Europe
um roughly or as early as six hundred thousand to
(18:05):
three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, right, and so
this means that they became extinct during the time of
of modern man in terms, you know, in terms of anatomy. Right. Uh,
there's a another group that we should talk about that
you and I got pretty excited about when we first
heard of this, and those are the dennis Ovans Um
(18:27):
spoiler alert. Most of the early Man variations that we
find have names based only on where they were first discovered. Okay,
so the dennis Ovans, we don't have much to go
on with these folks. Uh. Fairly recently, researchers at the
(18:49):
dennis Ovan Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia found, uh,
just some tiny stuff like fingerbone, toe, a couple of toes,
fragments of skulls, and from this they were able to
look at the d NA and discover that there was
another either a completely different species of early Man or
(19:09):
a subspecies of Homo sapien. And here's the thing, Asia,
the entire continent is not very well mapped from an
evolutionary perspective, so we're not sure what's going on with
the Denisovans. We don't really know what they look like.
We we don't know where they came from. Well, yeah,
(19:29):
it's it's very new, the denisovi and the idea of
the Denisoan is very new, and we could have found
some stuff from earlier that was also a Denisovan example,
but just not recognized, right. Um. One one thing to
note here been is that it's I've seen them called
Asian Neanderthals or the denisovan uh Denizoans referred to as that,
(19:51):
and that doesn't appear to be accurate. Even though it
does appear that they bred with Neanderthals or interbred with
neanderthals um, seventeen of their DNA does it does seem
to be neandertal um, although they think maybe they also
(20:11):
perhaps bread with another unknown uh homaid variant. Weird, right,
And this is this fascinating because some Neanderthal bones were
found with Dennisouvan bones in the Altzhim Mountain cave and
it seems as though they might have been living together. Again,
(20:32):
we don't know what they look like because we only
found a little bit of stuff, but this, this fingerbone,
which is from a younger female, is uh way bigger
than it would be if she was a Homo sapien.
So based on that, the big assumption that we're making
is that they were probably what's a polite way to
(20:54):
say this, probably robust, you know, hardy. Maybe in a
video game they would be the tank. Oh totally yeah,
if that makes sense, they have a shield and a sword, right, Yeah,
they're bruisers for sure. At least they were larger than
Homo sapien probably maybe not taller. But research is ongoing,
(21:18):
so we're gonna learn more about Dennis Ovins as we continue.
Hopefully we'll be able to update our video episode with
some more information. This leads us to one of the
most exciting and controversial recent finds of early man Homo
floris sins, which I just totally that's the that's exactly
(21:43):
the way I wanted to pronounce it, but I I
wasn't gonna attempt it. So what are we talking about
when we say this? What are we talking We're talking
about a real well a real life hobbit. Okay, I
see the finger quotes there? All right, how do we
find out about this? All right? So there were nine
individuals discovered in Indonesia in two thousand three on an
(22:04):
island island called Florious, which again mispronouncing there. Um they
were standing about three and a half feet tall. Well,
they would be standing three and a half feet tall
if they could and we're alive. But but that was
the entire community. Wasn't just one or two that they
found nine individuals that were that at all, Right, and
(22:26):
we know a lot of modern news outlets just want
to run with a sexy headline. So a bunch of
scientists got their dander up when they saw these headlines
that said real live hobbits found in Indonesia, uh, and
immediately started trying to shoot holes in in the theory.
Was there a genetic problem somebody had said maybe this
was an isolated and the uh. The implication there will
(22:49):
be inbred population that had microcephaly, which is a very
debilitating condition wherein somebody's head is um much smaller than
it should be and it can affect intelligence as well.
Or maybe they had no thyroid for some reason. Another
another thing that's not the same but similar, is that
(23:12):
maybe they were a distinct community that had island dwarfism,
which is, you know, the the theory that animals who
end up being on islands also end up being growing
smaller over time their species for this to happen, and
(23:32):
they would have to be divergence here. But there's a
really weird part. They were around pretty recently, right, Yes,
these um they lived as recently as twelve thousand years ago,
which is well it's very recent from the span of
humanity um, and that means it was it was alive
(23:55):
during the time of modern man. So when human humanity
was around, Homo sapien, right, they were around as well.
That is crazy because especially considering that we're we as
a society are still trying to figure out what is
going on with the human brain, right, and we don't
(24:16):
understand the nature of intelligence. For a long time, we
thought that size of a brain was related to intelligence,
but the things that we're learning about very intelligent creatures
are proving that is probably not the case. And one
thing that we found is that, uh, these creatures were
(24:37):
a little bit based on their anatomy. They were a
little bit closer to apes than modern man, you know,
in terms of length of arm to length of lag.
And they have tiny, tiny heads, you know, in comparison
to us and Neanderthals, I'm sure. And despite all this,
they still built stone tools, so they had the intelligence
(24:58):
to make tools. And there's a really to go back
to folklore, there's this fascinating thing called the I'm gonna
mispronounced this one too, Okay, The Ebu Go Go myths
in Flores concern this race of small, little people who
are not that great at language, but they hunt and
(25:19):
they can play tricks, and they interact with the local population.
And it's funny that this pops up because we know
that Indonesia still has a lot of remote forests, although
they are increasingly being torn down for various industries. We
also know that these quote unquote real life hobbits are
(25:41):
the longest surviving non modern humans that we know of.
It's pretty awesome. It makes me gosh, it makes me
wonder if that was the last surviving family perhaps of
of of you know, the these mythological creatures that were
an actuality, a real thing. That's that's fascinating to think about.
(26:04):
I'd love to have that to that story told, you know,
and on a film or something, just to see that.
Darren Ronofsky, you're probably listening, let's be honest, it's time.
Uh yeah. Well there's some really interesting stuff here too,
because reports of these ebu go go linger well into
(26:26):
the Portuguese arrival in Indonesia, and even today. There's a
cryptid called the orong Pendic, which is described as a
very short, very strong, ape like creature, and there have
been numerous reports this but we still have yet to
find a body or a fossil, you know what I mean, Man,
(26:51):
I just want to go out and live in the
forest for a while with a bunch of cameras. Yeah.
Well again, anyone listening at Discovery or sign Channel Ben
and I will do these kinds of things. You just
you know, give us the money and the cameras and
we'll go. Yeah. Just the plane ticket, really, plane ticket
in the camera and you don't have to pay me.
I'll camp out in Indonesia. Sure, I mean all right.
(27:15):
So what's fascinating here is that the theories of how
these creatures arrived. Maybe it's not fair to call them creatures.
I think they're close enough that we should refer to
them as people. The theories of how these Homo fluorescencess
arrive on this island sort of requires them to have
(27:36):
a knowledge of rafting at the very least, to come
over on a bamboo boat or something, because the distance
is too far to swim. So this means that they
also at some point, whoever their ancestors were. Whomever their
ancestors were, those people were capable of building boats, which
(28:01):
makes us rethink a lot of the stuff that we
we think about because these these creatures are clearly not
Homo sapien the way that we would understand it. And
so is it possible that's just an isolated branch of
Homo sapien that over the years, over the centuries, over millennia,
(28:22):
became something that seems startlingly different. And that's not even
that's not even all of it. We just named the
three early man types early human types that we know of,
because there's more to the story, right, that's right. Then
there are a lot of known unknowns. Uh. We we
(28:43):
do know that both Dennis Ovans and Neanderthals they both
bred with another early unknown version of man, and we
don't know what that was at all, or well, at
least there are some ideas, but we we really don't know.
And we also if you also are look at the
gaps in the early record, it's also possible that we
(29:06):
may discover these other variations just from going at it
basically more digging and more searching. Um. But the biggest
thing are Okay, so if we if we want to
look at um, one of the most interesting things to
me are these mysterious graves that exist. Okay, yeah, there
(29:29):
are there are numerous anecdotal and proven accounts of mysterious
grave sites with near human or humanoid basically humanlike remains,
and they're often really old. Yeah, and some of those
are our hoaxes, like the photoshop giant pictures you mentioned earlier,
or like the pilt down man in England. Uh, they're
(29:51):
you know, there are cases where unscrupulous, often racist investigators
would take you know, like an ape's jaw bone and
put it on a human skull and things like that.
But those hoaxes aren't the only thing. They're also medical conditions, right, Yeah,
you've got agromeglia, dwarf is um um micro or also
(30:16):
hypo cephali. There's all kinds of genetic disorders like the
what's that what's that one been? The boscops man? Oh yeah, okay,
so this is this is interesting because we don't know
if it's exactly a genetic disorder yet. So there was
a series of skulls found in South Africa by some
(30:39):
farmers and they noticed, to their credit that these these
skulls fragments they were finding didn't seem to be what
you would expect from a human skull, and essentially what
they found were baby faced people with huge Craney ancient
(31:01):
too so in uh some of the fringe research sites.
And according to a very controversial study, this so called
bust scopes man most scopes man, if I'm pronouncing correctly,
is a highly evolved or highly intelligent variant of human
(31:25):
that somehow died out way in the past. And this
argument for a very high intelligence on the part of
these fossils is made based on the based on the
size of what their brain would have been, how much
how much brain they could have in their brain case.
And again going back to the earlier thing we pointed out,
(31:48):
what we have learned is that that is not necessarily
the deciding factor. The brain can be smaller and really intelligent.
I E. Ravens. Yeah, sure, they're all kinds. There's high
intelligence all over the place in the brain. I guess
it matters in the folds mostly right. It's it's also, yeah,
(32:09):
which regions of the brain are the most are the
most of all, they're the most sophisticated. So when we
when we look at this, of course we're wading through
a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation. We
have an earlier podcast on misinformation and disinformation. If you
want to know the difference, right, Um, but we also
(32:30):
know that despite the hoaxes, despite the things that may
clearly be medical conditions, we have social practices and then
we have some inexplicable stuff. So when we say social practices,
there are these skulls that have, um, that that have
sort of a cone head look, you know, very elongated. Yeah,
(32:54):
and it's because they were shaping their heads, right since
they were essentially since they're born, and they begin shaping
their heads the way they do it, and don't do
this to your children s, don't. But the way that
they do it is taking wet uh slats of wood
I don't know why I'm acting it out now into
podcast and and wrapping the wood tightly around the head
(33:19):
so that it's pressing. Now you remember, of course, that
a baby's skull is much more pliable than human skull.
The bones that you are born within your skull as
child don't fuse together until you know, later in life.
So they're able to make these things that look like
make these people that look like they have heads from
(33:41):
the alien films. Yeah, but then there are also other things, um,
the horned growths. I remember seeing pictures of this ben Um.
Is this was this something found in the skull or
is this something that was artificially done? We ah, yeah,
that's a good question. We know that there are a
(34:03):
lot of hoaxes about this kind of stuff too, but
we do know that people can grow horns um for
all intents and purposes. You can look up pictures of
people who have been alive, likely during your lifetime, who
due to one rare condition or another, have grown horns.
They're normal people. They're just normal people affected with something
(34:26):
the same way that you would be affected with a mole,
you know what I mean, growth on the bone. Uh. Yeah,
I don't know enough about this to really delve into
it yet, um, but I can definitely check it out.
We can do, you know, devil people. If it's not
gonna be too offensive, I'm gonna look into it. Yeah.
And also we know, because of confirmation bias, that a
(34:49):
lot of skulls have been found that are irregular, such
as the very popular star child skull. Remember that one.
Uh that these have these have been touted by people
who believe in ancient alien theories as evidence of alien
visitation or something else. It looks like in most cases,
(35:10):
those deformed skulls come either from a medical condition or
from a uh social practice, but they're inexplicable corpses. There
really are corpses that are There are bones, at least
skeletons that are eight feet tall that we find, and
they're freaky, but so far as we know, they're not
(35:31):
part of a large breeding population. We've only found a few.
But to me, the most interesting things that we find
that are the most difficult to explain would be anachronistic remains.
Anachronistic meaning something that is not in the time it
belongs in. And this would be stuff like Romans out
in western China at the wrong time. So they're finding
(35:52):
Caucasian corpses in the weirdest places. That's easily explained. Well,
it's just time travel, It's okay, Well that makes sense.
And also we're finding you know, an African or what
would normally be ascribed as African uh remains in South America.
And you know, we we we know that history is
(36:14):
a muddy story here, so I mean, like people still
are trying to figure out what's going on with the
Olmec civilization, right, So we've looked at all these ancient
discoveries or discoveries, but from from a long time ago.
The earliest was twelve thousand years ago. But here's the big,
the big question again, are we still today alone our
(36:38):
Homo sapiens the only hominid, the only version of human
that exists today walking around? Could you? Could you go
somewhere and find one, find another type of human? Well,
according to some studies that are a little bit controversial,
you and I might be talking to Neanderthal right now,
(37:01):
or Dennis Ovans right I could be in Neandertal. Yeah, totally.
Those freckles and our reddish hair dead giveaways. Man, we
are no we are no longer pure Homo sapien quality.
You know what, I'm okay with it. So, according to
some studies that continue today, including something with the neat
name of the Neanderthal Genome Project uh, all global populations
(37:26):
other than some parts of Africa like sub Saharan Africa
exhibit significant Neanderthal genes, and significant only in that they
are traceable. So through a whole genome sequencing, a two
thousand ten sequence of the Neanderthal genome revealed that Neanderthals
share more alleles with Eurasian populations. So this would be
(37:47):
like the French, the Han, Chinese, Papua New Guinea than
they did with Sub Saharan African populations. So they think
that people did the study that this means there was
a recent gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans after
the migration out of Africa, and that if you have
(38:08):
Eurasian heritage, that it could be up to one to
four of your geno. What this means, oh, and then
they lowered that percent in two thousand thirteen. What this
means is that people who are around there, according to
this study, people whose ancestry originates there have some sort
(38:32):
of evidence genetic evidence of Homo Sapian interbreeding with Neanderthal
The highest admixture, of course, UH would be you know, Eurasia,
East Asia, and the lowest being Sub Saharan Africa. And
they're not the only people that might still be in
the game. Because we mentioned dennis Ovans, right, Yeah, according
(38:53):
to UH, some of the some of this DNA evidence,
it appears that dennis Ovan DNA is found in Southeast
Asian populations even today. UM and notably you're looking at
Papua New Guinea populations. UM. And there are also UH,
there's also evidence of this in other I guess you'd
(39:14):
say oceanic areas of the world. So, uh, this would
be in islands in Indonesia, Malaysia. Uh. There. There's still
some studies out because they're still learning a lot about this.
But what this means is that denis Ovans were probably
all over East Asia for a time, and they were
(39:36):
interbreeding with modern man, they were interbreeding with Neanderthals. They
were checking off the bucket list. It's almost as though
they got pushed out and to see almost like they
were seafair, more seafaring, at least from what I've been
looking at. Oh yeah, yeah, there's or at least they
were good at it, right, or or their their descendants
(39:56):
were at the very least. Now we get to the
big one, Matt, what else is out there? We have
no idea. We have no idea that we have no
idea what we could find. Uh. We might well discover
that some of the legends about giants and little people
(40:18):
or alternate versions of near human things are indeed true.
We still haven't found a sasquatch. We still have not
found a sasquatch. We have found, of course, one of
the one of the interesting candidates for sasquatch is always
going to be a bear. But uh, but we have
(40:39):
found that polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed. We
have also found that, at least in the past, uh,
large animals could escape detection. For while, the discovery of
that massive collection of guerrillas in Africa a few years back,
the discovery of recent mammals like that that monkey with
(41:02):
no nos it still freaks me. I remember that thing?
How did Yeah? And then there's there's still so many
archaeological mysteries in play. Will leave you with one here,
and that's the Red Deer Cave People. As recently as
eleven thousand years ago. There's a community in Red Deer
(41:23):
Cave in China, and they have a unique mix of
early and modern human population uh characteristics. So I implore
you to go check out Red Deer Cave People and
read a very very interesting story. Also, I hope that
you will check out our video series on giants and
(41:46):
some what what else do we have on this? We
have the who are the Nomo? We have the Nomo,
the one about our humans evolving? Yeah. Still, and if
you want to, you can even go back to the
ancient Aliens content we've averard Um, there's this branches out
into it. Yeah, it's gonna go with him anyway. It
(42:07):
has a lot of branches this episode and UM. And
one thing we would I would like to say this,
this kind of topic lends itself towards UM, some of
the darker things in humanity, towards racism and some of
anytime you're talking about d n A and humanity, I
(42:27):
would just encourage you to fight any of those urges.
If you have any of those, uh, fight them off
with a stick. Please. Well, yeah, we we do know
that in most cases, think things like that are huge
impediments to science. They're not really helpful. They get in
the way. In our Human Experimentation episode, we talk about
(42:52):
the huge ethical dilemma of Nazi experimentation on people, and
we also note that one of the things that really
prevents a lot of this research from being as valuable
as it could have been was the underlying Yeah, the
underlying bias, the underlying ideological constraints of the experimenters. So so, yeah, Matt,
(43:17):
you and I are not. I think it's fairly clear
that you and I personally believe in in the out
of Africa theory rather than the multi regional hypothesis. Um.
I think that there are more early races of manner
and the word race is not really fair here. I
think they're more early versions of man that were around
(43:39):
and have a genetic legacy today. The contributions by the
way of Dennis Ovans, uh, Neanderthals and other archaic humans
appear to be if all this is true, if the
studies are true, Uh, these appear to be crucial parts
of our evolution in terms of immunity to pathogens. That
(43:59):
of all, after Homo sapien left Africa. So we're alive
in a weird way again, if this stuff is true,
because we have been saved by cave people. Awesome. Yeah,
also not fair because Homo sapiens total cave people for
a very long time. I've got We've got one more
surprise here before we head out. Instead of doing listener mail,
(44:23):
you and I didn't experiment on Twitter, right, Yes we did.
We just asked you if you wanted to hear your
name on a podcast. Yea. So guess what it's happening
right now? Okay, let's start checking out some people who
wrote to us or retweeted and asked for a shout out.
Kia Stacy. Hello there, don Tree, you are in the house.
(44:47):
I believe there's Joel Micah, Harris chet Lemon. I've seen
you around on Twitter. JP Wigened also seen your face
a lot. San Juan Underscore Puerto Rico. Interesting. So is
that a place that wants a shout out? Maybe it's
(45:09):
a person, it's like a representative of the place. That's
pretty fun. Well, just to cover our bases, let's also
give a shout out to the entire city of San Juan,
Puerto Rico, Rico Rico. We've also got uh, a very
interesting person named g PC. We also have no uh yeah,
(45:31):
there's a oh geez, I'm gonna try and do this right,
Keith Mastro Michal's shout out to Ellipses or dot dot dot. Well,
we'll come back to that one. We'll come back to
I think that's what that means. Um. We've also got
Joe von ax Man. That's a cool name. Oh yeah,
(45:52):
Jessica J Glover f congratulations, your name was just spoken
uh digitally on podcast. There's Jason R. Yeager seeing you
as well all over Twitter. One of the first people
to read tweet. That's right too, and that's not all
some of you wrote to us with uh responses here.
(46:16):
So Bobby Samuel replied to something that made me laugh, Matt,
I want to read it to you and see if
you see if you get this, it's more of a
visual thing conspiracy stuff. Can I get a shout out
for my friends? Nil wob neb and cured deer tam
Do you get it? No, I'd have to read it
nice our words? Yeah, yeah, yeah, got us there, um okay.
(46:42):
And Heather also wanted to shout out high Heather and
thank you for the very nice thing you said in
what you called your ill advised late night tweets. Uh.
We also have uh not mugan who just learned about
our audio podcast us. We hope you're checking out and
enjoying it. Uh j PC. You made us laugh, of
(47:04):
course when you said it will be a conspiracy if
I don't get a shout out. Well played, sir. And
we'd also like to return to our buddy who was
Ellipses or dot dot dot because we had an actual
conversation online about how to pronounce your name, my friend.
We wanted to make sure we got it. Right, because,
(47:26):
as we said, Americans on both continents alry cartoonishly bad
at pronouncing things. So shout out to you, Keith Lee,
I hope that we have done that correctly, and shout
out to everybody who's listening who has yet to follow
us on Twitter or check out our website Stuff they
don't want you to know dot com, where we have
all kinds of spooky, interesting stuff, and you can check
(47:50):
out our Facebook. We'd love to see you over there.
That's where we also ask for a lot of ideas
for upcoming episodes. We hope that you enjoyed this episode,
and we hope the check out our video series on
the Lost Races of Man. If you want to write
us an email, we read those as well. Our email
address is conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From one on
(48:17):
this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
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