February 24, 2011 • 38 mins
For 200,000 years Neanderthals roamed Eurasia, yet over time the population dwindled and disappeared. In this podcast, Julie and Robert explore the story of Neanderthals, comparing them to modern humans and dispelling some popular myths along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas, And
you know Julie. In the in science fiction, we we
keep coming back to this idea of like humans going
out into the into the void and encountering another another
(00:26):
intelligent species and then figuring out what's going to go down,
and it's just you know, it's just throughout the genre.
But the trope, it's it's definitely a trope. It's all.
It's it's trophy even um but U. But that the
really fastinating thing to me is to is to look
backwards in time and and think about humans and uh
(00:47):
and their interactions with other human like beings, such as
most famously the Neanderthal. Yeah, the neanderthal, which is typically
spelled I mean, it's spelled like it's neanderthal, and I've
I've been saying it wrong for ages. But but of course,
as you pointed out, comes from the Germans, so it's neanderthal.
(01:08):
So I just wanted to say that it's yeah, it
rolls off the tongue a lot easier if you just
go ahead and and use the fig German accent that
we all have have gotten off of the television and
just say neandertal. But we can't do the entire podcast
in that voice. Oh my god, you sound eerily like
Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. See. I think I was listening
to a mix recently. They had a bunch of Arnold
(01:30):
like fitness samples. That was probably what did it. But anyway, Neanderthal,
hopefully that pronunciation won't annoy you too much, uh in
this podcast likewise, we're going to steer largely clear of
another problem the encounter when you start reading about Neanderthal
in Neanderthals or any any any topics concerning the ascension
of man and human evolution, and that is that you
(01:52):
almost all always get bogged down in discussion of dig
sites and all these Latin names to the different fossils,
and it's and it's all very important to a larger understanding.
But we're gonna try and steer clear of a lot
of that. Yeah, because it's like the Book of Genesis,
Yeah it is. It becomes like and then Homo epercatus
(02:12):
emerge from Homo elliptus, and we don't know where Homo
capacatas fits. You know, it just gets it gets a
little dry, you know, even even for me and I've
I've written some articles about this before and it just
you know, kind of stunned your brain after a while.
But for our purposes, but yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
sort of blow through some of that. But but there
(02:33):
are lots of great resources out there, um that that'll
that'll kill you with the Latin names if you like.
But to uh, to really put us in more of
a time and place. Um, but let's talk about what
the Neanderthals were all right, Um, they first they were
there hominids there, they would have looked very much like
people on like modern humans. Even like if you get
(02:56):
in your mind this sort of idea of like a
troll like um uh bron Pearlman esque hulking thing uh
um or Tom Waits, you can put that in as well. Um,
you know, it's like that's not necessarily a good model
to have, and it's a really hard one to kick.
Like when I think Neanderthal, it's it's really hard to
kick that idea of this hulking brute that's stomping through
(03:18):
the undergroad the cartoon caveman with a club thing. Yeah. Yeah,
um and uh and it's hard to get past that that,
but these guys would have looked more or less like
modern humans, only shorter, heavier built, um stronger, particularly in
the arms and hands. So they were they were kind
of thick. Uh and and you know, muscily dudes. Yeah.
(03:39):
Actually I read somewhere too that their rib cages are
really large and they didn't have much of a waste, yeah,
which was sort of like that gives you this idea
of these barrel chested, really compact muscular beings. Yeah, and
you know, kind of like I guess, kind of like
a stumpy wrestler physique. And to a certain extent um
they the skull evidence we have show that they didn't
have much of its hin uh and their forehead fourheads
(04:02):
were kind of sloped backwards. Uh. Their brain case was
lower but felt longer, and it housed a slightly larger
brain than what we're carrying around today, right, which was
really great for them help them survive for a very
long time, but also, as we'll get into later, may
have contributed a bit to their downfall as well. Yeah.
So these guys first showed up in Europe as early
(04:24):
as six hundred thousand UM or three fifty thousand years ago.
We're a little you know, again, anytime you deal with
the fossil record, you're dealing with bits and pieces of
the jigsaw puzzle, and many of the pieces will just
never have So it's it's always a little touch and go,
and it's it's and if you don't understand that, it
(04:44):
can be a little frustrating. We're like, how can we
not know? Like, how can we just dig up some
more bones? Well, not all bones survive, not all bones
become fossils. Yeah, that's the game of chance, right, Like
even the neanderthalman who was discovered it was sort of
by chance because the guy who who saw it was
about to pitch it and then he thought, well, maybe
that's a bear school, and he was collecting um animal
(05:05):
schools and ended up keeping it. And then they found
out later that no, this is not at your school.
So again, I mean, our knowledge would have been so
incomplete if he hadn't had that chance encounter. So these
guys pretty much ruled Eurasia for two hundred thousand years,
roaming around, uh doing their thing, and even at the
(05:27):
height of their occupation of a Western Europe, scientists think
that they probably never really exceeded say, fifteen thousand total.
So even so, you know, we we're not dealing with
modern population levels of human like today, humans are really
off the chart, you know, I mean, we're an exceedingly
successful species or where you can argue were an invasive
(05:48):
species pretty much everywhere. But but this was a time
when populations could not really reached the unsustainable levels that
we've managed to achieve to right, and from fossil records,
what we do know is that at the time that
um Neanderthals went extinct, humans were really homeless sapiens were
really starting to make great gains. So of course that's
where we that idea developed where we just vanquished the
(06:12):
Neanderthals and ate them and made it with them and
left them in the dirt. And that's not really true. Yeah,
it's kind of like to uh, this will probably the
only time I use a Will Smith quote. But but
there's this idea that the Neanderthals were old and busted
and the humans were the new hotness, and that we
just eradicated the old and busted and thoughts. So it's
(06:35):
just they were just a you know, this was the
old model. The new models so much better. So of
course the old model is going to die, right, right,
But the more you really look at it, the more
it becomes in a situation where you have two really
good models. I mean, it's it's kind of like the
idea that I think it was actually Ricky Gervei who
pointed out that like the garden slug may look disgusting,
we may hate it, but the garden slug is perfect,
(06:56):
like nature has filled that that niche with something that
really works. Well. So like nature does by and large
doesn't create, uh, you know, evolution does not lead to
ineffective designs. It's like this is the pinnacle. This is
a a great design. So the more you look at it,
you have a situation where the neander doll is a
is a killer design, but circumstances ended up having this
(07:21):
other design, this human design, be the one that's going
to take take the lead, become the dominant force. And
all that had to do with climate, right Like at
the time that they were flourishing neandertals, they had adapted
to their environment really well yeah, but I'm jumping ahead here, Yeah, yeah,
two other key things to mention is that another there's
(07:42):
a really old, outdated idea that's still probably kicking around
and a lot of people's heads, and that is that
we evolved from neander tal and that's that's completely not true. Um. Rather,
we share a common relative um, a common ancestor. So
if you were to follow the chart back, you'd say, hey,
here's this particular of species um and and at this
(08:04):
point it diverged and there's uh, and it's its ancestors
became Neanderthals and became humans. Right, So there's Homo erect us, right,
and then that's the branch of Homo Heidelberg genis saying that, right,
which I just picture a caveman in uh edohosen, I
know that's Heiderberg. Uh. And then of course that evolved
(08:26):
that that species evolved into neander tools right. Yeah, it's
it's like the same thing that we like, we share
common ancestors with the champion chimpanzee, but we did not
evolve from a chimpanzee. So if you had any of
that kicking around your head, get rid of that. Yeah,
our genetic material is shared with Neanderthals, yes, uh. And
another interesting fact to keep in mind is that is
(08:47):
that again we we coexisted with Neanderthals for for for
for a brief period of time as far as as
evolutionary history goes. But but but we did coexist, right.
They became extinct about thirty thousand years ago. Yeah, and
they may have survived in in some very remote areas
(09:09):
for perhaps up to twenty four thousand years ago. And
that's a specifically Gibraltar. You know, in the Strait of Gibraltar. Um,
there's a site there called Gorman's Cave that people have
studied a lot. So this is an isolated area that
that you know sits an island. They end up there
and they end up holding out there for a while,
but eventually, um, they're out injeri In. But what I
(09:31):
find really interesting is that neanderthal has got a bad
rap because they weren't these great bedazzlers. Oh yeah, because
they're like, well, where are their cave drawings? Where there
are their beads and their where's their jewelry? So but
at that time that was the litmus test of whether
or not you were um sophisticated enough to be thought
(09:51):
of as as cool as Homo sapiens, right, and so
that really did contribute to this idea of them as
knuckle drivers, actually, which is unfortunate because they are so
much more nuanced than um than that, and in fact
um it reminds me of Kazuo Shigaros. Never let me
go the novel. But the children, Yes, this is the
(10:15):
My wife read this for a book club, and it's
basically the same plot as the old sci fi film
parts the Clonus Hare, which they did for MST. Three K.
And also there was some what was that the Island. Yeah,
basically you know the idea of like, oh, let's let's
have clones of ourselves, so we can have spare parts, right,
so we can just pick up this organ from this person.
(10:35):
But one of the central um topics in the book
is that the children must produce artwork to prove their
own humanity. And so I was thinking about that. I
was thinking, well, that's the same case with Neanderthals. Is
that we thought, well, we don't see any cave paintings,
therefore they must have been brutes, they must have been
without sympathy or you know, these these higher ideas of
(10:57):
our emotions in our humanity. But we'll find this out later.
It's that's not the case at all. Yeah. Well, also
it's it's important to note that some of the early
cave drawings that you counter like pictures of our pictures
of animals, you know, pictures of prey, and and they
think that a lot of that is probably used to
to teach. This presentation is brought to you by Intel
(11:22):
sponsors of tomorrow. So it's not like they were like
they were like, Oh, I have free time, I must
create some art. Let me draw an antelope. Isn't it beautiful? Now?
It was probably more like, like, I'm really trying to
drive home that you had a hunt and antelope, kid,
let me draw one on the wall. Yeah, this isn't
cubism here. Yeah. So so I think we can sort
(11:45):
of get a little, uh, a little lofty about our
ideas concerning early primitive artwork. Yeah. And you've touched on
this too as well. Is it the superiority myth? This
idea that Homo safetians are really the only cool kids
in town because they mastered fire, um, just speak tools,
agriculture or someone and so forth. Yeah, And it really
(12:07):
kind of flows into sort of a manifest destiny that
you know, this idea that we're special. We've got to
be special. Um, you know, we're we're here where that
we must be the superior design. There could not possibly
be a better one, right, And that's the cool thing
about looking at this UM and thinking about it in
the context. We are the kid cool kids here right now.
But you know, two thousand years from now, they'll be
looking back at us saying, what in the world were
(12:29):
they doing? Yeah? We um and Neandertals first met our
human ancestors in the Middle East about a hundred and
thirty thousand years ago. Uh and perhaps uh, perhaps after
about a half million years of separation when they split
off from that common ancestor, then they contacted each other
again in Eurasia roughly forty five thousand years ago. And
(12:52):
and this is where we end up, you know. And
there are a lot of questions about what these contacts
consisted of. Uh. For one thing, you know, those cave
drawings that we've mentioned, you don't see any cave drawings
of Neanderthals, So it's it's not like they were just
running into each other the supermarket all the time. Again,
we're dealing with small populations of people, people that moved
around for the most part, So yeah, nomadic people. So
(13:15):
it's not again, it's not like people run into each
other all the time. And even human populations are were
likely to be running into you run into a group
that speaks differently that that are that are very alien
from you, there may be just as alien from you
as these uh, slightly heavy set guys who who look
pretty intimidating and look like they could really take you
down with the tackle if need be. But we know
(13:36):
know that that we humans tangled with neander tolls and
when by tangling mean they had sex with each other. Yeah,
at least some like it. It apparently happens. Yeah, the
genetic evidence is there. Did it happen all the time? No? No,
I mean it's it's not the kind of thing it's
happening all the time. No, And in fact, if that
(13:58):
were the case, then, um, we would have a lot
more evidence in our own DNA. Right right now, we've
got traces of two to of Neanderthals and the modern
human genome in populations outside of Africa, which is interesting. Um,
so you know there's some evidence there that again they
tangoed um and this we learned from the Max Planck
(14:18):
Institute because they sequenced the Neanderthal genoa. And they also
found out that they were pale skinned and they had
a range of colors including red hair. Yeah. Um. And
they shared the language gene with us, Yeah, which is
fox P two right, Yeah, that's that's the one there.
(14:39):
In fact, there have been some some arguments that they
may have uh, they have may have communicated musically. You
remember this from from our research for the Music Healing
the Mind. Yeah, music, can music rebuild your brain? Yeah?
And it was the bone flute yeah yeah, um, and
that was something like I don't know it was fifty
years ago or I fix thousand year old instrument. That
(15:00):
is clearly it's it's intentional and it's marking. Some people
have said, oh, animals made the holes in the bone,
but if you look at the pictures of it, like
the holes are pretty exact. Um, so it's not too
far off to think that they'd be able to to
use it as a musical instrument. They're also you also
see different examples of cannibalistic or well, okay, there's some
(15:23):
examples of cannibal possible cannibalism among the neandertals and also uh,
some evidence and with the bones to suggest that humans
may have eaten neanderthals at different times and possibly made
necklaces out of their children's teeth. Yeah, which is just
gonna happen. I mean, and you know, to call back
to another podcast, we have the Whole Cannibalism podcast where
(15:45):
we dealt primarily with cannibalism in nature. So if you
haven't listened to that one, if you were like my wife,
you were scared off from it thinking it was gonna
be about mainly about people eating other people. It's really
mostly about uh, about animals eating their own type praying
mances offering themselves up and a love victual to get
their heads. Been on lots of sexual cannibalism of that
kind of thing in that podcast. But one of the
(16:06):
things we really drove tried to drive drive home in
that was that cannibalism, when you strip away all of
the the the modern human taboos and all, it really
makes a lot of sense. So it's just the idea
that you would encounter it. That doesn't mean that we're
suggesting to do it, but no, no, in the context
of when it happened, it made sense, right, because they're
(16:26):
hardy protein sources. Yeah, yeah, And you know it's otherwise
that that stuff is going to go to waste and
you might starve to death, so of course you eat it.
There are also some arguments out there that these early groups,
including the andertal Is, also partook of some scavenging. So
it's also in a situation where there's some war dead
either on your from your own tribe, but from this
group that you just had a little um miscommunication with. Again,
(16:51):
why I let that, Why I let the vultures have that?
When that's those are some some vital nutrients that could
sustain you as you continue to to scour the landscape
for for what will hopefully be your next meal. Right,
And talking about miss communication or communication makes me again
think of the speech gene and the fact that because
they had the large brains and they had that gene,
(17:13):
and because they also had a tiny bone in the
throat called the highoid um, which supports the soft tissue
of the throat and it holds the root of the
tongue in place, which is a requirement for speech, makes
me think that Um and and many others, that they
did have some sort of language what we do know
is that their lantn x is much higher in their
throat than humans, which would have limited some of their speech.
(17:34):
But it's it's a it's good to note that because
again that that would have helped them to have survived,
to be able to communicate with one another, but in
the long run that it may have actually um contributed
to their demise interests of Homo sapiens well, and also
we've seen plenty of evidence that just because i mean
even just among Homo sapiens, just because one group can
(17:56):
talk to the other, doesn't any other group isn't going
to attempt to wipe them out, you know, No, Yeah,
And that's it was more in the well, we'll talk
about it later, but it was more in the context
of is it are you better suited to survive if
you can communicate really well with each other? Um. But
another thing about Neanderthals that has been that the veil
(18:17):
has been lifted on is toolmaking and some other school
skills and things that they've done. Again, it was thought
that humans had the upper hand with tools, but it
turns out that Neanderthals were just as sophisticated with their
tools and in some cases. Um, the shales or the
blades were a lot more effective than the homosapiene Homo
sapiens um. So there you go. Mad skills. Yeah, these
(18:40):
guys were hunters. Um. These guys make glue, Yeah, which
is just pretty amazing. It's yeah, do you mind if
I talk about it? So amazed by this? Uh, it's
the glue is made from tightly rolled strips of birch bark,
and it's deposited into a hole in the ground and
then they cover that with earth and they see at oxygen.
Then they take a small holdering stick put that in there,
(19:02):
and because the birch is deprived of oxygen, it sweats
out pitch and so when it cools, it can be
used in tools to bond materials together. And the even
cooler thing about it is that you can take that
piece of cooled pitch and take it anywhere. Of course,
thematic right, so they're gonna they're gonna bring it with them,
and then all you have to do is reheat it,
uh to use it again. And the reason I'm bringing
(19:24):
this up is because the I don't can't remember those
as a PBS special. I'll have to look at my
research notes. But the video clip that I saw this,
it was really difficult for them to do and to
do right. So it took a lot of skill, and
it took a lot of trial and air and even
in this day and age, for you and I to
try to do this, and I'm sure that would be
a lot of expletives flying. You know, there'll be a
(19:45):
steep learning curve. So for them to be able to
do this is amazing. Yeah. I can't can barely cook
dinner for myself without resorting the cursing, So I can't
imagine making glue in my backyard. I know, I remember
your risotto st technique needed some observation by a second party.
So yes, um, I cook best when I'm I'm helping,
(20:08):
not taking the lead. You're more of a chef. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's no shame in that chef. That's an important rule.
But they also used pollen. A lot of pollen was
found in the caves, and that's used as an antiseptic
and a salve. And speaking of of pollen, it's it's
worth pointing out that they were not specifically carnivorous. Yeah,
(20:28):
it seems like meat was a big part of their diet.
They were. They were probably steak fans and would have
been found frequenting out back if they were around today.
But but they did eat vegetable matter. They did when
they did the scavenge for seeds. When when that when
when they when they were available? Yeah, and they yeah,
that's right, they found some plant plant matter and the
(20:50):
molars um. And again here you have this idea of
them as being these you know, cavemen who were just
you know, and of course they were were taking down
some large animals, but they weren't, you know, primarily carnivorous. Um.
So this idea they invented the blooming onion. Actually people
really know that, but oh yeah they did. Um, Well,
(21:16):
you just threw me there. I'm like, now I'm imagining
them over the fire with their blooming onions. Um, I'm
salivating a little bit. And that's just so wrong. But
the other thing is a lot of people thought of
them is sort of like the dirty hippies too, of hominids. Um.
But in fact, the hygiene thing has been brought up
before that their teeth has shown very little decay, so
(21:37):
they were taking care of their their teeth in some manner. Well,
and it's it's also a lot easier to take care
of your teeth if you don't have a huge sugar
um diet. So um. You know these guys, you know,
aside from some nuts and berries here and there, you know,
they're probably not, uh, you know, sucking down as much
sugar as modern humans do. Yeah. Yeah, they're probably whittling
(21:57):
their own little toothpicks too. Yeah. Actually you know how
many evidence of that? But I'd like to um so
in in in thinking about like how how a this
human or humanlike population grew and expanded and eventually dwindled
and disappeared, you you really have to think of it
in terms of geology, climate, and resources. Um, because we're
(22:22):
talking about long stretches of time, your hundreds of thousands
of years during which the Earth's climate kind of whopped
around back and forth, kind of like a ping pong
ball where you had you had periods of cooling, you
had and you had periods of heat, you had some
some glacial stuff mixed in there, and uh and and
when the weather changes, it changes the the geology. And
(22:44):
when yeah, and when and over long periods of times
of the course of geology changes, it changes the weather.
So these are all things that are in flux and
they force in the same way that that you see
like populations of birds moving around. Uh. Um, you know
it's like oh, you know people and looking at say,
you know, global global warming and climate change. You know,
you see how populations of animals are are are affected.
(23:07):
And at this time, I mean, the humans were very
much uh. I mean humans are are susceptible to this
even now, but at the time, you know, if animals
had to move to a different geographical location, than the
humans were forced into that area as well, right, I mean,
and just to put it into context, to the global
warming that we experienced now is different from what they
(23:29):
were experiencing in terms of extreme climate changes. So the Neanderthals,
they survived the ice age, they did really well with that.
It became very compact and muscular, right. Um. But but
then at some point, um, the climates kept changing very
quick and within you know, a span of a lifetime,
a lot of their landscape could have changed, and in fact,
(23:52):
we know it changed. So the force that they relied
on they have receded, and all of a sudden they
have less area to hunt in. Yeah, and uh yeah
to this really bois done to two areas that really
stuck out to me, um about how how this these
changes in climate affected them. Um alright, one key thing
to look at is that Neanderthals, as far as we know,
(24:13):
never took to farming, never took up our agriculture, which
of course is just was a was and continued to
be a vital part of modern humanity. Yeah and keep
in mind or aromatic too. Yeah, yeah, they're nomadic. Um
and again and again. Agriculture is the thing that you
know made us settle down that and then ultimately lead
to uh, to the to the construction of villages and
cities that gave us the free time to specialize in
(24:35):
different skills and allowed like you know, one old dude
to just set around the village all day painting stuff, Um,
making those cool cave painting. Yeah. Yeah, we're making you know,
making little gold frogs or something. But Neanderthals never took
to the agricultural way of life. For the greater part
of their Eurasian dominance. Uh, the climate was harsher and
(24:56):
more sporadic than it was today. So it just wasn't
good a good time to get into farming. Um. You know,
even if even if they wanted to. They were smart
enough to. They were skilled enough too, So it wasn't
a situation where they would have been like, what is carrot?
How me plan? You know, it wouldn't have been a
situation like that. But that the time was not right
for the agricultural leap right, and well that they were
(25:18):
so tethered to their own physicality to right. But yeah, yeah,
and when conditions improved, when it did get become farming time, Um,
there wasn't that much really pushing them to leave behind
these honey and gathering techniques that worked well for them, right,
Because I was thinking about it that they they put
scientists put that the extreme climate changes about forty years ago.
They became extinct about years so for fifteen thousand years
(25:41):
and in crazy climates they they still have toe hold
in it, right, they were still existing. But eventually you're
going to die off, and you know you're not gonna
You're gonna lose that to toe hold and um, those
great stocking limbs that you had are going to be
problems on it because they require more calories to up
keep and there's less protein sources around. And that body
(26:04):
style that they had, that that meaty tough, you know,
wrestler build um. The main way that this suited them
u was in ambushing their prey. They were used to
dealing with with wooded or semi wooded area somewhere you know,
they can hide and cover, wait till that deer, that
ibex um you know, or that that bloomin onion comes
in close enough, you know, wait in the wait in
(26:25):
the cover, and then leap out and uh and really
throw down with that deer. So it was like a
wrestler on the ropes, right, yeah, come down. Yeah, he's
like he's on the ropes, let's get him. And then
they you know, just beat the crap out of the deer.
Or they were more like you know, they do spears
and whatnot. But they've also they've also found injuries and
some of the new their tolls that that they say
resemble rodeo rider um um injuries. So it's which you know,
(26:51):
so just imagine it's like you have a pretty dangerous
animal probably probably perhaps with big horns or antlers and
uh and these guy and again they probably would probably
they probably would not go after some of the larger
like megafauna. You know, they probably would not be hunting
rhinoceros or something like that, but something like a deer
and ibex. So they hide, it comes into into range,
(27:12):
they jump out, they surround it, and they just start.
They are a clown in this scenario, I hope. So
I hope that there was like a neandertal early clowning.
That's why they didn't paint rocks there. They their art
was many performance artists. Um. But yeah, that's interesting that
you bring up the injury too, because I remember reading
that those injuries were often times sustained when they were
(27:34):
much younger, and so it's for some of them it
could really limit their range of motion. And this is
where the community really comes into play, because those with
the elderly in the infirm were obviously taken care of
by the group, which is another factor of this of them,
you know, yea some sort of culture, so it's not
just like, oh, that one's hurt, we're going to leave
(27:54):
him behind. Yeah, we'll eat you later. Yeah. And you
can easily imagine too, like a system where it's like,
all right, the young guys, you guys haven't had your
legs broken yet, so you're the ones who leap onto
the ibex is back and uh, your father and grandpa
are going to stand back with the spears. You know.
It's it's I'm just sort of imagining things. But but
but it's easy to to see how the system like
(28:15):
this might work. Now. What happens though when climate change
causes your forests to shrink and it ends up creating this, uh,
this step tundra environment where suddenly you have more and
more just vast empty stretches of of you know, no
cover where you see you can see the herds of
reindeer or or or you know, ibex or whatever, but
(28:37):
they're off in the distance. It's like, how are you
gonna how are you gonna get that? So you see
there's a lot of competition for that, right, and you
see the emergence of persistence hunting, which there's a there's
an excellent sequence in the BBC Discovery documentary of the
Life of Mammals where they show because the final episode
that you know, they get up to the mammal humans
(28:57):
and they they they deal with sand people of the
Kalahari Desert, the last tribes supposedly on Earth to use
this ancient technique and this is where humans use running
and tracking to pursue prey just to the point of exhaustion.
See as humans, we of course can sweat um and
we you know, it reduces our body heat. But if
you're chasing some sort of quadruped uh, this particular prey
(29:21):
animal probably needs to slow down from a gallop to
a pand so it's the it's like the I kind
of think of it as the terminator method of hunting,
you know, where it's just like slow, you're never you're
not gonna actually outrun the gazelle or whatever. You're gonna
You're just not gonna stop. You're just gonna follow it,
and it's not gonna lose your trail, and you're just
gonna keep on and keep on until it literally falls down.
(29:43):
You see the videos of this is the animal just
eventually collapses and then the humans just walk up and
finish it off. So the Neanderthals, we're not we're not
built for this like this, this skill becomes the survival technique,
and they're they're just physically generally not able to carry
it out. There are also probably a lot of human
(30:03):
populations around this time that we're equally unsuited for this
new way of life, and they also went the way
of any other space. It's not just the Neanderthals we're
talking about, right, We're talking about a lot of you know,
it's like like any kind of like changes in an
economic situation, you know, like the economy changes. Oh suddenly
big bloated businesses can't survive and you know, maybe the
(30:25):
little guys are going to do better. This is I mean,
this is the same thing with the physicality, right, right,
I mean there are other uh Homorectus types out there
at the same time. We're just focusing again, we're just
focusing on Neanderthals, but there are other species existing out
there at this time period, um that that aren't making
the cut either. Yeah, and and also and again it
(30:45):
comes under resources to this. It's not a situation where
humans were like, all right, we're here, now, let's kill
all the Neanderthals. You're talking about generations and generations of
of the landscape of of human and human void populations changing,
where where the humans gradually outcompete the Neanderthals for resources.
The Neanderthals end up being isolated in smaller and smaller areas,
(31:08):
um in more isolated areas, until they are eventually a
uh to uh to steal a phrase from from a
book we were just reading, um Finlayson. Yeah, they become
the living debt, like a panda or a tire, though
in my opinion, far more interesting in panda. But you know,
they reached the point and where well that you don't know,
(31:32):
Neanderthals could have been could have been very cut like. Actually,
what I think it's funny about this is early depictions
of them made them look so caveman man apish, and
now that we've had this understanding of them, much fuller
understanding the last five ten years, they look so much
more human. Like. Yeah, they have like our different wax
depictions of them. They've gone from like you know, from
(31:53):
again like you know, you know, slope faced beast man
to looking like just somebody you'd encounter, you know, the street. Yeah.
Now that depictions have like little bow ties on them. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it's like fashion shoots and I like that.
You need to tell a w magazine about that. So
why us Why didn't Why did we persist? Uh? It
(32:15):
largely comes down to a situation of we were It
was just we were in the right place at the
right time. Really, we were better suited to roll with
some of the changes that were coming down the pike.
If the changes have been a little different, occurred at
a different time, it could have gone the other way
and we could cover more territory. Right, So we weren't
a stocky or muscular Yeah, we were. We were better
suited to persistence hunting. We we took to agriculture, we
(32:38):
um and we also, I mean we we also eventually
just got a better foothold on on our population because again,
you know, the Neanderthal population never got above like probably
fifteen thou So a smaller population is always going to
be more susceptible to extinction. Um. And once you reach
a certain size, and and in our case, when you
(33:00):
reach a certain sophistication, you're really not going to deal
with that as much, unless, of course, you engineer your
own extinction through any number of ways that were actually Leaky,
the granddaughter of Mary Leaky, has an interesting ted talk
and she talks about that. She says, hey, like, don't
get too much on your high horse, Homo sapiens, because
(33:21):
we've only got two hundred thousand years of skin in
the game, and you know, look at our how our
population has gone nuts and the resources that are dwindling.
So don't get too excited here about the old continuation
of of our species. Yeah yeah, because there's again at
all a lot of it comes down to geography, climate,
and resources. And if you look at the state of
(33:43):
human civilization, you can find some red flags really in
all three of those areas. And uh, yeah, how are
we going to roll with the changes? Yeah? I know,
I mean, yes, we have a dropped learnings and it
allows us to communicate in a more nuanced way, and
we can teach each other in a more effective way
than the nder tools. But yeah, what about what about
climate change? What about small yeah? Or onions and and
(34:08):
of course you know, there's always a chance that we may,
you know, eradicate ourselves with the with nuclear weapons. We
I don't think that's entirely off the table yet, um
as as much as we would like to hope. So
but hey, there you go, Nanderthals, Yeah, planet Neanderthal. Uh So,
I hope, I hope you you might look at them
a little differently the next time somebody mentioned it, and
the next time somebody slurs with them, you know, stand
(34:29):
up for your your evolutionary brother. Yeah, yeah, get and
check out if you'd like the Max Planck Institute. They've
got some really interesting information on the Neanderthal genome and
they have a really great video called the Neanderthal in Us. Yeah,
kind of like tobiaspoon Case The Man Inside Me. That's right. Well, hey,
(34:51):
we got some listener mail. Here's which I think I'll
fly through here real quick. Our listener Eric writes in
and and uh, he's responding to our our podcast the
Werewolf Principle engineering teams for outer space, which is one
I really enjoyed to do. And he says it was
interesting to hear about modifications to the body that might
(35:12):
be made to help people fly in space. But you
made two mistakes. First, deaf people would have would be
able to use the radio, something that was a little
bit critical to space. Why. And I believe here he's
referring to something we corrected in a or well clarified
and the previous listener mail, and that is that there
are various forms of deafness and only one really falls
under the under the model that was discussed in that podcast,
(35:34):
which is to say not all deaf people would yes
not suffer from from yet from motion. Uh. Weirdness in
the space, but Eric goes into them to to add
some some really interesting stuff here. He says, you also
missed a rather obviously at least to me point. Every
person who has flown in space has carried forty or
fifty pounds of equipment with him that is not only
completely useless in microgravity, but can even get in the
(35:56):
way their legs. A human leg from hip to flop
including the foot, weighs about twenty to thirty pounds, and
a person in reasonable shape as an ampute myself, I
think amputees have been overlooked as astronauts, though I am
not sure I'd be willing to have what's left of
my legs removed for a chance to fly in space.
I'm an s p k AMT two anyway, great program,
(36:17):
uh Art, So that was that was some really interesting insight.
I really had not thought as much about that about,
you know, because you see shots of astronauts floating around,
and indeed it's not like they're using their toes to
manipulate things. Here's a brief note from listener Chris. He says,
in reference to your podcast Underground Robotic Highway, you stated
(36:40):
that the driverless Google cars drove around San Francisco driverless wall.
Technically that is true. There was a driver in the
car to take control if needed. Left the podcast, keep
up the great work, um. And indeed, just to clarify,
there was a driver and these things were not just
rolling around unattended. There was you know, you can think
of it like a driver's ad class, where as a
human there in case something goes crazy. Although I love
(37:03):
the idea of you know, he's going around like Lombard Street. Yeah,
what's kind of like unattended? Like? Is it? I believe
David Sadarris pointed out that is it Michigan where blind
hunters can go out hunting alone? I don't know, but
I'm gonna say that sounds very Michigan as a Michigan
so this is sort of like that. UM. I have
(37:25):
another one here from listener Jane. Jane says, I listen
to your podcast about the curies, uh, and this is
about scientists and love and wanted to say thanks for
a great show. My husband and I met as undergraduates
at a nuclear and radio chemistry summer school put on
by the Durent Department of Energy, and I'm now working
to finish my PhD in radio chemistry, and my husband
is working as the reactor supervisor at our university's nuclear reactor.
(37:48):
He has a master's degree in chemistry, and when I
finished my time here, he will get his PhD. Considering
how I met my husband, I've always loved the story
of Marie and Verry Pierre Curie. It was great to
hear more personal side to their amazing scientific contributions. I
love y'all show. So there we go. There's a nice
stuff feedback from us some listeners I know, and that
(38:08):
just made me think I would love to see some
m r I scans of scientists and love and compare
them to the general population. I think that works. Yeah,
that would that would actually be a great like a
great art excipt. I would go suggest, all right, someone
out there there you go, so, hey, do you want
to come see what we're up to, what we're thinking about,
what we're writing about, what we're podcasting about. You can
(38:29):
find us on Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind,
and you can also drop us a line at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
(38:49):
our homepage. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas, And
you know Julie. In the in science fiction, we we
keep coming back to this idea of like humans going
out into the into the void and encountering another another
(00:26):
intelligent species and then figuring out what's going to go down,
and it's just you know, it's just throughout the genre.
But the trope, it's it's definitely a trope. It's all.
It's it's trophy even um but U. But that the
really fastinating thing to me is to is to look
backwards in time and and think about humans and uh
(00:47):
and their interactions with other human like beings, such as
most famously the Neanderthal. Yeah, the neanderthal, which is typically
spelled I mean, it's spelled like it's neanderthal, and I've
I've been saying it wrong for ages. But but of course,
as you pointed out, comes from the Germans, so it's neanderthal.
(01:08):
So I just wanted to say that it's yeah, it
rolls off the tongue a lot easier if you just
go ahead and and use the fig German accent that
we all have have gotten off of the television and
just say neandertal. But we can't do the entire podcast
in that voice. Oh my god, you sound eerily like
Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. See. I think I was listening
to a mix recently. They had a bunch of Arnold
(01:30):
like fitness samples. That was probably what did it. But anyway, Neanderthal,
hopefully that pronunciation won't annoy you too much, uh in
this podcast likewise, we're going to steer largely clear of
another problem the encounter when you start reading about Neanderthal
in Neanderthals or any any any topics concerning the ascension
of man and human evolution, and that is that you
(01:52):
almost all always get bogged down in discussion of dig
sites and all these Latin names to the different fossils,
and it's and it's all very important to a larger understanding.
But we're gonna try and steer clear of a lot
of that. Yeah, because it's like the Book of Genesis,
Yeah it is. It becomes like and then Homo epercatus
(02:12):
emerge from Homo elliptus, and we don't know where Homo
capacatas fits. You know, it just gets it gets a
little dry, you know, even even for me and I've
I've written some articles about this before and it just
you know, kind of stunned your brain after a while.
But for our purposes, but yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
sort of blow through some of that. But but there
(02:33):
are lots of great resources out there, um that that'll
that'll kill you with the Latin names if you like.
But to uh, to really put us in more of
a time and place. Um, but let's talk about what
the Neanderthals were all right, Um, they first they were
there hominids there, they would have looked very much like
people on like modern humans. Even like if you get
(02:56):
in your mind this sort of idea of like a
troll like um uh bron Pearlman esque hulking thing uh
um or Tom Waits, you can put that in as well. Um,
you know, it's like that's not necessarily a good model
to have, and it's a really hard one to kick.
Like when I think Neanderthal, it's it's really hard to
kick that idea of this hulking brute that's stomping through
(03:18):
the undergroad the cartoon caveman with a club thing. Yeah. Yeah,
um and uh and it's hard to get past that that,
but these guys would have looked more or less like
modern humans, only shorter, heavier built, um stronger, particularly in
the arms and hands. So they were they were kind
of thick. Uh and and you know, muscily dudes. Yeah.
(03:39):
Actually I read somewhere too that their rib cages are
really large and they didn't have much of a waste, yeah,
which was sort of like that gives you this idea
of these barrel chested, really compact muscular beings. Yeah, and
you know, kind of like I guess, kind of like
a stumpy wrestler physique. And to a certain extent um
they the skull evidence we have show that they didn't
have much of its hin uh and their forehead fourheads
(04:02):
were kind of sloped backwards. Uh. Their brain case was
lower but felt longer, and it housed a slightly larger
brain than what we're carrying around today, right, which was
really great for them help them survive for a very
long time, but also, as we'll get into later, may
have contributed a bit to their downfall as well. Yeah.
So these guys first showed up in Europe as early
(04:24):
as six hundred thousand UM or three fifty thousand years ago.
We're a little you know, again, anytime you deal with
the fossil record, you're dealing with bits and pieces of
the jigsaw puzzle, and many of the pieces will just
never have So it's it's always a little touch and go,
and it's it's and if you don't understand that, it
(04:44):
can be a little frustrating. We're like, how can we
not know? Like, how can we just dig up some
more bones? Well, not all bones survive, not all bones
become fossils. Yeah, that's the game of chance, right, Like
even the neanderthalman who was discovered it was sort of
by chance because the guy who who saw it was
about to pitch it and then he thought, well, maybe
that's a bear school, and he was collecting um animal
(05:05):
schools and ended up keeping it. And then they found
out later that no, this is not at your school.
So again, I mean, our knowledge would have been so
incomplete if he hadn't had that chance encounter. So these
guys pretty much ruled Eurasia for two hundred thousand years,
roaming around, uh doing their thing, and even at the
(05:27):
height of their occupation of a Western Europe, scientists think
that they probably never really exceeded say, fifteen thousand total.
So even so, you know, we we're not dealing with
modern population levels of human like today, humans are really
off the chart, you know, I mean, we're an exceedingly
successful species or where you can argue were an invasive
(05:48):
species pretty much everywhere. But but this was a time
when populations could not really reached the unsustainable levels that
we've managed to achieve to right, and from fossil records,
what we do know is that at the time that
um Neanderthals went extinct, humans were really homeless sapiens were
really starting to make great gains. So of course that's
where we that idea developed where we just vanquished the
(06:12):
Neanderthals and ate them and made it with them and
left them in the dirt. And that's not really true. Yeah,
it's kind of like to uh, this will probably the
only time I use a Will Smith quote. But but
there's this idea that the Neanderthals were old and busted
and the humans were the new hotness, and that we
just eradicated the old and busted and thoughts. So it's
(06:35):
just they were just a you know, this was the
old model. The new models so much better. So of
course the old model is going to die, right, right,
But the more you really look at it, the more
it becomes in a situation where you have two really
good models. I mean, it's it's kind of like the
idea that I think it was actually Ricky Gervei who
pointed out that like the garden slug may look disgusting,
we may hate it, but the garden slug is perfect,
(06:56):
like nature has filled that that niche with something that
really works. Well. So like nature does by and large
doesn't create, uh, you know, evolution does not lead to
ineffective designs. It's like this is the pinnacle. This is
a a great design. So the more you look at it,
you have a situation where the neander doll is a
is a killer design, but circumstances ended up having this
(07:21):
other design, this human design, be the one that's going
to take take the lead, become the dominant force. And
all that had to do with climate, right Like at
the time that they were flourishing neandertals, they had adapted
to their environment really well yeah, but I'm jumping ahead here, Yeah, yeah,
two other key things to mention is that another there's
(07:42):
a really old, outdated idea that's still probably kicking around
and a lot of people's heads, and that is that
we evolved from neander tal and that's that's completely not true. Um. Rather,
we share a common relative um, a common ancestor. So
if you were to follow the chart back, you'd say, hey,
here's this particular of species um and and at this
(08:04):
point it diverged and there's uh, and it's its ancestors
became Neanderthals and became humans. Right, So there's Homo erect us, right,
and then that's the branch of Homo Heidelberg genis saying that, right,
which I just picture a caveman in uh edohosen, I
know that's Heiderberg. Uh. And then of course that evolved
(08:26):
that that species evolved into neander tools right. Yeah, it's
it's like the same thing that we like, we share
common ancestors with the champion chimpanzee, but we did not
evolve from a chimpanzee. So if you had any of
that kicking around your head, get rid of that. Yeah,
our genetic material is shared with Neanderthals, yes, uh. And
another interesting fact to keep in mind is that is
(08:47):
that again we we coexisted with Neanderthals for for for
for a brief period of time as far as as
evolutionary history goes. But but but we did coexist, right.
They became extinct about thirty thousand years ago. Yeah, and
they may have survived in in some very remote areas
(09:09):
for perhaps up to twenty four thousand years ago. And
that's a specifically Gibraltar. You know, in the Strait of Gibraltar. Um,
there's a site there called Gorman's Cave that people have
studied a lot. So this is an isolated area that
that you know sits an island. They end up there
and they end up holding out there for a while,
but eventually, um, they're out injeri In. But what I
(09:31):
find really interesting is that neanderthal has got a bad
rap because they weren't these great bedazzlers. Oh yeah, because
they're like, well, where are their cave drawings? Where there
are their beads and their where's their jewelry? So but
at that time that was the litmus test of whether
or not you were um sophisticated enough to be thought
(09:51):
of as as cool as Homo sapiens, right, and so
that really did contribute to this idea of them as
knuckle drivers, actually, which is unfortunate because they are so
much more nuanced than um than that, and in fact
um it reminds me of Kazuo Shigaros. Never let me
go the novel. But the children, Yes, this is the
(10:15):
My wife read this for a book club, and it's
basically the same plot as the old sci fi film
parts the Clonus Hare, which they did for MST. Three K.
And also there was some what was that the Island. Yeah,
basically you know the idea of like, oh, let's let's
have clones of ourselves, so we can have spare parts, right,
so we can just pick up this organ from this person.
(10:35):
But one of the central um topics in the book
is that the children must produce artwork to prove their
own humanity. And so I was thinking about that. I
was thinking, well, that's the same case with Neanderthals. Is
that we thought, well, we don't see any cave paintings,
therefore they must have been brutes, they must have been
without sympathy or you know, these these higher ideas of
(10:57):
our emotions in our humanity. But we'll find this out later.
It's that's not the case at all. Yeah. Well, also
it's it's important to note that some of the early
cave drawings that you counter like pictures of our pictures
of animals, you know, pictures of prey, and and they
think that a lot of that is probably used to
to teach. This presentation is brought to you by Intel
(11:22):
sponsors of tomorrow. So it's not like they were like
they were like, Oh, I have free time, I must
create some art. Let me draw an antelope. Isn't it beautiful? Now?
It was probably more like, like, I'm really trying to
drive home that you had a hunt and antelope, kid,
let me draw one on the wall. Yeah, this isn't
cubism here. Yeah. So so I think we can sort
(11:45):
of get a little, uh, a little lofty about our
ideas concerning early primitive artwork. Yeah. And you've touched on
this too as well. Is it the superiority myth? This
idea that Homo safetians are really the only cool kids
in town because they mastered fire, um, just speak tools,
agriculture or someone and so forth. Yeah, And it really
(12:07):
kind of flows into sort of a manifest destiny that
you know, this idea that we're special. We've got to
be special. Um, you know, we're we're here where that
we must be the superior design. There could not possibly
be a better one, right, And that's the cool thing
about looking at this UM and thinking about it in
the context. We are the kid cool kids here right now.
But you know, two thousand years from now, they'll be
looking back at us saying, what in the world were
(12:29):
they doing? Yeah? We um and Neandertals first met our
human ancestors in the Middle East about a hundred and
thirty thousand years ago. Uh and perhaps uh, perhaps after
about a half million years of separation when they split
off from that common ancestor, then they contacted each other
again in Eurasia roughly forty five thousand years ago. And
(12:52):
and this is where we end up, you know. And
there are a lot of questions about what these contacts
consisted of. Uh. For one thing, you know, those cave
drawings that we've mentioned, you don't see any cave drawings
of Neanderthals, So it's it's not like they were just
running into each other the supermarket all the time. Again,
we're dealing with small populations of people, people that moved
around for the most part, So yeah, nomadic people. So
(13:15):
it's not again, it's not like people run into each
other all the time. And even human populations are were
likely to be running into you run into a group
that speaks differently that that are that are very alien
from you, there may be just as alien from you
as these uh, slightly heavy set guys who who look
pretty intimidating and look like they could really take you
down with the tackle if need be. But we know
(13:36):
know that that we humans tangled with neander tolls and
when by tangling mean they had sex with each other. Yeah,
at least some like it. It apparently happens. Yeah, the
genetic evidence is there. Did it happen all the time? No? No,
I mean it's it's not the kind of thing it's
happening all the time. No, And in fact, if that
(13:58):
were the case, then, um, we would have a lot
more evidence in our own DNA. Right right now, we've
got traces of two to of Neanderthals and the modern
human genome in populations outside of Africa, which is interesting. Um,
so you know there's some evidence there that again they
tangoed um and this we learned from the Max Planck
(14:18):
Institute because they sequenced the Neanderthal genoa. And they also
found out that they were pale skinned and they had
a range of colors including red hair. Yeah. Um. And
they shared the language gene with us, Yeah, which is
fox P two right, Yeah, that's that's the one there.
(14:39):
In fact, there have been some some arguments that they
may have uh, they have may have communicated musically. You
remember this from from our research for the Music Healing
the Mind. Yeah, music, can music rebuild your brain? Yeah?
And it was the bone flute yeah yeah, um, and
that was something like I don't know it was fifty
years ago or I fix thousand year old instrument. That
(15:00):
is clearly it's it's intentional and it's marking. Some people
have said, oh, animals made the holes in the bone,
but if you look at the pictures of it, like
the holes are pretty exact. Um, so it's not too
far off to think that they'd be able to to
use it as a musical instrument. They're also you also
see different examples of cannibalistic or well, okay, there's some
(15:23):
examples of cannibal possible cannibalism among the neandertals and also uh,
some evidence and with the bones to suggest that humans
may have eaten neanderthals at different times and possibly made
necklaces out of their children's teeth. Yeah, which is just
gonna happen. I mean, and you know, to call back
to another podcast, we have the Whole Cannibalism podcast where
(15:45):
we dealt primarily with cannibalism in nature. So if you
haven't listened to that one, if you were like my wife,
you were scared off from it thinking it was gonna
be about mainly about people eating other people. It's really
mostly about uh, about animals eating their own type praying
mances offering themselves up and a love victual to get
their heads. Been on lots of sexual cannibalism of that
kind of thing in that podcast. But one of the
(16:06):
things we really drove tried to drive drive home in
that was that cannibalism, when you strip away all of
the the the modern human taboos and all, it really
makes a lot of sense. So it's just the idea
that you would encounter it. That doesn't mean that we're
suggesting to do it, but no, no, in the context
of when it happened, it made sense, right, because they're
(16:26):
hardy protein sources. Yeah, yeah, And you know it's otherwise
that that stuff is going to go to waste and
you might starve to death, so of course you eat it.
There are also some arguments out there that these early groups,
including the andertal Is, also partook of some scavenging. So
it's also in a situation where there's some war dead
either on your from your own tribe, but from this
group that you just had a little um miscommunication with. Again,
(16:51):
why I let that, Why I let the vultures have that?
When that's those are some some vital nutrients that could
sustain you as you continue to to scour the landscape
for for what will hopefully be your next meal. Right,
And talking about miss communication or communication makes me again
think of the speech gene and the fact that because
they had the large brains and they had that gene,
(17:13):
and because they also had a tiny bone in the
throat called the highoid um, which supports the soft tissue
of the throat and it holds the root of the
tongue in place, which is a requirement for speech, makes
me think that Um and and many others, that they
did have some sort of language what we do know
is that their lantn x is much higher in their
throat than humans, which would have limited some of their speech.
(17:34):
But it's it's a it's good to note that because
again that that would have helped them to have survived,
to be able to communicate with one another, but in
the long run that it may have actually um contributed
to their demise interests of Homo sapiens well, and also
we've seen plenty of evidence that just because i mean
even just among Homo sapiens, just because one group can
(17:56):
talk to the other, doesn't any other group isn't going
to attempt to wipe them out, you know, No, Yeah,
And that's it was more in the well, we'll talk
about it later, but it was more in the context
of is it are you better suited to survive if
you can communicate really well with each other? Um. But
another thing about Neanderthals that has been that the veil
(18:17):
has been lifted on is toolmaking and some other school
skills and things that they've done. Again, it was thought
that humans had the upper hand with tools, but it
turns out that Neanderthals were just as sophisticated with their
tools and in some cases. Um, the shales or the
blades were a lot more effective than the homosapiene Homo
sapiens um. So there you go. Mad skills. Yeah, these
(18:40):
guys were hunters. Um. These guys make glue, Yeah, which
is just pretty amazing. It's yeah, do you mind if
I talk about it? So amazed by this? Uh, it's
the glue is made from tightly rolled strips of birch bark,
and it's deposited into a hole in the ground and
then they cover that with earth and they see at oxygen.
Then they take a small holdering stick put that in there,
(19:02):
and because the birch is deprived of oxygen, it sweats
out pitch and so when it cools, it can be
used in tools to bond materials together. And the even
cooler thing about it is that you can take that
piece of cooled pitch and take it anywhere. Of course,
thematic right, so they're gonna they're gonna bring it with them,
and then all you have to do is reheat it,
uh to use it again. And the reason I'm bringing
(19:24):
this up is because the I don't can't remember those
as a PBS special. I'll have to look at my
research notes. But the video clip that I saw this,
it was really difficult for them to do and to
do right. So it took a lot of skill, and
it took a lot of trial and air and even
in this day and age, for you and I to
try to do this, and I'm sure that would be
a lot of expletives flying. You know, there'll be a
(19:45):
steep learning curve. So for them to be able to
do this is amazing. Yeah. I can't can barely cook
dinner for myself without resorting the cursing, So I can't
imagine making glue in my backyard. I know, I remember
your risotto st technique needed some observation by a second party.
So yes, um, I cook best when I'm I'm helping,
(20:08):
not taking the lead. You're more of a chef. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's no shame in that chef. That's an important rule.
But they also used pollen. A lot of pollen was
found in the caves, and that's used as an antiseptic
and a salve. And speaking of of pollen, it's it's
worth pointing out that they were not specifically carnivorous. Yeah,
(20:28):
it seems like meat was a big part of their diet.
They were. They were probably steak fans and would have
been found frequenting out back if they were around today.
But but they did eat vegetable matter. They did when
they did the scavenge for seeds. When when that when
when they when they were available? Yeah, and they yeah,
that's right, they found some plant plant matter and the
(20:50):
molars um. And again here you have this idea of
them as being these you know, cavemen who were just
you know, and of course they were were taking down
some large animals, but they weren't, you know, primarily carnivorous. Um.
So this idea they invented the blooming onion. Actually people
really know that, but oh yeah they did. Um, Well,
(21:16):
you just threw me there. I'm like, now I'm imagining
them over the fire with their blooming onions. Um, I'm
salivating a little bit. And that's just so wrong. But
the other thing is a lot of people thought of
them is sort of like the dirty hippies too, of hominids. Um.
But in fact, the hygiene thing has been brought up
before that their teeth has shown very little decay, so
(21:37):
they were taking care of their their teeth in some manner. Well,
and it's it's also a lot easier to take care
of your teeth if you don't have a huge sugar
um diet. So um. You know these guys, you know,
aside from some nuts and berries here and there, you know,
they're probably not, uh, you know, sucking down as much
sugar as modern humans do. Yeah. Yeah, they're probably whittling
(21:57):
their own little toothpicks too. Yeah. Actually you know how
many evidence of that? But I'd like to um so
in in in thinking about like how how a this
human or humanlike population grew and expanded and eventually dwindled
and disappeared, you you really have to think of it
in terms of geology, climate, and resources. Um, because we're
(22:22):
talking about long stretches of time, your hundreds of thousands
of years during which the Earth's climate kind of whopped
around back and forth, kind of like a ping pong
ball where you had you had periods of cooling, you
had and you had periods of heat, you had some
some glacial stuff mixed in there, and uh and and
when the weather changes, it changes the the geology. And
(22:44):
when yeah, and when and over long periods of times
of the course of geology changes, it changes the weather.
So these are all things that are in flux and
they force in the same way that that you see
like populations of birds moving around. Uh. Um, you know
it's like oh, you know people and looking at say,
you know, global global warming and climate change. You know,
you see how populations of animals are are are affected.
(23:07):
And at this time, I mean, the humans were very
much uh. I mean humans are are susceptible to this
even now, but at the time, you know, if animals
had to move to a different geographical location, than the
humans were forced into that area as well, right, I mean,
and just to put it into context, to the global
warming that we experienced now is different from what they
(23:29):
were experiencing in terms of extreme climate changes. So the Neanderthals,
they survived the ice age, they did really well with that.
It became very compact and muscular, right. Um. But but
then at some point, um, the climates kept changing very
quick and within you know, a span of a lifetime,
a lot of their landscape could have changed, and in fact,
(23:52):
we know it changed. So the force that they relied
on they have receded, and all of a sudden they
have less area to hunt in. Yeah, and uh yeah
to this really bois done to two areas that really
stuck out to me, um about how how this these
changes in climate affected them. Um alright, one key thing
to look at is that Neanderthals, as far as we know,
(24:13):
never took to farming, never took up our agriculture, which
of course is just was a was and continued to
be a vital part of modern humanity. Yeah and keep
in mind or aromatic too. Yeah, yeah, they're nomadic. Um
and again and again. Agriculture is the thing that you
know made us settle down that and then ultimately lead
to uh, to the to the construction of villages and
cities that gave us the free time to specialize in
(24:35):
different skills and allowed like you know, one old dude
to just set around the village all day painting stuff, Um,
making those cool cave painting. Yeah. Yeah, we're making you know,
making little gold frogs or something. But Neanderthals never took
to the agricultural way of life. For the greater part
of their Eurasian dominance. Uh, the climate was harsher and
(24:56):
more sporadic than it was today. So it just wasn't
good a good time to get into farming. Um. You know,
even if even if they wanted to. They were smart
enough to. They were skilled enough too, So it wasn't
a situation where they would have been like, what is carrot?
How me plan? You know, it wouldn't have been a
situation like that. But that the time was not right
for the agricultural leap right, and well that they were
(25:18):
so tethered to their own physicality to right. But yeah, yeah,
and when conditions improved, when it did get become farming time, Um,
there wasn't that much really pushing them to leave behind
these honey and gathering techniques that worked well for them, right,
Because I was thinking about it that they they put
scientists put that the extreme climate changes about forty years ago.
They became extinct about years so for fifteen thousand years
(25:41):
and in crazy climates they they still have toe hold
in it, right, they were still existing. But eventually you're
going to die off, and you know you're not gonna
You're gonna lose that to toe hold and um, those
great stocking limbs that you had are going to be
problems on it because they require more calories to up
keep and there's less protein sources around. And that body
(26:04):
style that they had, that that meaty tough, you know,
wrestler build um. The main way that this suited them
u was in ambushing their prey. They were used to
dealing with with wooded or semi wooded area somewhere you know,
they can hide and cover, wait till that deer, that
ibex um you know, or that that bloomin onion comes
in close enough, you know, wait in the wait in
(26:25):
the cover, and then leap out and uh and really
throw down with that deer. So it was like a
wrestler on the ropes, right, yeah, come down. Yeah, he's
like he's on the ropes, let's get him. And then
they you know, just beat the crap out of the deer.
Or they were more like you know, they do spears
and whatnot. But they've also they've also found injuries and
some of the new their tolls that that they say
resemble rodeo rider um um injuries. So it's which you know,
(26:51):
so just imagine it's like you have a pretty dangerous
animal probably probably perhaps with big horns or antlers and
uh and these guy and again they probably would probably
they probably would not go after some of the larger
like megafauna. You know, they probably would not be hunting
rhinoceros or something like that, but something like a deer
and ibex. So they hide, it comes into into range,
(27:12):
they jump out, they surround it, and they just start.
They are a clown in this scenario, I hope. So
I hope that there was like a neandertal early clowning.
That's why they didn't paint rocks there. They their art
was many performance artists. Um. But yeah, that's interesting that
you bring up the injury too, because I remember reading
that those injuries were often times sustained when they were
(27:34):
much younger, and so it's for some of them it
could really limit their range of motion. And this is
where the community really comes into play, because those with
the elderly in the infirm were obviously taken care of
by the group, which is another factor of this of them,
you know, yea some sort of culture, so it's not
just like, oh, that one's hurt, we're going to leave
(27:54):
him behind. Yeah, we'll eat you later. Yeah. And you
can easily imagine too, like a system where it's like,
all right, the young guys, you guys haven't had your
legs broken yet, so you're the ones who leap onto
the ibex is back and uh, your father and grandpa
are going to stand back with the spears. You know.
It's it's I'm just sort of imagining things. But but
but it's easy to to see how the system like
(28:15):
this might work. Now. What happens though when climate change
causes your forests to shrink and it ends up creating this, uh,
this step tundra environment where suddenly you have more and
more just vast empty stretches of of you know, no
cover where you see you can see the herds of
reindeer or or or you know, ibex or whatever, but
(28:37):
they're off in the distance. It's like, how are you
gonna how are you gonna get that? So you see
there's a lot of competition for that, right, and you
see the emergence of persistence hunting, which there's a there's
an excellent sequence in the BBC Discovery documentary of the
Life of Mammals where they show because the final episode
that you know, they get up to the mammal humans
(28:57):
and they they they deal with sand people of the
Kalahari Desert, the last tribes supposedly on Earth to use
this ancient technique and this is where humans use running
and tracking to pursue prey just to the point of exhaustion.
See as humans, we of course can sweat um and
we you know, it reduces our body heat. But if
you're chasing some sort of quadruped uh, this particular prey
(29:21):
animal probably needs to slow down from a gallop to
a pand so it's the it's like the I kind
of think of it as the terminator method of hunting,
you know, where it's just like slow, you're never you're
not gonna actually outrun the gazelle or whatever. You're gonna
You're just not gonna stop. You're just gonna follow it,
and it's not gonna lose your trail, and you're just
gonna keep on and keep on until it literally falls down.
(29:43):
You see the videos of this is the animal just
eventually collapses and then the humans just walk up and
finish it off. So the Neanderthals, we're not we're not
built for this like this, this skill becomes the survival technique,
and they're they're just physically generally not able to carry
it out. There are also probably a lot of human
(30:03):
populations around this time that we're equally unsuited for this
new way of life, and they also went the way
of any other space. It's not just the Neanderthals we're
talking about, right, We're talking about a lot of you know,
it's like like any kind of like changes in an
economic situation, you know, like the economy changes. Oh suddenly
big bloated businesses can't survive and you know, maybe the
(30:25):
little guys are going to do better. This is I mean,
this is the same thing with the physicality, right, right,
I mean there are other uh Homorectus types out there
at the same time. We're just focusing again, we're just
focusing on Neanderthals, but there are other species existing out
there at this time period, um that that aren't making
the cut either. Yeah, and and also and again it
(30:45):
comes under resources to this. It's not a situation where
humans were like, all right, we're here, now, let's kill
all the Neanderthals. You're talking about generations and generations of
of the landscape of of human and human void populations changing,
where where the humans gradually outcompete the Neanderthals for resources.
The Neanderthals end up being isolated in smaller and smaller areas,
(31:08):
um in more isolated areas, until they are eventually a
uh to uh to steal a phrase from from a
book we were just reading, um Finlayson. Yeah, they become
the living debt, like a panda or a tire, though
in my opinion, far more interesting in panda. But you know,
they reached the point and where well that you don't know,
(31:32):
Neanderthals could have been could have been very cut like. Actually,
what I think it's funny about this is early depictions
of them made them look so caveman man apish, and
now that we've had this understanding of them, much fuller
understanding the last five ten years, they look so much
more human. Like. Yeah, they have like our different wax
depictions of them. They've gone from like you know, from
(31:53):
again like you know, you know, slope faced beast man
to looking like just somebody you'd encounter, you know, the street. Yeah.
Now that depictions have like little bow ties on them. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it's like fashion shoots and I like that.
You need to tell a w magazine about that. So
why us Why didn't Why did we persist? Uh? It
(32:15):
largely comes down to a situation of we were It
was just we were in the right place at the
right time. Really, we were better suited to roll with
some of the changes that were coming down the pike.
If the changes have been a little different, occurred at
a different time, it could have gone the other way
and we could cover more territory. Right, So we weren't
a stocky or muscular Yeah, we were. We were better
suited to persistence hunting. We we took to agriculture, we
(32:38):
um and we also, I mean we we also eventually
just got a better foothold on on our population because again,
you know, the Neanderthal population never got above like probably
fifteen thou So a smaller population is always going to
be more susceptible to extinction. Um. And once you reach
a certain size, and and in our case, when you
(33:00):
reach a certain sophistication, you're really not going to deal
with that as much, unless, of course, you engineer your
own extinction through any number of ways that were actually Leaky,
the granddaughter of Mary Leaky, has an interesting ted talk
and she talks about that. She says, hey, like, don't
get too much on your high horse, Homo sapiens, because
(33:21):
we've only got two hundred thousand years of skin in
the game, and you know, look at our how our
population has gone nuts and the resources that are dwindling.
So don't get too excited here about the old continuation
of of our species. Yeah yeah, because there's again at
all a lot of it comes down to geography, climate,
and resources. And if you look at the state of
(33:43):
human civilization, you can find some red flags really in
all three of those areas. And uh, yeah, how are
we going to roll with the changes? Yeah? I know,
I mean, yes, we have a dropped learnings and it
allows us to communicate in a more nuanced way, and
we can teach each other in a more effective way
than the nder tools. But yeah, what about what about
climate change? What about small yeah? Or onions and and
(34:08):
of course you know, there's always a chance that we may,
you know, eradicate ourselves with the with nuclear weapons. We
I don't think that's entirely off the table yet, um
as as much as we would like to hope. So
but hey, there you go, Nanderthals, Yeah, planet Neanderthal. Uh So,
I hope, I hope you you might look at them
a little differently the next time somebody mentioned it, and
the next time somebody slurs with them, you know, stand
(34:29):
up for your your evolutionary brother. Yeah, yeah, get and
check out if you'd like the Max Planck Institute. They've
got some really interesting information on the Neanderthal genome and
they have a really great video called the Neanderthal in Us. Yeah,
kind of like tobiaspoon Case The Man Inside Me. That's right. Well, hey,
(34:51):
we got some listener mail. Here's which I think I'll
fly through here real quick. Our listener Eric writes in
and and uh, he's responding to our our podcast the
Werewolf Principle engineering teams for outer space, which is one
I really enjoyed to do. And he says it was
interesting to hear about modifications to the body that might
(35:12):
be made to help people fly in space. But you
made two mistakes. First, deaf people would have would be
able to use the radio, something that was a little
bit critical to space. Why. And I believe here he's
referring to something we corrected in a or well clarified
and the previous listener mail, and that is that there
are various forms of deafness and only one really falls
under the under the model that was discussed in that podcast,
(35:34):
which is to say not all deaf people would yes
not suffer from from yet from motion. Uh. Weirdness in
the space, but Eric goes into them to to add
some some really interesting stuff here. He says, you also
missed a rather obviously at least to me point. Every
person who has flown in space has carried forty or
fifty pounds of equipment with him that is not only
completely useless in microgravity, but can even get in the
(35:56):
way their legs. A human leg from hip to flop
including the foot, weighs about twenty to thirty pounds, and
a person in reasonable shape as an ampute myself, I
think amputees have been overlooked as astronauts, though I am
not sure I'd be willing to have what's left of
my legs removed for a chance to fly in space.
I'm an s p k AMT two anyway, great program,
(36:17):
uh Art, So that was that was some really interesting insight.
I really had not thought as much about that about,
you know, because you see shots of astronauts floating around,
and indeed it's not like they're using their toes to
manipulate things. Here's a brief note from listener Chris. He says,
in reference to your podcast Underground Robotic Highway, you stated
(36:40):
that the driverless Google cars drove around San Francisco driverless wall.
Technically that is true. There was a driver in the
car to take control if needed. Left the podcast, keep
up the great work, um. And indeed, just to clarify,
there was a driver and these things were not just
rolling around unattended. There was you know, you can think
of it like a driver's ad class, where as a
human there in case something goes crazy. Although I love
(37:03):
the idea of you know, he's going around like Lombard Street. Yeah,
what's kind of like unattended? Like? Is it? I believe
David Sadarris pointed out that is it Michigan where blind
hunters can go out hunting alone? I don't know, but
I'm gonna say that sounds very Michigan as a Michigan
so this is sort of like that. UM. I have
(37:25):
another one here from listener Jane. Jane says, I listen
to your podcast about the curies, uh, and this is
about scientists and love and wanted to say thanks for
a great show. My husband and I met as undergraduates
at a nuclear and radio chemistry summer school put on
by the Durent Department of Energy, and I'm now working
to finish my PhD in radio chemistry, and my husband
is working as the reactor supervisor at our university's nuclear reactor.
(37:48):
He has a master's degree in chemistry, and when I
finished my time here, he will get his PhD. Considering
how I met my husband, I've always loved the story
of Marie and Verry Pierre Curie. It was great to
hear more personal side to their amazing scientific contributions. I
love y'all show. So there we go. There's a nice
stuff feedback from us some listeners I know, and that
(38:08):
just made me think I would love to see some
m r I scans of scientists and love and compare
them to the general population. I think that works. Yeah,
that would that would actually be a great like a
great art excipt. I would go suggest, all right, someone
out there there you go, so, hey, do you want
to come see what we're up to, what we're thinking about,
what we're writing about, what we're podcasting about. You can
(38:29):
find us on Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind,
and you can also drop us a line at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
(38:49):
our homepage. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes.
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