What happened to the Neanderthals?

As recently as 40,000 years ago we lived among humans from an entirely different species – Neanderthals. About the same time our species showed up, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Just what happened to the other guys? Did our ancestors do something … bad?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there, and um, this is stuff you
should know, Stuff you should Nizzo. I'm excited about this one.

(00:25):
This just feels like classic Josh and Chuck. I think
so too. Took Took's gonna make an appearance. Took Took
Mike make Sweet Love, which is always fun. And watching Took, yeah,
we like to watch. He's surprisingly tender, he is. I'm

(00:45):
sorry all the third graders are actually, more to the point,
the third grade teachers who are standing there right now
at the head of class, they're like, oh, what happened
to the Neanderthal's perfect for the classroom? Right? So yeah,
this is very uh. I thought this is very cool.
I love this. But we've talked a little bit about
Neanderthal's in the past and Homo sapiens and uh, Dennis
Snovin's and that's right, right, there's an extra end in there.

(01:10):
I think Dennis Stovan's. Dennis Snoven sounds like a dude,
like he manages the ice cream factory, right, Snovin, Dennis Snovin, Uh,
this is good stuff, though, So let's let's treat everyone
so all right, we'll do our best. Put the pressure on.
So Neander neander tals it really so? Then correct pronunciation

(01:33):
is tall by the way. Yeah, I had a teacher
point that out, remember, very specifically in the in the
ninth grade. But when you're being correct, you're actually speaking
in Old German, not even modern German. So it's really
just a question of how you want to say it.
Either one's acceptable, no, I mean the pronunciation would still

(01:54):
be that in modern German. Neander tal Yeah, okay, because
I saw it spelled t a L two. Oh really yeah,
let's get rid of that age. Okay. I kind of
like it. I like how it looks, but I think
it's up to the individuals. Say taller thal okay, but
the correct way is neander tal right, okay, and Neander talls.

(02:14):
I'm probably gonna just switch back and forth. That's okay
with everybody, not to make a big deal out of
it or anything, but um, neander talls uh or thals,
depending on who you are. They were a species of
human beings of humans like if you think about it, Chuck, you,

(02:36):
Jerry me, everybody out there. Sometimes yeah, same species, one
species of human, that's it. Like you just don't really
kind of think about that. But if you dial back
a little bit, if we got on the way back
machine and went back just like forty thousand years, there'll
be at least one other species of human running around

(02:57):
on Earth, and they would be the Neanderthals. Yes, so
we didn't even know that there was another such thing
as another human species until the eighteen fifties because there
was a forty thousand year gap separating us. And then
that's right, So the very first fossils of a Neanderthal
was found in eighteen twenty nine in Belgium and then
again in Gibraltar in eight But they kind of were

(03:21):
just like, oh cool, look at these old bones. Wasn't
a big deal. What's how easy they snap on my knee? Right?
They didn't know what they were, no, And then in
nineteen fifty six in Germany, something pretty significant happened. Uh,
they found some pretty substantial fossils. I think a whole
skeleton actually, yeah, well they definitely found a whole skull um.
This was in four or five ft of clay at

(03:42):
in a limestone quarry cave and a site called felt
so Glad. And this is in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf.
And this is where it all comes around. If you
hear the word Neanderthal or a tall um t h
a l and old German means valley. And so the

(04:03):
scientific name Homo neander tollensus means humans from the Neander Valley. Yes,
because it means that's where the first one that we realized, Um,
wait a minute, this is This isn't a cave bear.
This isn't like some some dead person. This is a
different species of human. Yeah. They saw that the what

(04:23):
we now know is classic Neanderthal oval shape. That that
big thick, low receding forehead and brow, very thick bones.
This uh, that was brought to the query foreman and
he said it's a cave bear. I guess you came
over from Alabama. But he said, but I do know

(04:45):
a teacher and a guy who's really into fossils. His
name is Johann Karl full Rot. And here you can
have these bones. He got them, did some impressions, what uh,
did some castings of these and sent though those to
Hermann uh Schaffhausen, a professor. I don't know German is

(05:05):
so funny. I don't either, but coming out of your mouth,
it's like it's just hilarious. After all these years. He's
a professor, was a professor of anatomy at the University
of Bonn. And they both were like, hey, this is
significant because this ain't no human. Uh no homo sapien.
But it's a human, right, we think, right, it's some
other kind of human, some other kind of hominid that

(05:29):
we just didn't understand before. So they presented their fightings
in the world. He said, look at this. Everybody, get
a load of this. And there was an immediate problem
with Neanderthals there there's so this is eighteen fifty eighteen
fifty seven when they prevented presented their fightings. And that
was before on the origin of the species. So before Darwin,

(05:52):
it was like God created all this, God created you,
God created the panther, God created the monkeys separately, like
all this stuff was all separate. And then Darwin came
along and said, no, all this stuff is actually related.
And if you trace everything far enough back, you're gonna
find the last common ancestor between two things that don't
look anything alike um, including humans and apes. And so

(06:16):
this was before that, so it didn't fit into the
Christian creation story. But then even after Darwin came along,
it just so happened that Neanderthals were discovered and analyzed
and and it was realized that they were in different
species of human at a time when biological anthropology was around, yeah,
phrenology and the you know, we've talked about it on
the show a little bit, the very sort of racist

(06:38):
practice of um categorizing humans in their inferiority of races
by the shapes of their skull. Right, look at this skull, um,
well there it's not not basically Western and European shaped.
We think it has some weird ridge. Um, so they're
an inferior race. They extended all that onto Neanderthals because

(07:02):
if you think, you know, if you're if you're comparing
like human Homo sapiens skulls to one another and somehow
finding inferiority or superiority, and that in the shapes of
those when you compare a Neanderthal skull to a human skull,
clearly that human skull is much more refined and developed.
Neanderthals must have been these dim witted brutes the caveman. Like,

(07:25):
the whole reason we think of the caveman and Neanderthals
is big dummies and and oaths. It is because they
were discovered during a time of racist science. Yeah, and
that was the view that was held, and it's still
held by some people who don't know better. This is
why we're doing that, you know, one reason why we're
doing this episode. But it was held for a couple

(07:46):
of hundred years. But in the recent decades things have changed.
Our picture of the Neanderthal has changed because of science
and research, and we now know that, uh, well a
lot of cool things. I don't want to spoil it yet, Okay, Yeah,
I was wondering if that was too much of the
beans getting out. I think, so let's tease that out.

(08:07):
That's fine with me. So, uh, we'll just sit here
quietly for a second as we go past this. Okay,
all right, we ready, yeah, alright, So the current story,
like the simple version of the current story is the
Neanderthal and the I mean, should we just say the
modern human or Homo sap That's how I was like,

(08:28):
how could because they're both humans, yeah, but they're just
two different species of human sapience tal and sapiens. All right.
So they separated between a half a million and about
six hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and they both
diverge from a common branch um H. Heidel their genesis rgensis.
I think the g is hard. I'm pretty sure that's right. H. Heidelbergensis. Yeah,

(08:52):
all right, that sounds right. Yeah. And this was in Africa, right,
that's where the divergence happened. That's right. Um. Then, so
either the division, the divergence happened in Africa or some
Heidelbergensis state in Africa, and some spread out of Africa
to yeah, into the Old World in Asia. And over time,

(09:16):
because of the separation, these groups of humans started branching
out and developing into distinct species. One of the species,
the first one to develop into a distinct species from
this branch, was Neanderthals, and by at least four hundred
thousand years ago, there were Neanderthals running around like distinct

(09:40):
species of humans called Neanderthals. Yeah, and they were developing
independently because they were very far from each other, and
they didn't for a very long time, did not have
very much, if any, contact with one another. Yeah. Remember
we did an episode on speciation where like brown bears
and polar bears used to be the same bear, but
the polar bear started drifting further and further north, and

(10:02):
they actually adapted to a different climate, different habitat, so
much so that they became a different species. That's the
exact same thing that we're talking at. Heidelberg ansis drifted
into two different parts of Africa and Europe, and the
climate in the habitat was different enough that it split
into two different species. Yeah. So what you've got in

(10:22):
Eurasia is a range from like Portugal and whales in
the west over to like Siberia. This is for Neanderthals, right, Yeah,
in the east. So that was their range in general,
and all the way down to the Middle East. Yeah,
it was a huge range, very big range. Um the biggest. Uh.

(10:43):
They were shorter than sapiens that we're still in Africa.
They were kind of stockier, they had bigger brains, they
were by most accounts, stronger, more muscular, had wider hips
and shoulders, sturdier bones, very sturdy, just stocky, robust things
you would not want to mess with the Neanderthal No,
and they were very adaptable. They they lived in very

(11:05):
cold environments. Uh, they lived in very sort of warm,
temperate environments. So it depends on the time. This is
what they think. They think that that range that was
so huge for the Neanderthals, there wasn't necessarily Neanderthals living
in all parts of that range at the same time
for four hundred thousand years or three fifty thousand years.

(11:26):
They think that over time, some Neanderthal populations died and
others came along and replaced them, and then some of
them moved down here and some of them were over here.
That they may have lived in different parts of the
world at the same time, but not necessarily their entire
range all at once. For the whole three fifty thousand years.

(11:46):
They moved a lot, and nor did they move all
together as whole populations. It was a lot of local
extinctions and recolonizations going on, right think exactly. So it's
almost like if you could look at the map of
eur Asia on a time lapse over three fifty thousand
years that Neanderthals were around in the area, you would
just kind of see these little populations kind of growing

(12:08):
and popping and dissolving and then picking up again. And
these are actually new groups going into areas becoming like
dying out for one reason or another. And then a
thousand or ten thousand years later, there's another group that says, oh,
this is a great spot and showing up kind of
like our real Atlantis episode. Remember there's like like twelve

(12:29):
feet of like fifty different settlements over thousands and thousands
of years because they're just like, this is a great
place to settle, but each one had no idea that
the last one was there. Same thing with the Neanderthal range.
So the Neanderthals are doing their thing all over your Asia.
Meanwhile back in Africa and East Africa, you've got the
Sapien doing their thing. And then they start to radiate

(12:53):
out a little bits, the Sapiens and then get obviously
the Middle East would be a pretty logical next place
to go from Africa, and they happened upon the Neanderthal
and they're like wow, we wow, who are you? And
then they were all of a sudden sharing space together,
right starting about a hundred thousand years ago in the

(13:15):
Middle East, in the Middle East, and then in Europe.
They shared space for two hundred to five hundred generations. Yeah,
they just like the Neanderthals spread out. The sapiens basically
followed the same path. But there were already people there.
It was Neanderthals and um. Yeah, two hundred generations, generations
between four thousand and ten thousand years. Very long time

(13:35):
to share space. It really is like that many generations
that that of just living in the same place. The
thing is is over the lifespan of the Neanderthals, three
fifty thousand years, four thousand years is nothing. It's the
blink of an eye. And around the time about so

(13:56):
say humans or sapiens showed up in Europe about forty
two two thousand years ago, about forty thou years ago
something give or take a few thousand years, Neanderthals just vanished.
Did they melt? We don't remember that old theory. That's
all right, they've melted. It was like nine years ago.

(14:16):
That was so uh. I think it's a good place
for a break. Yeah, we'll talk about what happened right
after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving in
your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from
Josh Damn chuck stuff you should know, all right, m alright, So, uh,

(14:50):
appearance of of sapiens in Europe before this um disappearance
of Neanderthals. For a very long time, everyone basically just
had one of two you're easy, either that sapiens killed
them off or that they were just so smart that
they out competed them for resources and they went away.

(15:10):
And that was It's known as the replacement model or
the recent African origin model, right, and people were all
on that train. Some people still very much are. Oh yeah,
in academia, not just not just you know, the general public.
I say, boo to that. I agree, And it seems
like there are people who are kind of chipping away
at that. But I believe the replacement model is the

(15:30):
dominant model for what happened to the Neanderthals. It basically says, humans,
Homo sapiens came along and our brains are so much smarter.
We were capable of things that Neanderthals couldn't even dream of, um,
things like culture and art and all sorts of men right,
um language probably um that the Neanderthals just didn't stand

(15:51):
a chance. Once the sapience showed up. It was like
progresses here, go ahead and die and either directly by
killing them via warfare or like you said, just out
competing them. That was it for the Neanderthals. And the
timing is definitely well sure suspect, you know, like and
I think that's what a lot of people have clamped
onto is humans show up a couple of thousand years,

(16:11):
Neanderthals are gone. Yeah, it makes sense, um on the surface.
But in two thousand and ten there was some pretty
startling discovery. Um, they fully sequenced Neanderthal genome, which is amazing,
super amazing, and we found out wait a minute, us sapiens,
some of us have Neanderthal DNA in our bodies. Are

(16:35):
Neanderthals ourselves? Yeah about depending on where you're from in
your ethnic background, but if you're European or Asian, you
have pretty good likelihood of being one to four percent
in Neanderthal as far as your DNA goes. UM. In
Sub Saharan Africa, there's not any obviously, because that's where
the sapiens were all, uh, you know, hanging out and
doing their thing right. They hadn't migrated out and intermixed

(16:57):
with the with the Neanderthals. So you know what that means.
That means that time period where they were all sharing space,
they're also sharing space. There was like a lot of
you know what I'm saying, they were making love. Oh
that ye took took would make love and create little
baby tooktoks. We have to say for just to keep

(17:19):
your crownded, we're not exactly sure what kind of uh
circumstances that making love took. No, you're right, it could
have been mistaken identity. Um. And obviously the brutal scenario,
which is probably the most likely, is that they came
in by force and that was like raping and pillaging
going up. But the thing is, we don't know that
that's necessarily likely. You know, I don't know. We honestly

(17:41):
have such a little understandings to Neanderthal We have no
idea they might have been hippies, But we got to
throw that out there, uh as one of the obvious possibilities. Yeah,
as much as you want to just be like, oh,
that's so awesome that Neanderthals were there, the humans showed
up and rather than humans killing off Neanderthals, get out
of here, you old archaic humans, they said, let's get

(18:03):
it on well, not only let's get on, let's let's
let's share resources, let's teach each other things, let's explore
life together, and let's didn't go away. They just got
absorbed and because there were far more sapiens, uh, their
traits just you know, sort of got weeded out over
the years for the most part. So this is the

(18:25):
rival to that replacement model that's the dominant model. This
is called the multi regional evolution model, and it says
basically what you just said, that Neanderthals and humans did
it so much that the hybrid human Neanderthals that were
um that were born as offspring um, they they mated

(18:47):
with other Neanderthals or other humans. But because there were
more sapiens I'm sorry, more sapiens than there were Neanderthals,
the likelihood was that a hybrid would be much more
likely to mate with a sapient and then that high
bread would be even more watered down neandertal And then
over time, because of and Neanderthals didn't die off, they

(19:10):
didn't get chased out, they just became part of that
larger human genome. So there's another theory too that's interesting,
or another interpretation I guess it's not a theory. And
this has to do with climate change. Um. They did
a study into and well this year actually two thousand
nineteen in France, and they discovered that all you need

(19:32):
over the course of about ten thousand years is about
a two point seven decrease in fertility rates UM to
go bye bye. Ten tho years for a decrease in
UM first time young Neanderthal mothers that population, and they
said cut that in half basically are close to it.

(19:52):
Within four thousand years, you would need only an eight
percent decrease in fertility and that same group. So it's
very uh, it makes a lot of sense that with
a little bit of climate change and a little bit
of scarcity and just uh, it didn't have to be
anything drastic. But over that amount of time, if you
don't have any as many calories going into your body

(20:14):
in your first time under twenty year old uh Neanderthal mother,
you're not going to be successful and you're not gonna
be as fertile. And then over time that just means
you you kind of very quietly and slowly go away. Yeah,
I got this. I think I found this article from
Live Science and in it they they say, by the way, um,
if the human replacement rate dropped to one point three

(20:36):
babies per mother, we'd be gone in three years. So
so just a very slight drop among neandertals could have
accounted for that four thousand to ten thousand year process
of just suddenly disappearing. And again in this this interpretation,
humans didn't do anything. We didn't war with them, we

(20:56):
didn't outcompete them, we we didn't do anything. It was
just something happened to the environment and it was just
harder to be fertile. And it wasn't all at once.
Maybe it might have been staggered in different parts of
the world exactly over over four thousand to ten thousand years.
And the reason it wasn't that Neanderthals couldn't compete, that
they couldn't survive um, whereas humans could. Because Neanderthals, again,

(21:20):
their lifespan was three hundred fifty thousand years. Modern humans
have only been around for fifty to a hundred thousand years,
maybe two at the outside. So Neanderhal's had been around
for a very long time, had been very good at
adapting to a changing climate basically the whole time that
they were around, so It's not like they couldn't compete
or couldn't adapt and humans could. What they think is

(21:41):
that they were just way more humans, and so our
numbers probably dropped at the same rate that Neanderthal numbers did.
There was just more of us to survive and carry
on after things got better. Yeah, and in more varied
ranges in parts of the world too. That all kind
of makes sense to me. Yeah, I suppose it could be. Uh,

(22:02):
both of those, climate change and lovemaking right very easily. Yeah,
they definitely go hand in hand. Like should we take
another break? All right, We'll take another break and talk
about what we now the sort of current understanding of
the picture of what the Neanderthal was. Right after this, Well,
now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want

(22:24):
to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck.
It's stuff you should know. All right. By the way,

(22:45):
have you seen or heard of that movie William? Uh,
it was out in April, did not do well, was
not reviewed well. But it is basically a sort of
mad scientist. Not a mad scientist, but a scientist with
a mad idea. Uh, there's a human neandertal born. They

(23:09):
get the d n A impregnate a modern sapient woman
and she has a a Neandertal boy, William, and he
goes to high school. I did not see that. I
had no idea about that movie. Yeah, just check out
the trailer. Oh, I don't haven't seen it. It's not
supposed to be very good, and it did not look
very good. But it was very much like, you know,

(23:31):
I just want to fit in, and he's you know,
he's in Neandertal. He's got the regular haircut, in the
vans and the jeans and the T shirt. He's got
the big forehead and the thick It sounds a lot,
it does, and it looks like it could be a joke,
but it's real. Was there that I feel good in

(23:51):
the middle of the trailer or that scene where like
like a teen woolf or something where he's really good
at sports or something. Yeah, yeah, man, William, Yeah, there's
a weekend for you. I'm not gonna watch it, but
I just thought it'd be it'd be worth mentioning before
the emails come in. So, uh, the image. We were

(24:15):
on a quest. I think um and sciences on a
quest to sort of rehabilitate That's why you mentioned that,
but to rehabilitate the image of the Neanderthal is this
hunched over brute. Part of the problem is, uh they
sort of based in an entire species on this one

(24:35):
hunched over uh dude skeleton skeleton, and they're like, look
at them that they're all hunched over oaths. And now
they're like, oh, actually that individual may have had a
digener to bone disease. And what we now think is
they just walked around like we do and probably looked
a lot like we do. Yeah. Um. They think that

(24:56):
from you, like, sequencing the Neanderthal genome, they think that
at least some of them had red hair and light
colored skin, which, by the way, by interbreeding UM with
neandertals recent arrivals from Africa, their hybrid offspring would have
been conferred with UM thicker, straighter hair, a smaller compact frame,

(25:19):
all sorts of stuff that you would need UM in
this colder climate of eur Asia from having just come
up from Africa over the last few generations. So there
was good stuff, there was also bad. So they think
some of the disease that we suffer from uh IS
is actually related to neandertal DNA. That doesn't have a
context or a point or a function like it used to,

(25:41):
and that that now it's actually producing disease in us. Yeah,
like the same d NA. Like they could have had
the same things that we associate with diabetes and crones,
but they would have bedn't affect them like it does us. Yeah,
there's a lifestyle and everything that how we diverged precisely
really interesting, I think is actually that's the alternative explanation

(26:03):
for the hygiene hypothesis. I did these these both sort
of linked in some ways right there. So behaviorally, it's, uh,
we're again we're trying to get away from this idea
of cavemen, uh and things that we thought were strictly sapient.
Over the years, it turns out that Neanderthals were actually

(26:23):
good at like making tools. Uh. And this really interesting technique, uh,
the Leva leva loire technique, which is basically, I am
in the area where I have the resources to make
all the tools, but we gotta pack up and leave,
and we don't know if we're gonna have this stuff there. Yeah,
there's some dinosaurs after us. Yeah, so like the very

(26:45):
like raw resource, like let's say it's just a certain
type of stone. So we're gonna pre shape all these
things into it's sort of a rudimentary uh, a rudimentary
tool that we can later make into a hammer or
a chisel, like, depending on what we need. But we're
kind of sort of pre shape them here, pack them up,
and take them all with us, so we'll have this
little factory that we can set up anywhere we want

(27:07):
what we need. Yeah, that's smart, it is, and it's
a technological innovation that is definitely attributed to the Neanderthals,
Like they came up with um and tool making, Like
we knew that older archaic humans were good with tools
going back probably a million or so years. Chimps use tools,
they use termite sticks. So people are saying, like great,

(27:28):
Like the Neanderthals like created some sort of like new technology,
some new tool culture. Um, who cares. It still doesn't
make them smart. But there's other stuff we found out
about Neanderthals that we started that have really kind of
changed our view of them because they're doing things or
they we found out they're capable of things that that
they are supposed to. Those are the things that make

(27:50):
humans humans, Like Neanderthals aren't supposed to have been doing this.
But the more evidence we're getting, the with the fresher
eyes were looking at existing evidence, it's starting to look
like they were behaviorally modern like humans, or there's a
really good chance that they were Yeah like the sapes. Uh,
they could they could spark fire, so the old notion
like quest for fire, that they just had to sit

(28:12):
around and wait for lightning to strike a bush is
not true. They use that fire to cook food, they think,
they think, which is a big deal. It's open new
interpretation stuff. Um what else they know from studying the
injuries on the animals that they hunted, That they were
very intelligent hunters and they killed big, big animals at

(28:32):
close range, which meant that they were skilled, that they
understood risk, that they were brave, and that they will
get into communication more. But you've got to be communicating
to to do something like that. Yeah, because they would
hunt in packs, but they would do it in close range.
The hunt in packs and always at the velociraptor. Oh,
I think so Jurassic Park by uh the while, they

(28:55):
threw me off. Sorry, do you think I'd be expecting
in this episode? Though? You know it wasn't they do
hunting packs though it was I was just appropriating that line.
But what was it? Oh man, they do travel in
they do pack lightly, Yeah, that was it? Okay, so um,
the fact that these guys would take on reindeer and

(29:16):
bison and mammoths at close range with like spears and
javelins and like, you know, some some hand to hand
combat type stuff has really kind of undermined that that
replacement model idea that humans came in and just killed
off all the Neanderthals because they just stood no chance.
They right, Neanderthals were tough, tough mos. Yes, most um

(29:44):
one of the big ones here. And this is where
it gets super interesting, I think to me is the
use of symbols. That is something that we thought was
very much sapien, very sapey. Right, if if they can,
if they we can show that Neanderthals understood symbols and
had that kind of higher thought that would make them

(30:05):
behaviorally equivalent to humans. And we're talking like any sapiens.
We're talking anything from making a like a necklace out
of beads to wear like an adornments, to using like
pigments on the face like the precursor to make up
and stuff like that. Yeah, humans have been shown to
UM to have been doing that at least for the

(30:27):
last eighty thousand years. And I don't know why I
can't get that um sapes have been doing that. Uh,
there's the earliest evidences at two sites in Ethiopia, and
this is they think it was like for you know,
identity or jewelry or something like that, but it is like,
that's not something you just do like this is there's

(30:47):
a there's not necessarily a practical function to it, and
it's a form of art. And there's ambiguous evidence that
Neanderthals did this too, that there was body adornment, that
there was that they would color themselves and pigments, put
on makeup basically right, So here's the thing question. So

(31:09):
that would suggest that Okay, if Neanderthal's do that and
humans did that too, then that makes Neanderthal's equivalent to
humans behaviorally. But the people who are big time into
the replacement model that Neanderthals were actually kind of stupid
and humans are the pinnacle and the first example of
higher intelligence. UM, they say, well, if you really kind

(31:31):
of date some of this stuff that the Neanderthal has
made it's probably around the time that humans showed up,
and it's really just Neanderthal's copying what they saw humans doing.
But there's no symbol symbolism to it, and that like
they could copy a shell as an ornament, but there
they didn't have any meaning. Yeah, which is a really

(31:51):
sort of a snotty approach. I think so too. Well,
they might have done it, but they were just copying,
no copying. Remember that kid, you know the kids doing
now he or she is running the company? Is that
Dennis Snoven ice cream and manager ice crea factory manager. So, uh,

(32:15):
cave art. Let's talk about cave art because this is
this is the one thing that um to make art
is the one thing that traditionally have always separated sapes
from everyone else. Right, Like, if everybody's saying, okay, even
if Neanderthals came up with body adornments, that's not art.
We're gonna the bar. This is what the poop pooers say,

(32:38):
that doesn't really qualify as art. Cave art is where
it's at. If you could show me Neanderthals that created
cave art, I will agree that they are behaviorally equivalent
to modern humans of their era. Yeah, and they found
cave art modern sapiens. Man, they found cave art at
the same time that there were Neanderthals around caves it um. Again,

(33:01):
it was just like, oh, well that was the Sapes.
That wasn't the Neanderthals doing that, right? They think that
the Savings came in and made that cave art, right, Like,
we need an ambiguous proof at this point. Here's the problem.
Radiocarbon dating gets unreliable after forty years, and it requires
organic material to date these pigments. Uh, they're using mineral pigments,

(33:23):
not organic one. So that was a problem. But and
this is kind of mind blowing. In two thousand eighteen,
they discovered or I guess perfected a dating technique that
measures the rate of decay of uranium atoms and calcite deposits.
So that's what makes up stalactites and stalagmites. Yeah. So
the idea is if you find cave art's sort of

(33:45):
like the mosquito caught an amber, it's a time stamp.
If you find cave art that's underneath uh some of
this deposits that have dripped down over it and encased it,
and you can date that. Then you know how old
that cave art is? Yeah, because the cave of arts
under the caw site. You know how old the cave
the caw site is than the cave art has to
be at least as old or slightly older than the

(34:07):
earliest deposit of cow sit. What's the secret? Well, there
was there was a study in two thousand and eighteen
that found that some cave art in in a cave
in Spain was created sixty four thousand years ago, a
full twenty thousand plus years before Homo sapiens showed up
in the area, which means that it had to have
been Neanderthals that created this cave art. Do you know

(34:31):
what the brewer said? That's not really art? What s
wwhere to God? Are you serious? He's like some hand
stencils and some dots on the wall, that doesn't count.
That's the first art ye tracing their hand to make
a turkey. They are really holding on for dear life.
But it's it's some people are really swimming against this current,
like they do not want the idea that humans are

(34:53):
not uniquely um uh special. I guess in that sense
that people have been thinking that it was humans and
these Homo sapiens that have the ability to create art
and think symbolically. Um, and it's starting to look like
that's not the case. Not only that that not it's
not just humans, and that maybe Neanderthals did too. But

(35:16):
that's possible that this kind of stuff evolved even further
back in that Heidelbergensis are less common ancestor running around
seven thousand years ago, may have created art and may
have been doing all this other stuff too that makes
us uniquely human. Well. Um, another one is music. They
have found bones from k bears in southeast Europe that

(35:39):
had these holes and they're like, hey, looks like a
flute to me, plays like a flute. It sounds like
a flute. Um. So it's Jethro tull. Uh. That's so good.
I'm so glad that they added flute to their their outfit.
Not many groups Martial Tucker band had the flute. And

(35:59):
here's a little something for you. I mean, I told
the story, but I was in our little local market
getting some food about two years ago, remember that, and
there was a guy in a band clearly and he
was like, play flute for Marshall Tucker. It's like, are
you kidding? No, I'm not like, you're one of the
two most famous flutists in rock music. Sure, but it

(36:19):
wasn't the original guy I found out still plays flute
from Marshall Tucker agreed. Just because he didn't write those
flute parts doesn't make him any less of a flutist.
He could still play. Yeah, so uh Anyway, they the
naysayers with the flute are just like, oh no, man,
those are just they were bones chomped on by hyena teeth. Yeah,

(36:41):
the the flute holes, the finger holes are teeth teeth marks. Yeah,
and sure you can play aqualong on it, but that's
just because the hyenas and their teeth marks. Right. Um.
There's a there's also really good evidence, cumulative evidence. There's
one other thing about the cave art that we didn't say.

(37:02):
Uh well, that was one thing that they found what
looks to be stalactite like purposeful arrangements of stalactites in
a cave that's from a hundred and seventy six thousand
years sure, right um, But now there are other similar
cave art paintings in Spanish caves um are in different places.

(37:22):
So they think it was an actual part of Neanderthal culture.
There wasn't one particularly imaginative Neanderthal who happened to leave
it behind. Yes, and it even said this is art
love took took find me on insta at took took
Oh if only um So. The The other thing that

(37:44):
there's a lot of a massed evidence for is that
Neanderthals appeared to have buried they're dead. This is pretty cool.
This is enormous because Okay, not only can they think
symbolically and like art and creating representations of things that
may or may not exist, they can they're thinking about
something coming after this. You don't just bury a corpse

(38:08):
for many reasons other than um spiritual reasons. I mean,
you can to keep, like you know, the wolves away
because you're going to camp near the corpse. But if
you're a hunter gather, you just move camp and you
can leave the person laying out there in the bush
by for the wolves to take. It doesn't matter because
there's no afterlife. If you bury somebody, it indicates you

(38:30):
thinking about something beyond this life, and that is definitely
higher level thinking. Yeah, and when we say Barry, we
don't mean they just found this body like on the
floor of a deep cave, like they dug a hole
and placed a body in there, positioned them in a
specific way. They found Yeah, different like grave sites basically
like cemeteries, bodies buried in the same manner. Uh. And

(38:51):
they even found in northern Iraq pollen flower pollen, which
clearly suggests that they buried them with flowers. They definitely
seems to that's like, that's a funerary, right, unless it
was just an accident and they just dropped a bunch
of flowers on the way up, which I mean, it's possible,
but it seems unlikely. I don't know if I'm being naive,

(39:12):
but I really want to believe this. Yeah, well, it's nice,
it's refreshing to think about. You know, humans don't have
to have for sapiens don't have to have the market corner.
We can share the humanity. Yeah, here's another one. Um,
if they were just brutes who you know, who didn't
have any capacity to understand things or take care of

(39:34):
one another. They found individuals, and one in particular that
was deaf, likely visually impaired because of a blow to
the head from as a ute, probably from a sapien.
Maybe ye was missing his right hand and then suffered
a disease that reduced his mobility. And they found this

(39:55):
person lived into his forties, maybe up to fifty. Yeah,
which there's no way person would have survived without a
community of people taking care of and making sure that
this person survived and ate and got around and moved
along with them because they cared for one another and
tried to heal one another. Right, Yeah, they took care
of their sick. They're injured, they're they're disabled, they're ill

(40:18):
um they like, they took they shared resources with them.
People who couldn't necessarily contribute still got stuff from the
from the community, which suggests this tight knit social group
that cared for one another. And then what about language?
So this one just knocked my socks off. There are
these Dutch researchers who wrote a paper that argued that um,

(40:41):
Neanderthal's almost certainly spoke a nuanced language that we would
recognize as a modern language um and that not only
did Neanderthals speak this speak their own language, probably Heidelbergensis
and maybe even further back in our archaic family line
spoke language too, and that if that's true, If that's

(41:04):
the case, Neanderthals had their own language, and human humans
absorbed Neanderthal's both culturally and genetically. It's entirely possible that
there are traces of Neanderthal language that still appear in
our languages that are spoken around the world today unbeknownst
to us. Man, if they could find out those words,
isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love that.

(41:28):
I like all this. I love you Neanderthals, love you Sapien,
love you Tuck Tuck and uh. I think I used
to just throw tuk tuk around in various ways, but
then you developed a taste for watching and make luve
that's right. But let me just from this point forward,
Took Took is clearly uh deep No, clearly Neanderthal. Ohh.

(41:51):
I think I had kind of just threw Took Took's
name around as any kind of early man. Yeah, he
could have been Captain Caveman. He could have been the
Gego cave Man. But he could be William for all
I know. You know, I thought about it. I thought
about it. The so Took Took is officially Neandertal. Yes, okay, um,
the Geico Caveman is actually a really good parable for

(42:14):
the struggle between the interpretation of Neanderthals today, like everybody's
like it's so easy a caveman could do it, and
this guy's playing like squash and driving a Porsche. Yeah.
Do you remember that their their short lived TV show.
I remember that it existed, but I never saw it.
They drove one of them drove a Porsche. Yeah, and
now a word from Geico. Uh okay, Well, if you

(42:36):
want to know more about Neanderthals, start reading up about it.
And there's a pretty amazing exhibit funded by one of
the Koch brothers if I'm not mistaken, at the Smithsonian
where you can see a real live Neanderthal skeleton. Really
pretty beautiful. Um, what's their angle right something? Maybe maybe
they're trying to rehabilitate Neandertals for some reason to bring

(42:59):
them back is floated workers. And since I just said
something about the Koch brothers, time for go ahead administrative Okay, Chuck,
as I said, it's time for administrative. Is this like

(43:26):
a family guy where you're just gonna do that? All right,
We're gonna start this one off. This is when we
thank listeners for sending in kindnesses to us and Michelle
from Crown Royal once again. The Booze company that just
keeps giving. I know, they just keep us in booze.
Thanks a lot for that, and I just wrote down

(43:47):
more booze. But we'll go ahead and plug the Crown
Royal rye. What about those, um, those glasses they gave us,
those are nice, So they're like these the rocks classes tumblers. Yeah,
um got a good hef to them, nice ape size
bottom and then yeah in that thick bottom th h
I C C bottom. Um. There is a laser etched

(44:07):
crumb Royal three D logo which is like so classy.
Your pinky can't touch the glass physically impossible. Yeah, it
just sticks straight up in the air when you're drinking
out of these glass. Oh. A lot of research went
into that design, you know, to make sure that pinky
was nowhere near the blast um. Aaron Clark, speaking of pinkies,

(44:29):
Aaron Clark sent us a Twinkie the Kid statue. Thanks Aaron,
that's right. Um, Monica and kam A and Fukushima Japan
send it's a nice, very nice handwritten letter and some
Fuku stuff pin stickers, calendars, magazine. Uh it's I got
at the desk can share that with you and they said, uh,

(44:52):
things are much better now. Good. That's cryptic, but yes, good.
I'm glad. Um. So we haven't done this in a
little I want to say thank you very much for
the Christmas cards from Heather K and Sri Lanka and
one from Renee and Eric Chester. It's very kind of you, guys.
Here's one maybe the weirdest thing we've ever gotten, but

(45:13):
one of the most awesome. Scott border Lan remember our
Wendy's Chili Finger episode. He sent us Wendy's chili from
that Wendy's. Wow, I think you're out of town. Yeah.
It obviously was no good by the time it got
to me, even and he was like, I know this
is not I'm not expecting you to eat this, but

(45:34):
he taped it up and he was like, this is
chili from that very Wendy's. That's amazing. He just thought
it would be kind of fun and it was. You
may be right, that may be the weirdest thing, but
not even freeze dried. And then there's Brooke Bergen sent
a T shirt and stickers of his work and you
can check out is very very awesome work. I believe

(45:55):
his it could be a girl. Um, and you can
check out there are awesome work at brooks Bergen b
r O O K S b U r g A
and dot com. That's right, and that that raises a point.
If you want to, uh send us the pronoun you
identify with, we are more than happy to abide by that.
Claire Sanchez and his skincakes, Oh yeah, very simple, delicious.

(46:21):
Teresa sent us really awesome quilted hand quilted postcards. Oh
that's right, yeah, beautiful. Again. We haven't done this in
a while. Sorry for everybody who's been sitting around waiting
having to listen to every episode just on the off
chance that administrative details is on. So everyone, Jerry just
stopped us right in the middle and said, I have one.

(46:41):
We always go on and on about Jerry and her miso. Uh,
big ups to Adam Brenton in Japan sent Jerry some miso.
How about that way to go, Adam. Jerry got our
own gift after eleven years, after all this time, our
very own gift, and meaning we didn't also getting me
so right, sure, and we even asked him she's hoarding it? Yeah,

(47:02):
because we share with Jerry. She didn't didn't go both ways.
We tried to. Yeah. Uh so let's see Joanna send
us delicious beer chocolates. Remember those? Um she brought him
to our Portland's show, I believe, Yeah yeah, and they
were awesome, So thanks a lot. You don't remember him
because they were beer chocolates. Tammy and Justin send us

(47:24):
miniature clay figures handpainted, which is very very sweet, along
with the very nice letter. We got a postcard from Vienna,
probably not Voyanna Georgia. I think it was Vienna, Austria,
like the real one from Pauline. Thanks a lot, Pauline,
Michelle and Nevin of Smithtown, New York sin his wedding invitation. Um,
happy marriage, guys, masl tov uh. And then we gotta

(47:46):
thank you note from Mitch m I C H. But
it rhymes with rich, so thank you for the thank
you note. Mitch Lowell Hutchinson sent us some uh oh
these are wonderful. There some hand lathed pins. You remember Lowells?
And when who sponsored our She's one of our elephant sponsors.
Yeah yeah, handpainted wood lathed pens. Yeah, man, very very beautiful.

(48:08):
And on that note, we actually got a lot of
pins and I don't think I wrote all of them
down because we did our episode on pens and people
felt compelled to send us their favorite pen and spread
the pen love. So if we forgot your pen, big apologies.
Yeah for real, that was very nice d o A.
And by the way, also again, um, you can check
out Lowell's turned Wood Creations and by the way, she

(48:32):
donates of all sales to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust too,
So go to at c dot com slash shop, slash
l O W E L L h U T C
H D E S I g N S wonderful Joe
gather Coleson his T shirts and c d s from
his horror punk band Headstone Horrors. It's a great name. Yeah. Uh.

(48:55):
And then let's see, I've only got I got three more. Okay,
I've got a book from Nick Kemper. Thanks a lot
for the book. Nick. That is beautiful of you, Mike, Ennis.
And it's a box of coffee crisps and they are
delicious and they are long gone. Yeah I can attest
they are very yummy, Thanks Mike. And then uh, we
got a an amazing illustration of us with a peacock

(49:16):
by CALLI. Thanks for that it's a great one, all right.
I got two more um adam Ressus and us megalodon teeth.
Yes for pretty awesome. Yeah, they are in large as
you would expect. You got another one. I'm done, all right,
my last one. Then, Kathy Hutton sent us some dog collars.
She works for a nonprofit spay and neuter clinic in

(49:38):
Washington State. Curly Tailed Hawk is who makes these collars,
and they donate a dollar from every collar that you
can just go to Curly Tailed Hawk dot com and
get your dog a new collar already and some of
that money will go to the spay and neuter clinic,
which is great. There you go, Well, thank you everybody.
If you want to get in touch with us, you

(49:59):
don't have to sentence they think, you can just say hi.
Go on to our social networks and you can find
all the links at stuff you should Know dot com.
You can also send us an email to stuff podcast
at I Heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of i Heeart Radios. How stuff works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(50:21):
favorite shows.