August 29, 2020 • 38 mins
What do recent studies about surfer’s ear and neanderthals reveal about their relationship with the ocean? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the condition and some recent findings regarding the neanderthals. (Originally published 8/27/2019)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for a
classic episode of the show. This one was originally called
Surfing Neander Tolls and it published on August nineteen. So
grab a board, the surf is up. Welcome to Stuff
(00:26):
to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And before we turn the mics on, or actually after
we turned the mics on, but before we officially started
the episode, we were just talking about is there a
(00:46):
better eighties action movie than Point Break? Um? I mean,
arguably there there are some, definitely some action pictures that
I love more than Point Break, But Point Break has
a purity to it, you know, this like this, this
the weird nobility of this band of nomadic surfers who
are also bank robbers and uh and then the man
(01:10):
who is pursuing them, a man who must become a
surfer in order to catch surfers. Because isn't that it
that the old saying in order to catch a surfer,
you must become a surfer. Uh, something like that. Patrick
Swayze is the key to the movie. Oh and hey,
by the way, if you're out there, some kind of
pedants saying wait a minute point break didn't come out
in the nineteen eighties. How are you saying it's the
best eighties action movie? As we all know, Sinna in
(01:33):
the cinema world, the nineteen eighties lasted until Okay, yeah,
I think that's a solid argument. But yeah, this was.
This was some some really great sways in this film,
Like Swayzy just has such such a unique charisma that
he's it's it's like with the Rhodhouse. You know, he's
he's able to be just so serious in this role
(01:55):
and it's and you're you're laughing because it is ridiculous,
but at the same time you're totally buying into this presentation.
He's giving you absolutely the the deep seriousness and the
delivery of the lines like pain don't hurt, the fact
that he is is trying to commit to this character
who's like a philosopher bouncer. Yeah, in Roadhouse, but now,
(02:18):
I mean, essentially, I think he's playing the same character
in Point Break, and that in Roadhouse he's a philosopher bouncer.
In Point Break, he's the same character. He's now become
a philosopher surfer slash bank robber. Yeah, and and he's
he's tremendous. He just like he eats that they've seen
he's in point Point Break is a great example of
one of these eighties again, but it was the eighties.
(02:40):
Eighties action movies that is so silly in a way
that like, there are still action movies that have a
great spirit of silliness that aren't like these unpleasant, self
serious action movies. Uh well, you know, a good example
is like the later movies in the Fast and the
Furious franchise, which can be a lot of fun, but
they are they're in the joke like the rock is
(03:01):
winking at the camera. It's you know, it's played explicitly
for a kind of like wet laughter that like cars
can fly and all this, But that's not what's going
on in Point Break, Point Break, and and some of
the movies like it are just as silly as the
later Fast and the Furious movies, but they're not they're
not winking at you. They're not in on the joke. Instead,
(03:21):
they've got Patrick Swayzy, who's taken himself real seriously. I
wonder if part of that is that a film like
Point Break like building on the in a sense, even
though it's an eighties and so technically nineties film, it's
building on like the grittier uh, like a film heritage
of the nineteen seventies that preceded it, and where whereas
(03:41):
nineties films are are proceeding from the eighties films, uh
and so forth to where there's just like the initial
groundwork underneath something like The Fast and the Furious, it's
just that much sillier and that that and just further
removed from like nineteen seventies cinema. Wait a minute, why
are we talking about Point Break? Oh? Yeah, we're talking
about it because this episode is about surfing the inder Tals.
(04:04):
I mean, it's also not about surfing Neandertals, but it
is about Neanderthals. It's about surfer's ear and uh, surfing
the Andertals, the working title of Point Break that was
on the script. It It is exactly where my mind
went when I first read a very recent scientific paper
that came out about the under tolls and surfers here.
(04:26):
But but before we get into all that, um and
we may come back two point break. As we proceed again,
I want to be clear that this episode is not
really about surfing. It doesn't have that much to do
with surfing. But I do want to point out the
ancient origins of this aquatic practice we call surfing. What
surfing wasn't invented in the nineteen sixties, No, no, no.
(04:46):
And I was looking at a couple of sources on this,
but but one of the better ones that came across
um it was a book by Ben R. Finney and
James D. Houston called Surfing, A History of the Ancient
Hawaiian Sport and U pretty inscifle. They point out that
that all you need really to surf is a surfer
and a board and of course waves um or something
(05:08):
standing in for a board, such as a canoe, or
even the surfer's own body. I mean, you can body surf.
What You don't need a surfballa you don't need a
surf suit. Well, as we'll discuss, it can be very helpful,
especially in the colder waters. But you know, it's just
it's ultimately and I don't know. Have you ever surfed, Joe,
have you ever? No, I've I mean very limited water experience.
(05:32):
I've done like knee boarding, and that's I know, that's
not surfing. I'd say that's the closest to that. You've
You've gotten up on your knees on a surfboard, well,
not on a surfboard, on a knee board. I don't
know how different they are. I've gotten up on my
knees on a floating thing that was being towed behind
a boat. Okay, well a little. It's not close, but
but it's it's enough. We can we can build from here.
(05:54):
So I I am not a surfer, but I on
a trip to Whoa I, um, you know, like like
twenty years ago or something. Um, I was encouraged by
a friend to go out and try it. This friend
had surfed before. This is very helpful I find. If
you were going to try to surf, uh, certainly go
with someone who has at least done it once before,
(06:15):
but preverably somebody who who is more skilled than that.
But there is this kind of magical moment where you're
you're pushing the board, you're you're you're paddling and kicking.
You're just going as hard and as fast as you can. Uh,
and then it comes this this almost magical moment where
the wave catches the board and suddenly the waves propelling
the board. And this is the point where then you
(06:36):
can climb up on onto your knees on the board.
And then and once you you know, have your figure
out what you're doing, this is where you can rise
up on both of your feet on the board and
you can ride the surfboard like a surfer rides a surfboard.
And it sounds hard. I mean, it's it's it's one
of those things where I definitely would have given up
had I not been encouraged to keep doing it, you know,
(06:58):
to just keep doing it again once more. Let's go,
let's paddle back, and then paddle as hard and fast
as you can to try and catch this magical moment
when the when the board catches you. Um. Yeah, and
so like once so, all you need is aboard the
waves yourself and then, like the patients and or courage
to to reach that point where you can rise up
on the board and become comfortable enough doing so that
(07:20):
you can manipulate the bird board further. Okay, so surfing
was not invented by the beach boys in the mid
twentieth century. Where does surfing actually come from? Well, as
the authors at this point out how Hawaii is of
course strongly associated with surfing, and humans seem to have
first arrived at these far flung Polynesian islands by between
three hundred and four hundred CE. Now, long boards would
(07:43):
have developed over time, and the author's guess that Hawaiian
surfing is ultimately perhaps a thousand years old, Yet the
principles involved would have been known to Pacific islanders and
the first pioneers to enter the Pacific as far back
as two thousand b C. So, um, you know, it's
one of those again, it's one of those things where
(08:04):
the necessary technology uh, and and and ability. You know.
It's not something that where it did not exist before
thousand years ago, you know, conceivably uh, you know, these
more ancient cultures knew of the properties involved. So we
don't know for sure how far back it could go, right,
And there's also some debate whether a form of stand
(08:26):
up paddle boarding practiced by the pre Incan civilization in
Peru would have constituted surfing. Some two thousand years ago.
Of course, that's another thing you get into, you know,
discussions of the terminology. Is it truly surfing, is it's
something else? Are are the people on these paddle boards
ever reaching that point where the you know, the magic
of the wave takes over and propels them. But anyway,
(08:48):
I just I found it. It'll be useful I think
to just think of that as we proceed, uh. And
in order to also keep it connected to surfing in
some way, to think of of surfing as this thing
that is at least a thousand years old, maybe all
older and uh and ultimately, just based on the technology involved,
is not all that uh, you know, constrained to a
particular portion of human time. For all we know dinosaurs
(09:11):
for surfing, definitely none for the dinosaurs, well, no, the
dinosaurs were not surfing. But I mean, ultimately, to come
back to the title of the episode, when you start
wondering if Neanderthals surfed, there's absolutely no evidence that they did.
But when you start considering the technology involved, yes, somebody
could make a case for it, and it would be
you know, you wouldn't have be able to prove it
(09:32):
necessary that we wouldn't be able to disprove it. So
what we're going to be talking about though in this
episode is more a matter of what is known as
surfers ear. Okay, Now, I remember from when I was
a kid, people I knew getting swimmers ear, but that
was just like ear infections, right right, Swimmers ear is
is the different things. Bacterial infection of the outer ear
(09:55):
often caused by trap water, So water or debris gets
trapped in the ear and it can cause an infection
and uh and depending on like the state and condition
of your your ear canals. Uh, some people are more
uh you know, have have more tendants, more greater tendency
to uh to get swimmers eer than other people. I
remember people with swimmers ere being treated by just getting
(10:17):
like ethyl alcohol pulled in there or maybe I don't
know what kind of some kind of alcohol alcohol uh
poured in their ear. Yeah, there's just a stest standard
swimmers ear um droplets you can get. I use some
like just the other day because I swim fairly regularly.
But uh. But but then also not to be confused
with the drops you would get for a full blown
(10:38):
ear infection. Like this is where yeah, everything is actually
getting like more and more painful in your ear, and
that may require uh, some more advanced drops, but that's
not really what we're talking about here. What we're talking
about here is exostosis of the external auditory canal or
external auditory exostosis or E a E also known as
(11:00):
surfers here and then the game. Yeah, and it's it's
a condition. It's a condition that affects both modern humans
and our our prehistoric ancestors. So what is E a E. Well,
these are dense bony growths that that that grow that
slowly extend into the auditory ear canal. Whoa bony growths
(11:20):
in the ear canal? Now, please reassure me, Robert that
these growths are not like spiny you know. No, No,
these are rounded growths um that you know. Basically, if
you look at it, if you look at an image
of this, it looks like they're bony growths on you know,
underneath the skin on either side that are like that,
are that are pushing in, causing kind of a cave in,
(11:41):
gradual cave in of the auditory canal. That still doesn't
sound good. So the question is what causes them? Well,
this is where it gets weird. It is, uh, we
basically still have a lot of questions about surfer's ear,
But the widely accepted hypothesis is the is the aquatic
hype ofthesis, and that is that it is caused by
repeated exposure to cold water or or in some cases
(12:06):
cold wind, but especially cold water. And it's typically encountered
in cold watered in cold water foraging among traditional and
ancient peoples, as well as among cold water sports practice
today such as surfing. Coming back to the question of
what is required for surfing, and you asked about body
suits and wet suits or dry suits, and uh, you know,
(12:29):
and and a part of this is has to do
with the fact that, in addition to having to deal
with you know, potentially being scraped up against things you
don't want your body scraped against, you're often also surfing
in colder environments and uh, and you want to protect
your body from the cold. But the cold water is
is also an irritant to the inner ear, and uh,
(12:50):
and it is the most commonly observed irritant that leads
to surfers ear, and repeated irritation leads to this growth. Now,
wait a minute, it sounded like you were alluding to
they're being potential, multiple potential explanations. Right, well, this is
I mean, well this is the primary explanation, um, and
I did not encounter another explanation that that was really presented. Basically,
(13:13):
it's just there are some mysteries remain about exactly how
it occurs. Uh. And Uh, anybody that's discussing surfers here
like is sticking to the aquatic hypothesis here. Uh, and
then certainly the evidence bears it out that it's I mean,
you look at at where surfers here occurs, and it
occurs in the ears of individuals who are engaging in
(13:33):
a lot of cold water activity, be it foraging, you know,
pearl diving that sort of thing, or surfing. But you know,
other forms of irritation can can can technically cause it, uh,
because it's just gonna result in tissue inflammation in the
inner ear. Now, so that's going to happen after just
like you have a couple of bad days in cold
water and you get these growths. No, no, no, it's uh,
(13:55):
this is something that's going to develop over the years.
So typically you see it manifest in a person during
their like their mid to late thirties or possibly in
their forties, lining up with the timeline of their exposure
to the irritation. It could potentially occur earlier though, But
like this is like when you think about like someone's
prime surfing years and at what point they've been surfing
(14:17):
for uh, you know, for say twenty years, that sort
of thing. Uh, it's gonna line up with this. So
you're more likely to see it in people who spend
a lot of time in the water over a long
period of their lives. Right, Yeah, they're spending a lot
of time in cold water, Like they're going surfing a
lot where they're going pearl diving a lot with with
a uh, you know, a fair degree of regularity. Well,
(14:38):
so it would seem like having bony growths protruding into
your ear canal would not be a good thing. Right,
So for for the for the longest, it's not really
an issue, but you know, it'll reach the point where
you'll have potential complications from your essentially you're closing ear canals.
That includes decreased hearing capability uh and increased likelihood of
(14:59):
blockage in an infection due to trapped ear wax or debris.
And you know, you see generally you're looking at a
five to eight millimeter diameter ear canal, but this can
be narrowed to almost total blockage over time by surfers here.
Am I imagining that there's kind of a cultural stereotype
where the you know, the the archetype, the surfer dude,
(15:21):
the surfer person is saying like, what what did you say?
A lot? Is that? Is that just my imagination or
does that exist as part of the stereotype? Um, I mean,
there's certain certainly a crossover between like the surfer stereotype
and sort of the the dude and sort of hippie
freewheeling stereotype. I don't know if lack of hearing is
(15:43):
really part of it, but it would make sense that
that it would be right because based on what we're
discussing here, I mean, this is this is where you're
going to see some potential hearing loss due to exposure
to the cold water. Now. An important thing to stress, though,
is that we only discovered surfers here in the last
century or so. I believe the first report on it
was a German paper by Welker h Uber in eighteen
(16:06):
sixty four. And uh, and so you know, we haven't
had that long to like really study it and figure
out what's what the deal is with it, or even
to figure out how in know ways to treat it
or how to to prevent it. But the most obvious
ways to prevent it are of course to avoid regular
cold water activities um which may not be an option
(16:27):
or or desirable for you if if you're really into
surfing or you depend on some sort of cold water foraging.
But I've read that cold water surfers are six more
likely to experience it than warm water surfers and sounds
like a significant effect. Now, you can also wear varying
forms of ear protection that will help, ranging from special
(16:48):
plugs to cat special caps to go over your head
in your ear, to certain varieties of wet suits. But
if you reach the point where where the bony protrusions
have grown to the point that it's an issue, doctors
can also remove the expotosis with a surgical drill. There
I think two different procedures, two different ways of going
(17:09):
in there and drilling back the bone the bony growths.
And the good news is that if if you have
this done, you'll probably you really probably only have to
do it once because generally, given the timeline of them
growing back. They can grow back, but you probably won't
reach that second point where you'll need to have them removed.
All right, looks like we need to take a break.
But when we come back, we will ask the question
(17:31):
of why these spurs and the ears? All right, we're back,
all right. So we've been talking about surfers ere or
the idea of external auditory exostoses or e a E.
And these are these bone like protrusions into the ear
canal that seem to pop up in people who spend
a lot of their lives in cold water. If you're
(17:53):
constantly irritating the ear canal with cold water, these things
are likely to pop up. Now, I guess we haven't
addressed yet why they occur. Well, if you think back
to the Bible, you have Cane and Able and uh
Able you know, was was really into stand on the land.
Cane was a big surfer, So God punish it now, Um,
(18:15):
that has nothing to do with that. Now. Now, this
is another area where it's there's still a lot of
open questions about it. Now, so some argue that it's
essentially like bone spurs, you know, which these occur either
due to these occur you know, due to constant irritation
or stress generally in the feet where you have these
bony um you know, protrusions that are forming in the
(18:36):
foot could be quite painful. So one idea is that
it's basically that irritation leading to growth, leading to symptoms.
And there's not a lot else beyond that in terms
of why, like what is the reason, you know, because
it's like asking what is what is the reason for
bone spurs? What is you know, what are the reason
for for various ailments that afflict us due to the
(18:58):
things that we insist on do ing due to our
you know, our our human desire to to ride waves
or climb mountains to ridiculous heights, that sort of thing.
But there is one area we will see an argument
for a purpose behind all that. Unfortunately it's in aquatic
eight theory. Oh yeah, So aquatic ape theory has come
(19:21):
up on the show before, and I think we've talked
about how this is one of those theories that's like
that's sticky. It's sticky beyond its explanatory power, and it's
hard to know exactly why some some hypotheses are like this,
but I think it tends to be the ones that
are just the most uh, that offered the most totalizing
(19:43):
explanation for the most phenomena through the most interesting image,
and it does that. It but it is also widely
rejected by science. And we can talk about some reasons
for that in a minute. Yeah, but it does continue
to come up, and you know, in fact, it was
it was recently brought up and by none other than
Sir David Attenborough himself. He apparently on a BBC four
(20:07):
um series he talked about it and he there's something
that criticized him for you know, bringing up, you know,
a redundant scientific theory. Well, I'm not gonna slam I mean,
you know, we talk about theories that are not accepted
because you know, it's okay to talk about things. I agree, Yeah,
you don't have to think something is correct to talk
about it. But it sounds like he was sort of
(20:28):
advocating it. Well, I mean, he has a history of
being interested in it. I read that he also organized
the symposium on the topic back in But you know,
it's like you said, we discuss theories and hypotheses on
this show that that are you know, sometimes definitely under
the category of of rejected or unprovable. Uh. And I
think my my opinion is that it is okay to
(20:51):
discuss these It's informative to it, and to discuss these ideas,
you know, as long as you're approaching them with the
right attitude and you're not like you know, you're not seeking,
uh to to prove them. You know, in in your
discussion of the of of of what is unprovable, right,
you're not becoming an evangelist for something based on bad evidence. Uh. Now,
(21:11):
So for a brief refresh, in case you don't recall
us talking about this theory in the past, the short
version is I think that the original idea was that
in nineteen sixty a marine biologist named Alistair Hardy proposed
this idea that we had an aquatic primate ancestor maybe
four to seven million years ago. And he proposed this
(21:32):
in this article a New Scientist. I think he also
gave a big talk about this. I think the idea
is that us having a an aquatic or semi aquatic
primate ancestor could explain many interesting morphological features of humans
that distinguish us from our closest relatives like the other
great apes. And there are a lot of examples of this,
like why do we have less body hair than the
(21:55):
other great apes? Why do we have this, you know,
smoother skin, And his idea was, well, maybe we lost
body hair and got smooth skin to streamline us for
swimming to reduce drag in the water. Um, why do
we have a thicker layer of subcutaneous fat uh than
some of the other than I think all the other
great apes. And his idea here is, well, maybe that's
(22:15):
like what we see in marine mammals that they use
for water insulation to help keep their bodies warm. Why
do we stand upright instead of walking on all fours?
The ideas well, maybe we had to wade in the
shallows and that got us standing up. And while it
is an interesting idea, and I think you know Hardy
it was it was clever for Hardy to come up
with this. I think we now have better explanations for
(22:36):
a lot of these interesting differences between humans and the
other great apes. And there's also no direct physical evidence
for the aquatic ape theory. But to bring it back
to the context here is this You're saying that some
enthusiasts of the aquatic ape theory would believe that our
ear canals or features of our ear canals would seem
to fit in with that list of supposed aquatic adaptations. Yeah,
(22:59):
I've ad e a positioned as possible evidence. You know
that it's a narrowing of the ear canals and keeping
with the narrowing of ear canals and aquatic mammals. It's
true enough the ear canals and toothed whales are narrow
and clogged with debris and wax. In bleeen whale ear
canals are plugged with a waxy cap. Now you know
(23:20):
they're obvious problems with this because it's not like, you know,
there's not some sort of Lamarchian scenario going on here
where surfers starts surfing and then their ears mutate into
into weird forms. It's not like the children of surfers
have have permanently plugged ear holes or anything. But maybe
the idea would be that we evolved the the adaptation
(23:42):
that gives our bodies the capability to adapt to repeated
water explight or or we would have developed the genetic
predisposition for for surfers here, and we do have a
genetic predisposition for surfers here. Uh that that's that seems
to be the case. But um, I think it's it's
(24:04):
a stretch to tie it in with this uh largely
refuted theory. Yeah, well, I mean I want to say
again not that we accept the theory or would advocate it,
but in the defense of this theory, I mean, it
is interesting to consider, and there's nothing inherently implausible about
the situation it imagines, nor nor insidious. It's not like
(24:25):
an anti science theory, right right, right, it's just so
there's nothing implausible about like prehistoric primates and migrating to
a partially aquatic lifestyle and gaining biological adaptations in the process.
It happened with other mammals, right, So it's not hard
to believe that a similar thing could have in principle
happened with primates. But the question is, just is that
(24:47):
what the evidence we have today's supports, And I think
most experts, for good reasons, think the answer is no.
M Most experts today believe the evidence for humans having
an aquatic ape ancestor doesn't hold up very well. Again,
there's zero direct evidence of it, so we don't have
like remains of an aquatic ancestor that just doesn't exist.
So you're you're having to hypothesize a sort of like
(25:10):
lost period that we haven't found direct evidence of yet,
but just reason backwards from traits that exist later. But
there's a basic question here. I can't I came across
this on from the writings of some paleo anthropologists, so
I'm sorry now I'm forgetting the the person's name. But
here here's a basic answer. If all these traits that
(25:33):
they're trying to explain through the aquatic ape theory were
acquired through an aquatic lifestyle that happened maybe four to
seven million years ago, why were all the aquatic traits
retained for millions of years after our ancestors supposedly moved
back to dry land. You would you would expect like
then the these traits would be lost because now they'd
(25:53):
be vestigial. We'd grow all that lovely hair back. Yeah,
unless you pose it like, well, actually, it turned out
once you moved back on the land, there was a
good reason for retaining that trait. Now, now it stayed
because it served some other survival purpose. But then you
could just short circuit the aquatic ape situation and say, well,
maybe we just got those traits because it served some
(26:15):
other purpose. So right, like like coming back to the
the hair theory of like the less hair you have,
the more you're able to show off that parasite free skin. Right,
that's a common theory. I mean, so, there are a
couple of major theories that exist now to explain why
humans ancestors lost a lot of the body hair they
originally had. And we don't know the answer, but some
fairly plausible answers seemed to be that that it helped
(26:38):
with with heat dispersal uh, and that it was maybe
a very good sexual selection signal. It it showed off
I don't have any lice on me because look how
little hair I have. And it turns out that I
think there are better explanations like that, And again we
don't know them for sure, but they seem like very plausible,
fitting with the evidence, explanations for all of these traits
(26:59):
that are answered through the aquatic ape theory. So why
do we stand up on two legs? We don't know
the answer, but a good candidate for that seems to
be that we were using our hands for things we
adapted to have to want to have free hands, uh,
and other things like oh, a common one that's cited
for the aquatic ape hypothesis is that why do we
have voluntary control over our breath? Right, we wouldn't need
(27:22):
that unless we were trying to be able to dive
underwater to get you know, marine mollusks or something is prey.
But what if we evolved voluntary control of the breath
because we needed to speak, right, to speak to seeing,
you know, so to communicate with each other, with each other,
that these are activities that require control of breath. Yeah, so,
(27:43):
I guess my main takeaway is that, you know, I
don't want to slam aquatic ape too hard. It's not
like an odious theory or something. It's just that I
think it's something that is. It's unfortunately sticky, and there
are better hypotheses more in line with the actual evidence.
We have to explain the same morphull logical features that
people appeal to the aquatic ape theory to explain. All right, Well,
(28:04):
on that note, let's take one more break. But when
we come back, we will we'll get to some more
good stuff. Discussing surfer's ear in human remains but also
in the remains of Neanderthals are So I think all
this stuff about surfer's ear is fascinating in and of itself,
but the the extra cool thing here is that surfer's
ear is detectable in human remains, right, because it's not
(28:26):
just soft flesh. They're like bony protruser. Yes, so we
can we can look to coastal humans of the past
and judge to what degree they were interacting with cold water,
and then we can also based on that, determine how
such acts were divided between the genders based on the
skeletal remains. Yeah. For instance, in December of researchers from
(28:49):
Washington University in St. Louis discovered skeletal evidence of surfer's
ear in a pre Columbian Panamanian village. They were looking
at a hundred twenty five skulls from nine burial side
and they found seven cases in males, one in female.
So this is this is interesting. You think of Panama
and you think of you may think of warmer waters,
(29:09):
but the water in the Gulf of Panama is actually
quite cold between January and April. And the researchers believe
that the divers here, that the remains that they found
were likely specialized pearl divers uh probably going after stuff
like like mother of pearl or or the orange and
purple pearls that derived from two species of thorny oysters.
(29:30):
These were these were popular in the region and you
also find these artifacts among the veried dead in these
grave sites. Also, Spanish explorers would later record the activities
of such pearl divers as well as you know, staying there.
They were trained since childhood to dive down four fathoms
that's twenty four ft or seven point three meters deep.
(29:51):
My ears are hurt and just thinking about uh so,
you know, surface certainly like these would have been individuals
diving down into those cold waters of training from an
early age and developing these bony protrusions that would there
were then detectable um you know, you know ages later
when we look back and try and figure out how
they lived. So, you know, it's a little things like
(30:12):
that that are insightful about it. But of course we're
talking about the recent past. We're talking about human remain
you know, almost sapiens. Is there is there a reason
you brought up neandertals early on? I feel like there was. Yes,
we've got a connection here, and that's because there's a
very recent study and this one came from Washington University. Uh,
Eric trink Us at All, author to paper External auditory
(30:35):
exococis among Western Eurasian Late Middle and Late Pleistocene humans
and this was published in p LS one. So, uh,
just a refresher about the Neanderthals, who we've we've talked
about on the show before and we'll continue to talk
about because there's always some sort of cool Neanderthal related
story coming out. Uh, they are our closest extinct relatives.
(30:57):
They lived in Eurasia two dred thousand to thirty thousand
years ago. We don't know exactly what happened to the Neanderthals.
They likely transitioned from they were out likely originally transition
to transition from Homo antecessor to Homo neanderthal insis a
hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and then they wouldn't
extinct thirty thousand years ago. Now we're continuing to learn
(31:20):
a great deal about them, how they differed from us physically,
but also what their culture may have consisted of. They
were ideal cold weather hominids, shorter and stockier than Homo sapiens.
They had large brains, but it seems that their brains
were far more suited for intense visual processing rather than
social processing, which would have been needed in the lower
(31:41):
light northern climates of Europe. Homo Sapiens, on the other hand,
are ultimately the evolutionary project product of higher light regions
of Africa. So enter this new study from Eric Trinkaus.
At All, they examined well preserved ear canals and the
remains of seventy seven ancient humans, including Neanderthals and early
(32:03):
modern humans of the Middle too late Plistocene epoch of
western Eurasia. So the rate of Homo sapiens surfer's ear
was more or less standard, but half of the twenty
three Neanderthals sampled had e A and their cases were
mild to severe, and we're seeing it roughly twice the
frequency of Homo Sapiens examples. So the obvious explanation would
(32:28):
be that Neanderthals simply foraged in cold waters more than
Homo sapiens, and that might well have been part of it.
Certainly it highlights that the water, the cold waters were
part of their foraging uh you know, realm. But it
also could mean that they just had an even greater
genetic predisposition for E A because again, humans have a
(32:48):
pre disposition for E A. Uh, and we see that
in modern human genetics as well. So here's just a
quick quote from from drink House about the study. Quote
and exceptionally high frequency of external auditory exotosis among Neanderthals
and a more modest level among high latitude earlier Upper
(33:08):
Paleolithic modern humans indicate a higher frequency of aquatic resource
exploitation among both groups of humans than is suggested by
the archaeological record. In particular, it reinforces the foraging abilities
and resource diversity of the Neanderthals. Well, that's interesting. So
it's saying that this is an indication that maybe humans
(33:30):
and especially neandertals of the time, we're spending more time
foraging in the water than other evidence in the archaeological
record would predict. Just another example of possible evidence for
for neandertal exploitation of marine resources for for food or whatever.
Is A is a paper I was looking at from
P and A S from two thousand and eight by Stringer.
(33:52):
At all that found is I was looking at the
Gibraltar region and the authors said that what we find
indications that inertals had knowledge of the geographic distribution and
behavior of their prey. We present here the evidence from
Gibraltar sites showing that Middle Paleolithic humans exploited not only mollusks,
but also seals, dolphins, and fish through a wide spread
(34:15):
of time. Dolphins and seals. So we got Neanderthals of
the period potentially hunting marine mammals, not quite wailing, but
a modest form of marine mammal hunting. And yeah, and
then in the process of doing it, developing surfers here,
possibly to the point of of deafness. And and by
the way, there's a there's another paper paper there was
(34:37):
also from Drinkos from in which he and his team
found an old, older Neanderthal from about fifty thousand years
ago who had suffered multiple injuries and become deaf. As such,
he argued that the elder must have relied on the
help of others to avoid prey and survive well into
his forties. So, you know, sort of like sandwiching these
(34:59):
two separate it studies together, it like it kind of
paints this picture you know of these you know, these
these these Neanderthals of foraging in the cold waters, diving
down for Mala's going after these uh uh, these other
marine creatures, and in doing so, like the the the
older members of the society, at least the ones that
are that are engaged in the aquatic foraging. Uh, you know,
(35:22):
going deaf and then having to depend on other members
of their society to survive. So I know you've been
picturing them as Patrick Swayze the entire time. Well no,
but but for some reason, when I first read the headline,
like last week or the week before, my my mind
instantly went to point break. It is the surfing movie.
Uh par excellence. Wait what about what about Surf Ninjas.
(35:45):
I've never seen Surf Ninjas. Can't vouch for it. I
have anything. I guess we'll have to come back and
check out Surf Ninjas. I just looked it up. Oh
it has Rob Schneider in it. That one don't know,
uh not that I can see right here unless he's
a cameo. Okay, it's goott Leslie Nielsen, tone Loke, Rob Schneider,
Ernie Rayas Jr. And All Star Gas. All right, well,
(36:08):
we'll have to leave it there. But you know again,
Neandertal's continue to be a topic of interest. And they're
just there's always so many there are always so many
great uh uh, potentially interesting studies that are coming out
about them. So I'm sure we'll come back to the
world of the Neanderthals in the future on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
(36:29):
head on over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
You can also find our other show, Invention at invention
pod dot com. Uh that's our our journey through human
techno history looking at various inventions. We haven't done one
on the surfboard, but that's exactly the kind of thing
we could do because we try, and we've been trying
to cover a wide variety of inventions, from like major
recent technologies to ancient invention inventions that are lost to time,
(36:53):
from you know, from the the advanced and the and
and the to the simple, from the obvious, uh to
to the far less obvious. So check out that show
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Wherever you get the podcast, rate and review us. Leave
us some stars in a nice comment that helps us
(37:14):
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you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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(37:39):
a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
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(38:01):
My part chases fans back the bottle par
Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for a
classic episode of the show. This one was originally called
Surfing Neander Tolls and it published on August nineteen. So
grab a board, the surf is up. Welcome to Stuff
(00:26):
to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And before we turn the mics on, or actually after
we turned the mics on, but before we officially started
the episode, we were just talking about is there a
(00:46):
better eighties action movie than Point Break? Um? I mean,
arguably there there are some, definitely some action pictures that
I love more than Point Break, But Point Break has
a purity to it, you know, this like this, this
the weird nobility of this band of nomadic surfers who
are also bank robbers and uh and then the man
(01:10):
who is pursuing them, a man who must become a
surfer in order to catch surfers. Because isn't that it
that the old saying in order to catch a surfer,
you must become a surfer. Uh, something like that. Patrick
Swayze is the key to the movie. Oh and hey,
by the way, if you're out there, some kind of
pedants saying wait a minute point break didn't come out
in the nineteen eighties. How are you saying it's the
best eighties action movie? As we all know, Sinna in
(01:33):
the cinema world, the nineteen eighties lasted until Okay, yeah,
I think that's a solid argument. But yeah, this was.
This was some some really great sways in this film,
Like Swayzy just has such such a unique charisma that
he's it's it's like with the Rhodhouse. You know, he's
he's able to be just so serious in this role
(01:55):
and it's and you're you're laughing because it is ridiculous,
but at the same time you're totally buying into this presentation.
He's giving you absolutely the the deep seriousness and the
delivery of the lines like pain don't hurt, the fact
that he is is trying to commit to this character
who's like a philosopher bouncer. Yeah, in Roadhouse, but now,
(02:18):
I mean, essentially, I think he's playing the same character
in Point Break, and that in Roadhouse he's a philosopher bouncer.
In Point Break, he's the same character. He's now become
a philosopher surfer slash bank robber. Yeah, and and he's
he's tremendous. He just like he eats that they've seen
he's in point Point Break is a great example of
one of these eighties again, but it was the eighties.
(02:40):
Eighties action movies that is so silly in a way
that like, there are still action movies that have a
great spirit of silliness that aren't like these unpleasant, self
serious action movies. Uh well, you know, a good example
is like the later movies in the Fast and the
Furious franchise, which can be a lot of fun, but
they are they're in the joke like the rock is
(03:01):
winking at the camera. It's you know, it's played explicitly
for a kind of like wet laughter that like cars
can fly and all this, But that's not what's going
on in Point Break, Point Break, and and some of
the movies like it are just as silly as the
later Fast and the Furious movies, but they're not they're
not winking at you. They're not in on the joke. Instead,
(03:21):
they've got Patrick Swayzy, who's taken himself real seriously. I
wonder if part of that is that a film like
Point Break like building on the in a sense, even
though it's an eighties and so technically nineties film, it's
building on like the grittier uh, like a film heritage
of the nineteen seventies that preceded it, and where whereas
(03:41):
nineties films are are proceeding from the eighties films, uh
and so forth to where there's just like the initial
groundwork underneath something like The Fast and the Furious, it's
just that much sillier and that that and just further
removed from like nineteen seventies cinema. Wait a minute, why
are we talking about Point Break? Oh? Yeah, we're talking
about it because this episode is about surfing the inder Tals.
(04:04):
I mean, it's also not about surfing Neandertals, but it
is about Neanderthals. It's about surfer's ear and uh, surfing
the Andertals, the working title of Point Break that was
on the script. It It is exactly where my mind
went when I first read a very recent scientific paper
that came out about the under tolls and surfers here.
(04:26):
But but before we get into all that, um and
we may come back two point break. As we proceed again,
I want to be clear that this episode is not
really about surfing. It doesn't have that much to do
with surfing. But I do want to point out the
ancient origins of this aquatic practice we call surfing. What
surfing wasn't invented in the nineteen sixties, No, no, no.
(04:46):
And I was looking at a couple of sources on this,
but but one of the better ones that came across
um it was a book by Ben R. Finney and
James D. Houston called Surfing, A History of the Ancient
Hawaiian Sport and U pretty inscifle. They point out that
that all you need really to surf is a surfer
and a board and of course waves um or something
(05:08):
standing in for a board, such as a canoe, or
even the surfer's own body. I mean, you can body surf.
What You don't need a surfballa you don't need a
surf suit. Well, as we'll discuss, it can be very helpful,
especially in the colder waters. But you know, it's just
it's ultimately and I don't know. Have you ever surfed, Joe,
have you ever? No, I've I mean very limited water experience.
(05:32):
I've done like knee boarding, and that's I know, that's
not surfing. I'd say that's the closest to that. You've
You've gotten up on your knees on a surfboard, well,
not on a surfboard, on a knee board. I don't
know how different they are. I've gotten up on my
knees on a floating thing that was being towed behind
a boat. Okay, well a little. It's not close, but
but it's it's enough. We can we can build from here.
(05:54):
So I I am not a surfer, but I on
a trip to Whoa I, um, you know, like like
twenty years ago or something. Um, I was encouraged by
a friend to go out and try it. This friend
had surfed before. This is very helpful I find. If
you were going to try to surf, uh, certainly go
with someone who has at least done it once before,
(06:15):
but preverably somebody who who is more skilled than that.
But there is this kind of magical moment where you're
you're pushing the board, you're you're you're paddling and kicking.
You're just going as hard and as fast as you can. Uh,
and then it comes this this almost magical moment where
the wave catches the board and suddenly the waves propelling
the board. And this is the point where then you
(06:36):
can climb up on onto your knees on the board.
And then and once you you know, have your figure
out what you're doing, this is where you can rise
up on both of your feet on the board and
you can ride the surfboard like a surfer rides a surfboard.
And it sounds hard. I mean, it's it's it's one
of those things where I definitely would have given up
had I not been encouraged to keep doing it, you know,
(06:58):
to just keep doing it again once more. Let's go,
let's paddle back, and then paddle as hard and fast
as you can to try and catch this magical moment
when the when the board catches you. Um. Yeah, and
so like once so, all you need is aboard the
waves yourself and then, like the patients and or courage
to to reach that point where you can rise up
on the board and become comfortable enough doing so that
(07:20):
you can manipulate the bird board further. Okay, so surfing
was not invented by the beach boys in the mid
twentieth century. Where does surfing actually come from? Well, as
the authors at this point out how Hawaii is of
course strongly associated with surfing, and humans seem to have
first arrived at these far flung Polynesian islands by between
three hundred and four hundred CE. Now, long boards would
(07:43):
have developed over time, and the author's guess that Hawaiian
surfing is ultimately perhaps a thousand years old, Yet the
principles involved would have been known to Pacific islanders and
the first pioneers to enter the Pacific as far back
as two thousand b C. So, um, you know, it's
one of those again, it's one of those things where
(08:04):
the necessary technology uh, and and and ability. You know.
It's not something that where it did not exist before
thousand years ago, you know, conceivably uh, you know, these
more ancient cultures knew of the properties involved. So we
don't know for sure how far back it could go, right,
And there's also some debate whether a form of stand
(08:26):
up paddle boarding practiced by the pre Incan civilization in
Peru would have constituted surfing. Some two thousand years ago.
Of course, that's another thing you get into, you know,
discussions of the terminology. Is it truly surfing, is it's
something else? Are are the people on these paddle boards
ever reaching that point where the you know, the magic
of the wave takes over and propels them. But anyway,
(08:48):
I just I found it. It'll be useful I think
to just think of that as we proceed, uh. And
in order to also keep it connected to surfing in
some way, to think of of surfing as this thing
that is at least a thousand years old, maybe all
older and uh and ultimately, just based on the technology involved,
is not all that uh, you know, constrained to a
particular portion of human time. For all we know dinosaurs
(09:11):
for surfing, definitely none for the dinosaurs, well, no, the
dinosaurs were not surfing. But I mean, ultimately, to come
back to the title of the episode, when you start
wondering if Neanderthals surfed, there's absolutely no evidence that they did.
But when you start considering the technology involved, yes, somebody
could make a case for it, and it would be
you know, you wouldn't have be able to prove it
(09:32):
necessary that we wouldn't be able to disprove it. So
what we're going to be talking about though in this
episode is more a matter of what is known as
surfers ear. Okay, Now, I remember from when I was
a kid, people I knew getting swimmers ear, but that
was just like ear infections, right right, Swimmers ear is
is the different things. Bacterial infection of the outer ear
(09:55):
often caused by trap water, So water or debris gets
trapped in the ear and it can cause an infection
and uh and depending on like the state and condition
of your your ear canals. Uh, some people are more
uh you know, have have more tendants, more greater tendency
to uh to get swimmers eer than other people. I
remember people with swimmers ere being treated by just getting
(10:17):
like ethyl alcohol pulled in there or maybe I don't
know what kind of some kind of alcohol alcohol uh
poured in their ear. Yeah, there's just a stest standard
swimmers ear um droplets you can get. I use some
like just the other day because I swim fairly regularly.
But uh. But but then also not to be confused
with the drops you would get for a full blown
(10:38):
ear infection. Like this is where yeah, everything is actually
getting like more and more painful in your ear, and
that may require uh, some more advanced drops, but that's
not really what we're talking about here. What we're talking
about here is exostosis of the external auditory canal or
external auditory exostosis or E a E also known as
(11:00):
surfers here and then the game. Yeah, and it's it's
a condition. It's a condition that affects both modern humans
and our our prehistoric ancestors. So what is E a E. Well,
these are dense bony growths that that that grow that
slowly extend into the auditory ear canal. Whoa bony growths
(11:20):
in the ear canal? Now, please reassure me, Robert that
these growths are not like spiny you know. No, No,
these are rounded growths um that you know. Basically, if
you look at it, if you look at an image
of this, it looks like they're bony growths on you know,
underneath the skin on either side that are like that,
are that are pushing in, causing kind of a cave in,
(11:41):
gradual cave in of the auditory canal. That still doesn't
sound good. So the question is what causes them? Well,
this is where it gets weird. It is, uh, we
basically still have a lot of questions about surfer's ear,
But the widely accepted hypothesis is the is the aquatic
hype ofthesis, and that is that it is caused by
repeated exposure to cold water or or in some cases
(12:06):
cold wind, but especially cold water. And it's typically encountered
in cold watered in cold water foraging among traditional and
ancient peoples, as well as among cold water sports practice
today such as surfing. Coming back to the question of
what is required for surfing, and you asked about body
suits and wet suits or dry suits, and uh, you know,
(12:29):
and and a part of this is has to do
with the fact that, in addition to having to deal
with you know, potentially being scraped up against things you
don't want your body scraped against, you're often also surfing
in colder environments and uh, and you want to protect
your body from the cold. But the cold water is
is also an irritant to the inner ear, and uh,
(12:50):
and it is the most commonly observed irritant that leads
to surfers ear, and repeated irritation leads to this growth. Now,
wait a minute, it sounded like you were alluding to
they're being potential, multiple potential explanations. Right, well, this is
I mean, well this is the primary explanation, um, and
I did not encounter another explanation that that was really presented. Basically,
(13:13):
it's just there are some mysteries remain about exactly how
it occurs. Uh. And Uh, anybody that's discussing surfers here
like is sticking to the aquatic hypothesis here. Uh, and
then certainly the evidence bears it out that it's I mean,
you look at at where surfers here occurs, and it
occurs in the ears of individuals who are engaging in
(13:33):
a lot of cold water activity, be it foraging, you know,
pearl diving that sort of thing, or surfing. But you know,
other forms of irritation can can can technically cause it, uh,
because it's just gonna result in tissue inflammation in the
inner ear. Now, so that's going to happen after just
like you have a couple of bad days in cold
water and you get these growths. No, no, no, it's uh,
(13:55):
this is something that's going to develop over the years.
So typically you see it manifest in a person during
their like their mid to late thirties or possibly in
their forties, lining up with the timeline of their exposure
to the irritation. It could potentially occur earlier though, But
like this is like when you think about like someone's
prime surfing years and at what point they've been surfing
(14:17):
for uh, you know, for say twenty years, that sort
of thing. Uh, it's gonna line up with this. So
you're more likely to see it in people who spend
a lot of time in the water over a long
period of their lives. Right, Yeah, they're spending a lot
of time in cold water, Like they're going surfing a
lot where they're going pearl diving a lot with with
a uh, you know, a fair degree of regularity. Well,
(14:38):
so it would seem like having bony growths protruding into
your ear canal would not be a good thing. Right,
So for for the for the longest, it's not really
an issue, but you know, it'll reach the point where
you'll have potential complications from your essentially you're closing ear canals.
That includes decreased hearing capability uh and increased likelihood of
(14:59):
blockage in an infection due to trapped ear wax or debris.
And you know, you see generally you're looking at a
five to eight millimeter diameter ear canal, but this can
be narrowed to almost total blockage over time by surfers here.
Am I imagining that there's kind of a cultural stereotype
where the you know, the the archetype, the surfer dude,
(15:21):
the surfer person is saying like, what what did you say?
A lot? Is that? Is that just my imagination or
does that exist as part of the stereotype? Um, I mean,
there's certain certainly a crossover between like the surfer stereotype
and sort of the the dude and sort of hippie
freewheeling stereotype. I don't know if lack of hearing is
(15:43):
really part of it, but it would make sense that
that it would be right because based on what we're
discussing here, I mean, this is this is where you're
going to see some potential hearing loss due to exposure
to the cold water. Now. An important thing to stress, though,
is that we only discovered surfers here in the last
century or so. I believe the first report on it
was a German paper by Welker h Uber in eighteen
(16:06):
sixty four. And uh, and so you know, we haven't
had that long to like really study it and figure
out what's what the deal is with it, or even
to figure out how in know ways to treat it
or how to to prevent it. But the most obvious
ways to prevent it are of course to avoid regular
cold water activities um which may not be an option
(16:27):
or or desirable for you if if you're really into
surfing or you depend on some sort of cold water foraging.
But I've read that cold water surfers are six more
likely to experience it than warm water surfers and sounds
like a significant effect. Now, you can also wear varying
forms of ear protection that will help, ranging from special
(16:48):
plugs to cat special caps to go over your head
in your ear, to certain varieties of wet suits. But
if you reach the point where where the bony protrusions
have grown to the point that it's an issue, doctors
can also remove the expotosis with a surgical drill. There
I think two different procedures, two different ways of going
(17:09):
in there and drilling back the bone the bony growths.
And the good news is that if if you have
this done, you'll probably you really probably only have to
do it once because generally, given the timeline of them
growing back. They can grow back, but you probably won't
reach that second point where you'll need to have them removed.
All right, looks like we need to take a break.
But when we come back, we will ask the question
(17:31):
of why these spurs and the ears? All right, we're back,
all right. So we've been talking about surfers ere or
the idea of external auditory exostoses or e a E.
And these are these bone like protrusions into the ear
canal that seem to pop up in people who spend
a lot of their lives in cold water. If you're
(17:53):
constantly irritating the ear canal with cold water, these things
are likely to pop up. Now, I guess we haven't
addressed yet why they occur. Well, if you think back
to the Bible, you have Cane and Able and uh
Able you know, was was really into stand on the land.
Cane was a big surfer, So God punish it now, Um,
(18:15):
that has nothing to do with that. Now. Now, this
is another area where it's there's still a lot of
open questions about it. Now, so some argue that it's
essentially like bone spurs, you know, which these occur either
due to these occur you know, due to constant irritation
or stress generally in the feet where you have these
bony um you know, protrusions that are forming in the
(18:36):
foot could be quite painful. So one idea is that
it's basically that irritation leading to growth, leading to symptoms.
And there's not a lot else beyond that in terms
of why, like what is the reason, you know, because
it's like asking what is what is the reason for
bone spurs? What is you know, what are the reason
for for various ailments that afflict us due to the
(18:58):
things that we insist on do ing due to our
you know, our our human desire to to ride waves
or climb mountains to ridiculous heights, that sort of thing.
But there is one area we will see an argument
for a purpose behind all that. Unfortunately it's in aquatic
eight theory. Oh yeah, So aquatic ape theory has come
(19:21):
up on the show before, and I think we've talked
about how this is one of those theories that's like
that's sticky. It's sticky beyond its explanatory power, and it's
hard to know exactly why some some hypotheses are like this,
but I think it tends to be the ones that
are just the most uh, that offered the most totalizing
(19:43):
explanation for the most phenomena through the most interesting image,
and it does that. It but it is also widely
rejected by science. And we can talk about some reasons
for that in a minute. Yeah, but it does continue
to come up, and you know, in fact, it was
it was recently brought up and by none other than
Sir David Attenborough himself. He apparently on a BBC four
(20:07):
um series he talked about it and he there's something
that criticized him for you know, bringing up, you know,
a redundant scientific theory. Well, I'm not gonna slam I mean,
you know, we talk about theories that are not accepted
because you know, it's okay to talk about things. I agree, Yeah,
you don't have to think something is correct to talk
about it. But it sounds like he was sort of
(20:28):
advocating it. Well, I mean, he has a history of
being interested in it. I read that he also organized
the symposium on the topic back in But you know,
it's like you said, we discuss theories and hypotheses on
this show that that are you know, sometimes definitely under
the category of of rejected or unprovable. Uh. And I
think my my opinion is that it is okay to
(20:51):
discuss these It's informative to it, and to discuss these ideas,
you know, as long as you're approaching them with the
right attitude and you're not like you know, you're not seeking,
uh to to prove them. You know, in in your
discussion of the of of of what is unprovable, right,
you're not becoming an evangelist for something based on bad evidence. Uh. Now,
(21:11):
So for a brief refresh, in case you don't recall
us talking about this theory in the past, the short
version is I think that the original idea was that
in nineteen sixty a marine biologist named Alistair Hardy proposed
this idea that we had an aquatic primate ancestor maybe
four to seven million years ago. And he proposed this
(21:32):
in this article a New Scientist. I think he also
gave a big talk about this. I think the idea
is that us having a an aquatic or semi aquatic
primate ancestor could explain many interesting morphological features of humans
that distinguish us from our closest relatives like the other
great apes. And there are a lot of examples of this,
like why do we have less body hair than the
(21:55):
other great apes? Why do we have this, you know,
smoother skin, And his idea was, well, maybe we lost
body hair and got smooth skin to streamline us for
swimming to reduce drag in the water. Um, why do
we have a thicker layer of subcutaneous fat uh than
some of the other than I think all the other
great apes. And his idea here is, well, maybe that's
(22:15):
like what we see in marine mammals that they use
for water insulation to help keep their bodies warm. Why
do we stand upright instead of walking on all fours?
The ideas well, maybe we had to wade in the
shallows and that got us standing up. And while it
is an interesting idea, and I think you know Hardy
it was it was clever for Hardy to come up
with this. I think we now have better explanations for
(22:36):
a lot of these interesting differences between humans and the
other great apes. And there's also no direct physical evidence
for the aquatic ape theory. But to bring it back
to the context here is this You're saying that some
enthusiasts of the aquatic ape theory would believe that our
ear canals or features of our ear canals would seem
to fit in with that list of supposed aquatic adaptations. Yeah,
(22:59):
I've ad e a positioned as possible evidence. You know
that it's a narrowing of the ear canals and keeping
with the narrowing of ear canals and aquatic mammals. It's
true enough the ear canals and toothed whales are narrow
and clogged with debris and wax. In bleeen whale ear
canals are plugged with a waxy cap. Now you know
(23:20):
they're obvious problems with this because it's not like, you know,
there's not some sort of Lamarchian scenario going on here
where surfers starts surfing and then their ears mutate into
into weird forms. It's not like the children of surfers
have have permanently plugged ear holes or anything. But maybe
the idea would be that we evolved the the adaptation
(23:42):
that gives our bodies the capability to adapt to repeated
water explight or or we would have developed the genetic
predisposition for for surfers here, and we do have a
genetic predisposition for surfers here. Uh that that's that seems
to be the case. But um, I think it's it's
(24:04):
a stretch to tie it in with this uh largely
refuted theory. Yeah, well, I mean I want to say
again not that we accept the theory or would advocate it,
but in the defense of this theory, I mean, it
is interesting to consider, and there's nothing inherently implausible about
the situation it imagines, nor nor insidious. It's not like
(24:25):
an anti science theory, right right, right, it's just so
there's nothing implausible about like prehistoric primates and migrating to
a partially aquatic lifestyle and gaining biological adaptations in the process.
It happened with other mammals, right, So it's not hard
to believe that a similar thing could have in principle
happened with primates. But the question is, just is that
(24:47):
what the evidence we have today's supports, And I think
most experts, for good reasons, think the answer is no.
M Most experts today believe the evidence for humans having
an aquatic ape ancestor doesn't hold up very well. Again,
there's zero direct evidence of it, so we don't have
like remains of an aquatic ancestor that just doesn't exist.
So you're you're having to hypothesize a sort of like
(25:10):
lost period that we haven't found direct evidence of yet,
but just reason backwards from traits that exist later. But
there's a basic question here. I can't I came across
this on from the writings of some paleo anthropologists, so
I'm sorry now I'm forgetting the the person's name. But
here here's a basic answer. If all these traits that
(25:33):
they're trying to explain through the aquatic ape theory were
acquired through an aquatic lifestyle that happened maybe four to
seven million years ago, why were all the aquatic traits
retained for millions of years after our ancestors supposedly moved
back to dry land. You would you would expect like
then the these traits would be lost because now they'd
(25:53):
be vestigial. We'd grow all that lovely hair back. Yeah,
unless you pose it like, well, actually, it turned out
once you moved back on the land, there was a
good reason for retaining that trait. Now, now it stayed
because it served some other survival purpose. But then you
could just short circuit the aquatic ape situation and say, well,
maybe we just got those traits because it served some
(26:15):
other purpose. So right, like like coming back to the
the hair theory of like the less hair you have,
the more you're able to show off that parasite free skin. Right,
that's a common theory. I mean, so, there are a
couple of major theories that exist now to explain why
humans ancestors lost a lot of the body hair they
originally had. And we don't know the answer, but some
fairly plausible answers seemed to be that that it helped
(26:38):
with with heat dispersal uh, and that it was maybe
a very good sexual selection signal. It it showed off
I don't have any lice on me because look how
little hair I have. And it turns out that I
think there are better explanations like that, And again we
don't know them for sure, but they seem like very plausible,
fitting with the evidence, explanations for all of these traits
(26:59):
that are answered through the aquatic ape theory. So why
do we stand up on two legs? We don't know
the answer, but a good candidate for that seems to
be that we were using our hands for things we
adapted to have to want to have free hands, uh,
and other things like oh, a common one that's cited
for the aquatic ape hypothesis is that why do we
have voluntary control over our breath? Right, we wouldn't need
(27:22):
that unless we were trying to be able to dive
underwater to get you know, marine mollusks or something is prey.
But what if we evolved voluntary control of the breath
because we needed to speak, right, to speak to seeing,
you know, so to communicate with each other, with each other,
that these are activities that require control of breath. Yeah, so,
(27:43):
I guess my main takeaway is that, you know, I
don't want to slam aquatic ape too hard. It's not
like an odious theory or something. It's just that I
think it's something that is. It's unfortunately sticky, and there
are better hypotheses more in line with the actual evidence.
We have to explain the same morphull logical features that
people appeal to the aquatic ape theory to explain. All right, Well,
(28:04):
on that note, let's take one more break. But when
we come back, we will we'll get to some more
good stuff. Discussing surfer's ear in human remains but also
in the remains of Neanderthals are So I think all
this stuff about surfer's ear is fascinating in and of itself,
but the the extra cool thing here is that surfer's
ear is detectable in human remains, right, because it's not
(28:26):
just soft flesh. They're like bony protruser. Yes, so we
can we can look to coastal humans of the past
and judge to what degree they were interacting with cold water,
and then we can also based on that, determine how
such acts were divided between the genders based on the
skeletal remains. Yeah. For instance, in December of researchers from
(28:49):
Washington University in St. Louis discovered skeletal evidence of surfer's
ear in a pre Columbian Panamanian village. They were looking
at a hundred twenty five skulls from nine burial side
and they found seven cases in males, one in female.
So this is this is interesting. You think of Panama
and you think of you may think of warmer waters,
(29:09):
but the water in the Gulf of Panama is actually
quite cold between January and April. And the researchers believe
that the divers here, that the remains that they found
were likely specialized pearl divers uh probably going after stuff
like like mother of pearl or or the orange and
purple pearls that derived from two species of thorny oysters.
(29:30):
These were these were popular in the region and you
also find these artifacts among the veried dead in these
grave sites. Also, Spanish explorers would later record the activities
of such pearl divers as well as you know, staying there.
They were trained since childhood to dive down four fathoms
that's twenty four ft or seven point three meters deep.
(29:51):
My ears are hurt and just thinking about uh so,
you know, surface certainly like these would have been individuals
diving down into those cold waters of training from an
early age and developing these bony protrusions that would there
were then detectable um you know, you know ages later
when we look back and try and figure out how
they lived. So, you know, it's a little things like
(30:12):
that that are insightful about it. But of course we're
talking about the recent past. We're talking about human remain
you know, almost sapiens. Is there is there a reason
you brought up neandertals early on? I feel like there was. Yes,
we've got a connection here, and that's because there's a
very recent study and this one came from Washington University. Uh,
Eric trink Us at All, author to paper External auditory
(30:35):
exococis among Western Eurasian Late Middle and Late Pleistocene humans
and this was published in p LS one. So, uh,
just a refresher about the Neanderthals, who we've we've talked
about on the show before and we'll continue to talk
about because there's always some sort of cool Neanderthal related
story coming out. Uh, they are our closest extinct relatives.
(30:57):
They lived in Eurasia two dred thousand to thirty thousand
years ago. We don't know exactly what happened to the Neanderthals.
They likely transitioned from they were out likely originally transition
to transition from Homo antecessor to Homo neanderthal insis a
hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and then they wouldn't
extinct thirty thousand years ago. Now we're continuing to learn
(31:20):
a great deal about them, how they differed from us physically,
but also what their culture may have consisted of. They
were ideal cold weather hominids, shorter and stockier than Homo sapiens.
They had large brains, but it seems that their brains
were far more suited for intense visual processing rather than
social processing, which would have been needed in the lower
(31:41):
light northern climates of Europe. Homo Sapiens, on the other hand,
are ultimately the evolutionary project product of higher light regions
of Africa. So enter this new study from Eric Trinkaus.
At All, they examined well preserved ear canals and the
remains of seventy seven ancient humans, including Neanderthals and early
(32:03):
modern humans of the Middle too late Plistocene epoch of
western Eurasia. So the rate of Homo sapiens surfer's ear
was more or less standard, but half of the twenty
three Neanderthals sampled had e A and their cases were
mild to severe, and we're seeing it roughly twice the
frequency of Homo Sapiens examples. So the obvious explanation would
(32:28):
be that Neanderthals simply foraged in cold waters more than
Homo sapiens, and that might well have been part of it.
Certainly it highlights that the water, the cold waters were
part of their foraging uh you know, realm. But it
also could mean that they just had an even greater
genetic predisposition for E A because again, humans have a
(32:48):
pre disposition for E A. Uh, and we see that
in modern human genetics as well. So here's just a
quick quote from from drink House about the study. Quote
and exceptionally high frequency of external auditory exotosis among Neanderthals
and a more modest level among high latitude earlier Upper
(33:08):
Paleolithic modern humans indicate a higher frequency of aquatic resource
exploitation among both groups of humans than is suggested by
the archaeological record. In particular, it reinforces the foraging abilities
and resource diversity of the Neanderthals. Well, that's interesting. So
it's saying that this is an indication that maybe humans
(33:30):
and especially neandertals of the time, we're spending more time
foraging in the water than other evidence in the archaeological
record would predict. Just another example of possible evidence for
for neandertal exploitation of marine resources for for food or whatever.
Is A is a paper I was looking at from
P and A S from two thousand and eight by Stringer.
(33:52):
At all that found is I was looking at the
Gibraltar region and the authors said that what we find
indications that inertals had knowledge of the geographic distribution and
behavior of their prey. We present here the evidence from
Gibraltar sites showing that Middle Paleolithic humans exploited not only mollusks,
but also seals, dolphins, and fish through a wide spread
(34:15):
of time. Dolphins and seals. So we got Neanderthals of
the period potentially hunting marine mammals, not quite wailing, but
a modest form of marine mammal hunting. And yeah, and
then in the process of doing it, developing surfers here,
possibly to the point of of deafness. And and by
the way, there's a there's another paper paper there was
(34:37):
also from Drinkos from in which he and his team
found an old, older Neanderthal from about fifty thousand years
ago who had suffered multiple injuries and become deaf. As such,
he argued that the elder must have relied on the
help of others to avoid prey and survive well into
his forties. So, you know, sort of like sandwiching these
(34:59):
two separate it studies together, it like it kind of
paints this picture you know of these you know, these
these these Neanderthals of foraging in the cold waters, diving
down for Mala's going after these uh uh, these other
marine creatures, and in doing so, like the the the
older members of the society, at least the ones that
are that are engaged in the aquatic foraging. Uh, you know,
(35:22):
going deaf and then having to depend on other members
of their society to survive. So I know you've been
picturing them as Patrick Swayze the entire time. Well no,
but but for some reason, when I first read the headline,
like last week or the week before, my my mind
instantly went to point break. It is the surfing movie.
Uh par excellence. Wait what about what about Surf Ninjas.
(35:45):
I've never seen Surf Ninjas. Can't vouch for it. I
have anything. I guess we'll have to come back and
check out Surf Ninjas. I just looked it up. Oh
it has Rob Schneider in it. That one don't know,
uh not that I can see right here unless he's
a cameo. Okay, it's goott Leslie Nielsen, tone Loke, Rob Schneider,
Ernie Rayas Jr. And All Star Gas. All right, well,
(36:08):
we'll have to leave it there. But you know again,
Neandertal's continue to be a topic of interest. And they're
just there's always so many there are always so many
great uh uh, potentially interesting studies that are coming out
about them. So I'm sure we'll come back to the
world of the Neanderthals in the future on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
(36:29):
head on over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
You can also find our other show, Invention at invention
pod dot com. Uh that's our our journey through human
techno history looking at various inventions. We haven't done one
on the surfboard, but that's exactly the kind of thing
we could do because we try, and we've been trying
to cover a wide variety of inventions, from like major
recent technologies to ancient invention inventions that are lost to time,
(36:53):
from you know, from the the advanced and the and
and the to the simple, from the obvious, uh to
to the far less obvious. So check out that show
if you haven't already, and if you want to support
these shows that we're putting together for you, the best
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Wherever you get the podcast, rate and review us. Leave
us some stars in a nice comment that helps us
(37:14):
out a lot. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
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touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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(37:39):
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