Planet Neanderthal

It's it's trophy even um but U. But that the really fastinating thing to me is to is to look backwards in time and and think about humans and uh and their interactions with other human like beings, such as most famously the Neanderthal. Yeah, the neanderthal, which is typically spelled I mean, it's spelled like it's neanderthal, and I've I've been saying it wrong for ages. But but of course, as you pointed out, comes from the Germans, so it's neanderthal.

So I just wanted to say that it's yeah, it rolls off the tongue a lot easier if you just go ahead and and use the fig German accent that we all have have gotten off of the television and just say neandertal. But we can't do the entire podcast in that voice. Oh my god, you sound eerily like Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. See. I think I was listening to a mix recently. They had a bunch of Arnold

like fitness samples. That was probably what did it. But anyway, Neanderthal, hopefully that pronunciation won't annoy you too much, uh in this podcast likewise, we're going to steer largely clear of another problem the encounter when you start reading about Neanderthal in Neanderthals or any any any topics concerning the ascension of man and human evolution, and that is that you almost all always get bogged down in discussion of dig sites and all these Latin names to the different fossils,

and it's and it's all very important to a larger understanding. But we're gonna try and steer clear of a lot of that. Yeah, because it's like the Book of Genesis, Yeah it is. It becomes like and then Homo epercatus emerge from Homo elliptus, and we don't know where Homo capacatas fits. You know, it just gets it gets a little dry, you know, even even for me and I've I've written some articles about this before and it just you know, kind of stunned your brain after a while.

But for our purposes, but yeah, we're gonna we're gonna sort of blow through some of that. But but there are lots of great resources out there, um that that'll that'll kill you with the Latin names if you like. But to uh, to really put us in more of a time and place. Um, but let's talk about what the Neanderthals were all right, Um, they first they were there hominids there, they would have looked very much like

people on like modern humans. Even like if you get in your mind this sort of idea of like a troll like um uh bron Pearlman esque hulking thing uh um or Tom Waits, you can put that in as well. Um, you know, it's like that's not necessarily a good model to have, and it's a really hard one to kick. Like when I think Neanderthal, it's it's really hard to kick that idea of this hulking brute that's stomping through

the undergroad the cartoon caveman with a club thing. Yeah. Yeah, um and uh and it's hard to get past that that, but these guys would have looked more or less like modern humans, only shorter, heavier built, um stronger, particularly in the arms and hands. So they were they were kind of thick. Uh and and you know, muscily dudes. Yeah. Actually I read somewhere too that their rib cages are really large and they didn't have much of a waste, yeah, which was sort of like that gives you this idea

of these barrel chested, really compact muscular beings. Yeah, and you know, kind of like I guess, kind of like a stumpy wrestler physique. And to a certain extent um they the skull evidence we have show that they didn't have much of its hin uh and their forehead fourheads

were kind of sloped backwards. Uh. Their brain case was lower but felt longer, and it housed a slightly larger brain than what we're carrying around today, right, which was really great for them help them survive for a very long time, but also, as we'll get into later, may have contributed a bit to their downfall as well. Yeah. So these guys first showed up in Europe as early as six hundred thousand UM or three fifty thousand years ago.

We're a little you know, again, anytime you deal with the fossil record, you're dealing with bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and many of the pieces will just never have So it's it's always a little touch and go, and it's it's and if you don't understand that, it can be a little frustrating. We're like, how can we not know? Like, how can we just dig up some more bones? Well, not all bones survive, not all bones

become fossils. Yeah, that's the game of chance, right, Like even the neanderthalman who was discovered it was sort of by chance because the guy who who saw it was about to pitch it and then he thought, well, maybe that's a bear school, and he was collecting um animal schools and ended up keeping it. And then they found out later that no, this is not at your school. So again, I mean, our knowledge would have been so

incomplete if he hadn't had that chance encounter. So these guys pretty much ruled Eurasia for two hundred thousand years, roaming around, uh doing their thing, and even at the height of their occupation of a Western Europe, scientists think that they probably never really exceeded say, fifteen thousand total.

So even so, you know, we we're not dealing with modern population levels of human like today, humans are really off the chart, you know, I mean, we're an exceedingly successful species or where you can argue were an invasive

species pretty much everywhere. But but this was a time when populations could not really reached the unsustainable levels that we've managed to achieve to right, and from fossil records, what we do know is that at the time that um Neanderthals went extinct, humans were really homeless sapiens were really starting to make great gains. So of course that's where we that idea developed where we just vanquished the Neanderthals and ate them and made it with them and

left them in the dirt. And that's not really true. Yeah, it's kind of like to uh, this will probably the only time I use a Will Smith quote. But but there's this idea that the Neanderthals were old and busted and the humans were the new hotness, and that we just eradicated the old and busted and thoughts. So it's just they were just a you know, this was the

old model. The new models so much better. So of course the old model is going to die, right, right, But the more you really look at it, the more it becomes in a situation where you have two really good models. I mean, it's it's kind of like the idea that I think it was actually Ricky Gervei who pointed out that like the garden slug may look disgusting, we may hate it, but the garden slug is perfect, like nature has filled that that niche with something that

really works. Well. So like nature does by and large doesn't create, uh, you know, evolution does not lead to ineffective designs. It's like this is the pinnacle. This is a a great design. So the more you look at it, you have a situation where the neander doll is a is a killer design, but circumstances ended up having this other design, this human design, be the one that's going

to take take the lead, become the dominant force. And all that had to do with climate, right Like at the time that they were flourishing neandertals, they had adapted to their environment really well yeah, but I'm jumping ahead here, Yeah, yeah, two other key things to mention is that another there's a really old, outdated idea that's still probably kicking around and a lot of people's heads, and that is that we evolved from neander tal and that's that's completely not true. Um. Rather,

we share a common relative um, a common ancestor. So if you were to follow the chart back, you'd say, hey, here's this particular of species um and and at this point it diverged and there's uh, and it's its ancestors became Neanderthals and became humans. Right, So there's Homo erect us, right, and then that's the branch of Homo Heidelberg genis saying that, right, which I just picture a caveman in uh edohosen, I know that's Heiderberg. Uh. And then of course that evolved

that that species evolved into neander tools right. Yeah, it's it's like the same thing that we like, we share common ancestors with the champion chimpanzee, but we did not evolve from a chimpanzee. So if you had any of that kicking around your head, get rid of that. Yeah, our genetic material is shared with Neanderthals, yes, uh. And another interesting fact to keep in mind is that is that again we we coexisted with Neanderthals for for for for a brief period of time as far as as

evolutionary history goes. But but but we did coexist, right. They became extinct about thirty thousand years ago. Yeah, and they may have survived in in some very remote areas for perhaps up to twenty four thousand years ago. And that's a specifically Gibraltar. You know, in the Strait of Gibraltar. Um, there's a site there called Gorman's Cave that people have studied a lot. So this is an isolated area that

that you know sits an island. They end up there and they end up holding out there for a while, but eventually, um, they're out injeri In. But what I find really interesting is that neanderthal has got a bad rap because they weren't these great bedazzlers. Oh yeah, because they're like, well, where are their cave drawings? Where there

are their beads and their where's their jewelry? So but at that time that was the litmus test of whether or not you were um sophisticated enough to be thought of as as cool as Homo sapiens, right, and so that really did contribute to this idea of them as knuckle drivers, actually, which is unfortunate because they are so much more nuanced than um than that, and in fact um it reminds me of Kazuo Shigaros. Never let me

go the novel. But the children, Yes, this is the My wife read this for a book club, and it's basically the same plot as the old sci fi film parts the Clonus Hare, which they did for MST. Three K. And also there was some what was that the Island. Yeah, basically you know the idea of like, oh, let's let's have clones of ourselves, so we can have spare parts, right, so we can just pick up this organ from this person.

But one of the central um topics in the book is that the children must produce artwork to prove their own humanity. And so I was thinking about that. I was thinking, well, that's the same case with Neanderthals. Is that we thought, well, we don't see any cave paintings, therefore they must have been brutes, they must have been without sympathy or you know, these these higher ideas of our emotions in our humanity. But we'll find this out later.

It's that's not the case at all. Yeah. Well, also it's it's important to note that some of the early cave drawings that you counter like pictures of our pictures of animals, you know, pictures of prey, and and they think that a lot of that is probably used to to teach. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. So it's not like they were like they were like, Oh, I have free time, I must create some art. Let me draw an antelope. Isn't it beautiful? Now?

It was probably more like, like, I'm really trying to drive home that you had a hunt and antelope, kid, let me draw one on the wall. Yeah, this isn't cubism here. Yeah. So so I think we can sort of get a little, uh, a little lofty about our ideas concerning early primitive artwork. Yeah. And you've touched on this too as well. Is it the superiority myth? This idea that Homo safetians are really the only cool kids in town because they mastered fire, um, just speak tools,

agriculture or someone and so forth. Yeah, And it really kind of flows into sort of a manifest destiny that you know, this idea that we're special. We've got to be special. Um, you know, we're we're here where that we must be the superior design. There could not possibly be a better one, right, And that's the cool thing about looking at this UM and thinking about it in the context. We are the kid cool kids here right now.

But you know, two thousand years from now, they'll be looking back at us saying, what in the world were they doing? Yeah? We um and Neandertals first met our human ancestors in the Middle East about a hundred and thirty thousand years ago. Uh and perhaps uh, perhaps after about a half million years of separation when they split off from that common ancestor, then they contacted each other again in Eurasia roughly forty five thousand years ago. And

and this is where we end up, you know. And there are a lot of questions about what these contacts consisted of. Uh. For one thing, you know, those cave drawings that we've mentioned, you don't see any cave drawings of Neanderthals, So it's it's not like they were just running into each other the supermarket all the time. Again, we're dealing with small populations of people, people that moved around for the most part, So yeah, nomadic people. So it's not again, it's not like people run into each

other all the time. And even human populations are were likely to be running into you run into a group that speaks differently that that are that are very alien from you, there may be just as alien from you as these uh, slightly heavy set guys who who look pretty intimidating and look like they could really take you down with the tackle if need be. But we know know that that we humans tangled with neander tolls and when by tangling mean they had sex with each other. Yeah,

at least some like it. It apparently happens. Yeah, the genetic evidence is there. Did it happen all the time? No? No, I mean it's it's not the kind of thing it's happening all the time. No, And in fact, if that were the case, then, um, we would have a lot more evidence in our own DNA. Right right now, we've got traces of two to of Neanderthals and the modern

human genome in populations outside of Africa, which is interesting. Um, so you know there's some evidence there that again they tangoed um and this we learned from the Max Planck Institute because they sequenced the Neanderthal genoa. And they also found out that they were pale skinned and they had a range of colors including red hair. Yeah. Um. And they shared the language gene with us, Yeah, which is fox P two right, Yeah, that's that's the one there.

In fact, there have been some some arguments that they may have uh, they have may have communicated musically. You remember this from from our research for the Music Healing the Mind. Yeah, music, can music rebuild your brain? Yeah? And it was the bone flute yeah yeah, um, and that was something like I don't know it was fifty years ago or I fix thousand year old instrument. That

is clearly it's it's intentional and it's marking. Some people have said, oh, animals made the holes in the bone, but if you look at the pictures of it, like the holes are pretty exact. Um, so it's not too far off to think that they'd be able to to

use it as a musical instrument. They're also you also see different examples of cannibalistic or well, okay, there's some examples of cannibal possible cannibalism among the neandertals and also uh, some evidence and with the bones to suggest that humans may have eaten neanderthals at different times and possibly made necklaces out of their children's teeth. Yeah, which is just gonna happen. I mean, and you know, to call back to another podcast, we have the Whole Cannibalism podcast where

we dealt primarily with cannibalism in nature. So if you haven't listened to that one, if you were like my wife, you were scared off from it thinking it was gonna be about mainly about people eating other people. It's really mostly about uh, about animals eating their own type praying mances offering themselves up and a love victual to get their heads. Been on lots of sexual cannibalism of that

kind of thing in that podcast. But one of the things we really drove tried to drive drive home in that was that cannibalism, when you strip away all of the the the modern human taboos and all, it really makes a lot of sense. So it's just the idea that you would encounter it. That doesn't mean that we're suggesting to do it, but no, no, in the context of when it happened, it made sense, right, because they're

hardy protein sources. Yeah, yeah, And you know it's otherwise that that stuff is going to go to waste and you might starve to death, so of course you eat it. There are also some arguments out there that these early groups, including the andertal Is, also partook of some scavenging. So it's also in a situation where there's some war dead either on your from your own tribe, but from this

group that you just had a little um miscommunication with. Again, why I let that, Why I let the vultures have that? When that's those are some some vital nutrients that could sustain you as you continue to to scour the landscape

for for what will hopefully be your next meal. Right, And talking about miss communication or communication makes me again think of the speech gene and the fact that because they had the large brains and they had that gene, and because they also had a tiny bone in the throat called the highoid um, which supports the soft tissue of the throat and it holds the root of the tongue in place, which is a requirement for speech, makes me think that Um and and many others, that they

did have some sort of language what we do know is that their lantn x is much higher in their throat than humans, which would have limited some of their speech.

But it's it's a it's good to note that because again that that would have helped them to have survived, to be able to communicate with one another, but in the long run that it may have actually um contributed to their demise interests of Homo sapiens well, and also we've seen plenty of evidence that just because i mean even just among Homo sapiens, just because one group can talk to the other, doesn't any other group isn't going to attempt to wipe them out, you know, No, Yeah,

And that's it was more in the well, we'll talk about it later, but it was more in the context of is it are you better suited to survive if you can communicate really well with each other? Um. But another thing about Neanderthals that has been that the veil has been lifted on is toolmaking and some other school skills and things that they've done. Again, it was thought that humans had the upper hand with tools, but it turns out that Neanderthals were just as sophisticated with their

tools and in some cases. Um, the shales or the blades were a lot more effective than the homosapiene Homo sapiens um. So there you go. Mad skills. Yeah, these guys were hunters. Um. These guys make glue, Yeah, which is just pretty amazing. It's yeah, do you mind if I talk about it? So amazed by this? Uh, it's the glue is made from tightly rolled strips of birch bark, and it's deposited into a hole in the ground and then they cover that with earth and they see at oxygen.

Then they take a small holdering stick put that in there, and because the birch is deprived of oxygen, it sweats out pitch and so when it cools, it can be used in tools to bond materials together. And the even cooler thing about it is that you can take that piece of cooled pitch and take it anywhere. Of course, thematic right, so they're gonna they're gonna bring it with them, and then all you have to do is reheat it,

uh to use it again. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because the I don't can't remember those as a PBS special. I'll have to look at my research notes. But the video clip that I saw this, it was really difficult for them to do and to do right. So it took a lot of skill, and it took a lot of trial and air and even in this day and age, for you and I to try to do this, and I'm sure that would be a lot of expletives flying. You know, there'll be a

steep learning curve. So for them to be able to do this is amazing. Yeah. I can't can barely cook dinner for myself without resorting the cursing, So I can't imagine making glue in my backyard. I know, I remember your risotto st technique needed some observation by a second party. So yes, um, I cook best when I'm I'm helping, not taking the lead. You're more of a chef. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no shame in that chef. That's an important rule.

But they also used pollen. A lot of pollen was found in the caves, and that's used as an antiseptic and a salve. And speaking of of pollen, it's it's worth pointing out that they were not specifically carnivorous. Yeah, it seems like meat was a big part of their diet. They were. They were probably steak fans and would have been found frequenting out back if they were around today. But but they did eat vegetable matter. They did when they did the scavenge for seeds. When when that when

when they when they were available? Yeah, and they yeah, that's right, they found some plant plant matter and the molars um. And again here you have this idea of them as being these you know, cavemen who were just you know, and of course they were were taking down some large animals, but they weren't, you know, primarily carnivorous. Um. So this idea they invented the blooming onion. Actually people really know that, but oh yeah they did. Um, Well,

you just threw me there. I'm like, now I'm imagining them over the fire with their blooming onions. Um, I'm salivating a little bit. And that's just so wrong. But the other thing is a lot of people thought of them is sort of like the dirty hippies too, of hominids. Um. But in fact, the hygiene thing has been brought up before that their teeth has shown very little decay, so

they were taking care of their their teeth in some manner. Well, and it's it's also a lot easier to take care of your teeth if you don't have a huge sugar um diet. So um. You know these guys, you know, aside from some nuts and berries here and there, you know, they're probably not, uh, you know, sucking down as much sugar as modern humans do. Yeah. Yeah, they're probably whittling their own little toothpicks too. Yeah. Actually you know how

many evidence of that? But I'd like to um so in in in thinking about like how how a this human or humanlike population grew and expanded and eventually dwindled and disappeared, you you really have to think of it

in terms of geology, climate, and resources. Um, because we're talking about long stretches of time, your hundreds of thousands of years during which the Earth's climate kind of whopped around back and forth, kind of like a ping pong ball where you had you had periods of cooling, you had and you had periods of heat, you had some some glacial stuff mixed in there, and uh and and

when the weather changes, it changes the the geology. And when yeah, and when and over long periods of times of the course of geology changes, it changes the weather. So these are all things that are in flux and they force in the same way that that you see like populations of birds moving around. Uh. Um, you know it's like oh, you know people and looking at say, you know, global global warming and climate change. You know, you see how populations of animals are are are affected.

And at this time, I mean, the humans were very much uh. I mean humans are are susceptible to this even now, but at the time, you know, if animals had to move to a different geographical location, than the humans were forced into that area as well, right, I mean, and just to put it into context, to the global warming that we experienced now is different from what they

were experiencing in terms of extreme climate changes. So the Neanderthals, they survived the ice age, they did really well with that. It became very compact and muscular, right. Um. But but then at some point, um, the climates kept changing very quick and within you know, a span of a lifetime, a lot of their landscape could have changed, and in fact, we know it changed. So the force that they relied on they have receded, and all of a sudden they

have less area to hunt in. Yeah, and uh yeah to this really bois done to two areas that really stuck out to me, um about how how this these changes in climate affected them. Um alright, one key thing to look at is that Neanderthals, as far as we know, never took to farming, never took up our agriculture, which of course is just was a was and continued to be a vital part of modern humanity. Yeah and keep in mind or aromatic too. Yeah, yeah, they're nomadic. Um

and again and again. Agriculture is the thing that you know made us settle down that and then ultimately lead to uh, to the to the construction of villages and cities that gave us the free time to specialize in different skills and allowed like you know, one old dude to just set around the village all day painting stuff, Um, making those cool cave painting. Yeah. Yeah, we're making you know, making little gold frogs or something. But Neanderthals never took

to the agricultural way of life. For the greater part of their Eurasian dominance. Uh, the climate was harsher and more sporadic than it was today. So it just wasn't good a good time to get into farming. Um. You know, even if even if they wanted to. They were smart enough to. They were skilled enough too, So it wasn't a situation where they would have been like, what is carrot? How me plan? You know, it wouldn't have been a

situation like that. But that the time was not right for the agricultural leap right, and well that they were so tethered to their own physicality to right. But yeah, yeah, and when conditions improved, when it did get become farming time, Um, there wasn't that much really pushing them to leave behind these honey and gathering techniques that worked well for them, right, Because I was thinking about it that they they put scientists put that the extreme climate changes about forty years ago.

They became extinct about years so for fifteen thousand years and in crazy climates they they still have toe hold in it, right, they were still existing. But eventually you're going to die off, and you know you're not gonna You're gonna lose that to toe hold and um, those great stocking limbs that you had are going to be problems on it because they require more calories to up keep and there's less protein sources around. And that body style that they had, that that meaty tough, you know,

wrestler build um. The main way that this suited them u was in ambushing their prey. They were used to dealing with with wooded or semi wooded area somewhere you know, they can hide and cover, wait till that deer, that ibex um you know, or that that bloomin onion comes in close enough, you know, wait in the wait in the cover, and then leap out and uh and really throw down with that deer. So it was like a wrestler on the ropes, right, yeah, come down. Yeah, he's

like he's on the ropes, let's get him. And then they you know, just beat the crap out of the deer. Or they were more like you know, they do spears and whatnot. But they've also they've also found injuries and some of the new their tolls that that they say

resemble rodeo rider um um injuries. So it's which you know, so just imagine it's like you have a pretty dangerous animal probably probably perhaps with big horns or antlers and uh and these guy and again they probably would probably they probably would not go after some of the larger like megafauna. You know, they probably would not be hunting rhinoceros or something like that, but something like a deer

and ibex. So they hide, it comes into into range, they jump out, they surround it, and they just start. They are a clown in this scenario, I hope. So I hope that there was like a neandertal early clowning. That's why they didn't paint rocks there. They their art was many performance artists. Um. But yeah, that's interesting that you bring up the injury too, because I remember reading that those injuries were often times sustained when they were much younger, and so it's for some of them it

could really limit their range of motion. And this is where the community really comes into play, because those with the elderly in the infirm were obviously taken care of by the group, which is another factor of this of them, you know, yea some sort of culture, so it's not just like, oh, that one's hurt, we're going to leave

him behind. Yeah, we'll eat you later. Yeah. And you can easily imagine too, like a system where it's like, all right, the young guys, you guys haven't had your legs broken yet, so you're the ones who leap onto the ibex is back and uh, your father and grandpa are going to stand back with the spears. You know. It's it's I'm just sort of imagining things. But but but it's easy to to see how the system like

this might work. Now. What happens though when climate change causes your forests to shrink and it ends up creating this, uh, this step tundra environment where suddenly you have more and more just vast empty stretches of of you know, no cover where you see you can see the herds of reindeer or or or you know, ibex or whatever, but they're off in the distance. It's like, how are you

gonna how are you gonna get that? So you see there's a lot of competition for that, right, and you see the emergence of persistence hunting, which there's a there's an excellent sequence in the BBC Discovery documentary of the Life of Mammals where they show because the final episode that you know, they get up to the mammal humans and they they they deal with sand people of the Kalahari Desert, the last tribes supposedly on Earth to use this ancient technique and this is where humans use running

and tracking to pursue prey just to the point of exhaustion. See as humans, we of course can sweat um and we you know, it reduces our body heat. But if you're chasing some sort of quadruped uh, this particular prey animal probably needs to slow down from a gallop to a pand so it's the it's like the I kind of think of it as the terminator method of hunting, you know, where it's just like slow, you're never you're not gonna actually outrun the gazelle or whatever. You're gonna

You're just not gonna stop. You're just gonna follow it, and it's not gonna lose your trail, and you're just gonna keep on and keep on until it literally falls down. You see the videos of this is the animal just eventually collapses and then the humans just walk up and finish it off. So the Neanderthals, we're not we're not built for this like this, this skill becomes the survival technique, and they're they're just physically generally not able to carry

it out. There are also probably a lot of human populations around this time that we're equally unsuited for this new way of life, and they also went the way of any other space. It's not just the Neanderthals we're talking about, right, We're talking about a lot of you know, it's like like any kind of like changes in an economic situation, you know, like the economy changes. Oh suddenly big bloated businesses can't survive and you know, maybe the

little guys are going to do better. This is I mean, this is the same thing with the physicality, right, right, I mean there are other uh Homorectus types out there at the same time. We're just focusing again, we're just focusing on Neanderthals, but there are other species existing out there at this time period, um that that aren't making the cut either. Yeah, and and also and again it

comes under resources to this. It's not a situation where humans were like, all right, we're here, now, let's kill all the Neanderthals. You're talking about generations and generations of of the landscape of of human and human void populations changing, where where the humans gradually outcompete the Neanderthals for resources. The Neanderthals end up being isolated in smaller and smaller areas, um in more isolated areas, until they are eventually a uh to uh to steal a phrase from from a

book we were just reading, um Finlayson. Yeah, they become the living debt, like a panda or a tire, though in my opinion, far more interesting in panda. But you know, they reached the point and where well that you don't know,

Neanderthals could have been could have been very cut like. Actually, what I think it's funny about this is early depictions of them made them look so caveman man apish, and now that we've had this understanding of them, much fuller understanding the last five ten years, they look so much more human. Like. Yeah, they have like our different wax depictions of them. They've gone from like you know, from again like you know, you know, slope faced beast man

to looking like just somebody you'd encounter, you know, the street. Yeah. Now that depictions have like little bow ties on them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's like fashion shoots and I like that. You need to tell a w magazine about that. So why us Why didn't Why did we persist? Uh? It largely comes down to a situation of we were It was just we were in the right place at the right time. Really, we were better suited to roll with some of the changes that were coming down the pike.

If the changes have been a little different, occurred at a different time, it could have gone the other way and we could cover more territory. Right, So we weren't a stocky or muscular Yeah, we were. We were better

suited to persistence hunting. We we took to agriculture, we um and we also, I mean we we also eventually just got a better foothold on on our population because again, you know, the Neanderthal population never got above like probably fifteen thou So a smaller population is always going to

be more susceptible to extinction. Um. And once you reach a certain size, and and in our case, when you reach a certain sophistication, you're really not going to deal with that as much, unless, of course, you engineer your own extinction through any number of ways that were actually Leaky, the granddaughter of Mary Leaky, has an interesting ted talk

and she talks about that. She says, hey, like, don't get too much on your high horse, Homo sapiens, because we've only got two hundred thousand years of skin in the game, and you know, look at our how our population has gone nuts and the resources that are dwindling. So don't get too excited here about the old continuation of of our species. Yeah yeah, because there's again at all a lot of it comes down to geography, climate,

and resources. And if you look at the state of human civilization, you can find some red flags really in all three of those areas. And uh, yeah, how are we going to roll with the changes? Yeah? I know, I mean, yes, we have a dropped learnings and it allows us to communicate in a more nuanced way, and we can teach each other in a more effective way than the nder tools. But yeah, what about what about

climate change? What about small yeah? Or onions and and of course you know, there's always a chance that we may, you know, eradicate ourselves with the with nuclear weapons. We I don't think that's entirely off the table yet, um as as much as we would like to hope. So but hey, there you go, Nanderthals, Yeah, planet Neanderthal. Uh So, I hope, I hope you you might look at them a little differently the next time somebody mentioned it, and the next time somebody slurs with them, you know, stand

up for your your evolutionary brother. Yeah, yeah, get and check out if you'd like the Max Planck Institute. They've got some really interesting information on the Neanderthal genome and they have a really great video called the Neanderthal in Us. Yeah, kind of like tobiaspoon Case The Man Inside Me. That's right. Well, hey, we got some listener mail. Here's which I think I'll

fly through here real quick. Our listener Eric writes in and and uh, he's responding to our our podcast the Werewolf Principle engineering teams for outer space, which is one I really enjoyed to do. And he says it was interesting to hear about modifications to the body that might be made to help people fly in space. But you made two mistakes. First, deaf people would have would be able to use the radio, something that was a little

bit critical to space. Why. And I believe here he's referring to something we corrected in a or well clarified and the previous listener mail, and that is that there are various forms of deafness and only one really falls under the under the model that was discussed in that podcast, which is to say not all deaf people would yes not suffer from from yet from motion. Uh. Weirdness in the space, but Eric goes into them to to add some some really interesting stuff here. He says, you also

missed a rather obviously at least to me point. Every person who has flown in space has carried forty or fifty pounds of equipment with him that is not only completely useless in microgravity, but can even get in the

way their legs. A human leg from hip to flop including the foot, weighs about twenty to thirty pounds, and a person in reasonable shape as an ampute myself, I think amputees have been overlooked as astronauts, though I am not sure I'd be willing to have what's left of my legs removed for a chance to fly in space. I'm an s p k AMT two anyway, great program, uh Art, So that was that was some really interesting insight.

I really had not thought as much about that about, you know, because you see shots of astronauts floating around, and indeed it's not like they're using their toes to manipulate things. Here's a brief note from listener Chris. He says, in reference to your podcast Underground Robotic Highway, you stated that the driverless Google cars drove around San Francisco driverless wall. Technically that is true. There was a driver in the car to take control if needed. Left the podcast, keep

up the great work, um. And indeed, just to clarify, there was a driver and these things were not just rolling around unattended. There was you know, you can think of it like a driver's ad class, where as a human there in case something goes crazy. Although I love the idea of you know, he's going around like Lombard Street. Yeah, what's kind of like unattended? Like? Is it? I believe David Sadarris pointed out that is it Michigan where blind

hunters can go out hunting alone? I don't know, but I'm gonna say that sounds very Michigan as a Michigan so this is sort of like that. UM. I have another one here from listener Jane. Jane says, I listen to your podcast about the curies, uh, and this is about scientists and love and wanted to say thanks for

a great show. My husband and I met as undergraduates at a nuclear and radio chemistry summer school put on by the Durent Department of Energy, and I'm now working to finish my PhD in radio chemistry, and my husband is working as the reactor supervisor at our university's nuclear reactor. He has a master's degree in chemistry, and when I finished my time here, he will get his PhD. Considering how I met my husband, I've always loved the story of Marie and Verry Pierre Curie. It was great to

hear more personal side to their amazing scientific contributions. I love y'all show. So there we go. There's a nice stuff feedback from us some listeners I know, and that just made me think I would love to see some m r I scans of scientists and love and compare them to the general population. I think that works. Yeah, that would that would actually be a great like a

great art excipt. I would go suggest, all right, someone out there there you go, so, hey, do you want to come see what we're up to, what we're thinking about, what we're writing about, what we're podcasting about. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind, and you can also drop us a line at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff

works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.