0:05

During the earliest days of this millennium,

0:07

I took part in a kind of history

0:10

series, an ambitious survey

0:12

that explored milestones in American

0:15

culture decade by decade. Of

0:18

course I'm talking about

0:23

and after. I loved the apies there

0:26

was, and

0:29

really who could forget

0:37

What made Dynasty work was

0:40

the camp fights. Yeah, he went from John Cougar

0:42

to John Cougar Mellencamp and I thought, did

0:44

he get married? John Travolta's asked

0:47

Urban Cowboy is if there

0:49

should be a shrine Delta. It

0:51

was a classy show featuring a panoply

0:54

of commentators, and I was one of them,

0:56

pondering complex topics like nineteen

0:59

eighties hospital dramas, saying

1:01

elsewhere it was and our long

1:03

drama. It starred Mark Harman

1:06

as doctor Bobby Caldwell. Comedian

1:09

and actor Michael Ian Black was

1:11

another contributor. I

1:13

thought, if anything, the title That's Incredible,

1:16

it was an understatement of how incredible

1:18

the things on That's incredible work. We didn't

1:20

really know each other back then, but I distinctly

1:23

remember his take on the nineteen eighty

1:25

one Neanderthal epic Quest for

1:27

Fire. While most of us were

1:29

obsessed with the film's nudity, Michael

1:32

took the high road. I was really looking at

1:34

it more from an anthropological point of view than

1:36

to see ray Don Jones tatas. And

1:38

it's that prehistory that's our

1:40

subject this episode.

1:46

Since Quest for Fire, we've learned some

1:48

stunning truths about Neanderthals,

1:51

and I knew who. I wanted to discuss this topic

1:53

with my friend Michael ian

1:55

Black back

1:57

when we were loving the eighties. Neither

1:59

of us knew just how connected he is

2:02

to our human cousins of four thousand

2:04

decades ago. If they had told

2:06

me only how much Neanderthal I am,

2:09

I would have paid twice the amount for the test. I'm

2:13

mo Rocca. And this is mobituaries.

2:22

This mobit Neanderthals

2:24

circa forty thousand years ago, death

2:28

of a human species. Okay,

2:33

first, let's take care of some basics. The

2:36

name Neanderthal comes from the neander

2:38

Valley in Germany, where one of the first

2:41

Neanderthal skulls was found in eighteen

2:43

fifty six. At the time, the fossil

2:45

was misidentified as the skull of a Cossack

2:48

soldier from the Napoleonic Wars.

2:50

They were only off by a few tens of thousands

2:53

of years now, Neanderthals

2:55

were also human, but a separate

2:57

species Homo sapiens. That's

2:59

us and Neanderthals did share

3:02

a common ancestor over half a million

3:04

years ago. Almo sapiens would go

3:06

on to flourish in Africa, while Neanderthals

3:09

roamed across Europe and Asia,

3:11

adapting to a cold or harsher climate.

3:14

Eventually the two species did meet

3:16

up. Then, about thirty to

3:18

forty thousand years ago, Neanderthals

3:21

disappeared without a trace, or

3:23

so we thought, which

3:26

brings me to my guest, Michael

3:28

ian Black. So, Michael Ian

3:30

Black, thank you so much for joining me

3:32

for this whole episode. My pleasure. Let's

3:34

get the promotion out of the way first, because it's

3:36

deserved. Your podcast, How to Be

3:38

Amazing is amazing. Yes, you

3:40

can be on it. No, yes, I think

3:43

that's where I was going. So years

3:46

ago I interviewed you about

3:48

your one of your books, Naval Gazing,

3:50

and in it you talked about

3:53

genetic testing and why

3:57

did you go about investigating your

3:59

genetic makeup? I think the same reason

4:01

most people do, just curiosity.

4:04

I just wanted to know genetically

4:07

speaking, who I am. I

4:09

had it in my head that I must

4:12

be at least a pastiche

4:14

of things, some kind of milange. I

4:16

was hoping to find some African Americans,

4:19

some Native American but the results

4:22

were so disappointingly

4:25

kind of exactly what I had been led to

4:27

believe, which is that I am a hundred

4:29

percent Ashkenazi Jew. I do

4:32

think the food is better than Sephardic

4:34

food. Delicious, delicious

4:37

if you just take the gafiltha

4:39

fish out of that which I have always associated

4:42

and will always associate with just jellied

4:44

cat turns. But

4:47

but you say you found out you were one hundred percent

4:49

Ashkenazic Jew. But that's not quite

4:52

right. Well, it is

4:54

in terms of ethicity.

4:58

But there was also a marker

5:00

which I didn't know till I got it back

5:02

from the company that says it

5:05

will also tell you your Neanderthal

5:09

percentages. If they had told

5:11

me only how much Neanderthal I am,

5:14

I would have paid twice the amount for the test, because

5:16

for some reason, that just really captured

5:19

my imagination to think, oh, I may

5:21

be part of an entirely different species.

5:23

Right. That was thrilling to

5:25

me, And I didn't know that they had developed the

5:28

test, and I found out that I am two

5:30

point nine percent Neanderthal,

5:34

which is greater than

5:36

the norm. The average is a

5:39

two point seven percent. Okay,

5:41

that's a significant difference. I mean, I can't

5:43

tell you how delighted I

5:45

was to hear this, because

5:48

your listeners can't see me, but you

5:50

can probably tell by the way I speak

5:53

in the timber of my voice that I

5:55

am not the most masculine of fellows.

5:58

But I was going to say, I

6:01

mean, I mean, I'm tolerant, but to a

6:04

point. But just

6:06

the popular image of the Neanderthal

6:08

as a lumbering brute, as

6:11

this strong survivor

6:13

out on the steps end planes just thrilled

6:16

me to no end. And so I was delighted.

6:19

And I told my wife that I am

6:22

above averagely Neanderthal,

6:24

and she said, that's why you look like

6:26

that, and she did not mean it as a compliment.

6:29

And let me just say that Martha

6:31

is highly evolved. She's basically Darryl Hannah

6:34

and Clanta the Cave Bear, a

6:38

highly evolved, leggy blonde. Yes she

6:40

is, but wait, wait, hold on, When you describe

6:42

Neanderthals as masculine, lumbering

6:45

brutes. You're making certain assumptions,

6:47

and we'll dispel some of these in this episode.

6:49

For instance, how do we know there weren't

6:52

cultured, epicy Neanderthals?

6:54

Well, I think we do know now you are doing

6:56

the research. And I'm just speaking off the top of my head. Now

6:59

they were conness of fine wine, is

7:01

my understanding. They did puppet

7:03

shows. Oh, Michael, We've got some work to

7:06

do. Think of me as your Henry

7:08

Lewis Skates and this is finding your roots,

7:10

or as your Lisa Kudrow and this is

7:12

who do you think you are? I think that's her show. I

7:15

want you to know that your Neanderthal ancestors

7:17

were pretty darned special and

7:20

not as different from us normal people as you

7:22

may think. So how did they get

7:24

such a bad rap? Let's find

7:26

out. I

7:34

grew up with so many classic TV shows

7:36

and films about Neanderthals and cavemen,

7:39

and they pretty much all got it wrong. In

7:42

nineteen eighty one, there was the aforementioned

7:45

Quest for Fire. The characters

7:47

basically just plump through the whole movie,

7:52

except when one of them gets beamed in the head by

7:54

a rock and

7:57

then everyone laughs. That

8:01

same year, moviegoers were subjected

8:03

to the ringo star vehicle Caveman.

8:09

During the course of the movie, a bunch of bumbling

8:11

cavemen discover fire, how

8:15

to light farts on fire, and

8:18

jam bands and

8:24

who could forget the mel Blanc voiced

8:26

cartoon character. But

8:33

as far as portrayals of the primordial

8:35

go the show that had the biggest

8:37

impact on me was Land

8:39

of the Lost. The theme song

8:42

told the story of the series. It's

8:46

about a family on a river rafting trip.

8:49

During the ride, they go down a magical

8:52

waterfall and enter a universe filled

8:54

with dinosaurs and cave creatures.

9:03

Hi, I'm Phil Paley and I played

9:05

Chocca on the seventies

9:08

show Land of the Lost. You

9:10

were only nine years old when he got this

9:12

role. Tell us about the character. Chaca

9:15

was the youngest of the

9:17

pacoony clan. What

9:20

do you think he is? Who kind of a

9:22

came in a monkey or what? Chaca?

9:28

I wore a prosthetic headpiece,

9:30

so it had a very prominent brow and

9:33

forehead, so it did kind of look

9:35

neanderthal ish. I guess

9:38

back when I watched the show, I kind of assumed

9:40

Chocca was a Neanderthal. But looking

9:42

back at the clips. Now he seems more monkey

9:45

boy free all over, except

9:47

for his face. The suit was made out of

9:49

like nylon pantyhose material with

9:51

a real human hair hand sewn into

9:53

it, so it made it kind of itchy. Luckily, there

9:56

are some people who know the difference between Saturday

9:58

Morning science fiction and real

10:00

science. Anything that depicts

10:03

Neanderthals as basically

10:06

bad hair, that's what I laugh about.

10:08

Professor John Hawks from the University

10:10

of Wisconsin at o'claire is one of

10:12

the world's leading experts on Neanderthals.

10:15

Why have Neanderthals

10:18

had such a bad reputation.

10:20

The Neanderthals are a group that doesn't

10:23

have an advocacy.

10:26

They don't have a lobby. You know, there's there's

10:28

not Neanderthal representatives calling

10:30

their congressman and so as a

10:32

consequence, if you thought

10:35

something bad about the past, you

10:37

know, they were a convenient group because they weren't going

10:39

to complain. It's so easy to use

10:41

Geico dot com. A caveman

10:43

could do it. What not

10:47

cool? I did not know you were there. The

10:51

Neanderthals in those Geico commercials

10:53

might be funny, but make no mistake,

10:55

we're laughing at them. So

10:58

how did this stereotyping of Meanderthals

11:00

as brutish, howling and stupid

11:03

get started? John Hawkes

11:05

says it may have begun with a nineteenth

11:08

century German biologist named

11:11

Ernst Heckel, who attempted to

11:13

map a genealogical tree of all

11:15

living things. When he came to early

11:18

versions of us, he had no fossils

11:20

to study. It was pretty much just guesswork.

11:22

He chose a rather insulting classification.

11:26

The name that he had for the predecessor

11:28

of humans that would be the Neanderthals

11:30

basically was Homo stupidus. Yes,

11:33

Homo stupidest. But

11:36

it was the French who really gave Neanderthals

11:38

a bad name. A nineteen oh eight,

11:40

a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton

11:43

was found in a cave in the town of

11:45

La Chapelle. Ausan paleontologist

11:48

Marcel Boule analyzed the remains

11:51

of this individual and made

11:53

sweeping and hugely influential

11:55

assumptions about the entire species.

11:58

The image that came of his work

12:01

was hairy and pretty

12:03

ape like, with splayed

12:06

toes and a slouching,

12:09

hunched posture. Kate

12:11

Wong is a writer for Scientific

12:13

American and what researchers later

12:15

determined was that this was an older

12:18

individual, this Nandertal,

12:20

who had suffered from severe

12:23

arthritis. So all

12:26

of the sort of features that led Bull to

12:28

assume that the species had these

12:31

slouched, stooped traits were

12:33

actually the result of disease. That

12:36

is really hilarious to me, isn't it wild?

12:38

And I've wondered about that before, Like, when

12:40

you find an individual species of

12:42

something, what if you're finding a weird

12:44

member of that species and it turns out

12:47

that's exactly what happened with the Neanderthals.

12:49

Totally an agreement, fascinating and hilarious.

12:52

But hold on, there's more. The

12:54

old Man of La Chapelle, as he

12:56

came to be known, became the public's

12:58

picture of Neanderthals for generations.

13:02

They were the arcotopical cave people, and

13:04

that image unfold she has stuck with the Neandertos

13:07

over one hundred years later. Professor Chris

13:10

Stringer, the research leader at the Natural

13:12

History Museum in London, tells

13:14

me part of the problem was that in the early

13:16

twentieth century we didn't understand

13:19

how evolution worked. There was

13:21

this rather simplistic idea that they

13:23

would be missing links to be found

13:25

in the story of human evolution. And it

13:27

was because we were so fixated on the idea

13:30

of a missing link that we typecast

13:32

Neanderthals into the role of a half

13:34

ap half human caveman duke.

13:42

But thanks to the rapid advancement and

13:44

the study of archaic humans, the

13:46

image of the Neanderthal is finally

13:48

changing. To be sure, Neanderthals

13:51

were different from us in appearance. The

13:54

pronounced brow ridge and sloping

13:56

forehead in those Geico commercials weren't

13:59

tramped up by make up. Our nests, so

14:01

our brain case shape is rather globular,

14:03

sometimes described as like a soccer ball. The

14:06

Neanderthal cranial shape was longer

14:09

and lower. In fact, the Neanderthal

14:11

brain was bigger than ours, as

14:14

was the Neanderthal schnaz. We

14:16

guessed that the whole nose would have been broader.

14:18

They certainly seem to have had a nose that

14:21

was capable of very

14:24

very heavy breathing. It may also have served

14:26

a function of warming up and humidifying

14:29

the air when they were living in relatively

14:31

colder and drier conditions. They

14:33

were starkier too, with rib cages

14:36

that flared out and shorter limbs

14:38

better for conserving heat. But recent

14:41

studies on the Neanderthal thorax suggest

14:43

that they might have walked even more upright

14:45

than we do. As for what they sounded

14:48

like, Neanderthal voices might

14:50

have been higher pitched than ours. Listen

14:53

to this simulation from the BBC. Let's

14:56

just add a bit of nasal, now

15:00

push into me. This is actually getting

15:02

him right into his body. Now

15:05

speak. No,

15:08

that isn't a monty python sketch. It's

15:10

a serious demonstration. But aside

15:13

from the physical, what's really surprising

15:15

is how on par Neanderthals

15:18

were with us cognitively

15:20

and creatively. They made

15:22

a lot of the same kinds of tools they

15:25

had fire, They

15:27

decorated their bodies with jewelry

15:30

made from shells, eagle

15:33

talons, animal teeth, all

15:36

sorts of fabulous accouterment.

15:39

Some of these discoveries of them using feathers

15:42

systematically and collecting

15:45

predominantly the feathers of very dark

15:47

black birds. We talk about it

15:49

as Neanderthal goth because it seems

15:52

like they preferred these dark raptors and dark

15:54

crows and ravens and that sort of thing. Some

15:58

signists speculate that Neanderthals

16:00

saw power in these dark birds

16:03

and thought they'd be imbued with that power

16:05

if they wore those feathers. And

16:07

if you're picturing share in Bob Backy at

16:09

the nineteen eighty six Oscars, I am

16:11

too. And

16:14

within just the past few years researchers

16:17

found the first ever Neanderthal

16:19

cave paintings and etchings, which

16:22

reveal in early interest in social

16:25

media. There's a great place

16:27

in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar that

16:30

has this what we call the

16:32

Neanderthal hashtag because

16:34

it looks like that pound sign that

16:37

is scratched onto the

16:39

floor of the cave. What

16:44

it means, what it meant to them, we

16:47

have no idea, but it

16:49

shows us some sign from

16:51

the past that these were thinking beings.

16:54

They were conveying something

16:57

through their use of markings, through their

16:59

use of ornaments, and that something

17:01

was social. It was something

17:03

about what they had to say to other

17:05

individuals, what they had to communicate

17:08

about themselves. And

17:11

when it came to hunting, Neanderthals

17:13

were pretty crafty. To attach

17:15

tips to their spears, they made

17:17

their own glue. In order to do

17:19

that, you have to take birch bark and

17:23

smoke it down, reduce it at

17:25

high temperature so that the sap inside

17:27

of it condenses into this sticky pitch

17:30

and that in the end makes a very very

17:32

tiny amount of this. So you've got to do this many

17:34

times to concentrate it. Neanderthals

17:37

managed that process. If

17:39

I had to assign an engineering class to

17:41

figure out how this was done, they would

17:44

have a hard time of it. All

17:47

to say that Neanderthals weren't

17:49

the least bit stupidest, and

17:51

neither was Choca.

17:56

And the Pecuni had a language. It

17:59

was developed by a UCLA

18:01

language professor by the name of Victoria

18:03

Frankin. After all

18:06

these years, Philip Paley can

18:08

still say some phrases in Paku.

18:11

Well, these are classic ones. Bungu

18:13

sarissa taka and that means

18:15

beware of slee stack with an important

18:18

warning very and

18:20

uh. There's also oh

18:23

ganza bisasa what does that mean?

18:26

Big magic? I love? Who doesn't

18:28

love big magic? And we're

18:37

back with Michaele and Black talking about

18:39

what it really means to be Meanderthal.

18:44

But I mean they were capable of language that we

18:46

we we learned that right right. I

18:48

thought you were just belching. No, No, I was just grunting

18:51

in the Neanderthal Neanderthal like

18:53

way. Right. We should have done that at

18:55

the top of the episode. So there are two different

18:57

ways to do it. I like

19:00

saying Meandrewthal. There are some people

19:02

that will say Neandrew Tall. So you are welcome. You

19:04

can go back and forth. You can switch over to neander

19:06

Tall if you want. I am now forevermore

19:08

going to pronounce it Neander Tall. Okay,

19:11

so that's this scud. We're going to do

19:13

a split on this, and I'm going to stick with Neanderthal. You

19:15

stick with me Andrew Tall, and then everybody will be satisfied.

19:17

Yeah. Did you like Land

19:19

of the Loss? I loved it. There were these

19:22

sid and Marty Croft shows, and

19:25

in my memory, that was the only

19:27

tolerable one, Right, I loved

19:29

it. Yeah. I'm older than you are, so when I

19:31

watched it, I could tell it was pretty cheaply done.

19:34

But I liked the opening credits. That's what I like,

19:36

because it just seemed really exciting. Yeah,

19:39

to me, there was nothing cheap about it. It

19:41

was as real as well. Get

19:44

rewatching a little bit of Captain Caveman

19:46

that cartoon. I remember

19:49

that I was kind of attracted

19:51

to Captain Caveman. I

19:54

there was something, maybe it was I don't

19:56

know anyway, And now when I go

19:59

back and look at it, I think it's kind of weird because he

20:01

looks like a testicle basically.

20:03

Well, then that explains your attraction. Thank

20:06

you. So

20:10

so, Michael. Now that we've

20:12

established that Neanderthals were intelligent

20:14

and surprisingly similar to modern

20:17

humans, that raises the question

20:19

why did Neanderthals go extinct?

20:22

Now there are various theories on this. First

20:24

up, Professor Michael stab Vasser

20:27

from the University of Cologne in Germany.

20:30

My speciality is a subject called

20:32

isotope geochemistry. Oh, he's got

20:34

my old position. That's what I did exactly.

20:38

It is awkward for you. No, no, no, okay,

20:40

I mean so I

20:42

asked him what he actually does. It's almost

20:44

like you're a weatherman

20:46

for the ancient times. Yes,

20:49

you could say that. Yes, he didn't really

20:51

like that line, as he could tell anyway. He

20:53

thinks it's climate change that did

20:55

in the Neanderthals. By studying

20:58

stalagmites in caves, he determined

21:00

that during their last fifty thousand

21:02

years on Earth, the average temperature in

21:04

the Danube Valley, one of the places where

21:06

Neanderthals lived, was much colder

21:09

than it is now. It was about thirty nine

21:11

degrees fahrenheit. But and this is crucial,

21:14

during that period, there were these cold

21:16

snaps that would ultimately

21:18

seal their fate. They lasted something

21:21

between a century and a millennium

21:23

on average. They usually

21:25

led to temperature drops which could be up

21:27

to let's say, six to eight degrees today.

21:30

It may not sound drastic, but it

21:33

makes the difference between being

21:35

able to grow crops or not, and if

21:37

you can't eat, you're going to die.

21:39

And then as climate

21:42

recovered, modern humans

21:44

basically resetted an

21:47

empty area more or less. So

21:49

he isn't saying that modern humans were

21:51

better adapted to these cold temperatures in the Neanderthals.

21:54

I think the point he's making is that the extinction of Neanderthals

21:57

was pretty much bad timing, wrong

21:59

place, wrong time. But they

22:01

had existed for millennia up

22:03

until this point, and

22:06

the average temperature as

22:08

it's going down could have forced them

22:10

south into warmer climates. But

22:12

it seems like it didn't do that. I know,

22:14

I don't know why. This feels like a very

22:19

dumb theory, which is why we have

22:21

another theory for you on why Meanderthals

22:23

died off. Okay, good, You remember Chris

22:25

Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London.

22:28

He thinks the small population

22:30

of Neanderthals was essentially swallowed

22:32

up by modern humans. Some experts

22:35

estimate that atops there were only

22:37

about fifteen nous in Neanderthals spread

22:39

all across Eurasia. There just weren't that many

22:41

of them. The Neandersals were relatively

22:43

low in numbers, and I think that it

22:45

probably wouldn't have taken much to push them over

22:47

the edge to extinction, and maybe

22:50

the appearance of modern humans as a competitor was

22:52

sufficient to do that. But of course that's

22:54

just a guess. Yeah, well, that just

22:57

sounds like the most likely explanation.

23:00

There was a sharknado of humans

23:02

that came in and just wiped

23:06

him out. I mean, we have a habit of

23:08

doing that. That's kind of what

23:10

we do. It's who we are. But

23:14

who we are isn't who

23:16

we used to think we are. Doo

23:19

doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo. Of

23:21

course, Neanderthals aren't really gone.

23:24

They live in you Michael and so

23:26

many others. Let's find out

23:29

what that means today.

23:32

What does it mean to have within our

23:35

genetic code a certain percentage

23:37

of Neanderthal DNA?

23:39

I wanted to find out, so I'm heading to

23:41

New Jersey to talk to one of the foremost

23:44

experts in the field. My

23:46

name is Josh Aki, and I'm a professor

23:48

in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary

23:51

Biology in the Lewis Sigler Institute

23:53

for integrif Genomics at Princeton University.

23:55

And you do that all in one breath. With

23:58

twenty three and me, we can discover where

24:00

in the world your DNA comes from. An unforgettable

24:03

gift my heritage DNA, What are

24:05

your kid At ancestry dna dot

24:07

com. I spoke to Professor Ak about

24:10

what these DNA kits can tell us.

24:12

It's one thing to find out that from one

24:15

of these mail order things that you're

24:17

ten percent Irish, ten percent

24:20

Mediterranean, you know, five

24:22

percent African. But to find

24:24

out that your two point five percent

24:26

Meandrethal, that's a whole

24:28

other level of self discovery. We've

24:31

always said that our genomes are a mosaic

24:33

of different ancestors, and

24:35

I think what we've learned more

24:38

recently is it's a mosaic of both recent

24:40

ancestors and very distantly related

24:43

different types of human ancestors. Before

24:47

we could get to know what Neanderthal DNA

24:49

looked like, we had to truly understand

24:52

our own DNA. More than a thousand

24:54

researchers across six nations have

24:56

revealed nearly all three billion letters

24:58

of our miraculous a code. That

25:01

was President Bill Clinton back in

25:03

the year two thousand announcing the first

25:05

time the human genome was sequenced.

25:08

Then in two thousand and six, Swedish

25:10

scientist Savante Papa

25:13

and his team embarked upon sequencing

25:15

the Neanderthal genome in

25:17

a positively Jurassic Parkian

25:20

way. They were able to isolate

25:22

ancient DNA directly from a Neanderthal

25:25

femur bone. So they drill into

25:27

the longbone and

25:30

loud to a whole bunch of cleanup procedures

25:33

to try to make sure that you're just getting Neanderthal

25:36

DNA hall from this femur bone.

25:38

Amazing. Once

25:42

we sequenced the Neanderthal genome,

25:44

we were able to recognize that we have

25:46

what is called archaic DNA

25:49

within our own genes. And

25:51

this bombshell told us a lot

25:53

about what Neanderthals and modern humans

25:56

were doing with one another about forty

25:58

to fifty thousand years ago.

26:03

It's been interestingly one of the most

26:05

hotly contested issues in

26:07

science for thirty years, with people

26:10

arguing either there was admixture

26:13

that happened between Neanderthals and modern humans

26:15

or there wasn't. He's talking about

26:17

sex, and recent studies

26:19

suggest that they add mixed

26:22

a lot. Okay, So where did

26:24

the modern humans in the Neanderthals end up hooking

26:26

up? That's a great question and something

26:28

we still don't know precisely. It seems

26:30

to make most sense that the

26:32

initial rounds of hybridization

26:35

happened shortly after modern humans

26:37

dispersed out of Africa. So maybe

26:39

in Asia, minor like in Turkey, modern

26:41

levront of like in Syria and Jordan.

26:44

Yeah, okay, so it was a Middle Eastern that's where they

26:46

got together. That's yes. And I

26:49

can't help but imagine it. I

26:51

mean in kind of a literal way. I

26:53

mean, fifty thousand years ago, modern humans coming

26:55

out of Africa and meeting a group of Neanderthals.

26:58

Yeah, and what was that interaction? Like what was

27:00

the interaction with did the modern

27:02

human guy walk over to

27:05

the female neanderthal and were

27:07

they saying like, stop, no, don't

27:09

do it, She's not our kind. There's

27:12

so much we don't know, but we're

27:14

learning more every day thanks to Professor

27:16

Aiki and his team. He took

27:18

me on a tour of their facility. So

27:22

we're going to go look at the experimental

27:25

and computational space in the Lewis

27:27

Sigler Institute. You had to wear aaron at

27:29

um. No, we're not going to be baking,

27:31

but don't touch anything, okay. Mostly

27:37

so these are my graduate students pretending

27:39

like they're working. This

27:42

is all right, nice

27:44

to MITYA thesis

27:48

project is on understanding

27:50

how Neanderthal sequence is distributed

27:52

across the human genome. When you

27:55

walk down the street, do you ever

27:57

sort of wonder the knee

28:00

anderthal content of different people.

28:02

I'm actually really good at picking

28:05

that out just by looking at you. Yeah,

28:07

how much Neanderthal do you think is in me? Brush

28:09

back your hair a little bit. I think

28:12

you're about one percent. Okay, So

28:14

my friend Michael Ian Black is

28:16

two point nine percent

28:19

Neanderthal. He's an exceptional

28:21

case. It's amazing had a

28:23

picture. Wait, let me just show you a picture of it. Look

28:26

at that to look at him, Yeah, I can definitely

28:29

see yeah, because he's got a

28:31

small chin, and Neanderthals

28:33

are known for being relatively chinless,

28:35

which is why I think you're a lower because you have a nice,

28:38

strong chin, thank you. And he also has

28:40

this sort of backward sloping foreheads,

28:43

which is also very um yeah,

28:46

what we're referred to as like archic. I

28:49

don't feel like I have a very weak chin. I

28:51

don't have a we don't have a clapped to deskue

28:54

chin. I've never felt the need

28:56

to beard myself. You objectively

28:59

do not have a weak chin. But I do

29:01

have a reverse sloping forehead. He was

29:03

right about that. But Tode's Roger Stone

29:05

and he's gorgeous. All

29:08

right, all right, one out of two. Let's get

29:10

back to the beast. After meeting

29:12

with grad student Aaron, Professor Age

29:15

set the record straight. Just because

29:17

someone has a lot of Neanderthal DNA

29:19

doesn't mean his or her physical appearance

29:22

will reflect this. One

29:25

of the dirty secrets still about

29:27

genetics is that we are not

29:29

very good at interpreting DNA sequence

29:32

variation. So if I look at my friend Michael

29:34

and I see certain features

29:36

that may look like a rendering

29:38

of a Neanderthal. That's just a coincidence.

29:41

It is most likely just a coincidence.

29:43

Most like you're leaving a little bit of room

29:45

there. We can never say things with a certainty

29:48

and science that's hysterical.

29:50

All right, let's go downstairs because that's where the fun toys are.

29:53

This feels like the movie Coma, Remember

29:56

Coma. This is an aluminum

29:59

high twenty five hundred instruments.

30:01

So this is one of the class

30:04

of next generation sequencers.

30:06

You don't have to have large, intact

30:09

fragments of DNA. You can

30:11

sequence from the small degraded fragments

30:14

that most Neanderthal ancient DNA

30:16

exists in because it degrades over

30:19

time and you can sequence

30:21

a lot of it. Knowing what we do about

30:23

Neanderthal DNA put the

30:25

science fiction part of my brain in full

30:28

geek out mode. In

30:30

our lifetime, will we be able

30:32

to see, you know, kind of a living,

30:34

breathing Neanderthal that's created in a lab.

30:37

The technology to do so arguably

30:40

exist today. You can have like a version

30:42

of Sturbridge Village or Williamsburg, Virginia,

30:44

just a town with all Neanderthals building

30:47

tools and grunting at each other. I think it will

30:49

ultimately be decided that

30:51

that's an unethical thing to do.

30:53

Good, just because you can do

30:56

something doesn't mean you should do something.

30:58

But what does that Neanderthal DNA

31:00

mean for us today? According

31:03

to Professor Ake, one of the benefits

31:05

modern humans got from mating with Neanderthals

31:08

was it improved their immune systems.

31:11

It was a very efficient way for our ancestors

31:14

to quickly adapt to these new conditions

31:16

was to have sex with the neanderthal and just pick up

31:18

a few beneficial genes from the Anderthals.

31:20

Great, okay, but you don't get the benefits just

31:23

from the sacks off. Your kids will get it. Yes, yeah,

31:25

it's a persistent benefit. I almost

31:27

never get sick per neanderthal

31:30

thing. Yes, almost never. I can't remember

31:32

the last time I was sick. Wow, And you have kids,

31:35

have kids and the whole thing. I never get the flu,

31:37

I never get colds. I never really get anything

31:39

that is interesting. But wait, there's more

31:41

to the benefits of having Neanderthal DNA.

31:44

There are a few genes that are clearly important

31:47

in early formation

31:49

of skin, like keratin

31:51

proteins, and Neanderthals

31:54

had nice nails. Perhaps it was nice

31:56

nails or hair. My nails I think

31:58

are fine. Yeah, I like your nils thinks

32:00

I don't think me yet. Your Neanderthal

32:02

DNA does have some downsides. It

32:05

may play a factor in depression, and

32:07

it may have something to do with chain smoking.

32:10

It just so happens that

32:12

this sequence now influences your

32:14

ability to stop smoking. Okay,

32:17

never smoked. It's a good thing you've never smoked,

32:19

because you'd find it harder to quit. I

32:22

may just take up the habit just to see

32:24

if it's right. Right, just contest

32:26

this proposition. One

32:29

of the most mind blowing things

32:31

the field of archaic genomics has uncovered

32:34

is that modern humans and Neanderthals weren't

32:37

the only people around thirty

32:40

thousand years ago. Forty thousand years ago, we

32:42

walked around the Earth, we'd find modern

32:44

humans Neanderthals. Denisovans

32:48

that if we went to the island of Flores,

32:50

we'd see the hobbit individuals. So there

32:52

was hobbits, Homo florencias, so

32:55

very small, diminutive archaic

32:58

human types. So the world

33:00

was a much more interesting place. Fifty thousand

33:03

years ago and today, the

33:05

only remnants that we see

33:07

of these archaic forms of humans are

33:10

the scattered remains of their DNA

33:12

and the genomes of modern individuals.

33:17

I may not only have Neanderthal DNA.

33:20

I may have Denisovan, Hobbit,

33:23

or who knows what. So

33:25

I decided to take a test. Do

33:29

you know one thing about myself? I

33:32

wonder if my caveman ancestors

33:34

were any better? Opening packages, a

33:38

saliva collection kept

33:40

and all right, no food

33:43

or drink for thirty minutes. So okay, spit to

33:45

fill line. All right, Oh

33:47

god, that's a lot of spit. Twenty

33:51

minutes later, my cup runneth

33:53

over with saliva.

33:56

I have to say this is bringing out a little bit

33:58

of my competitive tendency. I'm

34:00

a little jealous that Michael is so neanderthal

34:04

h and I don't know. We'll see

34:06

time to see who's the neanderthalist

34:09

of them all. And

34:14

so I actually have the result. I already

34:16

looked, yet you haven't looked. I have

34:18

not looked. So I as you heard, I

34:21

spit in an envelope and sent it in, and

34:23

I'm gonna look. Now, your DNA

34:26

tells a story of who you are, and how you're connected to

34:28

populations, trace your heritage

34:30

through the centuries and uncovered Cleo

34:33

one hundred percent. What does that mean? Cleo?

34:36

Yeah? What is Cleo? Gideon? Hey

34:38

Mo, remember you were a little nervous

34:40

about using your real name. I

34:43

use the name of my cat. Oh

34:45

that's the name of Gideon's cat. Is Cleo.

34:51

I'm one hundred percent Cleo?

34:56

He was like, So I thought maybe it meant,

34:58

oh, you've got a one hundred percent of a mark for some

35:00

disease that's going to kill you, the Cleo

35:02

disease. Okay, all right, it's

35:05

already says our ancestry composition.

35:08

Your DNA suggests your ancestry

35:11

is forty point eight percent Iberian

35:14

with ties to five other populations.

35:16

And I'm going to view report. Wow, some

35:18

over forty percent Spanish, okay,

35:21

which is kind of sexy. And did you know that?

35:25

Well, my mother's Colombian. Okay, so thirty

35:28

point two percent Italian Italy.

35:31

I'm point three percent Ashkenazi

35:33

Jewish? Are you yes? I

35:36

It's interesting because a cab driver

35:39

the other day, asset, are you Jewish?

35:42

Said to you, are you Jewish? Yeah? And now

35:45

you can answer in the affirmative. Hell yes,

35:47

I am yeah, Hell yes, Okay,

35:50

I'm three point five percent East Asian and

35:52

Native American. Oh that's what I

35:54

was looking for. Oh my god, I have it. Congrats,

35:57

Thank you, God, don't be jealous. Okay, two

36:00

two point seven percent Native American, Columbia,

36:02

Venezuela plus three more, Goobab,

36:05

Brazil and Maica. That's

36:08

great. I'm so excited. So where do

36:10

I find my Neanderthal? It was on a separate

36:12

tab as far as I recall. So

36:15

it looks like I have only only

36:18

two hundred and thirty six Neanderthal

36:20

variants, which puts

36:23

me in the bottom eleven percent in

36:25

terms of Neanderthal content. Well, it

36:27

sounds like that researcher was

36:29

right that you have less Neanderthal

36:32

than the average person. If you have less

36:35

than eighty nine percent of twenty three and ME customers,

36:37

that suggests to me you don't have very much

36:40

at all. Right, I guess that's what it means

36:42

anyway. So okay, so we can conclude

36:44

I have virtually no Neanderthal,

36:47

hence our different pronunciations of Neanderthal.

36:49

Yes, but you do have a real

36:52

smorgas board of all everything

36:55

that I wanted, so I

36:57

wouldn't say it's a tie. I would say you're slightly ahead.

36:59

And the genetic lottery, you said a Samargus

37:02

board, but I have no Northern Europeans,

37:04

so that's why we should what would be something more Payea,

37:08

which I love it so much. Well,

37:15

Mike lean Black, I want to thank you,

37:18

but you should really be thanking me because

37:20

this was about finding your roots since I'm

37:23

basically zero present Neanderthal. Well,

37:25

thank you. I mean I really feel like I learned a lot

37:27

about myself, about my family. I

37:30

now know more about you

37:32

and simultaneously think less

37:34

of you because you are not of my

37:37

species. But yeah, this was

37:39

a blast. Before

37:43

we close, a word from the University of

37:45

Wisconsin's John Hawks

37:48

on his predecessors in Neanderthal

37:50

research, those people

37:52

whose early analysis set the stage

37:54

for how Neanderthals were seen for so

37:57

long. When we look at the scientific

37:59

world of the Victorian era, you're

38:02

looking at people who became aware

38:04

of human variation around the world, but

38:06

they interpreted it in a very culturally

38:09

insensitive way. You look

38:11

at the past and think, oh my gosh, I can't

38:14

believe that they said that. But that was the

38:16

way that they approached their science. Today

38:20

we look at things totally differently, and

38:23

when we look at extinct human groups, they

38:25

had their own ways of living in the world. You

38:27

have to appreciate they're not

38:29

us, but they lived at a time

38:31

with incredible challenges and they overcame

38:34

those challenges, and that is something really

38:36

fundamentally similar that we share

38:38

with them

38:43

today. We're all experts. I

38:45

mean, we can just spit in an envelope

38:47

and get all the answers right. Far

38:51

from it. Let's all hope that science

38:53

and technology will allow us

38:55

one day to understand why

38:58

a species of humans is advanced as

39:00

the Neanderthals disappeared

39:02

from the planet, so that maybe,

39:05

just maybe we don't disappear,

39:11

at least not before our next episode

39:14

of Mobituaries featuring

39:16

the incomparable Sammy Davis

39:18

Junior. I

39:25

certainly hope you enjoyed this episode

39:27

and if you would, please rate and review

39:29

our podcast. You can also follow

39:31

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39:34

and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca

39:37

tell me how Neanderthal you are. For

39:39

more great content, please visit mobituaries

39:42

dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries

39:44

wherever you get your podcasts. This

39:47

episode of Mobituaries was produced

39:49

by Gideon Evans. Our team

39:51

of producers also includes Megan Marcus,

39:53

Keith mccauliffe, Megan Dietree, and me

39:56

Morocca. It was edited

39:58

by David Fox and neared

40:00

by Dan de Zula. Indispensable

40:03

support from Justin Ader, Genius,

40:05

Dineski, Kiera, Wardlow, Zach

40:08

Gilcrest, the team at CBS News

40:10

Radio, and Richard Rohrer. Our

40:12

theme music is written by Daniel Hart.

40:15

Special thanks du Gary Purdue, Ainara

40:17

Sistiaga and London's Natural

40:20

History Museum, and has always

40:22

undying thanks to Rand Morrison

40:24

and John carp without whom Mobituaries

40:27

couldn't live. Hi,

40:36

It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries

40:38

the podcast, may I invite you

40:40

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40:43

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40:46

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40:48

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40:50

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40:53

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40:55

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40:58

whole countries that went caput. And

41:00

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41:02

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41:06

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