Homo Sapiens vs Neanderthals

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First visit historyhit.com/subscrib. Europe 45,000 years ago, two species of humans co-exist. On the one hand, you have our ancestors, early Homo sapiens, who've recently dispersed out of Africa, and are now reaching the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea, bringing their own technologies and lifestyles with them.

On the other hand, you have a species that has already been living in Europe for well over 100,000 years, robust in their body structure, and well accustomed to the cold acclimates this far north. Now we know that early Homo sapiens and Neanstal groups did interact with each other, and

not always violently, but how they communicated and the nature of these interactions largely

remains a mystery. Could they have exchanged a knowledge and ideas?

“Could there even have been friendships and alliances between Neanstal and Homo sapiens?”

Do we know they integrate with one another? There would have been early humans with one Homo sapiens and one Neanstal parent. What might that have been like? This questions like these that we're going to delve into today, we're going to explore this fascinating area of human evolution, have the paths of Homo sapiens and Neanstal's

finally crossed after hundreds of thousands of years, and why it was ultimately Homo sapiens that won the competition for survival, why Neanstal's went extinct, and we did not. Welcome to the ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and this is the Everdeveloping Story of Neanstal's and Homo sapiens. Our guest is the Paleo Anthropologist, presenter, comedian and author, Ella Alashimahi.

Homo sapiens and Neanstal's new tool, becoming human continues in the UK on the 28th of May. Ella, it is such a pleasure, it's an honour to have you on the show. An honour to be. Thank you very much. Have you been very busy?

You've been everywhere at the moment, with your Paleo Anthropology stuff. It's really, really great to have you on and to talk about Homo sapiens and Neanstal's and their interactions with one another, their stories. Please such a fascinating moment in our evolutionary story, just thinking about those early meetings and how these two types of humans would have interacted with each other.

“It is something that I think captures people's imagination, like I will say, if even Hollywood”

are interested in the Neanderthals, probably on to something in terms of subject matter here, I think I have to say, obviously, I am fascinated by this period, but when you actually study it, how could you not be like these are people who in so many ways were similar to us?

And I cannot help but wonder about those interactions, the very first Homo sapiens and Neanderthals

who met each other, what would they have made of each other? Would you have looked at each other and recognised each other as being part of the same Chinese, would you be like, yeah, they're like ours? Or would you look at each other and think, who and Earth are you? You look funny, you look shit, yeah, you know, it's interesting actually.

I don't think I've mentioned this to you before, but there was a really old joke amongst paleontropologists. You probably heard it, but it's basically this whole discussion about whether Neanderthals are the same as us or not. And this one paleontropologist says, look, the same as us, if you gave one a shave, you washed

it up a bit, put it in a suit and gave it a bowler hat to cover it's like we had bulged at the back of the skull and put it on the New York subway, nobody would notice, and then another paleontropologist was like, yeah, maybe that says more about the New York subway, but it does. Yeah, I'm opposed.

“And I think it really captures, I think for me, that recognition issue, like, do we recognise”

each other?

And actually my very first TV show, when we were just pitching it and playing with it, I was

like, guys, we need to bring this scene to life. And it's like, one of my proudest moments of television that we managed to put a Neanderthal

Would you look at that person and be like, and it really split the audience and, you know,

“they, some of them were clearly like, no, they look weird and others were like, I mean,”

I've seen strange things. Well, that's the thing isn't it, or just be polite. Yeah, you know, you know, British for like me, and it's so weird being paleontropologist

because I never would need to talk about the tech revolution and how, like, now is the moment

for tech, et cetera, et cetera, like, now is the moment to be studying paleontropology because, like, there's a new discovery, like, every week and it's, they're not even small discoveries anymore. The kind of discoveries, which are so big that they make you question so many things, including who and Earth, the Neanderthals are, you know, and so it's just a fascinating time to also

be studying this, because I feel like if I had been studying this even 40 years ago, the conversations would be so boring, like in Paris, where is, like, literally we are now having a conversation about, oh, we think it was probably Neanderthal males and homo sapien females into breeding, which is just a fancy word for having sex, and I'm just like, what have we got to this point?

You know, well, we're discussing this now, but that is the state of the research. And we just imagine, like, with the technology to say, what, I mean, how different our

“conversation on this same topic could be in like five to ten years time, that's how quickly”

things are changing. Yeah, and that's the terrifying thing when you're writing a book by the way, I'm writing a book and I'm like, oh, my God, oh, God, I'm going to have to be careful about this, but I got to be careful about this, but it could be because as soon as that book is published, it will be out of date.

The answers have had such a bad rep for so long, and you can't help with all this information coming out, and like, with this portion, like, you're a new series, and so on, you can't help but love them. You can't feel that actually they're not too different from us. Yeah, what's really funny is so many of us who kind of who studied the antitholes or

talk about the antitholes to the public, we, you know, a lot of us give talks or what have you. And I have to say that it is not uncommon to the point where I've now had to tell people

stop doing it for women basically to drag up their poor husbands and be like, could you

please feel his skull, because I'm convinced he's an antithole and I'm like, oh, so that kind of association with them being like, less, like, more on, it's still very much present. But what's really interesting is that I've been a pale answer prodigalist now for a minute, but I've only been in television since, I don't know, 2017, maybe, and when I started, that stereotype of the neanderthals being knuckle-driking, eight men basically, I feel like

it was very, very strong with the public. And the first show that I overdid was called the antitholes, meet your ancestors, and we were really trying to kind of essentially do a PR job on these neanderthals and kind of portray them in this sign to pick, yeah, you're at, like, we dragged in, anti-circus and, oh, yeah, we used like motion capture and all this stuff.

And what's wild is that now when you talk about the general public about neanderthals, yeah, it's still an insult, nobody's calling you any antithole and being like, oh, you're

so small and brilliant and pretty, but, but, so many people now know that the stereotype

is incorrect. I don't know if you're feeling that as well. I am, and also on the anxious podcast, we've done a few episodes on the antitholes and those stories and people love the story that the last neanderthals look well, but, yeah, they have a good look on.

We had no for that. We had crostringer on. And that was, you know, Loma DNA in the acogenetic diversity, variation of identity, sure. But, like, learning from that, the interest in it, yes, we still had a comment. Just like, no, then the antitholes aren't extinct.

I saw one down the pub the last week. Yes. But, yes, there is just a real fascination actually wanting to learn more about who these people are because we now have the information to give, like, a detailed 40, 50, 60 minute podcast that's about it.

No, completely.

“It's interesting, because I think also just DNA testing, because now people can see”

some DNA within them and maybe if people don't want to think, oh, I just, my ancestors or, you know, whatever. But, yeah, it's been really, really interesting to see that kind of people come to terms with who they are and I think one of the things that I argue a lot and I'm actually preparing a tour right now.

So I'm kind of thinking about the kind of, you know, the messaging that I want to put out to the public. And one of the things that I'm arguing quite heavily is, like, look, when we portray these other species, like the Neanderthals, as incredibly primitive. Not only are we doing an injustice to them, like, less than they're not here to defend themselves,

do you know what? But I would argue that we actually make our story less remarkable, because those are the species were incredible. And if you were to get a lot of paleontropologist together in a room, and I mean, we don't agree on much.

But if you were to say, all right, like, between us and the Neanderthals, who was going to make it, a lot of us would not be betting on ourselves into right kind of much more recently, should we say? Like, even Chris Christringer is like, yeah, a hundred thousand years, he wouldn't have been

And so for me, I'm like, if we keep portraying them this scientifically inaccurate way, we actually do our own really remarkable story, more of a disservice, because how on earth are we, the only ones left when the Neanderthals seem to be doing? Okay, they seem to be more experienced than us, numerous times, they were not going locally extinct.

And we were in the same geography sometimes, if I'd often, and you just think, right, that's a changing fortune.

“So yeah, so I think it's kind of important to give them their due.”

I think, absolutely. And as you say, it does make the story of homo sapiens, us today, it's all for our own purpose. They're so grown. It's just an ego beast.

First, and everyone on the planet, they were amazing, and therefore we must be even more

amazing. All right, well, let's start with the background of Neanderthals, and then homo sapiens, and then how they interact. Which is very interesting. So Neanderthals, how far back in time are we going where in the world are we going

with the Neanderthals before they meet our ancestors? Okay, so basically, the reason why I'm like saying is that the Neanderthals keep getting older, bless them. And what I mean by that is, we used to climb to think. And when I say we used to, I'm really talking like, within the last 10 years, what

might talk about, even more recently than that.

“We used to think Neanderthals, kind of a 200,000 years old, went extinct 40,000 years ago.”

Like that's kind of classic Neanderthals. For years before that, like up to 350,000 years, that's kind of this, for a while, we'd see it as this gray zone where you could kind of see Neanderthal features coming in.

There was some Spanish Neanderthals at quite famous collection of Neanderthals who people always

argue that they Neanderthal and they not Neanderthal, they're similar, Delta Squaresos, Neanderthals. And you can hear probably from the fact that I'm calling them Neanderthals that the genetic evidence started coming in and it was overwhelming to you that they were Neanderthals. So then very recently, the date got pushed back to, okay, well, Neanderthals 350,000 years. I was just invited, like, you know, they're probably taking a lot of effects that keep

getting older. But then, oh, we'll stay recently, because Chris Stringer, who, for those of you who are maybe Neanderthal or just Neanderthal, I'm just a refugee, Chris Stringer is the dawn of paleoids. We're going to be trying right after this. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

He's living shrine at that tradition. He's, because he's kind of still there. But yeah, he's absolutely incredible paleoids, apologies. And he and a number of Chinese colleagues, they have new dates on another species called Denisibans.

But now bear with me, right, because I'm talking about Denisibans, but I'm talking about the antithols. So the thing with our family tree is we consider the Neanderthals to be our sister species. And by that, I mean, that they are our closest relatives, and we share a common ancestor. Okay, so yeah. Yes, exactly.

Like a, the shape, basically, like a triangle.

But then the Denisibans, we also consider to be the sister species of Neanderthals, or very, very closely related. So it's kind of like, actually, now, like, there's a three way thing to go for. Yes, exactly. And by implication, because we are kind of sister species. The implication is that we will be similarish ages, because whenever the split was with

our grandparents or our parent species, you're kind of broadly expect that those species will be the same as us, not necessarily have to be true, but broadly speaking. Listen, some Chinese family anthropologists have basically, or now of the opinion that they have a Denisibans around the millionaires old. Of course.

So the implication.

“And if it had come from many others, I think we wouldn't have been taking it seriously.”

But the implication is that, therefore, if the Denisibans are a millionaires old, then Neanderthals are something similar, and we therefore are something similar. So surprise, you are a lot of really think you are. I feel this is a topic that we could delve into for a long time. It's worthy of another episode, and it's so right.

It's very good for that. Yeah. But that language time is mind-boggling, especially with the human homo sapiens and Neanderthals interacting. It's very late in that story.

Yes. But with Neanderthals, are we largely then just going to be thinking, Eurasia? Yes. Neanderthals that we know of existed in Europe and into Central Asia. We don't have any Neanderthals in Africa.

I mean, if you held the gun to my head, and we're like, are you trying to tell me that Neanderthal ever made it to North Africa? I'd be like, of course, they did. They must have done, right? She's got no evidence for it.

So I probably shouldn't say that. But there are parts of Spain where you could see Morocco back then, and I find it plausible. But there's no evidence for them in Africa. There's no genetic evidence either, although, I mean, that's a slightly different topic. We'll get into interpreting them in a second.

So let me stop there. Well, if we go forward to, let's say 200,000, 300,000 years ago, when it's just seen

where you send theanderthal. Is it a right or wrong way? My way is right. No. Okay.

I need it. That's fine. Okay. So this is taxonomy. So we're in nerdy bunch, and we have all these rules about how you, they're called

the A priori rules in taxonomy, and basically, well, that means is, when you name a species,

whoever names a species first, you call dibs.

“I know that's how to take blitz, it's a blitz.”

They get fair enough. So if you found a fossil, and you just think of the most ridiculous name for it, I would get that Tristanosaurus or something like that. Yes, there we go. Although you can't call it after yourself, so it's something else we have to name it.

So essentially, then that's, you call dibs on that species. And anyone that comes after, if I come along and I want to give it like a more respectable name, I technically have to go by your name, and colleagues have to then take your name as well. Does that make sense?

So basically, the thing with the Neanderthals is, it was a mispronunciation and a mispronunciation

spelling, I guess, of a German name, because it's Neanderthal valley, but the angles were basically saying Neanderthal, and so technically, it's an incorrect thing, but because it's fair, it then becomes complicated. But now if I was to, oh my god, this is complicated, but if I was to write Neanderthal with just a T and not a T-h, that would be incorrect, but pronunciation is a bit more ambiguous.

So I would argue that we should probably do T-h, because we made a mistake and we should live with it, and the laws of a priori, the laws are very priori as such that you have to stick with it, but other people very respectfully point out that it's pronunciation, it's not written, and it was mistake, maybe grow up and just go with the actual German pronunciation.

“The truth is, it does not matter, but it's really fun to ignore people.”

I'm going to show you how malleable I am now. I will now, for the rest of this episode, try and we say Neanderthal. So don't, don't, don't, stick with town, because it's honestly, it does not matter. I have to have the phone. There we go, we have the phone.

There we go. Tomatoes tomatoes. But so the classic Neanderthal, let's go through it through it at the moment, like physiology, cognitively, I mean, what picture should we have of Neanderthal? So I think us, but stock here, you're talking, the males, well, I mean, it's debated, but

maybe five foot five on average, but you've got to remember, homo sapiens would have been more slender, especially back then, and a bit end-tooler, so, you know, so there was that kind of difference. Also, in terms of the head itself, it was once described to me, and I really love the description.

It's like you've got a homo sapiens skull, and then you just put it on one of those grid systems in a computer, and you know, there's grid systems where you could like manipulate it. And you kind of bring out the front, so it's kind of jutting all prognathic, as we say, and you bring out the back, so you kind of got what we call an occipital bone at the

back, so with a lot of Neanderthals, if you touch the back of their skull, they have quite a big bump. Now, if you touch a lot of people's skulls, women tend to be slightly smoother, men have a bit more ridging, it's a bit rougher, but with Neanderthals, I'm talking about a proper bump at the back, and then they don't really have chins, chins are actually a very modern

invention. There's no real species of human that has chins besides us. They had also very prominent brow ridges, yeah, very, very prominent, and also you see your forehead, my forehead, they kind of go up, and the Neanderthal forehead is kind of it's much shorter, but it kind of just kind of recedes straight into the rest of the

head, basically. So, there are different physical characteristics. The broadly, it's been argued a kind of in line with, you're in a slightly colder climate. It kind of makes sense if you're in a colder climate to have a bigger chest comparative

“to your limbs, although honestly, it's constantly debated as to whether it's really”

funny actually, people keep suggesting that is the prevailing theory, but every time people test it, sometimes it proves correct, sometimes it's like there's something about nasal size that Neanderthals have slightly bigger noses, and there was thinking about that

being about cold air and what have you, the testing is always, it's never conclusive,

but I think broadly, most of us kind of buy that it's because it will cop the doubt. And then bigger body mass, so then they have to hunt more, but we think you've the answer tools with spears and the like, and the classic images, is then with woolly mammoths or... Yeah, but even the hunt, like, you know, once you, I don't know that they're necessarily

bigger, because they might be stockier, but they're so short by comparison, so not necessarily, but what we do think is that they were doing a lot of short-range hunting, so not really projectile weapons, projectile weapons are quiet and incredible adventures, oh my god,

the force velocity will have you speed is increased, but it's less deadly for you on the

other side. Neanderthals have so many injuries, we think partly because they're doing cross-range hunting. Think about it. Think about the logic of how interesting is that though, once you're kind of doing cross-range hunting, you're risking your life so much more, so yeah, we think, you know,

very similar hunting towards, though, in terms of the prey that we were eating. I mean, ever since often you get a headline that's really interesting, like, some archaeologists are years ago now, started looking at different assemblages like different, within the archaeological record, the animals that were being consumed by us versus the Neanderthals, and they were of the opinion that the Neanderthals were hunting less small animals, like

rabbits, and so it came to this conclusion that we survived because of small animals, and the logic of that was that we had smaller furs that we could kind of cover ourselves better

“with, and that's the thing, I think, in the field, everyone's always going, maybe it's”

this, and you just, you know, that sounds slightly bar me to me, but I just go with it.

Okay, show me also, mentioned that, get away this idea, Neanderthals, always would be fully

naked, they wouldn't have had clothing, I mean, this idea of Neanderthals with ornaments, with arts, which is really coming to the fore now, this was, if it was a really big past their story to explain, you know, even before they meet modern humans. Yeah, it was saying that Neanderthals did have similar size brains to us, if you correct for size, maybe a teeny bit smaller, but they did have similar size brains to us, and

we know that they were playing around with, for example, Oca, Red Oak, like pigments. We know that they had shells, they had pierced holes into that they were putting pigments on, so it looks like they were beaded, they have talons as well from them that seem to have been worn. Also, we've got Brutal Cal, Brutal Cal is a massive headache to anyone that sees Neanderthals

“as primitive, so Brutal Cal is this one site in France that, you know, we had understandably”

assumed this homo sapiens because it's basically full of these, they salvmit or stalactites, stalactites, or stalactites. One or the other. Do you mean those big things? Exactly.

And they're basically made into these, like, concentric circles, so this is crazy structure.

And everyone just always assumed it was, this was homo sapiens, I mean, you know, it looks

potentially ritualistic, but it certainly looks creative. Do you know what, and it doesn't seem to have a structural purpose. Doesn't seem to have been because it's an abode and a home and that kind of thing. And then they did the dating on it a while back then, 10 years ago, and they were like, oh, it's really old, it's over 100,000 years old, and in Europe, that's not really homo sapiens.

I mean, it's possible that a homo sapiens group got to France at that point. It's absolutely possible, it's just got no evidence for it. The only evidence that period is neanderthals. So if neanderthals are, I mean, what are you doing? Moving around, stalactites and making them into these strange circles and a cave.

And like, that seems incredibly creative to a lot of us. They also, we know now, we're doing cave, I mean, hand prints.

“If you want to call that cave art, I personally would.”

Some people wouldn't call it cave art, but I mean, you know, I don't know any other species that we know of that was putting their hand in pigment and putting it against a wall. You don't get chimpanzees doing that, don't get hammer-hired or against us, or any of these other species that we know of doing it. Dinosaurs were probably doing it, but the others, some evidence for this.

That's them, and I'm a member of seeing this, we're watching one of your episodes on human talking about the feathers. Oh, thank you for reminding us. Well, well, I feel I had to because I mean, that's what I was talking about. Yes, and I think that for a lot of us is incredibly visual.

So for those of you who didn't watch the series 'Human', I won't take it personally. But there is this moment where we're talking about feathers. And I think what's really interesting is, obviously, you can imagine, as you know, these things you kind of talk to your whole team about them, all the production team and the directors and what have you.

And we were kind of just, like, feathers were hit at home to people. Because if the Neanderthals were picking out feathers, so we know this. We know that if we know it from Italian assemblages, we know it from so many different assemblages in Europe. So I mean, that the Neanderthals seem to be collecting birds, but specific birds. You know, they weren't just after any birds, they seem to favor birds with iridescent feathers,

the kind of feathers which are more attractive, look more beautiful, shinier, that kind of thing. And that, you know, that takes your breath away, and as a team we were like, yeah, we think, for an audience, this challenges that assumption of the Neanderthals being knuckle-dragging eight men.

I'm not just that, like, you know, teenage girls were better, I was a teenage girl, and when I say, you know, I mean, yesterday, like, you know, just feathers in, in like ornaments for your hair, you're kind of like it, you know, it's considered to be very beautiful, it's whatever, it's attracted to something shiny about it. And to think that, you know, these Neanderthals who, the way we've told their story, they're just that interested in survival and procreating, they're doing that.

And then they're building these strange structures in Brunekal in France.

“I think it forces us to reevaluate the way we see the Neanderthals.”

So if we go towards, like, say, a hundred thousand years ago, and the onions to us up in Europe,

all these amazing artifacts, and so on. And in Central Asia, thank you.

Modern humans, homo sapiens, we've been on our own path. I mean, our evolutionary story, even up to that point, before we leave Africa, has already been, it's been quite a journey in itself, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah, basically we're an African species, and for those who are kind of like, hold on a second to how we, how exactly are we thinking we're related? The basic thinking is that there was some kind of ancestral species. We used to call them hide-and-begansus. Now, we don't even

know if that's a species or not, but anyway. So let's just say species X, for example, right? Species X started in Africa, we think. Then some of them broke off, and went into Asia and Europe, and gave birth to, eventually, with time, the Neanderthals. The ones that stayed behind, eventually, became us. That's the broad thinking. Now, we were in Africa, we started in Africa, we used to think, oh, hopefully we're not going to go back there in a million years again,

“'cause I can hear you. Well, I've been till before COVID, I think it was. We thought it was 200,000”

years. Then they found the incredible jubilant hood fossil in, well, they didn't find it. They just started dating things more accurately in Morocco, and then they were like, oh, hold on a second. We actually think we're 300,000 years old. And now, obviously, if you're to accept Cristina and colleagues, interpretation of things, we're even older than that. And every soften we would leave Africa. And this was the thing, we constantly actually left Africa,

but we would leave, and we never really got a foothold, and we'd become local extinct,

and it was just this pattern that just kept going on. And so actually, the first time we think we left and we interacted with the Neanderthals was probably in the Middle East. Okay. In fact, it would have been in the Middle East. There's a lot of evidence for us being contemporaneous with the Neanderthals in that region. There's an incredible mountain, called Mount Caramel in Israel that has two caves. One cave is called Thubbon,

which is a Neanderthal cave. And around the same time, so 90 to 120,000 years, there was this overlap with the occupants of another cave called the school. And Sworne had, well, it was a homo sapiens cave. And like, firstly, let's just acknowledge

how amazing Mount Neighborhood Mr. Moon. Like, they're the same mountain. We think the same time,

you've got a cave of Neanderthals and a cave of homo sapiens. And what I love about this is we actually included this in the series Human in the first episode. It was kind of like an on the flyer did we kind of like actually let's include this as such a cool story, like, and the daily male in their review of the episode. And I cannot emphasize this enough. Right, one of the most amusing reviews, because they spent most of that review just going, oh my god, what was it like to

be on that mountain? Like, thank you to your sense. But that just gives you a sense of the human mind and the interest in the answer was today. It is that, as we said, is that first contact idea or most right? 100% like what was that like now? The interesting thing is the fascinating thing, I might say the bonkers thing is, one of those species became local extinct and disappeared. And in the way that we've told the story of us and the Neanderthals, you would assume it was the

Neanderthals. Turns out it was us and you see this consistently. And it's to the point that there are some who, when you look at the pattern of homo sapiens movement, I want to have you, there are of the opinion that the reason why homo sapiens appear to have favored going east. Instead of going north is because the Neanderthals for the longest time were a formidable force. And yeah, this is a, it's a very respectable theory that, you know, what the dates are very interesting

“because we, we leave Africa, but we seem to favor the east, at least that's what the current evidence”

suggests. And we're not in Europe as much. Like, we'll dial in, but the number of homo sapiens

were a force to be reckoned with. And this is when the interesting evidence, you know,

trying to find where evidence from like the Arabian peninsula right to think homo sapiens doing that bridge across the Red Sea further south and going that way. And that's another great story isn't it, to try and learn a bit more about that potentially eastward movement of them. Yeah, so this is, so, you know, the traditional telling is we go via the Sinai of Egypt.

“And honestly, the way you used to be told is kind of you'd hang around in the north of the Arabian”

peninsula, which isn't really the Arabian peninsula by that point. It's the Levant because you're looking at like Syria as well, Lebanon, those areas and Iraq. And then, but actually increasing me, there's evidence to suggest that Arabia was green at various moments. And that that whole area was used. And was actually at times a refuge. And in fact, there's some people that would argue it's not out of Africa. It's out of Arabia, stroke the Middle East. And of course, you know,

our ancestors, and then the antithalls had no sense of what continent was. You know what I mean? They weren't like, well, that's the African continent. That's Asia. Like, no, this was just landmasses to them. So, I think there's probably some truth to that. Yeah, I think it's so quite as well. It's really interesting that that story. But if we do focus a bit more on Europe and homo sapiens, I mean, do we know when they do manage to be a bit more successful and get into

kind of Europe proper? And then they're managing interactions between them and the ants, to groups there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I would say starting, I mean, there are so many different incursions within to, I mean, you know, once you start looking at Central Asia, there's quite a lot there. But even within Europe itself, you get incursions. I mean, you get incursions technically starting from about 220,000 years ago. You've got some homo sapiens teeth in Greece.

It's Greece. It's like Greece. Very confusing. Yes. Yeah, let me tell you when that came out,

we were like, can we just not think about that for a second? It's confusing enough as it is.

“Here's the thing, about 60,000, 50,000, you do start seeing us. I need to check exactly where”

in the 60,000 mark. But by about 54,000, you you start seeing us very present within Europe. But it's interesting because for the years before then, there's a lot of like, you know, we turn up, we disappear, we turn up, we disappear. We're not quite getting the foothold in Europe. And then things kind of start changing. And then by the time you get to 40,000, it's just us. But we can imagine, let's say, between 55 and 60,000 years ago, something like that.

Like, almost can we tell from the evidence now that they would have been clear interactions between the end story and how much they've been there? Yeah. And there's, I mean, there's people. Do we think large people? Likewise. So difficult to prove whether it's peaceful or not. Steve Churchill suggested that there might have been some interspecies of violence,

“based on some, I think it was maybe some Iraqi material. What's it around?”

But I think it's very, very difficult to prove something being interspecies. Really the way you do it is, it's like, if the injury looks like a projectile injury, as opposed to a close range hunting injury, projectiles, I was, it's not that. But I think what's what you do tend to find though, is culture being transmitted. So there are a few examples that are used. It looks like there's a particular kind of glue that we actually might have picked up off the

end of those. We might have learned how to make this particular glue off the knee end of those. There is a tool that actually is still being used. I have been told in some very, kind of, let's say, awkwardure French fashion houses to prepare leather. And that looks like it was picked up from the knee end of those as well. It might not have been, but that's kind of

been a suggestion. But then also, people that really, really have incredible sights. There's

a few people who have the kind of sights where there's a lot of resolutions, so they can really start seeing things in different layers. They will argue certain things. They will argue that it looks like there's some kind of technological exchange or information exchange, but that it, there are parameters on it, often. I think Marie Suresse and Ludwig both of them have argued similar things, that it does look like there's information exchange, but they're not necessarily,

or at least some people are not necessarily arguing that it's, we're sitting there. Go, what is, how do you do it? It might have been, some people have argued that it might have been observation. It might have been the people are nosing on each other very quickly, spying on neighbouring community. And when you say Ludwig, that's Ludwig's Le Manor. Yes, I'm so glad that

fascinating sights? I hope we'll probably talk about that sight in the bit of this event which happens in a bit, big lot of cold coming in. But what you were saying there, I have to then ask about your communication, the tensioner communication. You've done a lot of work on the handshake. Yes.

“Do you think it's likely that there would have been a homo sapien-nion-stool handshake?”

I know this sounds bonkers, but I have thought about it and looked into it extensively, and I do think the handshake is probably biological. Okay, and I argue this because chimps a bloody shaking hands. Like we know this now researchers who observe wild chimps, because it has to be wild, because if they're in a zoo, they might just be copying what some keep is are doing. But wild chimpanzees have been observed shaking hands and the meaning being

broadly similar. So it's basically, some researchers have sent Andrews, they showed that these two male chimps are kind of fighting each other. And after the fight, they come up to each other's shake hands to work out. And the thing is if chimps are doing something and we're doing something, it's a pretty obvious argument to argue that is by dissent. And the thing is because we do the handshake, and we like to see ourselves as being these fancy people. We assume that the handshake is just

like a purely cultural thing. But a number of hidden camera experiments have shown that actually

handshakes are a really good way of passing on chemo signals. I don't know. Half a million the audience

is chemo signals or the listeners are chemo signals. Okay, so chemo signals are basically chemical signals. And we emit chemical signals all the time. We like to think that we're very, we're beyond that,

“but as I always argue, we haven't evolved our way out of being animals. So by the way, if you want to”

pass some time and just have your mind blown, read upon chemical signals, chemo signals for humans, because there were all these experiments which show that we give off sense when we are happy, when we're sad, when we're scared. And if you think about this, with the rest of the animal kingdom, you're like, oh, that makes sense because they can't communicate as well. So, you know, oh, the person next to me is scared, maybe there's like, I don't know, a wolf nearby or something, right?

It turns out we have a similar thing. There are these experiments where they basically get people

to put goals under their armpits and all that. We'll show you zero journey and what have you and they get them to watch like happy films or sad films. And then they take that goals. They give it to a different group of participants and they're accurately naming the emotion. It's eatable wild stuff. And so the argument has been that a handshake is a good way of passing a longer chemical signal. It's a good way of assessing somebody upon a first meet and actually using

hidden cameras. They were able to show that people are more likely to put their hand to their face and sniff it after a handshake. Yes. And suddenly as our seeming very criminal proper, we see more like dogs just smear something. But the reason why I'm talking about all this

“is that I think that the handshake is very old. And if the chimps are doing it as well,”

that the general kind of evolution re-biology principle is that if two very closely related species are doing something, there's a good chance that it's by dissent. And so therefore if we're doing it, then the Neanderthals are also part of that lineage. They would also be doing it. So I think it is possible. I mean, we were having sex with the Neanderthals. So let's just put out that maybe we should have my hands as well. I mean, you're kind of primed to my next question, which is like obviously

there is some sort of interaction because we know they're shagging with each other. Yes. Yes. And but it's just fascinating that communication to wonder what that communication was. Remember to enter Chris about this. Could there have been any equivalent of Neanderthals to homer sapiens translate as it was someone who was kind of working to bridge the gap? There's a fascinating question to know how it happened, right? And I think what I love about this

and I think about this a lot is that I think in the way that we talk about history, we often assume that everybody's the same, right? And my personal observation is that people

within a group, within tribe can be very different. And in my mind, it's always like Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob is always the one because there's always one person, right? It's usually an art, but sometimes there's Uncle Bob who would just way too friendly. They want to talk to everyone. They want to talk to the strangers. They want, and it's like in my mind it's like Uncle Bob is constantly they want going off to talk to the Neanderthals and all the other species and just being out and it's like, oh my god could you stop it? It's weird. But like as much as I'm being like slightly,

I'm taking the piss there a little bit, but actually am I? Am I? I think realistically, in times when things weren't so bad, I reckon we would have been more comfortable talking to, you know, these strange other humans than the other those, when times were maybe more difficult, maybe we weren't, but maybe if actually working with them helped us survive, we were.

Some people would have been much more like suspicious of them and other people would be like,

“we're judging always makes interviews, sometimes like this. So, so difficult because you need to”

make you always need to make clear that everyone is not the same, right? And that's one of the

beauties of it of how one homo sapient viewed in the end to compare to how another one viewed, which I guess might also be his evidence who the fact that some homo sapiens chose to have sex move in the end to us. Yeah. And you know, I mean you say chose also. I mean okay, so we know what we know now for sure is that Neanderthals and homo sapiens were having sex with each other. We do not know obviously what was going on with those interactions. So I often, you know,

I'm always like, oh, was it like, oh, that's the bad boy over there, kind of thing, you know, what was it attraction? For we know, you know, it might have been part of a trade agreement,

you know, it might have been very, very practical, it might have been a bit darker, we just don't know.

“I think there was so many instances of it though that it's also possible that it was many different”

things. Now, one thing that has been really, really interesting is trying to work out was it like how was that and was it like Neanderthal females or Neanderthal males like what was what was that? And this is where genetics is kind of really interesting because we have Neanderthal DNA all over our genome, if you are from outside of sub-subsan Africa, if you're from inside of sub-subsan Africa, you have some Neanderthal DNA and you may be, but don't necessarily outside of sub-subsan Africa,

it's about 2% on average for an individual. And it spreads all over your genome. So it's important to say that like my 2% is going to be different from your 2% right? But there are a few places where there are these Neanderthal deserts where you don't see much Neanderthal DNA and the main place you see it is on the sex chromosomes. And that usually indicates that haldenes rule, is it playing a haldenes rule is we will probably talk this at school, the biological species concept.

So biological species concept is that two, two things are two different species, two animals are two different species, if when they have sex, the offspring is in fertile, right? That's like oh you're two different species. Now, one of the things about that is that the sex chromosomes

will basically have less DNA from the other because of haldenes rule, it's kind of the way it goes.

So the risk that so initially we were like okay well haldenes rule is at play,

“it's that we're becoming two different species or we are two different species and that's why”

there is this desert there of Neanderthal DNA, only just in the last few weeks. There's been some research coming in and the suggestion isn't actually, there's another possible explanation for why there's no Neanderthal DNA on the homo sapiens, sex chromosomes. It's that it was homo sapiens females running off with Neanderthal males and that really makes me laugh because I'm like even back then there was a precedent for liking Neanderthal.

The Neanderthal bad boy there he goes. Yes. Have an image of like oh because it would have been our grandmother, if this is correct it would have been our grandmother right and I just have an image of her looking at the great grandmother being like, oh my my loving my loving my loving my and it's just being her and I'm gonna bump at the wedding. Then also really interesting to think that like if it's homo sapiens woman giving birth to a

Neanderthal. Well but then like you know that's another question entirely isn't it's like the actual process of giving birth and they're like but also like community wise what that would have been if your dad was in the hands to it if your mum was a homo sapiens it's another of those fascinating questions that you know people can think about for ages and just think about. I yes and it's it's so interesting because I think one of the things that I was really keen on with the series human

and just generally with my stuff generally when it comes to communicating science is that I think in the often the way we do paleo anthropology it's quite emotionless should we say and I can't help but do emotion some people might say it's because I'm Arab I don't know but I come to it with a motion and it was really interesting because I we had quite a lot of discussions with the BBC about this because I think you know they want to make sure that they're doing

justice to the science and and and I came in very loudly and very strongly being like we need to put the human back in human evolution. I was like we are doing a disservice to these species and our ancestors by portraying them as if they're devoid of emotion because actually emotion is so central to being human I would argue the magnitude the gamut of emotion that we have is

it got to the point where I was so firm and I was just like look you know you're you were

“allow David Attenborough to give more emotion to ungulates than you imagine allow me to give”

to our ancestors and it was really interesting because everyone went oh okay and my argument like one of the arguments like because they were like but we're inspected of torture and I'm like that's okay we say we make it clear we don't know for sure but I'm like just based on anthropology and ethnography how can we not ask if a hybrid child would feel belonging or not we know from ethnography from anthropology that people that are mixed outside us it is complicated now we know some tribes

much more welcoming towards individuals than others sometimes as well it's dependent upon the individual right but we know that these are discussions we know this consistently this is like so well documented and so for us to feel nervous about having that conversation is wild and I was like being

“that I'm a third culture kid especially I think it is and being like I'm a woman it would be even”

more insane for me not to say as a third culture kid as somebody who's parents Arab who I was also

partially raised by my man who's white like how how would that have been would that have been complicated would the mother have been terrified for that child would she have been like oh I hope they look like my species not the other species because I don't know how how's like 80s absolutely within our right to ask these questions we shouldn't be giving answers unless we know for sure but we can be speculating within the realms of what we know of anthropology and ethnography

and it was really interesting and they everyone accepted it and we went for it and it's really interesting to see the feedback from people because people are like oh there are so many

because it's no longer people think oh no they were too simple brain to have any thoughts like that

is that no that thinking's out of window now yeah I mean if you got home and leddy bearing their dead I'm sorry we can be talking about when I'm with me and the thought or and homo sapien kids felt that they belonged or not in a tribe yeah we're within we're cut I'm comfortable with that discussion well if we go more like homo sapiens against the ant tools and we mentioned earlier how the ant tools like for much the time it seems like

they're better better surviving in so on and and we have the local extensions so there seems a great example of this some 55,000 years ago the climate in Europe gets colder and this is not the time in the ants tools go extinct this is still the time when it seems they're better prepared than we are there is a little bit of discussion about the exact dates but yes there is very clear evidence of homo sapiens in Europe and then it seems and we were kind of

in some of the same geographies and then we just disappear from Europe but the neanderthals don't now we do know that the climate was getting quite difficult but you know the neanderthals when exactly having a heyday either but they just seem to be able to cope with that harsh climate better than us and we do generally see a pattern of that with the neanderthals don't be wrong the neanderthals also when the climate got bad you would notice them you know more in the

south for example but it was they were still able to cope with those climate a bit better than us and then some time after 54, 55,000 years the tide starts very very very slowly changing and it's it's really difficult to square it all up because I mean there was some research coming out of Germany for example that was showing that the neanderthal sites in Germany were having a

“heyday from like 40, something thousand years to you know for it for 10, 20 I think was probably”

until about 70,000 years and there were so many sites in Germany etc etc and suddenly there was this complete crash so it's also really different like it turns out it's very difficult to stalk um ancient people because it's really hard to get demographic data and to be really sure but what we do see is this pattern she's passing them as being in Europe hanging on for a few thousand years and then just disappearing and you get it actually in in Ludwig's site actually you get this one

layer where the technology just changes and it's her most epic technology it's her most and and it's interesting because Ludwig was looking at this technology gang this is this isn't

below this layer are the same kind of technology and then suddenly you get this like alien technology in the middle and then they found a tooth and when they did the DNA analysis on the tooth it was a homo sapiens tooth so they realized they had an incursion of homo sapiens in this one site in France and there are some other places as well and then they just disappeared and the

neanderthals came back to the site isn't that remarkable and then basically you see this decline

and it's just fascinating so only a very few thousand years that you get it where we just kind of and you can probably tell I'm avoiding dates here because I am I just I'm so stuck on dates I feel so frustrated by it because I think it really helps you guys you know the the listeners and the audience kind of visualise stuff but the frustrating thing is we just the dates keep changing and also we keep hearing rumors of the dates are about to change again so I mean not particularly

in this case but we just know it's a thing but I will say when I talk about overlaps you know I'm not talking like you know 30 thousand years I'm talking much much less than that and then basically

“the neanderthals just slowly just disappear there's like this you know or if you want to”

look at the German case there seems like a crash but generally speaking they just disappear which makes the question why I mean why do we think that it's in those following few thousand years that the answer was under this evidence of cannibalism around that time but why not be I was like is it just it seems to be a combination of factors all coming together that this was a game show that you like you know when you've like struck gold okay so if you were to put

a hundred penny anthropologists in a room and ask them why the neanderthals would extinct it would

be hilarious because the venn diagrams would be everywhere but anyway and there's always like one

person not even within the venn diagram they're just a circle of somewhere inside be using Harvard did they actually go extinct yes yes yes yes some people will argue that actually they never went extinct and that they just it's a bit like when London just kept getting bigger and bigger and just you're surfing all the towns around fair enough no some people actually and you know

“what there's no agreement for that right I think it is fair to say we cannot agree and I think”

there is a reason for that I think it's because the evidence is there's a lot of different reasons I think we can say I personally find it very very hard to ignore a few pieces of evidence I think the neanderthals were clearly doing fine for a very very long time although they were surviving much better than us and those climates for a very long time it makes sense because they were adapted to them well hundreds of thousands of years whereas remember we with immigrants we

with the new ones we went adapted the anthals you are right had very very small effective population sizes what I mean by that is they were really in red for those who are kind of interested in genetics they had very very very low levels of head for psychosity which means their DNA just wasn't very diverse it reflects a really small gene pool and as a result of that

you interpret that as being okay so they are small in number which basically means that they are

more likely to be riddled with diseases which we do know for example there are some neanderthals from a cave called Sidron I'll Sidron where they had the kind of diseases you associate with very very severe in breeding but beyond that what does a small population size lead to I would argue a small population size means the cumulative culture which I am obsessed with is not a strong of a play and our cumulative culture is this idea it's a it's a mainstream theory but I will say

not necessarily everybody accepts it it's the idea that every generation builds upon the previous generations are technology science like miley Cyrus like just everything right every generation just gets better than the previous generation in terms of the ability to accumulate knowledge because because you know and and the thing with cumulative culture yes it requires a brain that likes to copy and is is plastic that's to copy each other but the really big thing with cumulative

culture needs is numbers and and people I think sometimes get lost with cumulative culture because

“it's just harder to visualize but the best way that I can explain humans have culture people is”

that if let's say you and I will part of a tribe that was only like I don't know 20 people suddenly you and I would have to get really really good at hunting gathering and just about everything in between to survive if our tribe consisted of 500 people we are suddenly taking a massive sigh of relief because we're we can take a breather but also it means that you can go off and

for example if one of us invents like the most basic cake in the world like a sponge cake right

“sorry I'm obsessed with sugars you probably guessed from a little earlier when I had a lot of sugar”

anyway when Ella came in you needed to sugar rush shape away we were happy to provide to

it's something like that so basically if one of us invents the Victoria it's like just normal

sponge cake and our tribe is only 20 people it's good at realistically say as a sponge cake for generations but if you have hundreds of thousands of people in that we're even tens of thousands that's a sponge cake is going to turn into a red velvet quicker right because there's just more people looking at each other copying each other there's more brain power on it homo sapiens we know had a much much much much bigger population than all the other species

that were on the planet and certainly than the neandethos that gives you a massive adorn let's say

“our brains aren't actually superior I think they're probably we're slightly more plastic but let's”

say they weren't just numbers alone could explain the better technology because there's just

more of you on it that the hand-act type the bow and arrow technology so even weeping I mean Chris Stranger argues that weaving is potentially a thing and weaving I know my not sounds as sexy I folks for those of you who listen to this and watch this right now I'm sorry weaving is not as sexy as a bow and arrow let me explain the thing it wants you invent weaving your kids are going to stay warmer because you can invent like you know the side bits is supposed to flap it bits your nets

also become better your ability to transport food yeah we need to make weaving sexy yeah but yeah but also I will say there's one other thing the advantage of homo sapiens in my opinion is that we had Africa as the mothership and Africa as the mothership Africa is kind of an incredible continent and one of the things about it is that if we had an offshoot of pioneers for example in Europe if the climate got bad and they went locally extinct and so did the neanderthals there we can

replenish from Africa the neanderthals couldn't that's a long-winded explanation for why I think they went extinct and watch as soon as as soon as another person sits in this chair there will be

“another theory and they're in there no I don't think so too I think that was great and I think yes”

it's a finish on the Africa point and the fact that yes we had failed incursions before always

came back like the Romans in battle and they're like they're like it was come back and adapt and that larger gene diversity and all that stuff you know it does explain how homo sapiens image the top dogs at the end yeah which I'm sure would explain a bit more in our next chat together but Ella this has been absolutely fascinating thanks for having me a grave so yeah it just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show you so appreciate it thank you

for having me well there you go what a fun chat that was to record with the brilliant Ella as shemahi asking these more human questions around homo sapiens and the animals getting a sense more of what might it have been like these early interactions could there have been handshakes between the animals and homo sapiens what might it have been like for someone who was born with a knee-anstal parent and a homo sapiens parent fascinating question to consider I really

do hope you enjoyed listening to this episode just as much as I did recording it just to let you know that Ella's new tour becoming human it continues in the UK on the 28th of May so book your tickets now now if you've been enjoying the ancients recently please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts if you be kind enough to leave us a rating as well what we'd really appreciate that don't forget you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of

hours of original documentaries with a new release every week sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe that's all from me I'll see you in the next episode