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Were Neanderthals neurodiverse? Part 2/2 - Ep 02
167 Plays1 month ago
This is the second episode of Neurodiverse Neanderthals with Dr Andy Shuttleworth, an honorary fellow at the department of Anthropology at Durham university.
In this episode we learn more about the enigmatic Neanderthals and discuss further evidence for neurodiversity! This two-parter was so interesting and fun and threw up some unexpected signs of spectrum-esque behaviours among our closest relatives.
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Transcript
Introduction to ADHD BCE Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to ADHD BCE, the podcast scouring the ages in search of neurodiversity. I'm your
Host Introduction: George Lomas and His Interests
00:00:23
Speaker
host George Lomas and I have ADHD, autism and a fascination with ancient things.
00:00:28
Speaker
In the last episode, we took the idea of neurodiversity beyond the world of anatomically modern humans, as in us, and into the enigmatic world of Neanderthals with Dr Andy Shuttleworth, who is an honorary fellow at the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, and a veritable Neanderthal nerd.
00:00:46
Speaker
I spoke in length to Andy about Neanderthals and if we could see any signs of spectrum traits like creativity, ingenuity, stone collecting, that sort of thing. Unfortunately we kind of run out of time but I'm delighted to welcome Andy back today to continue our chat about Neanderthals. Andy, welcome back. Thank you very much. Hello. Hi. Great.
Neurodiversity in Neanderthals: Past Episode Recap
00:01:08
Speaker
So Andy, we need to pick up from where we were in the last episode and and we were just starting to touch on symbolism and social structures among our nearest and dearest Neanderthals.
00:01:18
Speaker
But before we dive into that, there's a pertinent question I've been carrying around since we last spoke. So in the last episode, we touched on the possibility that there's been a genetic gift of some elements of new and autism from Neanderthals. And I think that's right. And I can't get out of my head. If we inherited that particular gene from them,
00:01:40
Speaker
Did they inherit that from early species like hydrobogenesis or erectus? Possible. Very possible. Not going to say yes or no either way because the genetic analysis hasn't been done and I don't want to kind of put, you know, all the chickens in a line before we've got the evidence.
The Inheritance of Neurodiverse Traits from Neanderthals
00:01:58
Speaker
But there's one of two main kind of things why those genes would be prevalent. Those kind of neurodiversity associated genes might be present within our own genome. One is, like you said, we've inherited it it from Neanderthals.
00:02:10
Speaker
who have inherited it from maybe an older shared common ancestor, either against this anti-cessor, erector, gasser, whomever. And because of that shared ancestorship, we get it from both the Neanderthals and our shared ancestor. That's why we have it in the majority of our you know homo sapien populations in the modern day. So that's one reason, like you've said, it could have come from a shared ancestor and and therefore just been propagated by the Neanderthals, come back into us in some way, shape or form, had a boost And that's why you see it in in most modern populations today. The second reason why it could be so diverse within modern contemporary populations of homo sapiens is that they were selectively chosen so that those genes could have had a positive effect for those homo sapiens. So remember the last time we checked, the only reason chatted the only reason that those genes would be so prevalent is one of two reasons. One, they were evolutionarily
00:03:08
Speaker
or advantageously neutral, so they had no negative, no positive kind of impact to our genome, so they were just kept. Or the second option is that they were positively influenced for our genome, so they had a ah net positive to our behaviour, our genetic code in in some in some way. So the second reason is they could have been positive, and that's why they were selected for, and that's why they're prevalent in so many contemporary modern human societies. Once they're in the genes, whether they came from an ancestor or the Neanderthals directly,
00:03:38
Speaker
they were positive, they were selected for evolutionarily and then they just spread throughout all contemporary homo sapien populations through breeding between different communities etc etc. So there are the two reasons why we would see them so distributed across not just Eurasia but a little bit in Africa, North America, that kind of thing going forward. They're either a
Evolutionary Reasons for Neurodiverse Genes
00:03:58
Speaker
result of a common ancestor or they came from Neanderthals and they were positively selected and were therefore spread across our species. Yeah, you see, I always knew that autism was a positive thing. It's banned, too. That's the thing, really. Any behaviour has a positive kind of spin to it, right? you know there's no well I don't want to dig myself into a hole, but there's no really bad behaviour. You just need the context of that behaviour for it to be positive. You need the context to that behaviour to be right.
00:04:27
Speaker
And that right behaviour could be right for an entire community or an entire species, or it could be right for a familiar unit or an individual, say, you know that kind of thing. So you have behaviours such as, say, hunter-gatherers who take more than they contributed to hunts and stuff like that, right? And they're just like, okay, I've not really contributed to this.
00:04:49
Speaker
hunting of a bison or hunting of a reindeer or hunting of a moose or whatever, but I'm going to take more than is due me. and That kind of behaviour ensures that their genes ah ah they survive, their genes are spread to the next generation, etc. and it's detrimental a little bit to the to the overall familial or community unit, but it it's beneficial for that individual because that individual survives context is key for behavior. So you know, broadly, there might not be any negative bad behaviors, but there might be negative bad contexts where those behaviors can express themselves. But that's the joy of human societies, we create these social structures that kind of
00:05:24
Speaker
elevate those certain contexts and thus the good behaviours with them and create certain social rules which diminish the certain contexts and certain negative behaviours. that could be negative for the whole group. Yeah, I think we can see evidence of that in in the modern world that we live in. A lot of that goes on. Yeah, and you know yeah it's like we have that hunter-gatherers as well, right? So you have like, indigenous Americans, you have the various kinds of Arctic, Inuit, North and Canadian kind of hunter-gatherers, that kind of stuff. You even have the tropical
00:05:58
Speaker
hunter-gatherers like the Kuka Kuka and very South African kind of communities and hunter-gatherers who all have various kind of social control mechanisms to you know to do it. We in our
Behavioral Context and Social Structures in History
00:06:08
Speaker
modern society have laws, have punishments, right? You can go to jail, you can be fined, you can be socially shunned, whatever. The hunter-gatherers have their own type of rules. you know My favourite is the Inuit. who have like this gossip system network amongst them. So if someone breaks a social rule, then the women of the group will gossip about them and that gossip will then get filtered through. And that's like a ah communication network to say,
00:06:34
Speaker
hey, so you know this individual has broken a rule and that's bad. And that person is then shamed into following the rules again. And I find that a very good social control mechanism. It's one of those things where it's like, that's that's amazing. I also imagine it is like my grandmother and her friends like gossiping over knitting and stuff like that. And she's like, oh, well, you know Steve has done this and that kind of thing. And it eventually gets to Steve's mom who puts Steve in his place and Steve becomes petty, you know that kind of stuff. But yeah, there are those macrokisms of hunter-gatherer behaviour and social control that are also available in our modern society. Yeah, sure. and it' say so its It's a bit like a shame-based motivation, isn't it? But it's probably a bit but a bit more ah ethical than, yeah dad I don't know, some of the punishments that we... If you know look at Victorian England or or whatever, when they just threw know you stole a loaf of bread, you got carted off to the sunniest place in the world.
00:07:26
Speaker
yes yeah yeah It's more more ethical than forced relocation. The you know banishment for hunter-gatherer societies was a punishment. like if If an individual didn't take heed of that shame or didn't take heed of the other public social control mechanisms that that community had in place, and banishment was a thing. you know yeah that That is very evident in Native and Indigenous American groups. Well, I can i can imagine as well, i I've seen enough to survival programmes these days to to know that being part of the group is essential, especially you know you in in a what we what what we would call called a Jumanji type world. didn't you know If you imagine you've been isolated out there in their hostile environment, potentially very difficult environments anyway, weather and climate and
00:08:11
Speaker
Well, the predators and so on. you Literally, if you get kicked out, you you you haven't got long. You've got to take this. So if if you don't want to be gossiped about, that's one thing. But if if if if you say, don't care of what people say about you in those environments, that might not work too well. If you get kicked out in your ear and you're you're sort of left to fend for yourself and you've probably got weeks left to live. Exactly. Yeah. you need to To be banished. And if you can't find another community with like shared, you know, worldviews or shared kind of traits to your original community, then you're on your own and you know, death is significantly likely. And that's why cooperation within hunter gatherers is so key because there's that recognition that they all have to work together because you know, individuals make a community
00:08:57
Speaker
and ah individuals sometimes are fallible, but yeah you know working together, communicating, sharing, that kind of thing, to the ceremonies and rituals that bind these individuals together allows for success. Well, that's that that that is probably the perfect way to sort of cover it into the next question that I've got for you actually, Andy, which is, what would it have looked like, or if that's stretching their imaginations a little bit too far?
00:09:21
Speaker
how
Social Mechanisms in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
00:09:22
Speaker
could it have looked, smelt, felt, and been to have been a Neanderthal at various times and places? And if we can go one step further and imagine that DeLorean were mentioned in the last episode, if that came and flew us back hundreds of thousands of years, what would it have been like to have been a neurodivergent Neanderthal? But I suppose, it well to be fair, before we get too far into that, we should probably look at the structures and symbolism within the groups and sort of build from that, if you like. Yeah, let's talk about the, I'll mention the the social structures and the symbolism of Neanderthals, because they were symbolic, and they did have distinct social structures. And that could give you an idea and give your listeners here an idea of of how the Neanderthals lived and and and what they experienced that going forward. And then we can focus on hypothesising about the neurodivergence within the Neanderthal behaviour and stuff. First thing to mention is when we we talk about kind of Neanderthals and their population, we're not talking about our contemporary numbers. So obviously, homo sapiens today,
00:10:19
Speaker
inhabit most ecosystems across this world. There are 7-8 billion of us on on this planet. you know We'll take it to your listeners, whether you feel that number is too large or too small, or just right. We're not looking at those numbers with Neanderthals in Europe or Eurasia. But okay, we're're we're talking about the thousands, the tens of thousands, I think around 70,000 is that the the number anyone given time, maybe at their peak, that yeah the number of Neanderthals were. So to put that in context, that's probably a large town in the UK. That's the number of students from what, three universities in the UK, 70,000, all distributed across that ge geography. We talked about Eurasia, you know, from Iberia,
00:11:04
Speaker
up to middle middle England, down to to to Italy, all the way to the Near East, to modern-day Israel, for example, to Georgia, and all the way going into, like, to modern-day China, Mongolia, Siberia, that kind of thing. 70,000 distributed that far. Three universities worth of students, a large English town. That's not a lot. So the social structure is heavily distributed. It's distributed across all of that area. Okay, so it's not like they're in constant touch with the Neanderthals you know next door but one to them. They have these large spaces where they rove, where they hunt to gather, where where they hunt, you know that kind of stuff. And it could be months, it could be years before they interact with another Neanderthal group. you know they They could very likely have seasonal cycles, so seasonal areas of where they they hunt and seasonal places where they go to gather that kind of thing. And through that seasonality and that regular kind of pattern, they would come into contact with more of their kin, you know, that kind of stuff. But we're looking at these small groups highly dispersed that have between maybe 10 and 30 individuals within a familial group.
00:12:15
Speaker
Okay, so it's not so not much, enough that they can acquire food, enough that they can teach and learn and maybe ah support little Neanderthal children as they grow up and stuff like that. So you look at Cueva de Silva in Spain, and the footprints for La Roselle in France. So Cueva de Silva in Spain, you have about seven adults, three adolescents, two juveniles and an infant, okay, within that kind of group. Whereas in La Roselle in France, based on footprint size, you have about 10 to 30 members.
00:12:45
Speaker
of Neanderthals there in that particular group, where there are juveniles and adolescents, which made up 90% of the group. And that's the thing with Neanderthals, you're not living to the ripe old age of 80. You're probably dying in what we would call early middle age. So, you know, 30 to 40 kind of thing, not necessarily because of bad health, you know, probably because of of the activity that they are involved in.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit like a rugby player's career comes to the end. By the time you're in your 30s, your body's just battered and bruised and you can't really move around. In a lot of the environments we've talked about over the last few hundred thousand years, you need to be able to move. That's one of the first things you need to be able to do. Yeah, migration is key. Migration is the key behaviour to adaptation to a changing environment, especially in the middle pile ethic of that time.
00:13:38
Speaker
And like, say, you have your modern day football players, that's your homosapiens, they run about, they get exhausted, but they they can hunt from a distance, you know, they're persistent hunters, you know, they they will injure an animal and they will chase it down so the animal is exhausted, and then they will butcher it and hunt it and gather the the meat from it. Neanderthals are different, they're quite possibly close quarters hunters. And when you consider what they're hunting, which could be, you know, sabertooth cats, large bison, mammoths, those creatures aren't going to take that lightly. okay You go to up a mammoth with you know five or six of your fellow Neanderthal rugby league players to hunt it with your sticks and your your stone tools and your spears and everything like that. That mammoth could do some significant damage if it suddenly wants to turn around and say, I do not want to be your burger tonight, you know that kind of thing. Of course, there are evidence that Neanderthals also used very intricate behaviors to hunt
00:14:31
Speaker
animals such as mammoths. So at Lakot, for example, does the you know there's the old theory that they used at that site in Jersey to kind of herd mammoths down ah into ah into a gully so that they would fall down into a gully and be killed through the fall, that kind of thing. So that precludes them getting up
Imagining Neanderthal Life: Social Structures and Challenges
00:14:50
Speaker
close and personal with these kinds of creatures. But in other areas, there's there's distinct evidence, bone breaking, pathology of Neanderthals,
00:14:56
Speaker
which shows the heavy life that they're living. So they're not living to 80, you know, they probably will be living to 30 or 40. So it makes sense that like, or as our friends indicates that about 90% maybe of their groups are juveniles and adolescents, you know, growing up quicker and faster and having to learn and live that kind of thing going through. As for the overall kind of dynamics going through, what we're looking at is probably the same as any hunter-gatherer, whether it that be contemporary, whether that be prehistoric, Commissapians, or even Neanderthals. They would, like you said, be living via migration. you know there There would be a distribution of of work. You would have expertise gathered towards hunting, expertise
00:15:39
Speaker
gathered towards gathering. I'm not saying that's gendered. In all likelihood, the Neanderthals probably wouldn't have had a gendered kind of society because everyone needed to to eat and everyone needed to you know put efforts into acquiring food in some way, of shape or form. But there would have been those who would have stayed behind to look after children, the so-called grandmother hypothesis of those who couldn't who couldn't hunt maybe. There were definitely those who were injured who were looked after whilst they were sick as well, so there there was clearly some kind of community and group cohesion, suggesting that obviously these 10 to 30 individuals in the normal size of Neanderthals are more likely familial units looking after their own. There would have had to have been teachers
00:16:19
Speaker
whether that's everyone or specific people to make those stone tools we were talking about. If you remember the Love Our War tool, which isn't an easy concept to think visually, let alone learn, someone would have had to, or many some people would have had to teach, you know, the little Neanderthal child and adolescent how to make that. So you would have had a system a social structure in many ways, same as what we see in contemporary hunter gatherer societies. It's probably logical that that's one of the ways to survive. Everyone chips in, everyone learns from each other. People have expertise, individuals have expertise, and when that expertise comes off, they learn from that person and and go forward.
00:17:00
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's one of those things where the groups would have been small, highly mobile, geared toward the acquisition of food and and going towards better environments, geared towards maintaining maybe familial kin and seasonally meeting up with other dispersed Neanderthal groups at certain points in time to maybe mate expand their kin networks.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, of course, because i did that that that's absolutely has to happen. You know, the the genetic diversity is key for survival, I assume, and in Neanderthals as much as it is in modern humans.
00:17:36
Speaker
i think it's I'm just imagining this world where the 70,000 Neanderthals spaced out over and in what half the globe ah in an enormous area.
00:17:47
Speaker
and it's Obviously, the conditions varied during ice ages and interglacial and all that lot. and I just blows my mind. I love this. i mean I think about these tiny groups. I appreciate that that the populations are smaller, but it's not until you really sort of spend some time thinking about it that you start to imagine it. And that's when you see this little world, these tiny groups of Neanderthals in some of the most hostile environments imaginable. I mean, horrific to our sensibilities.
00:18:21
Speaker
But those environments wouldn't have been all hostile all the time. So the information that that kind of picture I've showed you is probably more like the ah the temperate times. So when the glacial period came in, what the Dracula record shows is that Neanderthals did group together in certain spots. So you have like Iberia, for example, where during glaciations you see a larger ah undertaking in settlement of of Neanderthals. Same in the Middle East, for example, around modern day Israel and Jordan and Lebanon.
00:18:49
Speaker
And obviously in France, where they just migrated south, they would have all kind of come together. So their societies would have ebbed and flowed and adapted according to the environment and the weather.
00:19:00
Speaker
ah Yeah, absolutely. And and I think the the image I've got of these small groups, of say, maybe as as as few as 10 members of a group that aren't... No, this is right, isn't it? They're not going to bump into any other groups of Neanderthals outside of those 10. Well, the the core group might have been like 10 to 30 individuals, you know, ah they that could have been a core familial unit, for example, and then that they could have spent Let's hypothesise 11 months of the year, just those 10 to 30 individuals, and then maybe one month because of the cycle, because of the migration patterns, e etc. They could have come across another Neanderthal group of 10 to 30 individuals, and that would have allowed mating kin exchange, that kind of stuff to happen.
00:19:45
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. I just think about the logistics. It's a survival situation, isn't it? You know, ah you can't just be blase about it. You can't say, oh, me and the guys are fancy going hunting for a bit. ah we'll We'll catch you guys later. There's got to be systems in place to ensure the safety of, I mean, because you have injuries, we know this, isn't it? And I thought they would, there's been the signs of injury on skeletal remains and so on. What about... Oh, I've lost my train of thought. ADHD again. Right, where was I Andy? Come on, help me out. Injuries. Injuries. That was it. So if we if we look at people who are suffering, so we've got people with a disease, an illness, they they're feeling under the weather, they ate the wrong thing, or they've been injured, or maybe they were born different.
00:20:34
Speaker
And maybe maybe they weren't as mobile, maybe maybe they needed or they were suited to better or decide different tasks. And, you know, maybe I have this vision, this vision is not the right word, is it this image, sorry, of the small group.
00:20:52
Speaker
operating in a particularly difficult environment where you've got the, you've got a baby, you've got ah your grandfather, who's in his forties now bless him. And and you've got, you know, a couple of yeah you basically they're the hunters, we we can't say that they were were they were all male. No.
00:21:10
Speaker
And in all likelihood, you know, hunting would have been a a mixed sex mixed family. Yeah, family, family. Yeah, yeah. and I know, myself and my wife, if we were thrown into Jumanji, we would obviously have four kids to take care of. So we'd have to ensure, first things first, we got to stay alive. So we've got to protect the children, we've got to get shelter from the weather and the predators and all that. like And then we need water and then we need food. So logistically, in the underthals,
00:21:38
Speaker
it was second age to them. That was their world. That's what they knew. Yeah. yeah it's yeah it's you know We go to Sainsbury's or whatever. They throw away into the... you know it's like That's the thing. and you know There would have been lean days, lean weeks, maybe even lean months. so When they killed something, they they would have they would have stored it. A mammoth can... It's not going to feed one family of 10 to 30 for just a day for a meal. That that will feed that 10 to 30 people. They will utilise everything from that mammoth.
00:22:08
Speaker
to to feed them for as long as possible. right so they They may dry out the food. you know they they They would use fire to to to cook it and stuff like that, and and and keep them preserved as much as possible. you know We're not just talking about the meat from it. you know
Neanderthal Extinction Theories
00:22:21
Speaker
The organs, the bones, the fats, the sinews would have all been used.
00:22:25
Speaker
to support them so that a mammoth could have supported 10 to 30 people, maybe for a week, two weeks, the better part of a month. So yeah, they they would have they would have there would have been these like boom and bust periods going forward. you you know And so the failure of a hunt could have in all reality, could have signaled the death of of these 10 to 30 individuals if it didn't go if it didn't go well. yeah I was thinking about it. I felt a little emotional, actually, thinking about the the smaller groups completely isolated, and and the weather turns, and they haven't got those resources, and they're just going to die out, aren't they? no and this is This is one of the the theories
00:23:04
Speaker
that go towards Neanderthal extinction. Because you you have those who say that you know modern humans in Neanderthals had this epic, pile-ithic war and homo sapiens won. I don't believe in that. That's that's that's not incredible anymore. You have those who said homo sapiens outbred Neanderthals, and there's some truth in that. that That's likely possible that we outcompeted them in resources and pushed them away from their hunts and their food sources. That is also possible, and there's some truth in that. But one of the other reasons is that the Neanderthals in such of these small groups were probably very close to extinction naturally because all it takes is a downturn. All it takes is a failed hunt and these people these individuals, these people are dead. So there's there's a theory of natural extinction that these small groups
00:23:51
Speaker
slowly reduced the genetic diversity, slowly reduced the total numbers of Neanderthal population, below what we call like you know the the breeding number, the effective population. Neanderthals, we estimate, needed at least 15,000 Neanderthal individuals to be breeding at any given one time to maintain the population. The loss of a group here, a group there, could it could be sustained. But if this is happening throughout Eurasia,
00:24:19
Speaker
are these small groups suddenly disappearing because a hunt fails, because the weather changes, because a glacier is there when it wasn't there before, because an individual dies without passing on their knowledge. if If you know you're not looking at one or two small groups going, but dozens going, then that would effectively reduce the effective population size, which could put it under 15,000, which would mean that Neanderthals would not be able to sustain their numbers and genetic diversity.
00:24:46
Speaker
So there's this little theory says that actually, the Neanderthals could have already be on the way to extinction as modern humans were coming in. We just sped that natural process up. So they were literally fighting for their lives. And if you believe that kind of theory, and there's some truth to it, they were already losing, which is not to say that they were they were doomed to extinction, not to say that they were not not you not smart enough or not, you know, comparable or anything. That's just nature, because when last we spoke, you know, we said the thing of like, you know, there's this perception that because we survived, because we're the only human species here, that there's something better about us. Well,
00:25:25
Speaker
does not really, we were just really lucky given the time of our evolution, given the nature of the the interstennial events that the weather, the climate being nice and warm, that kind of thing, given the lack of competition between other major predators, which also includes some humans, you know, we were just lucky and the Neanderthals were lucky for a bit.
00:25:46
Speaker
until they weren't. And that's the way evolution works. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I was just thinking as well with these isolated groups when Homo sapiens turned up. Now, forgive me if I'm wrong on this, but I know the last glacial maximum was 20,000 years ago, wasn't it? 21,000, yeah. twenty hundred two hundred thousand years ago Neanderthals died out at 40,000 years ago, and anatomic modern humans were in Europe by about 50,000. Was it 60? I can't remember what it was. Give around 60,000 years. The the dates, 50,000 to 60,000 years, the dates are fluctuating because, one, our dating is getting better and better and pushing back some dates, and two, we're finding new sites, which also push back that kind of stuff. Good old archaeology. So somewhere somewhere between 40 and 60,000 years is the general consensus that that's when
00:26:36
Speaker
the first few waves, significant waves of homo sapiens started coming into Europe. Right. Okay. So is it right to say that, so obviously being of European descent myself, I am almost certainly fortunate enough to have inherited, was it two to 6% Neanderthal DNA. So this interbreeding between Neanderthals and nanotonic humans, that's that happened in when the weather was good, essentially. Yeah, pretty pretty much. that that That would have happened when the weather at the interstate feels good. Homosapians were able to be like, hey, we can survive in this environment. We can adapt to this environment slightly. Yeah. it we did it we didn't It wasn't like we're in the middle of an ice age and we're going to die out and the animals came over and gave us a turkey or something. There there was that there was a nice temperate atmosphere. There were forests, there were grasses. you know Southern Europe would have had probably a more warmer Mediterranean climate than in experiences now. There would have been tundra to the north. you know they would have been able to get to places where modern-day Sheffield was you know before they had any kind of issue, you know or can get cresswell crags and stuff like that. yeah so it's it's all you know and all of that was up so It wasn't a major leap for Homo sapiens for our populations to come into to Europe at the time. Obviously, we had to adapt different geography, different you know species of flora and fawn and that kind of thing. There's also another human population there. So what you're probably likely is to have like three broad interbreeding contact zones, one in Eastern Europe, you know where we first meet, including maybe the Near East in one day, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, that kind of thing. Probably the other major interbreeding zone is somewhere in Central,
00:28:16
Speaker
Central Western Europe, so Germany, France, you know, that kind of area. And then the last interbreeding zone would have been around Iberia, where the last Neanderthals are dated, the latest Neanderthals are dated as they were pushed back kind of stuff. And the and Neanderthals also would have interbreeded in their contact zones with with other human species, because don't forget, there are Denisopans at this point. And obviously, you know, we we share genes with those, Neanderthals, et cetera, so they would have been exchanging their genetic materials and stuff with them. So it's you know all of those kinds of things are happening. So it's not just this one big pile of thick party where everyone gets together and stuff like that. it it's It's over several thousand years where this gene intermixing is happening, most likely at certain places at certain times. So that's why these genes are probably so persistent with us because it's not just one
00:29:05
Speaker
small group. We're probably looking at dozens, if not hundreds, of groups over the space of maybe 10,000, 20,000 years coming over. Mason- Wow. Yeah, yeah. That was awesome. So interesting. I was going to crack a joke about a barmy sunny afternoon and the anatomical and anatomically abundant human map, but I'll leave that out. Mason- I mean, the versions of Tinder and Bumble would have been amazing, I'm sure.
00:29:31
Speaker
Like, you know, here's your modern homosapien. They have mode three technologies, this kind of thing. Here's your Neanderthal. They can do ash, ashalayan and laval war. What would you like? There is cave paintings by Bob over here. There is other artistic expressions, you know, by Neanderthals over there. Do you prefer mammoth? Do you prefer deer swipe left, swipe right? That's just about to say I was swiping right on that one. That's amazing. Yeah. good but that That's the same. We've got a new theory on the origins of cave art immediately. That's another episode already.
00:30:04
Speaker
yeah well that'll be that i suppose really then I do want to go into what it would have been like to be a neurodivergent Neanderthal if we can try and imagine that, but yeah i do i think I think also it's important to get symbolism in there because we missed out on that last time, so I don't know how you want to do it. if you want to so Let's do symbolism first because I think this is is is the big difference between Neanderthals and one human. The context behind Neanderthal symbolism is for years, for centuries, even for a better part of a century, no one believed or no one seriously considered that Neanderthals were a symbolic species. okay Compared to Homo sapiens, why would you? Homo sapiens, we created the cave art in Lascaux and everything like that. We created Venus figurines and and all that kind of stuff. we We decorated our caves, our sites, that kind of stuff with pigments and and that kind of stuff. Neanderthals, we didn't find that evidence.
00:30:50
Speaker
Okay, we we we found it and dated it towards, you know, certain kind of things for for homo sapiens, but Neanderthals were always lacking. And that was one of the key things, you know, the the absence of that evidence convinced people that actually, no, they weren't they weren't symbolic at all. But the more we've looked, the more we've kind of understood is that actually they were they were probably very symbolic. Okay, but but just in maybe a different type than we are, because obviously they are a different human group, for example, and not all human groups have the same kind of symbol symbolic expression that we do. So for example, in Cueva Anton in Spain, there's a king scallop. Okay, that is that is decorated, there is porforations around it, which kind of suggests that it was worn, the shell was worn. And it's got as this natural red coloration around it on the exterior and offers and traces of unnatural
00:31:47
Speaker
orange pigmentation on it. So it was it was painted yeah for its color and it was worn for its color. And it it's dated to the to Neanderthal you know times, that kind of stuff. It's it's not modern human. It's it's definitely clearly Neanderthal. And here it is. It's it's done.
00:32:04
Speaker
and It's been dated. You have the the reconstruction of like the white tailed eagle talon jewellery from Kropina in Croatia, for example, all maybe worn as ah personal ornamentation, you know, that kind of stuff going forward. You have you have the bone flute from Difjebabe, you know, which it's 43,000 years old. it's It's in Slovenia. It was found in 95. It is definitely proper. It's borderline, but it's more likely on the Neanderthal side than the modern human side. And if if it is a flute, it it's showing Neanderthal music. yeah So they may not be, they may not be making these giant, you know, paintings of, of, of bison, of horse, of, you know, mammoth and all that kind of stuff and saber-toothed cats. They have what seemingly is a more personal adornment symbology.
00:32:58
Speaker
Which, think of it, George, that's kind of what you would expect from them. They're in small groups. They're not necessarily communicating beyond breeding and kin exchange with other people. Their symbolism is going to reflect their identity. It's going to reflect them, and therefore it's going to be personal adornment. It's not going to be like, hey, look at this cave painting that I've done, because other than them, who's going to see it?
00:33:24
Speaker
yeah You know, modern humans have the numbers, they can can keep coming back to these cave sites, you know, that kind of thing. And season, season, season Neanderthals, maybe not so much. So it's like, they paint this dates gone, Neanderthals gone, but the animals will be wearing this kind of jewelry going forward, they would use it to symbolise who they are, maybe represent visually, what their kin is, compared to other Neanderthal kin groups, which may adorn themselves ever so slightly differently.
00:33:52
Speaker
And this is reflected also in their stone tools. you know Like I said before, Karen Rubens looked at the hand axes and the ovates and stuff like that, the shapes of their stone tools and found that those distinct shapes within Northwestern Europe around Belgium and and France and stuff like that, where you had three or four distinct shapes, which could represent three or four distinct Neanderthal groups in that area. And they're representing that and showing people through their tools who they are, showing people through the shells that they wore, the talents that they wore, who they are, through the music that they played, maybe who they are. wow and it you know and And then people are just like, okay, that's fine. Modern humans did this on ah on a bigger scale. And you're just like, yes, but okay, they did it bigger. It doesn't necessarily make it better. The issue is that the Neanderthals made it. Therefore, their symbolism shouldn't really be in as much doubt as some people have it. And people look at while they didn't make these art forms, they didn't make these drawings, and it's like, okay, but they don't have to make these art drawings. And this is where I think maybe a strong or a stronger argument for Neanderthal neurodiversity can come into it, George, because Neanderthals, there is some evidence of so-called art
00:35:04
Speaker
So, you know, in, in Spanish, lapaiaga you have some red painted dots, discs, lines, and hand stencils on the cave walls. Same in Dona Trinidad as well. They're dated. They're older than 66,000 years ago. That's at least 20,000 years prior to the arrival of modern humans in that part of Europe.
Symbolism in Neanderthals vs. Homo Sapiens
00:35:23
Speaker
Okay. So they're not painting animals, but they have this abstract art. Okay.
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah. Which is completely different to what we're doing as homo sapiens. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've also humans sapiens, we love to create different types of art as well. So there's nothing saying that. I mean, I know when I'm thinking way back to to my uni days when I did a module on Paleolithic or Paleolithic cave art and We talked about mobile and art and external art, where there was on the rocks outside the caves and outside on the trees and wherever you could imagine there could be art, and none of that's going to survive. And if the Undertholes preferred that, then maybe they expressed their genius in ways that didn't survive the archaeological record, and we perhaps wouldn't even necessarily recognize as art.
00:36:15
Speaker
exactly. we're we're We're looking at Neanderthals symbolism from a very distinct modern homo sapien bias. like What is art to us? Did the Neanderthals do it? And you just kind of like Why are we asking that question? Why are we viewing it through that lens? Because they're a different group entirely. It's the kind of colonial equivalent of Europeans going to indigenous Americans and going, you're not civilized, we have civilization because we have religion, we have this and that and you you don't have this.
00:36:45
Speaker
So you were not our civilizer, you know, that kind of thing, which is rubbish, because obviously, the indigenous Native Americans were civilized, they had their own culture, it was just different to the Christendom that Europeans came from. And it's the kind of the same parallel argument that modern humans have, why should we view Neanderthal art for you the prism of our own experiences of art. And over recent years, people have kind of kind of come to that and recognise these abstractions of art, these dots, these hand paintings, these lines, these discs as not possibly mere doodles, but actual representatives of a very distinct Neanderthal art. And that kind of that's kind of culminated a little bit in places like Gorms Cave and Einhornhรถller. So Gorms Cave in Gibraltar dated to around 39,000 years ago. Einhornhรถller is in Germany around 49,000 years ago. So both dated to roughly before modern humans ish were coming into those areas.
00:37:41
Speaker
And they display engravings on the walls on various artefacts, for example. So in Ein on Hall in Germany, there's a giant deer bone which displays distinct engravings on it. And in Gorham's cave, there is a scratched floor with distinct engravings on it in kind of abstract patterns. And all the rest, deep scratches. Okay.
00:38:01
Speaker
And this, could again, could be the representation of of art going forward. and And it's been overlooked by us for X amount of years because we don't view that as others.
00:38:14
Speaker
but it could be. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is, it very well could be, and deep down I think there is some kind of maybe abstract artistry involved, but there are other reasons why we could have these engravings on on floors, say at Gorham's Cave, you know, they could have laid down an animal hide and and were scratching it to remove it, you know, for preservation, that kind of thing, and over time that's gone on to the rock itself, that's a possible alternate alternate hypothesis other than symbolism, but the fact that these are now cropping up in these different versions, that there are consistent engravings across Eurasia within the Neanderthal time period suggest that okay maybe it's more than just you know a secondary effect of some other behaviour. Maybe it is symbolism. well yeah i and and look like look i mean so If you're looking at a species that can survive in incredibly difficult, challenging environments and survive it for hundreds of thousands of years,
00:39:11
Speaker
It's a little disservice to them to say they didn't have the imagination to create symbolism, isn't it? Yes, it is. it in it And it's it's disservice that boosts up our own species' collective ego. Because if if we if we turn around and say, by the way, the Neanderthals were no different than us, they they were basically rugby league players who hunted, were in smaller groups and created their own form of symbolism, then the inevitable question is, what makes us different?
00:39:36
Speaker
And that's the question of prehistoric history for centuries has been, what makes homo sapiens different? Why are we here? yeah Why are we so special? Why are we so special? And for years it has been, we have been smarter and that has been proved not to be case. We are biologically more adaptive, that has been proved not the case. And now it's, behaviourally, we are symbolic. No, George, it's been proven. That is not the case. And when you remove all of that, you realise what makes us special and nothing.
00:40:03
Speaker
makes it special. We are all beautiful, unique snowflakes. we have we we are we are you know And and then then you have to realise that on an evolutionary perspective, like I said before, like I said in the last recording, we were just lucky. like i'm i'm not I'm not saying that there there has been some evolutionary work in Homo sapiens that clearly has been, you know, stone tools.
00:40:24
Speaker
going into new environments, outcomp competing Neanderthals, agriculture, that kind of stuff. Yet, we have done amazing things. But a lot of that has been down to look the look of the environment, ah look the look of being in a specific time and place, that kind of thing. you know and you know Time energy has been invested. It is not because we are inherently more intelligent. It is not because we are inherently more symbolic.
00:40:49
Speaker
or abstract or anything like that. It is because there's been a right set of conditions and we've we've benefited from them. Given another group, you know we could have been reversed. Given some other kind of
Neurodiversity's Role in Human Evolution
00:41:00
Speaker
conditions, we could be Neanderthals on a podcast talking about our cousins, homo sapiens from Africa, and why they suddenly went extinct, you know that kind of thing. It's it's just evolutionary look. and I think it's the symbolism, this different form of symbolism, because our tool industries were very similar. Our one thing behaviours were very similar. our kinship systems seem to be very similar, our genetics seem to be very similar, okay, and then you have this abstract symbolism which seems to be ever slightly different.
00:41:30
Speaker
So if you're looking for neurodiversity, this is where I think you'll find it more solidly. This is where I think you'll find it archaeologically in these abstractions of imagery going forward. What are they communicating? What do these engravings mean going forward? Because we see engravings in homo sapiens, yes, but they're more visual in their parietal and more biliary art going forward, you know, Lascaux and all all the cave paintings and stuff and the handprints. What does this mean? And I think if If if we're going to find reason for neurodiversity and what a neurodiverse Neanderthal was, you know I can't say with certainty, but this these abstractions would be, I think, the place to look going forward, and then to compare them with maybe neurodiverse art from contemporary neurodiverse homo sapiens.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I think that if if you're looking for it, you you're looking for ingenuity. We see that in stone tools, and I think we say stone tools, that's what survives best. There's so many other perishable tools and so on that haven't survived that probably would give a better indication of just how incredibly intelligent and creative and industrious these guys were. With the the the symbolism in art, and when i that that immediately betrays a desire to create. okay So that that that that individual that made those marks on those bones or those dots or those lines
00:43:06
Speaker
they that They felt that. They weren't just doing it. They're not avatars. this is why I always found that ah people would look back into the past as some text or a straight line backwards and some avatars walking around fulfilling this prophecy of what they did back then. But really, these everyone was feeling something at that time. Some emotions were involved with it. and Their nervous systems were humming when they were making that art. you true. But don't also forget that they're making this out with those emotions, that feeling, that purpose. And and you're right, George, it would have had a purpose. like it will It would have been tens of thousands of years before artists, so so human society can make art just for art's sake. Really? That art, even for homo sapiens, would have had a purpose. That symbolism would have had a purpose.
00:43:55
Speaker
And even on the kind of broad sense of a financial individual, this more personal art would have reflected maybe their kin, their sense of self. And they would have been making that with all the emotions that you have just said, finding beauty in those materials, those those colours and finding meaning in them, and use them not just to preserve those emotions and feelings maybe, but to communicate to others who they are, just as Homo sapiens did.
00:44:24
Speaker
The other thing I was just thinking as well is also there's a potential element of soothing involved and expression, not necessarily understood, more abstract. So you've had a rough day. So this said so I imagine myself as a Neanderthal and I've been out hunting. we've There's been an injury. There's maybe been a death in the family. Maybe, a yeah, we're very stressed at the time. Maybe we had some luck and things came good and we got back home and everything's going to be okay tonight.
00:44:53
Speaker
Maybe there' you've got to process these emotions. So if you're if i'm and ah a neurodiverse Neanderthal. i'm not I'm not sort of sitting down going, oh, fantastic. That was a great day. We got what we want. and i've I've got a belly full of food. Now I'm going to sleep. I've still got to process all this out of my nervous system. I need to let it go. and If there's music, is there storytelling? If there's art, is there acting? you know How far could it have actually gone? yeah yeah it it it Again, this like you said before, a lot of this kind of behaviour, because it's non-material, won't be reflected in the archaeological record. but
00:45:30
Speaker
Neanderthals most likely had language. I firmly believe that they did. like How else can you create most of these stone tools, teach these stone tools without some form of vocal language? So if you if you have this, if you're trying to process, if you're trying to teach these people or individuals or your kin how to create a stone tool, you have some form of a language, some form of a vocalisation. You can use that not just to teach, but to tell stories. you know And those stories might have a lesson in them, of course, but they will allow you to you know to pass on information, to soothe, to reassure, to to teach lessons. you know So you know your young juvenile Neanderthals are ah reassured that things can get better. And obviously, you know we mentioned the barefoot.
00:46:13
Speaker
you know they They could have music, they could be singing. you know I would be curious as to know what a Neanderthal boy band looked like, but they could have this you know they they could have been utilizing these music, these flutes and that kind of thing for their own kind of stuff. All of which would not be, the sounds of which would not be created or or stored in the archaeological record. but yet they Were they telling stories? I would hand on heart. I think they would be. Would they be having conversations amongst themselves in the Neanderthal way? Most definitely. you know Would they be using that like contemporary hunter-gatherers use it to to pass on their belief systems if they had them, pass on their understanding of the environment, you know the next day's plans, processing, like you said, the previous day that they've had,
00:46:55
Speaker
mourning the dead, because obviously they buried the dead, that must have been a very significant situation, whether even that was because of, you know, just so a decomposing Neanderthal didn't stink up the place, or because this wasn't a very distinct individual that would have had some emotionality to it, that as that as the act was being undertaken, and obviously, they've got language and less like know, they experienced toxic toxic masculinity, that homo sapiens experienced toxic manality, they would have talked about it, they would have shared that going forward. So yeah, all of this symbolism, all of this communication, I think is there, we just can't prove it unless, like you said, we gunned the DeLorean up to 88 miles an hour and go and go and see what it is. So which takes us all back, really, George, to like your that first question, like, this all gives an idea, I think, what Neanderthal to you and your listeners, what Neanderthal life
00:47:46
Speaker
would have been like, right? It would have been hard, but it would have had its moments, okay? Its moments of joy when you get a mammoth to eat and a moment of bounty with all that resources. It would have been filled maybe with with stories and and distinct types of art at various places. It would have been filled with ornamentation that placed you within a kin group, okay? Which bones you to these to these individuals. It would could have been filled with music. at times of, there would have been times of of want, which those kinds of materials would have bound even further because you you weren't in it alone, you were you were in it together with your 10 to 30 other Neanderthal groups. The second part, that that's kind of like Neanderthal life as it was really. The second part of your question was what would a neurodiverse Neanderthal life look like? And I honestly think it would have looked very similar,
00:48:39
Speaker
but with certain kind of caveats. I think maybe depending on the expression of that neurodiversity, you could have found individuals who would have been at the centre of maybe teaching, you know, lavalois and that concept that is very hard for maybe an individual at such an early stage to visualise and grasp. They could have been there to say, look here, they could have been at the forefront of developing those kind of technologies within their stone tools of how they created it. Conversely, they could have been at the forefront of the symbolic technology that helped bind people together to be like, Hey, look, I've made made these indentations in Gibraltar, because this is our was space kind of thing to reassure that individual that this is their or part of their home, and part of their kin to create those items that bind
00:49:28
Speaker
everyone together through that kind of behaviour. So I kind of think a neurodiverse behaviour would have would have been a typical Neanderthal like turned up five to 10% that kind of stuff to yeah help to help bond everyone together and to create a place for it to to help reassure the group cohesions and the group success and becoming value to to that group.
00:49:53
Speaker
Absolutely. i dad it sounds like it's Another way of pointing it is that the circumstances were there for neurodivergent neanderthals to have very similar roles to what some neurodiverses have had over the centuries, the millennium that we know as anatomically modern humans. We used to
Archaeology's Lessons for the Future
00:50:13
Speaker
talk about art and and storytelling and their creativity and ingenuity and all that.
00:50:18
Speaker
we The genius that comes from the spectrum has to go somewhere. It needs to be expressed, or it manifests in depression, anxiety, and all sorts of problems. We see that. And very well, Neanderthals probably suffered from those kind of things, especially in the lean periods. But the expression of Neanderthal society was more likely very very insular. Yes, they traded with other groups. And yes, you know we see material exchanges all across Europe of certain stones and stuff like that and raw materials. But on the day today, it would have been very insular. It would have been focused on those 10 to 30 individuals, the familial units. So it's no surprising that those neurodiverse behaviours were probably geared towards mean if they existed what have gear towards maintaining those bonds. Whereas with homo sapiens,
00:51:05
Speaker
we're not necessarily, we're insular, but we also view, view outwards because we had the population numbers. We needed to communicate with other other groups and we did so more routinely. So our neurodiverse behaviours were probably slightly different to the epitopes, whether they were insular, ours could have been going outwards. So our symbolism, our neurodiverse behaviours probably not only in affected and bonded us together, but also communicated that and helped bond other homo sapiens together. And that's why you probably would have a large spectrum now of homo sapien neurodivergent behaviour compared to maybe the Neanderthal perspective of it. Well, I mean, the yeah question that's popped into my head now is not going to be able to answer today. In fact, we're running out of time, but I am conscious of that. I say again, I can waffle about the answer as long as you want.
00:51:52
Speaker
I know, honestly, like I could listen all day on these. It's fantastic. I love this, but the one thing I was saying, this just popped into my head, is would it be ridiculous to imagine that the Neanderthals gave us or that side that particular, so none of not just the Neanderthals from their their further back, from the older primates and so on.
00:52:13
Speaker
and But the autism side of things came down that line, and then the anatomic people and humans came over with ADHD and we combined. Do you know what I mean? With your powers combined, I pronounce you Eurodiverse. The lovely thing about archaeology and prehistoric anthropology, George, as you well know, is that nothing is known for certain, and there is no There is no loss in answering that question or proposing that hypothesis because we don't know and the joy is finding the answer and time will tell, right? The better we understand genetics, the better we understand neurodiverse and neurotypical behaviour both in ourselves and its expression in other human groups like Neanderthals, the better we understand the interplay of genetics and phenotypic behavioural sequences, the better we can be able to see and look for these clues in the material like archaeological record.
00:53:05
Speaker
So yes, it could be you know that we could get one from one and another from another, that kind of stuff. It could all be this interplay of genes you know that that makes us unique in in that kind of diverse behaviour. And that's the joy of archaeology and prehistoric anthropology in this. is It's the joy of understanding who we are, because that's that's the thing. The more we realise we're not special compared to other human species, the more we realise we're lucky, the better we can focus on who are we as a human species.
00:53:35
Speaker
And how did we get here? And what can we do going forward? Because you know as you know, George, archaeology, we may look at the past. but we learn the lessons of the past to apply it to the future. Absolutely. that that That's the beauty of archaeology, isn't it? it's It's the gift of knowledge, of true understanding and taking that into everyday life. So
Historical Impact of Neurodiversity
00:53:57
Speaker
yeah it just dispels so many myths and gets rid of so much tension. yeah we We don't need to hate each other. We're all the same. We're all different. you know it's It's just one big story.
00:54:10
Speaker
It is. It's one big evolutionary story that has its winners, that has its neutrals, that does has its has its losers, but it's we're all part of it. We're all under the same same influences, the same processes, that kind of stuff. And it's amazing to see not only how far we've come as an African species to you know to dominate our global ecosystem for better or worse, depending on how you view that, but also how our extended family has evolved. So we've talked about Neanderthals, we've talked, we've mentioned Agastoerectus, Heidelbergensis, Antisessus, the Denisovans, obviously more and more known about them each day, but also like some of the African human species, you know, habilis, you know, Naledi, those kinds of stuff, were all evolving. And on that kind of ah spectrum of evolution, those traits of evolution going forward, and some were success, some contributed to our success, some failed.
00:55:04
Speaker
and it It is amazing to see that human journey start from you know not just our journey, because we weren't the only human, but you know from a million years ago, or more for Homo hablis and Homo agaster to now, to see how far we as a genus, as a human group have come. is humbling. It's also gorgeous. I love it. i have It's a big tapestry. you like yeah I don't think an impressionist could paint a better tapestry of art kind of stuff. I did they try, but I don't think they'd scope it. You know you you truly realise the art of
00:55:39
Speaker
you in the broader sense, not the literal sense of of the human story, when when you can sit down and you can see these 1 million-year-old hand axes or incisions 39,000 years ago or that kind of stuff. No, they all deserve their their moment, don't they? say It's a disservice to them to sort of blanket them all together and say, oh, yeah, it was OK. No, it was wonderful. Every every every significant event, every invention, every creation. And I think it's fair to say that neurodiversity has had a big role in all of that.
00:56:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah yeah, of course. like with Without that neurodiversity, you know we can't we may struggle pointing you know examples of it and and knowing for sure, but in probably all high probability without that neurodiversity, we we might not have had the adaptive advantages that we would have had. And that goes not just for Homo sapiens, but Neanderthals and and other such humans, and maybe even you know other mammalian species. we don't you know I'm not a geneticist on the the mammalian level, but It's, you know, all of that kind of stuff without that diversity of behavior, neuro or otherwise, we we would not be here. Absolutely here here.
Conclusion and Reflections on Neurodiversity
00:56:43
Speaker
Well, Andy, I do want to ask a load more questions, but we say when when we we're not going past an hour. I'm not doing anything. We're going to cap it at that and just say thank you very, very much for coming back on. I think we can probably say that neurodiversity isn't something that we can claim as our own in the modern world. I think it's something that's been here a long time and it's probably not something we should get too upset or excited about, but definitely something we can be proud of. so Andy, the underthalls are amazing. That was amazing. Thank you so much. and I hope we can do something like this again because there's loads more to talk about. Thanks for having me and I'll call me back anytime. Andy, thanks very much. And everyone else, thank you very much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode. Bye bye.
00:57:38
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.