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Were Neanderthals neurodiverse? Part 1/2 - Ep 01
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This is the first of two episodes on neurodiversity in Neanderthals with Dr Andy Shuttleworth, who is an honorary fellow at the department of Anthropology at Durham university.
In this episode Andy talks about Neanderthals; where they lived, how they survived so long` and what their world was like. Long gone are the days of viewing Neanderthals, our nearest and dearest relatives, as simple cave-dwelling ancestors. Not only did Neanderthals survive incredibly challenging environments for hundreds of thousands of years, but they displayed signs of neurodiversity such as survival strategies, creativity, symbolism and may even have passed on autism to those of European decent.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
George Lomas on Neurodiversity and Ancient History
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to ADHD BCE. I'm George Lomas and I have ADHD, autism and a fascination with anything ancient. In this podcast, I'm going to be scouring the ages in search of neurodiversity.
Exploring Neanderthal Creativity with Dr. Andy Shuttleworth
00:00:28
Speaker
And in this episode, we're going way, way back to see if we can find signs of creativity, ingenuity and other spectrum traits among our closest relatives in Neanderthals.
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm delighted to team up with Dr. Andy Shuttleworth, an honorary fellow at the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. Andy, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, George. Great to be here. Andy, first of all, obviously it's impossible to diagnose anyone with things like ADHD and autism, let alone the ancients.
00:00:59
Speaker
But hello, Neanderthals. But nothing's stopping us having a look. So we can look for typically neurodiverse traits. That's what we're going to try and do today anyway. We're going to try and then
Neanderthal and Modern Human Comparisons
00:01:10
Speaker
see what we can find. But first of all, would you mind giving us a background, I suppose, to the Neanderthals, sort of where where they come from, where where they lived, how similar and how different they are to us? Sure, sure. My pleasure. First things first.
00:01:23
Speaker
Let's get it out of the way. We use the term Neanderthal in modern culture as something as a negative epitaph kind of thing, you know, as an insult. Let's throw that out of the way. Neanderthals were just like us in intelligence, in behaviour, in their archaeology, in the material culture for the most part. They were smart is what I'm trying to get at. It's not an insult or it shouldn't be an insult to cause someone a Neanderthal these days. It does them a disservice and I'm very protective and a lot of people are very protective about Neanderthals.
00:01:53
Speaker
It kind of stems from a Victorian kind of misunderstanding of of who and what they were.
Neanderthal Physical Characteristics
00:02:00
Speaker
The second thing you should know about Neanderthals is basically how to view them because they are human, but they are of a slightly different to what we look like not grossly so they still have two arms and two feet and all that kind of stuff. So what I'd like you and your podcast listeners to visualize is a Premier League football player. okay They are us. They are modern humans, homo sapiens. okay We're relatively tall, we're relatively sleek and fast built for running, okay and we can do that quite quite ah a long distance in a long time.
00:02:33
Speaker
Now, an Neanderthal is not a Premier League football player, sadly. They are more or less a rugby player. They're a rugby league player because that's the best type of rugby. They are built. They are squatter. They are shorter. They are more muscular. They can run, but they're not designed to run constantly like Premier League football players, like homo sapiens. So, they can do short fast busts, but they need to slow down.
Neanderthal Evolution and Interaction with Homo Sapiens
00:02:58
Speaker
They're more a tackle-built physiology. So, if a quick image of a Neanderthal is look at your Premier League players, look at your Rugby League players. The Rugby League players are your Neanderthals here. That's the general kind of proportions we're looking at. you know Big stocky squats. There are some distinct physiological differences through the pre prehistory, slightly larger brains, more robust eyebrows, that kind of stuff. But generally, that's the image that we're we're going for Neanderthals. So once you've got that in your mind of who we look like in prehistory and who the Neanderthals look like in prehistory, how they came about is really just a story of dedicated evolution. So we as our species, Homo sapiens, George, we evolved in Africa about 300 to 400,000 years ago. and And that's reflected in our physiology, our height, our slim, for the most part, build, you know, and how we hunt and how we run.
00:03:57
Speaker
that kind of thing. Neanderthals didn't evolve in Africa. They evolved in Europe and the environment in Europe is completely different to the environment in Africa as it is now. In Africa, you had open savannas when homo sapiens were evolving, lakes and all the rest.
00:04:12
Speaker
in Europe, it was different. It's a glacial or an interglacial climate, so it's colder, it's more windy, the the hills are hilly, for lack of it, it's not flat like like Africa is. There are mountains, there are different types of predators, will they mammoth, sabre-toothed cats, that kind of stuff. Temperatures considerably lower than they were in Africa, and that kind of influenced who the Neanderthals are and how they evolved into these like rugby league player type forms, because that kind of physiology, that small squat physiology helps them to conserve heat, helps them to conserve energy, helps them to to adapt into this higher latitude, what we call environments going through. And they evolve in Europe somewhere, we're not exactly sure 100%, because archaeology is not pretty much an exact science when it comes to this kind of stuff, somewhere between 800,000 and 315,000 years ago.
00:05:07
Speaker
And they lived quite successfully to around 40,000 years ago. And there was a brief overlap between Neanderthals and ourselves on the sapiens inhabiting the same kind of environments and niches as us humans came into Europe and kind of displaced them a little bit. And that could have led to a little bit of their
Complex Neanderthal Behaviors
00:05:27
Speaker
extinction. But for those 300,000 years, 800,000 years of life on Earth with the Neanderthals, they were remarkably behaviourally complex human species. They survived two, three ice ages when glaciers dominated the area. They responded to threats in their environment just like we do. Sometimes they moved, so that's why we find Neanderthal sites.
00:05:53
Speaker
Not only in Europe, so from England, for example, but in Spain, there's a lot of them in France, several in Germany and Belgium, where they were first found and identified. There's a lovely little cave, Gorham's cave in Gibraltar. You can find them in Italy, but you can also find them in modern places in the Near East. So in modern Israel, for example, there are many Neanderthal sites going forward, as well as Georgia and other such places around the Mid and Near East in that kind of area.
00:06:21
Speaker
And they're even if you kind of look at the fringes of the archaeology, possible diastole sites in Central Asia and Siberia too were, you know, that landscape, that climate and environment kind of spread out in the higher latitudes. So they kind of inhabited this old world prehistory and they were dominant in it. They were the only really human there until we came about, give or take.
00:06:46
Speaker
and they made it their own. They had their families, they had their tool industries, they had their symbolism, their spatial use. They hunted, whether that be mammoth or sabretooth cat or deer. And we used to view them as these apex hunters that they only ate meat. But we now know from their teeth, from other kind of paleoecological studies that they ate carrots and other such plant materials that were abundant.
00:07:14
Speaker
within Europe at that time. They buried their dead, whether that be
Neanderthal DNA in Modern Humans
00:07:19
Speaker
symbolically or not. There are debates on that, but we do know that they buried their dead. They created symbolism through etchings and art, and there's evidence of personal adornments of Neanderthals in Spain. And more recently, over the past decade, we know that they interbred with us, with Homo sapiens. And If you or your listeners are of Eurasian origin, for example, so if you're not sub-Saharan African in your in your ethnicity or your family history, you are chances to have some amount of Neanderthal DNA within you because of this interbreeding between these two kind of human groups. Oxford, about 10, 13 years ago, did the genetic test and and claimed that Eurasian or modern Eurasian populations have somewhere between 1-6% of Neanderthal DNA within them. That's kind of shifted over the ensuing decade. We believe it's 1-4% maybe of our neanderthal of our genome is Neanderthal in origin, and it shows that basically we there there weren't these roots of prehistory. They were this very adaptive, very willing
00:08:34
Speaker
species just as like we were at the time and their extinction came about for a number of reasons. Competition with us, for example, there used to be a theory that there was this massive prehistoric conflict or war between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and that we won. That's not the case. There's no evidence of that. Competition for sure, we were fighting over the same resources, but it was an evolutionary fight, not an actual literal one.
00:09:00
Speaker
into bread, the environment changed and the environment that they were adapted to slowly went away and it changed over time as the planet got warmer and benefited us as homo sapiens than it did the nanotals and they they dwindled out further on. Which is sad but that's how kind of nature goes. So here you have these rugby players who had their own industry, their own stone tools, hunted big game but also ate vegetables and carrots and other type of her herbs looked after their kin, their children, their elderly, buried their dead. It had this large geographic expansion across all of what we would call modern day Europe, parts of Eurasia, Asia and the Near East, and had this lovely symbolic expression that ultimately ended in their meeting us and intermixing with us to create what we are today.
00:09:56
Speaker
this modern human homo sapien kind of population which has expanded all over the globe. and With that 1-4% or 1-6% of Neanderthal DNA, it's quite humbling to recognise that, in essence, if you if you think of it as a philosophy type thing.
00:10:13
Speaker
the Neanderthals are still alive with us now in our
Cooperation Between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens
00:10:16
Speaker
genome. And that's a little bit weird, right? They they evolved 800 to 315,000 years ago. They went extinct as a distinct kind of species or human group 40,000 years ago or so. But they're still with us, right? and And they're still inside of us. And I think that's amazing. And and it's a testament, I think, to their survivability that in in that genetic sense, they're still here with us.
00:10:39
Speaker
Andy, that's incredible. i There's a few things that have just popped into my head. I mean, ah for for a start, i i I was a little bit surprised that on on the dates there, I remember years ago when I was at uni, we were looking at sort of 350 to 400,000 years ago for the origins of Neanderthals. But you you mentioned more like eight. I mean, that doesn seem that that's incredible. Well, I'm so far out of the loop with that. Things have been pushed back in the past 10 years, even you know archaeology changes massively. And because of the archaeological record with Neanderthals, one find can push something back 100,000 years or more, or can completely upend previous interpretations of not just Neanderthal behaviour and evolution, but our own behaviour and evolution at that time as well. Most Neanderthal dates, some of the oldest Neanderthal bones, date to around 430,000 years ago, give or take. Most of the most numerous fossils date to around 130,000 years in that. But studies produced various times and of which the 800,000 years is like the furthest
00:11:49
Speaker
of it, like the earliest possible one, and the 315,000 years is like quite possibly the the earliest type. So but that's the range archaeologists work within. Mason Sure. It's super interesting. ah There's a couple of other bits as well that struck me. It was obviously the similarities. They're obvious. you know were We're talking about humans, ah a whole evolution.
00:12:13
Speaker
ah it was about adaptability and surviving incredibly challenging environments and we had to create we had to adapt just to stay alive let alone thrive and eventually take over the world in terms of the food chain i suppose but but but One thing I wanted to ask was that this popped out of your talk just then was the similarities between us and the interbreeding between us. Now, when we think about it genetically, we are great Neanderthals in humans DNA mixture and we have some Neanderthal DNA in us now. But at the time, in those moments, those separate tribes of separate humans, essentially,
00:12:54
Speaker
they
Climate Challenges for Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens
00:12:55
Speaker
bred. We don't want the details, but the circumstances. where Is it possible that they lived harmoniously together and created tribes of co-human, co-nandertals and they integrated and emigrated in in ways that different populations do today?
00:13:17
Speaker
So there's a massive caveat to this answer in that we'll never know unless someone builds a DeLorean and guns it to 88 miles an hour and goes back you know that far time just to have a look at it. That's for the physicists to figure out. But I hypothesise, yes, there probably was some intermixture. Was that intermixture significant? You have to realise, and your listeners need to realise, that we're not talking about population numbers as we understand them now. okay So we're not talking about millions of Neanderthals or millions of homo sapiens. We're talking 10,000 at most, w right distributed across a large geographical expanse. So that it's not like they're in settlements or they're in fixed points. They're distributed and moving across this large landscape. And that movement will be dictated, as you just said, by the environment and food and all that kind of stuff.
00:14:10
Speaker
So when modern humans, homo sapiens meet and Neanderthals meet, they're not meeting en masse. okay that They will meet at certain points, we hypothesize, in in the landscape, the Near East, for example, maybe Central Europe, Iberia, where the last strongholds, the the last dated Neanderthals are. But they're not meeting in the thousands or maybe even the hundreds. They're meeting maybe in the dozens, if that, and you know cooperating.
00:14:41
Speaker
mating, producing offspring, cooperative hunting. In that kind of environment, adapting to that environment, the changing European landscape for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals both,
00:14:54
Speaker
cooperation is going to be the bigger driver of a competition. You look at ethnographies and and hunter-gatherer behaviours in in the ah the modern age, so to speak, they cooperate far more than they relatively kind of compete because that's of benefit to them when they cooperate with different areas. You have modern African sub-Saharan African populations who exchange gifts quite regularly between distant communities to keep that cooperation going because they may need access to another community's watering hole if there suffers a drought and vice versa. You see it within the different Inuit populations where they cooperate annually or semi-annually on large seal hunts together and then distribute the the wealth of the catch amongst themselves dependent on you know who did what. I anticipate or I would hypothesise that it was probably a similar relationship when those small bands of Neanderthals and small bands of homo sapiens met themselves.
00:15:53
Speaker
There was nothing physically other than one being maybe darker of skin, taller and thinner, and one being squatter and maybe of paler skin. Nothing different to say you're completely fundamentally different from.
00:16:08
Speaker
from what i I am, you know, we're not talking about like Neanderthals didn't have a third eye or an extra arm or anything, they they were human, they looked human, as did modern humans, they were just a different type of human, a different community of humans. So when they would come back, it would be as two communities meeting in a place where they would need to adapt. And that adaptation would have or should have necessitated cooperation over conflict. Because to conflict means there's going to be a loser and evolutionarily, we don't really want that.
00:16:37
Speaker
where cooperation, where it leads, okay, you may have to sacrifice something a little bit, but you still get something in return. And it's clear that if we have Neanderthal genes in us today, regardless of the percentage, that cooperation was ultimately more successful than any competition that happened, any conflict that happened between those two groups.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
Survival Strategies in Harsh Environments
00:17:00
Speaker
sure And I suppose Europe and and Asia and Eurasia, during these glacial and interglacial, the environment was changing. So we can't say it was like this or it was like that. It it was a changing landscape. And so it was an additional challenge. It's sort of like Jumanji really, isn't it? there Yeah. You roll the dice and one minute there's there's glaciers there. In ah in the next 50,000 years, they're retreating in this tundra. And 50,000 years, there's grassland and only for it to be reversed. the for People forget, because of our modern age, we talk about climate change and and and that kind of stuff in the modern time, as this this this big change in it is, but it's not the first time we as Homo sapiens have faced that, because the climate and the environment it spawned was the evolutionary driver
00:17:51
Speaker
for the vast majority of our evolution and time on Earth, the same with Neanderthals and other human species of of any other animal really on this planet. It's only recently that we have kind of maybe stepped aside from that as as the dominant type of adaptation where the environment has taken a secondary role to maybe larger demographics, to to social evolution and social pressures. But as you can see with the news, with modern climate change and stuff like that, the environment can still bite and we will still have to adapt to it at some point.
00:18:27
Speaker
Absolutely. yeah i suppose what i'm trying to I'm trying to articulate this in my head at the minute. This is an ADHD in action right now. I've got got all these thoughts swimming around and I can't quite ah settle on the question, but and I'm thinking about they are these change in environments in Europe and the fact that Neanderthals survived for so long. i' I'm not talking about Europe because they they were further afield than Europe, but the the thing about the ah the significance of the changing landscapes and these different challenges, just showing how adaptable they are. now i mean i i I'm a modern person, I haven't had to survive out in any particularly challenging environments, but I've seen on the TV, there are people who willingly go out into those kind of environments and pit their wits against nature and so on. There's a a couple of programs, I can't remember the titles of them actually, but
00:19:19
Speaker
they there's one or two where they get thrown out into the wilderness and they have to survive for as long as they can. Now, obviously, as I was saying in my yeah nice comfortable living room watching it on my nice big TV, it is horrifying to think that people would have to endure that. But we're looking at Well, I mean, really, if you go all the way back through evolution, millions of years, but we're talking about Neanderthals and humans, I suppose, here today. So it's hundreds of thousands of years and such a small population as well. I mean, it's mind blowing for a start when you when you think about it in those terms. And I guess this is is where my questions landed for some reason, but I'm thinking about the challenges they faced.
00:20:05
Speaker
And you talked about the smaller population of Neanderthals and humans interacting on whatever basis that was, however infrequently or or whatever.
Caloric Needs and Survival Dynamics
00:20:16
Speaker
In terms of teaming up together to survive, was it as important for anatomically modern humans, sort of what you call, I don't know, 96% of our DNA in Europe,
00:20:31
Speaker
And in the end of those, would was it as important for them both to team up to survive against not just nature, and because obviously food resources would have been abundant pretty much throughout. It was more extreme temperatures, I guess, and other predators, because some of the predators in Europe, and I think we should probably have a little moment to talk about this if you're up for it, just what challenges they faced in terms of how many numbers do you think there would have been? We're talking saber-toothed tigers, cave lions, I don't know whatever, giant bats, I don't know man, there's so many horrifically terrifying creatures in those environments.
00:21:14
Speaker
was it a bit like too much in that sense where you'd turn your back and all my, you know, because I always think like I walk, I've got kids and I walk the kids around the fields. And even now when they stray too far, my instincts are they're too far away. And I think, what are they too far away from? We haven't got any wolves, tigers, lions or anything like that, but it's in me to worry. So When we talk about the interactions between Neanderthals and humans, is there a case or an argument that they had to survive if they didn't team up? They both would have died out. Is that impossible to say? Yes and no. You're looking into genetics here and demography. Yes and no. In the short term,
00:22:01
Speaker
for those groups that came into contact with each other, I'd probably hazard a guess that say, yes, it is, they needed to cooperate to survive. For the sole reason that modern humans, Homo sapiens, did not know the environment,
00:22:16
Speaker
didn't know the extremes of the environment, the predation, the animals, whatever. They didn't know the landscape to navigate around. They could guess, they could take what they've learned and they can intuit, and that could all be very well and good, but it could also not be very well and good. And a false move or a failed hunt or not acquiring fresh water could mean death for that small group.
00:22:38
Speaker
So for those incoming homo sapiens, yes, it's it's that learning curve that would be crucial for them. For the Neanderthals, it will be crucial for them to cooperate on a different way. And this comes down to the physiology, what we call the energetics of our two different kinds of variants of humans. So I'm going back to my analogy of Premier League football players and rugby players, right?
00:23:02
Speaker
We as modern humans need 2,000, 2,500 calories per individual per day to sustain our basic metabolic processes. Okay. To keep our brains active, to keep us able to running, to allow us to create symbolism, to create tools. We need that calorific intake to do that. If we do more activity, we obviously need more calories, but the base is 2,000 to 2,500 calories per individual per day. And we can get that from tubers, from plants, from fish, from meat.
00:23:31
Speaker
And that's grand. The Neanderthals, however, the rugby players with that stocky muscle need anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 calories per individual per day to maintain their basic metabolic processes. So nearly 1.5 to twice as many calories for a Neanderthal than a modern human.
00:23:55
Speaker
okay Now, both of these groups are competing for the same food and same resources. okay The same wild horse, the same deer, the same woolly rhinoceros. okay The modern human gets it. They can have food for a week, a month. you know They can dry it out. It's great. If that doesn't happen, if the Neanderthal gets it, they've got food for a day or a week at most. If the animals don't get any of that food,
00:24:24
Speaker
they starve because they need more calories. The more humans get it, the homo sapiens get it, they're bountiful. So it's a different kind of short term success that they're each looking for. you know For modern humans, for homo sapiens, it's the short term success of the experience of living in Europe and the landscape and getting to know its kind of environment. For the Neanderthals, cooperation is required on the short term because they need to eat They know the landscape. That's grand. They have their tools. they They're competent more than competent in using them. But if they fail at hunting, if they are out-competed by homo sapiens, they starve, which means they have to go further and further away in the landscape to acquire food, which may be tricky. That's risky. And if they fail at that, they die. So cooperation is in everyone's best interest in the short term, but for different reasons.
00:25:22
Speaker
in the long term, and this is where the number that matter comes from, short term cooperation for our species as a whole, like homo sapiens as a whole, is a bit neither here or there because there are more modern humans, more homo sapiens coming into Europe every year. OK, migration is coming in and coming in and coming in. We're outbreeding the Neanderthals.
00:25:49
Speaker
we we just breed faster like rabbits. okay And so obviously those populations, even if those small groups die off of of Homo sapiens die off, they're going to be replaced maybe the next season by two more. And they might be replaced by four more the next next season after that.
Neurodiversity in Neanderthals
00:26:08
Speaker
But the Neanderthal group, if it succeeds, might only grow by one or two. And if it dies, it might not be replaced by another Neanderthal group because they are so far dispersed.
00:26:20
Speaker
Okay, because if you have a group of a family of Neanderthals, say, and that there's yourself, George, there's your good lady, Neanderthal wife, and there's your four Neanderthal kids, each of which require anywhere from three to 4000 calories per individual per day. Okay, do the math. That's a total amount of I can't do math. I've just called myself out on that. But that's a total amount. So like 12,000 odd calories per individual to sustain your family, say,
00:26:47
Speaker
i fifteen thousand calories to sustain your family. That means the environment needs to sustain you. okay That means the environment cannot sustain maybe 20 of your families. It can only sustain three or four maybe if you know if there's ah a large herd you know or there's a specific growing season of flora and fauna and stuff like that, which makes ah an area particularly rich in calories. But it cannot sustain, the environment literally can't sustain an infinite number of Neanderthals because they're taking too much out of the environment to keep themselves alive. So that's why these Neanderthal groups are heavily dispersed. Because if they're all concentrated, that environment will become a desert very quickly. But for the Homo sapiens who are having 1.5 to twice as less as and Neanderthals,
00:27:41
Speaker
that environment can support more homo sapiens in comparison. And that's how you get population replacement, or one theory of population replacement between ourselves versus the anantols. Right, I see. Well, it would technically both because we've got Neanderthals in as you're saying. Yes. yeah but yeah and So yeah, in in the short term, yes, you're right, cooperation will be key, but for different reasons for the different types of human communities. But in the long term, it's like here or there because that that economic, energetic at advantage of of ourselves, of pharmo sapiens this one the one that Neanderthals really can't compete with. Yeah, sure. Wow. Okay, well, that sort of brings me to start thinking about, we we're talking about similarities as well, I suppose, between Neanderthals and and humans. So,
00:28:33
Speaker
One of the inspirations for this podcast actually is the belief that anatomically modern humans have been all but the same for potentially hundreds of thousands of years. so we've had a default from From the point of view of this podcast, we've had neurotypicals and the neurodiverse living simultaneously throughout all that time.
00:28:55
Speaker
and then if we're looking at Neanderthals and seeing all these similarities in other areas because they had art, they had ingenuity and at the box thinking and survivability in in spades, could we look at the dynamics of Neanderthals as groups and see that you're likely to have because because we get it with people, don't we? we get the Anything from characteristic traits, either grumpy ones to the to the to the positive types, and then you've got obviously neurotypicals and neurodiverse or neurodivergent people. so
00:29:33
Speaker
could we look yeah Obviously, the archaeological records are fairly sparse this far back, but could we at least talk about that these dynamics and if we could imagine that Neanderthals would be similar in say, let's think about it, in humans we we have, is it is it towards 20% of the human population is neurodivergent? Sort of like 5% ADHD or something? I don't know. It's something, I did know this but I've forgotten it because that's my working memory.
00:30:05
Speaker
but could could Could we imagine that in the Anderson groups you'd have the geniuses, essentially, and then you'd and and you you'd have people who were great at yeah more athletic, say, or or other talents, and that because we need these dynamics in a complex and social environment to survive.
00:30:27
Speaker
What are your thoughts on that, Andy? I don't think I've made that question very clear. that's all i think i got I think I get like the the main thing that you're going for here. if i you know Would Neanderthal society, would Neanderthals themselves be neurodiverse and display those behaviours?
Challenging Historical Biases in Archaeology
00:30:40
Speaker
And you know but would there be similar behaviours that we see in the neurodiverse community and everything like that, that we see today, modern-y, I guess yes, would be the possibility to that, sure. Again, with a massive caveat that not only will it be hard to see in the archaeological record, because most of that diversity is non-material, it's behavioural, so we'd have to infer it from like secondary or tertiary kind of sources, but also a little bit of a warning, because we're essentially reflecting our own neurodiversity as homo sapiens.
00:31:15
Speaker
with this question onto the Neanderthals. so and you know that That's fine because that's how we view the world through our own lens. okay so we We do it compared to ourselves, but we also have to recognize that, yes, the Neanderthals could be neurodiverse and probably were diverse in in in and their neurology. We see various variants of their behavior in the archaeological record, in the tools that they make, in the social organization, that kind of thing.
00:31:43
Speaker
But we also need to recognise that their neurodiversity could be something completely different from ours. Sure. Yeah. And so it's like we' we're looking at it like apples and oranges and we can compare them like we can compare. We have two fruits, we have two, you know, this, that and the other. But it's ultimately some of that neurodiversity make completely different from ours but that we just can't see it because it doesn't conform, ironically, to our own perceptions of neurodiversity. So yeah, I would expect that Neanderthals would have had some elements of neurodiversity within their behavior, maybe even stemming all the way to a genetic level. And yeah, some of that could be mapped onto or we could use our own neurodiversity behavior to map onto the Neanderthals to kind of pinpoint it. But those kind of pins aren't going to be definite, they're just going to be
00:32:32
Speaker
as ah as a possibility, that kind of thing to to take into consideration. Again, unless those those physicists come up with the DeLorean and we can go back in time to do more ethnographic studies, which I'm all for if ah people want to include me on that grant.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'll be in that car with you, man. 100%. Yeah, well, that that's, yeah, completely the right answer to that. Because, I mean, if there's a saying goes, you meet one autistic, you've met one autistic, you know, saving on the saving on the spectrum. In our time, it's incredibly diverse, we're as diverse as the rest of the population. So pin pinning things down it like that is incredibly difficult. It is. And I'm very wary of transposing modern homo sapien behaviours onto to Neanderthals as a compare and contrast, because for as long as we've known and researched Neanderthals, really ah up until last, maybe 30 to 50 years, that's all it's ever been. Because there's been this assumption that homo sapiens won. We evolved, we're the only human left on this earth.
00:33:38
Speaker
But we shared it with the Neanderthals and we shared it with other human species at other points in time, but we're the only one
Investigating Neanderthal Creativity and Neurodiversity
00:33:44
Speaker
here. And that has assumed people to say something must be different about us, either in behaviour, genetics, physiology, whatever. And and we've used that to look back at the Neanderthals in particular and viewed them as inferior.
00:33:57
Speaker
yeah And I think that's that's wrong because we're we're viewing them from our lens and we should be viewing them from theirs. And their lens is of remarkably successful human species that really the environment didn't go their way. and And they went extinct as dozens, hundreds, millions of other species have gone extinct throughout known time. We're we're here, not because we're special,
00:34:23
Speaker
not because we are unique, though we we are essentially unique as being the only human here. We're here because we adapted. We're here because we got very lucky as a species. And we're here because of we've used that adaptation to our 12 fullest effect. And we we shouldn't confuse that with a perception that, you know,
00:34:43
Speaker
we're superior in some way and shape and form. A different turn of the dice, a different flip of the coin, we could be Neanderthals having this conversation about Homo sapiens and Euro diversity, that kind of stuff. So yeah, would I would be hesitant in all things of using our lens to look at the Neanderthals. Obviously, it's one of our tools that we do use as archaeology. We can't get away from it, but we have to recognize that bias, I think, when we do do this.
00:35:09
Speaker
Absolutely. There's there's there' an awful lot of arrogance there, isn't there? it's there I suppose it that that was the archaeology back in the day. It was very that sort of Eurocentric, very much so yeah white sky supremacy kind of crap. and So yeah, that did that makes sense. Thanks, Andy. the I suppose I've just got to do this. I've got this vision of Neanderthals. This needs to be an HBO thing when ne ander know the other hit the one, the second world war. We need the Neanderthals won Europe and and we're all here playing rugby league and having a great time. It's a better world, George. It would be a better world. I believe you believe that. I may agree. I'd have to think about it, but it does sound it does sound wonderful.
00:35:52
Speaker
Okay, so let's let's move on. Well, no, it's not moving on actually, it's continuing along this path of looking for, because this is about neurodiversity in the archaeological record. So here we are talking about Neanderthals and neurodiversity. So here is the not the million dollar question, it's say hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of questions lumped into one messy question that roughly equals a million pounds. We can't do maths though, can we? So when yeah, what I'm getting to is,
00:36:21
Speaker
Neanderthals and their archaeological record and everything we know about them. Obviously, their neurodiversity would have been different two hours, but just listening into the things you've described about tool making, art, burying the dead, surviving and incredibly challenging environments for hundreds of thousands of years. Do we see signs? Because when we talk about neurodiversity, we talk, I mean, we did we do, the you know, the classical, autistic, amazing at maths, even though i'm i'm I've got autism and I can't do maths at all. and then we've got ADHD with a hyperactivity and half the time I'm exhausted. So we're looking for traits. This isn't a definitive yeah description by any means, but do we see, or can we sort of see the similarities that we could potentially pick up all together and throw them into a pot and see if we can make a neurodiverse stew out of it. So we're looking for impulsivity, creativity, out of the box thinking, or there's tons of
00:37:30
Speaker
different elements to to to the spectrum, but based on what you know and what you need in your research and experience and your knowledge of Neanderthals, do you see things and think, Crikey, yeah, that that day is incredibly creative. That is, you know, because we talk about, you said right at the beginning of the podcast, we're just spelling this myth about the yeah and Neanderthals being a a as it being an and a term for an insult. And we we talked a few moments ago about Eurocentric sort of arrogance and transposing our own ideas of success and superiority onto them. I've lost my train of thought now. That's another ADHD train. You're going to have to get used to this, everyone. I do
Genetic Evidence of Neurodiversity
00:38:11
Speaker
this. yeah so what what i' trying to say is do Do you see ah they a neurodiverse traits, not neurodiversity itself, but elements of it within Neanderthal records?
00:38:22
Speaker
so I would say, yeah, probably we do. And again, there are caveats to that, which I've mentioned before. I think we we should be able to see it in in Neanderthal symbolism or what we constitute Neanderthal symbolism, aspects of of the kind of social behaviour, the tools that they made.
00:38:39
Speaker
maybe how they organized you know their spaces, their spatial orientation with with the Neanderthal sites, for example. And we should, because there are there are those who view neurodiversity to be genetic kind of of origins, we we may be able to see it in Neanderthal genes as well. and And just like our homo sapien genome has been mapped, the Neanderthal genome has been mapped as well to a greater or lesser extent. So if we're going to see evidence of neurodiversity in Neanderthals,
00:39:09
Speaker
we're going to see, I think, in those kind of areas. Before going to that, if you just still indulge me a little bit, George, like if we to to kind of explain the overlap, I guess, of for me, of Neanderthals and neurodiversity behavior, we need to kind of look at maybe four little things of the Neanderthals themselves. Because like I said, like you pointed out, we are very similar, like not just in physiology, but also in and brain size and roughly brain orientation for the most part. Now, Neanderthals, sometimes some of the higher ranges of brain size overlap or go beyond our own homo sapien total brain size. But for the most part, we're we're relatively the same in in our brain in size between Neanderthals and Mon humans. So to me, that says there's a very closeness in in evolutionary terms between between our two human species. And as such, we should expect both species to display
00:40:03
Speaker
neurodiversity in the behaviour. So I think, you know, going from that kind of commonality of foundation, I think we can all agree on. The second is, it used to be, you know, 30 to 50 years ago, everyone just looked at total brain size and total brain volume. But the more we understand about the brain, especially the mammalian brain, the more we realise it's actually specific parts of the brain that actually influence and affect our behaviour, higher functions of of thought and processing that kind of thing. And that's the neocortex.
00:40:34
Speaker
in both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. And that's key for behaviour. And I think that would therefore be where to look for, for neuro evidence of neurodiverse behaviour Neanderthals to look at the overall size of Neanderthal neocortex, its relationship maybe to the rest of the brain from the castes that we have, that kind of thing and comparing it to the neocortex of modern humans. And no, we, we kind of do know that there are differences between modern human neocortex and the Neanderthal ones. And that does suggest then there could be slight behavioural repertoire differences between the Neanderthals. Going forward, they could approach things differently. Ellie Pierce, for example, in 2013 wrote a paper about how the larger orbits, that's the the eyes of Neanderthals, compared to Homo sapiens, could mean that Neanderthals are more visual processes.
00:41:27
Speaker
Okay. So which makes sense, right? If you're in a higher latitude environment where it's not sunny, the sun's not up for the same amount of time as it is in Africa, you're you're going to need more visual processing to scan the environment, to recognize threats, to recognize food, that kind of stuff. But that might come at a cost that that increased visual processing could come at a lesser cognitive processing. So a change within that behavior, so to speak. So Pierce proposed that in 2013.
00:41:54
Speaker
And that's kind of backed up. That's one interpretation of of some of the archaeological records. Some people agree with it. Some people don't. The third area is like I've mentioned before is genes. I think genes are key really for this. They would determine neocortex size, overall brain size, and therefore will have an effect on our behavior. So if there is a genetic source for neurodiversity, then we should be able to see it or eventually we will be able to see it in in our genome and the Neanderthal genome. And the fourth one,
00:42:24
Speaker
as you've mentioned, is basically we should look at the behaviour to identify that neurodiversity. When all else fails, let's look at the archaeological record, look what they were doing, look what they're creating, look how they were organising, and see what they were doing, and yes, compare it to what homo sapiens were doing, and and to see if there's any distinct changes or distinct similarities that kind of parallel the neurodiversity within our own kind of species. The issue with that is most of those behaviours, as you know, are not material.
00:42:53
Speaker
you've just explained you know your ADHD and hyperactivity with you know sometimes being exhausted, that kind of thing. We're never going to be able to see that in the archaeological record, but we can infer certain non-material behaviours as proxies from the material record, for example, and that's what we do as archaeologists. But the caveat with that is other people, other researchers can make very similar interpretations that are the complete 180. So if if neurodiversity exists in Neanderthals and it is of a similar kind of content as it exists within homo sapiens, then those are the key areas to look to look at as the causes. And then the evidence of that will be genetically, maybe in spatial ah organization, the tool use, the symbols and use, that kind of stuff, which is great because we have a lot of evidence of those kinds of things. Again, highly subjective, highly interpretive, but enough that
00:43:50
Speaker
know with a greater understanding of neurodiversity within ourselves, within homo sapiens, we can then maybe look for a greater appreciation of neurodiversity in our closest cousins, the Neanderthals. So, yeah, does that make sense to you, George? every Yeah, absolutely. I think there's ah and an exciting investigation that needs to needs to be led by somebody there. I think looking for neurodiversity in Neanderthals and other primates, I suppose. is Well, but that works actually going on. So like Penny Spickens from York, for example, is looking into emotion in the archaeological record.
Genetic Research and Modern Connections
00:44:26
Speaker
And I remember when Penny started first talking about this, she presented at a conference like in 2012. And I was like, this is interesting. But and I admit, I hold my hands up to this, I was like, what is the point?
00:44:40
Speaker
like we can't see this we can't understand of course everyone has emotion how can we translate this how can we infer emotion from a stone tool from something else and since then the more I've chatted with Penny and some of her PhD students and read her work I've actually been turned on this and like actually you you can it's not you can look at some of this and you can infer this it's not 100% science, you know, you're not going to be able to point to it definitively inside this Neanderthal was angry or tired or mad, you know, when, when they created this particular item or whatever. But you can infer the wider range of emotionality. And I think, you know, as emotion plays,
00:45:20
Speaker
quite big in neurodiversity. That's a that's a start. And if for those who are interested, look up Penny Spicken's work from York. She's done a lot of this and and she's she's leading the vanguard, I think, in the UK about it all. But yeah, I would recommend. Yeah, I've actually ah sent an email to Penny. I'm i'm waiting for her reply.
00:45:39
Speaker
know send send a message for me if you know and i will I'll a text like, you need to do George's podcast. It's great. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, for me, obviously this this was never going to be a definitive discussion about yes or no. They did all they do. I think in reality, I think being so closely related to Neanderthals, it's entirely possible, and probably highly likely. that so we have There must have been, no there's neurodiversity amongst animals. So, when you did it your studies, it did you you did you remember Paul Mellor's?
00:46:19
Speaker
I remember the name. the name so Paul Miles, Professor Mellor, he's passed now, but he was he was a Titan in in Neanderthal archaeology and Neanderthal behaviour and modern human homosapien behaviour. He came up with this lovely quote, the the impossible coincidence. and His basic kind of thing was that we have two separate species, therefore we have two separate behavioural niches, therefore we have two separate behaviours. One us, homo sapiens, we're modern, you know that kind of thing, we're behaviourally distinct, we have this capacity for symbolism, for you know love, that kind of all that kind of thing. And the other Neanderthals, they're behaviourally archaic, they're limited in their cognitive ability. and
00:47:00
Speaker
i never I never got that, I never understood that that that. Even though I couldn't do multiplication just 20 minutes ago, I'm a statistician and I know that nothing is impossible, just mathematically improbable. And that's and when you consider all of the evolutionary similarities of Neanderthals and homo sapiens, how close we are in terms of time and evolution. The fact that we were able to interbreed on a biological level to create viable offspring. The fact that we created similar tools in hand axes and that kind of stuff and and denticulates and all the rest. The fact that we hunted game and that kind of thing. That removes the level to high level of improbability, right? So it becomes more probable once you consider all of these similarities. So you're right, George, she's like we are so close. like the improbability scale might still be slightly skewed in the into the negative, but the more we learn about Neanderthals and their similarities, the more that improbability becomes closer to probable. And yeah, and the more we find out about the archaeological record, the more likely maybe in 5, 10, 15, 50 years, we'll have a better understanding of neurodiversity, not just within our own modern populations, but within the archaeological Neanderthals as well.
00:48:15
Speaker
How exciting. I don't have the patience for this. We need the DeLorean. We do. We do. Go backward and forward. I'll get my hoverboard and be granted. To the extent, we don't you know I look forward to the next 50 years of research on this coming on, but that foundation is already being built right now. so I've just talked about Ellie Pierce and her work. That's a beginner. That that gives an insight into the different like neocortex and maybe visual cognitive processing of Neanderthals, which you know there are some people listening to this who might be like, oh, God, yeah, that's maybe my visual, my neurodiversity. I i process things visually a lot better maybe. But you have Gregory et al. from 2017. They did a correlation between Neanderthal genes and brain organisation.
00:49:03
Speaker
again, highlighting the greater visual impact of of Neanderthal brain chemistry and and diversity there. And you have ah Ockensburg et al in 2013, who potentially, and this is directly relevant obviously to this podcast, identified Neanderthal genes relating to autism. oh wow no There's a big caveat to this because even though we have like mapped our own genome and the Neanderthal genome, we still don't know what specific genes and alleles do in combination with each other. That is something for the next century to kind of figure out, right? But they've they've highlighted potential genes, potential alleles within the Neanderthal genome that could could link or could, you know, express themselves in autistic kind of behaviors. And here's the kicker.
00:49:54
Speaker
is the kicker of this. So um Fool and Elba did a follow up in 2018 and they they they correlate these genes to Eurasian populations. So basically, these genes are ah higher in prevalence in Eurasian populations, those with the Near East, those of North Africa, those of Asia, that kind of thing, and less prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. I'll go way back when when I told you this, that this kind of their hypothesis that admixture and interbreeding between homo sapiens and Neanderthals could have transferred some of these genes from the Neanderthals to us.
00:50:33
Speaker
Wow. you You heard it here first, guys. Well, no, yeah yeah you heard it here first It was the first time I heard it. But no, it's like, again, there are massive caveats to to these things of worlds. They are still hypotheses. They are still being determined. They are still interpretations. These aren't definitive. Okay. But there are strong correlations between these genes and autistic behavior. There are strong correlations between these genes and their expression in Eurasian populations.
00:51:03
Speaker
So, you know, you can connect the dots, but as any statistician knows, causation doesn't mean correlation and and vice versa. So it's, you know, these are just intriguing things. And it's also one of these things where these are done by geneticists, not necessarily archaeologists and anthropologists kind of stuff. So they're focusing on the genes, but they're not necessarily well connected with the behavior that archaeologists and anthropologists
Neanderthal Tool-Making and Intelligence
00:51:24
Speaker
have. But there's always a bit of a disconnect between fields. So this is this is work that is still, even though it was done in 2013 and 2018, still in early days,
00:51:33
Speaker
So, but there are these tentative insights to it. and And if it's true, if some of these, you know, four to 6% or whatever of Neanderthal genes that have come in to our genome from the Neanderthals are subscribed to some form of autistic expression, for example, then think of it because if those genes were negative,
00:51:55
Speaker
if they had a negative impact on our homo sapien evolution, they would have been evolved out. Wow. You know, no, one no one would have, chuck you know, no one would have mated with people with those genes, with those phenotypes, that kind of stuff, but they have persisted. Okay. And and and they're here up to 6% of our genome, which means that they are either neutral, fine,
00:52:17
Speaker
So they have no bearing either positive or negative on our genome and on our behaviour. We've just incorporated it into the behaviour of homo sapiens, or they are positive.
00:52:31
Speaker
and they have been selected in some way, shape or form, maybe specifically, maybe unintentionally, whatever, but they've been passed on. So this this is the beginning of that genetic research. So this is why you're right to be excited in for the next 10, 20, 50 years, because the more we understand about how genes and ahel alleles kind of combine and react to each other and express themselves, the more we can then answer these questions. like Right now, our understanding is we could, could, could, and I'm putting that in italics underlined, could, not definitively, could have gotten some genetic markers of autism and neurodiversity from our Neanderthal cousins, just like we could have got ginger hair from our cousins and stuff like that. We won't know until we have a fuller understanding of those genomes. And that won't come and until for a new, the next few decades. If anyone is listening to this, by the way, and would like to investigate that,
00:53:26
Speaker
go for it, because that's where it's going to be. That's where we may fail or find it. So that's like the genetic level. And those are the foundations of maybe the next half a century's work and understanding of that, of of its origins. It could be right. It could be completely off base. We've been off base in archaeology and Neanderthals with genetics before. So there was this thing called FOXP2, which is a a gene that helps with language. And when it was originally came out,
00:53:53
Speaker
You know, we have Fox P2, but some sometimes the animals didn't. And so we, we kind of said, okay, that, that precludes them from having language. And that was, that was the rule of the land for like 20, 30 years. And then someone looked at Fox P2, looked how it interacts and was like, actually that's, it has a impact of language, but it's not the impact you think. you You don't need to have this gene to be able to speak and to be able to comprehend language and stuff. And it completely overturned everything. So let's take it with a pinch of salt, but this is a foundation. I'm i'm far too excitable to take it with a pinch of salt. I'm running with it. I've got it in my head now. I get my autism and ADHD from Neanderthals. Maybe I get ADHD from Homo sapiens and I get autism from Neanderthals. Maybe. you know you can indeed du there There are certain companies who do genetic tests to figure out how much Neanderthal DNA that you that you that you have. I've done it. I have about 6%.
00:54:46
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's grand. But yeah, you can you can do that. But it's like, that's on the genetic level. And like, say, as an archaeologist, I prefer the material over the genetic one, because I can understand the material far more than genetic. And two, yeah there there are there are more material understandings than we have in the archaeological record to work with and the genes that we but we currently understand. But When we look at Neanderthals spatial organization, for example, of a cure in 2024 has looked at numerous sites are around Europe of how Neanderthals organize their space. So like, um you know, is there a work area? Is there a processing area for food? Is there an eating area? Is there a sleeping area? And they find out, yes, there is. And they're remarkably like homo sapiens, which is not surprising, right? Like because they are humans, of course,
00:55:34
Speaker
we would assume that they organize the living arrangements. They don't want to sleep in the same place. They process their kills. They don't want to sleep in the same place. Maybe they are on the tool shards and stuff like that. That they've just made that kind of stuff. But again, this this is coming out in 2024. And so the Nandhars have a lot to prove just to do that. They do the normal assumptions stuff. If it was homo sapiens, everyone would just be like, yeah, we do that yeah yeah that kind of
Material Culture and Symbolism
00:56:03
Speaker
stuff. I think The two major areas, other than genetics, we're going to find evidence for neurodiversities in the tools though, and in Neanderthal symbolism, because those are the kind of two places where Neanderthals, one from the tool perspective, that's their daily life. They need those tools to hunt as part of their behavior, as part of their very survival. So any change in there, any adaptation in there on neurodiversity is going to be evident quite possibly within the tools they use on a day to day.
00:56:30
Speaker
And for those who don't know, on your podcast, you know, Neanderthals have two stone tool industry called the Mysterian, named after the site of Le Mustier in France. And it's a, it's a, like it's a flake industry. It creates scrapers from stone tools from Flint, that kind of thing. It creates knives and all that kind of thing. But as the Neanderthals evolved, they started employing another kind of industry, another technique of creating tools called Lavalois. And Lavalois is complex.
00:56:59
Speaker
like George, if i if I gave you a stone and and another pebble and I said, could you make a sharp edge? Could you make me a flake from this piece of stone? Intuitively, I think you could probably knock off an edge and say, there you go. there's ah There's a cutting edge. You can cut this hide. You can cut this meat. Lavalois is not intuitive to make. it is It is really, really hard. I'm not a natural stone knapper, so I find it very, very impossible to do. But I know friends who were expert stone knappers and it took them a long time to learn how to use this. And lavalois is great, and from quite possibly a neurodiverse perspective, because one, it is it is not intuitive. So you have to learn it, you have to visualise it, not just, you know, with this piece of flint in front of you, you're you're going to have to visualise
00:57:49
Speaker
removing pieces of it to get a biface you know from it, a lavalois blade from it. And and the the first step, if you mess that up, you've messed everything up entirely, essentially. So you've got to mentally map in a very distinct process of what you're going to do, where you're going to hit the flint to remove the flakes and where you're going to hit it to remove you know a biface or ah a lavalois flake, that kind of stuff. The second point beyond its complexity is that it is very economical So you have your little flint block and you want to make a lavalois and an axe or something like that or a flake. But in making that single lavalois flake, you make dozens of other flakes that can then be used as other tools. So that piece of flint becomes like a Swiss army knife. You know, you you get the resources that you need to make scrapers, to make knives, to make whatever. OK. And then you get this perfect lavalois flake at the end of it all.
00:58:49
Speaker
and you can begin again. And it's great. So you have this non-intuitive, very complex methodology that is very economical. And the Neanderthals made it. One, that is a testament to their intelligence. But two, and you know, forgive me, George, I'm i'm not and necessarily up being what would be described as neurotypical. ah You know, I'm sure there are other neurodiverse individuals out there who when they think of planning something, when they think of mapping something in their mind, maybe, yeah yeah might might sing to them a little bit, because that's what the Nantos would have had to have done. They would have taken this nodule of Flynn and they would have had to, before they even touched it to remove a flake from it, they would have had to mentally created
00:59:32
Speaker
a methodology within the mind of that particular flint nodule. I think that may be that could maybe in a behavioural sense come the closest to neurodiverse behaviour because it it combines that visualisation, it combines that methodological skill, it combines that you know, expertise, it may be manual handling and stuff that you definitely need, that dedication of of intricacy, of specificity to to create this. Potentially hyperfocus hyper-focused. Definitely hyper-focused. And then you link into this because that's not intuitive. so Someone had to teach a Neanderthal how to do that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so we're we're not born with those skills, right? Someone needed to teach us to read and write, and okay, to hold a pen, to to do the A and do the capital A. And
01:00:20
Speaker
ABC, that kind of stuff, right. And that's, you know, that that takes, I don't know, George, you have you have children weeks to to do months to do that. That's an that's an ongoing process as new words are learned. and And right. But then so someone had to sit down a young Neanderthal and say, right, we're going to learn. lapalll one yeah And that yeah and that that that is an indirect reference to the social structure, that you would have had teachers, you would have had students, yeah you would have you would have had that bond of, this is important, please watch this, you know, that kind of stuff. And I don't know about you, George, but have you ever taught someone to do something very specific, very hyper focused, without language?
01:01:02
Speaker
um I wouldn't want to go into details, no. but the word sp But yeah, but it's harder, right? Like say, imagine trying to teach someone to write without explaining to them verbally why something is done. Like just explaining to them via gesture or grunt or, you know, whatever that it's doable. I'm not saying it isn't, but it's harder. Yeah, absolutely. So it might so that when people say like,
01:01:30
Speaker
oh, yeah, the Nantos might not have had language, you know, 20, 30 years ago. No one was pointing to La Valois to say, how can you make this then without language? Yeah. But you know, and they did make it and it's all there and pristine examples of it. Someone would have had to teach them someone and that teaching must have been done with language. Absolutely. In some way, shape or form. So if if you say we're dodging around this this question of the material evidence of of neurodiversity in the archaeological record, remove the genetics, which we have, but the tools I would just focus on without, I'd be like, okay, what about this? and And to me, that's a possibility. And I leave it to other kind of specialists in neurodiversity to not confirm that interpretation or say, no, maybe something else entirely. But that's a probable contender. Andy, thank you so much. that they did The one thing that's just popped into my head is whenever I go out for a walk with the kids, the first thing they'll do is find an interesting stone. We always bring stones home from wherever we go. So maybe maybe that's part of our rare 46%. I mean, I'm all for stones. um you know you know with In comparison, 99% of our
01:02:45
Speaker
time on this earth, our history is prehistory, and the vast majority of that was stone tools. How can we not have a bond with that material? like yeah okay We have iron, we have steel, we make buildings out of them, but they are blinks in the eye compared to a hand axe, compared to that bond. and You can still like go to the Natural History Museum or the British Museum, you can see see these hand axe is like the Swanscombe hand axe, and you look at it, and it's it's beautiful. It's a work of art.
Conclusion on Neanderthal Neurodiversity
01:03:13
Speaker
it's They're lovely. And, you know, Neanderthals made these, you know, and you look at the different Neanderthal tools, and there are differences between regions. So Karen Rubens highlighted in and Northwestern Europe about three different micro industries, all Mysterian, but different morphologies slightly, which could represent different groups.
01:03:35
Speaker
yeah and you' just like so These are how the Neanderthals could have communicated with each other, could have delineated their territories, you know that kind of thing. It's very interesting. And we do that all the time. You know, we just do it now with Android phones and iPhones, you know, that kind of stuff. It's still going on. and And that, you know, we've not even touched upon Neanderthal symbolism, which is very... No, Andy. Honestly, I really wish we could do this for the next hour, but... I told you I could talk all day about Neanderthal symbolism. I could listen to you talk about that. It's been an absolute pleasure, Andy. And I think we have probably established some very arbitrary, loose,
01:04:12
Speaker
undefinitive assumptions that maybe perhaps Neanderthals did have neurodiversity that could reflect our own and maybe to the point that we inherited some of that. so Quite possibly. like you know it's I never say never, I never say definitively, but it's quite possibly and if if so, very interesting.
01:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, indeed. Andy, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. It's been an absolute blast and so interesting. It's it's been great. I do feel that we'll have to do this again to touch on symbolism and lots of other areas that we've just not going to have time for in in and out. I'm all down for a part two, George, you know, being right. Fantastic.
Podcast Credits
01:04:49
Speaker
We'll get that lined up. Andy, thanks so much for coming on. And yeah, we'll do this again. So thanks very much, mate. And everyone else, thanks for listening. And we shall get on with another one. Cheers, guys. Take care.
01:05:10
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.