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What's Next - Episode 20
56 Plays10 years ago
This episode also features another segment of “Back to Basics with Jenny!” This time, I wanted to do an Anthro 101 Introduction to Human Origins review.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Host's Thesis Journey
00:00:24
Speaker
Hey, hey, hey, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. This is Jenny, your fantastic host for this evening. Welcome back for episode 20. That's right, 20 episodes of the podcast today, and I'm so excited to bring you another fun-filled adventure into the world of archaeology, ancient history, anthropology, and other things generally nerdy and awesome. And with that,
00:00:53
Speaker
Let's start talking about today's episode. It's called What's Next, and the reason why it's called What's Next is because you may have noticed if you were following me on social media that I had kind of a big month last month out of nowhere. I kind of heard all of a sudden from my graduate thesis committee that I was going to be needed in the state of Florida in three weeks to defend my master's thesis in order to graduate in December, which
00:01:21
Speaker
would be happening, you know, unbeknownst to any communication that I had had previously about this. So I kind of had to kick my editing into full gear to get my thesis formatted and edited it in time for my defense, which was just crazy. Probably the most stressful two weeks I've ever had in my life. And so that was not
00:01:49
Speaker
the funnest experience I've ever had but I am really glad that it happened because I defended my thesis successfully and it has been accepted by my department for graduation and by barring any major catastrophes with my thesis reader on formatting errors I will be graduating in December
00:02:11
Speaker
thank the freaking lord because you know i've been in grad school for quite a while and i was so ready to be done with it dunzies i finished writing my thesis in may i think so yes i i'm really glad that i was able to uh finish the editing and move on with my life now yay
00:02:34
Speaker
So that's basically what happened to me and also why I haven't released a podcast in a month. I was pretty busy with that working day and night on formatting because when you write something like a published work or a thesis, it has to conform to the formatting of the institution or publication that is going to be publishing it.
00:02:58
Speaker
And so it's just a lot of crazy nitpicky stuff about where this line goes and what gets capitalized and where this alignment goes and how the pictures are and the citations and the blah and the blah and the blah. It's a pain in the arse. But yeah, once it's done, it's done and then you are done. And the thesis.
00:03:22
Speaker
defense process if you are thinking about going to grad school and interested in how it works. So you develop your research over a couple. Well, mine took two years to do my research and to write my thesis. And then your thesis committee will edit your thesis chapters, send them back to you with their suggestions for what to fix.
00:03:43
Speaker
Once you've fixed it to their liking, they'll approve your thesis to be defended. And I'm not sure exactly if every single school will be the same way that mine is, but at least at my university. So your thesis defends.
00:03:59
Speaker
You have to submit your finalized written thesis to your department, and then you have to do a presentation in front of your professors and your committee members, and it's open to, in my case, students from the department to come and listen to you present a PowerPoint and a 20-minute presentation on your research.
00:04:21
Speaker
outlining your hypotheses, your research goals, how you conducted your research, and then, of course, what your findings were. And then, after that, I was submitted for questioning from the audience, and I had a little bit of a grilling from several of my audience members on my methodology and my data and the conclusions that I came up with from that.
00:04:46
Speaker
And then if that wasn't fun enough, then you get shut in a room with just your thesis committee and then they grill you some more on your research. And so that was fun too. But it actually, I was super nervous at this point because you never know if they're going to just rip you to shreds or whether they're going to be like, no, but seriously, good job. That was great. You're done.
00:05:14
Speaker
So I was kind of like ready to dive, like ripping my hair out, waiting to get in that room to see what they would think and...
00:05:23
Speaker
Thankfully, they did not rip me to shreds. They were actually very kind and supportive and they liked my research and my theoretical modeling and my arguments and my everything, which was such a relief because once I got in there and they all said that it was such a great job, I just was like,
00:05:45
Speaker
I can breathe again and I am not going to pass out and die from shame if I get rejected for my defense, because they can fail you and make you do it again, but thankfully that did not happen.
Post-Thesis Reflections and Future Plans
00:06:02
Speaker
So yeah, that was great. I immediately went back to where I was staying and got like Just entirely ill over my whole body. I think from the stress and I passed out for like five hours And then I went out and had beers and pizzas and it made everything better so
00:06:25
Speaker
That's the thesis and now the master's degree is over and in December will be official. So yeah, for you college students thinking of the graduate life, this is what most likely would be in your future because I know there's some type of programs and courses of study where you won't really have a thesis that is as in-depth
00:06:50
Speaker
as mine was. I'm all told with my bibliography and appendices and front matter. My thesis was 300 pages long. That is not the normal length. I know mine was extremely long because I had lots of data and I had lots of tables and things like that that took up a lot of space and I had like a 20 page bibliography. But
00:07:14
Speaker
What was I saying? Oh yeah, people going into grad school. It's not all the same in every single program and every single course of study. I know some people who said their graduate master's thesis was 25 pages long and I laughed in their face and started crying at the same time.
00:07:31
Speaker
uh... but it just depends in the academics though such as anthropology uh... which is a serious academic field uh... yeah you're going to be expected to do some pretty hardcore uh... theoretical and methodological work and data stuff and in archaeology of course the data analysis is very important so yeah you're going to spend a lot of time working on it and it's going to end up being a really huge chunk of research and so your
00:07:58
Speaker
writing up of your thesis and your defense are extremely important. And then what's expected of you after this happens? Well,
00:08:06
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to be a responsible member of the academic community, it is important to make your research known to the public and to the rest of the people in our field by publishing and presenting it. So now you'll be looking at, maybe I'll be turning part of my thesis or my presentation into a paper to submit for publishing in academic journals that are of the same subject area as my research.
00:08:36
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And I will also be sending in abstracts to the conferences that I want to present it at so that I can basically just redo my presentation in front of the rest of the academic community.
00:08:51
Speaker
anthropology and so other people will be able to learn about what I've done and then maybe there will be more of an open discussion of back and forth about it. People, you know, if it's published then it's open to peer review and the entire academic process will be at work and
00:09:12
Speaker
on my lovely research and so that is the goal in the end and then hopefully also because my research took place at a site that is part of a public archaeology program
Job Search in Archaeology
00:09:26
Speaker
It will, in some way, be included now in the literature that is provided to the public at the archaeological site and be part of maybe making it more of an immersive experience for them to help them better understand the context of what they're seeing in the archaeological remains and the reality of history at the site. So I'm very excited about that because that's going to actually, you know,
00:09:56
Speaker
impact people and improve their understanding of the local culture and history and So that's what I'm really excited about but um, so yeah, that's the main goal and I think it's gonna be great once I get that degree and Also now that I will be a master's I have that going for me in the job market and
00:10:20
Speaker
And because I am the struggling archaeologist, now I will have to struggle some more to use my degree to get myself a real job! Yeah! I get emails from people who are sort of like me and wondering about working in the field.
00:10:45
Speaker
and how they get into it, what they do, how they find jobs, and sort of what I'm doing as far as turning my academic life into a professional life. And so on the podcast today, I thought we would talk a little bit about this aspect of being a struggling archaeologist. And then I thought,
00:11:09
Speaker
Remember a couple of episodes back, I did sort of a basic archaeology lesson. Archaeology 101, if you remember. And I thought I would continue the series, the lecture series today, with an anthropology 101 lesson. Not just limited to the field of archaeology, but of course our larger discipline of anthropology.
00:11:35
Speaker
And because of just things recently, conversations that I've had with some people, I was inspired to talk about human history on the podcast. And so I'm going to do a little anthropological basics lesson on human origins. And so that will be the second part of our podcast today.
00:12:00
Speaker
But first, let us talk about what is next for me, the struggling archaeologist, on my road to success. Well, uh, let's see. I am...
00:12:12
Speaker
currently in the job market looking for a permanent position in anthropology or archaeology to utilize my skills for the betterment of the world and cultural heritage everywhere. So if you are like me and you are ready to get yourself a job,
00:12:31
Speaker
Whether you are an undergraduate or a recent graduate student, there are several things that you can do to get immersed into the job market and figure out how it works and get yourself connected and get paid. So, first of all, I would recommend to everyone
00:12:55
Speaker
Throughout your entire course of study and work in this field, remember your connections and foster your connections with people in the field. This will be your biggest weapon or tool in getting work and making networking, which is of course extremely important in any field, but these are most likely people who are at some point maybe going to be able to
00:13:23
Speaker
get you a job or put you in contact with someone who can get you a job. I know a lot of people who get their CRM positions or research positions just because of people they know. So make good impressions on people.
00:13:40
Speaker
Don't be crazy, kind of, I mean, I don't know, be who you are, be yourself, but be the best you you can be, especially when you are in professional settings to make sure that you get leave a good impression of yourself with the people that you are in contact with and the people who you encounter in the workplace.
00:14:01
Speaker
So that is my number one advice. Do that, be awesome, make friends, keep those friends, and then at some point maybe that will help you in the future to get jobs or
00:14:16
Speaker
excellent research projects or funding or anything. I mean it's just a good idea. So there's that. If you are just sort of starting and you need to know where to look for jobs in archaeology and anthropology,
00:14:34
Speaker
Well, mainly archaeology for this one. I would recommend there are several websites that most archaeologists have turned to when they were starting and through their entire careers to find field work. And that is shovelbombsandarchaeologyfieldwork.com
00:14:52
Speaker
And most people will have heard of Shovel Bums. These sites have pretty awesome up-to-date job listings from around the world, and they mostly cater to CRM archaeology, but there are also posts in the academic world. So if you are looking for a job, and especially if you
00:15:13
Speaker
Know a specific part of the world or the country that you would like to work in. You can filter your searches to look for jobs in these locations or for your specific niche area or the level that you want to enter work at.
00:15:29
Speaker
and you will be able to find a lot through them. And I would definitely recommend signing up for email updates when new jobs are posted or liking them on Facebook so you see new job postings in your Facebook feed because a lot of CRM jobs go very quickly and as soon as the listing comes out, people are going to be sending their CVs into the companies that are hiring and so you want to make sure that you get yours in there as soon as possible if it's a job that you want.
00:15:56
Speaker
So definitely check out archaeology fieldwork and shovel bums.
00:16:01
Speaker
Then you've got sort of, there's a bunch of websites you can also go to for job listings, some of them more on the academic side, the Archaeological Institute of America, the SAA and SHA websites, Society for American Archaeology, Society for Historical Archaeology will have job listings there as well. So yeah, there's just, you can look up a bunch of different websites that will have job listings and
00:16:27
Speaker
maybe the listings of institutions of higher education and museums and places where research is being done that you can go to directly to apply and see what they're hiring for, maybe send your resume or CV to them to begin with.
00:16:45
Speaker
And when applying for these type of CRM jobs or research jobs, there are a lot of sources you can go to for advice on how to do this. There's podcasts, like the CRM archaeology podcast will have a lot of very helpful episodes on getting work in the field that I recommend you go and listen to. There's podcasts on CV writing, on
00:17:11
Speaker
interviewing. There's also blog posts by a lot of archaeologists in social media who are writing and giving advice about this subject that are all really excellent. So you can find a lot of podcasts and blogs just by doing Google searches or going to really good archaeology blogs that will have links to all this stuff in articles that they've already done on getting jobs in the field.
00:17:34
Speaker
Or you could go to Amazon and you could buy my friend Chris Webster's book, The Field Archaeology Survival Guide, which will give you an insider's view from a professional in serum archaeology on everything you need to know about working in the field and getting jobs and all of that. And so definitely check that out. It would be an excellent resource to have if you want to work in field archaeology.
00:18:01
Speaker
Then you can always ask for the tips, tricks and tips of your professors, your mentors, people that you've worked with in the field who you know are working now.
00:18:16
Speaker
Ask them how they got their first job, ask them how they keep getting jobs, how to improve your CV, have your maybe your professors or a mentor review your CV for you. Anything you can do to try and ask questions and get valuable advice about how to improve your chances would be a good thing.
00:18:37
Speaker
And so when you apply for jobs, a lot of the times you'll send a cover letter with your CV or your resume. And so the cover letter in itself is an art to writing. You can find a lot of posts online, blog posts.
00:18:53
Speaker
things like that on how to write a good cover letter. And that's also something you can ask your professors and mentors about. So take advantage of the people that you know who are successful in the field and their knowledge on making monies. Besides that, where are you going to be looking for jobs if you're not looking in the CRM website sphere that I talked about before?
00:19:21
Speaker
There are a lot of archaeologists and anthropologists who work for the government and so I'd definitely suggest if you are interested in working for the government in these type of projects to go to usajobs.gov and that way you can do searches on their website for positions through the government, the military, there's a bunch of different type of
00:19:50
Speaker
positions for archaeologists and anthropologists through the government. And they do hire CRMR, they do work in developing countries, there's a whole bunch of options for you there.
00:20:03
Speaker
And then there's also of course the traditional academic roots, so you can also query for educational institutions, museums, historical societies, and the like, places where if you want to work maybe in an archaeology lab, or you want to work in research, or
00:20:21
Speaker
you want to teach, of course, or you want to develop public archaeology programs, then these are the type of places you would probably search for in the areas of your interest to see if you could work for someplace like that. So these are the things I recommend you do in places you go if you are starting in the job market and if you are in need of a job and are
00:20:45
Speaker
looking for places to go, where do I start? This is where I recommend you start and good luck to you my friends in your job hunting and good luck to me in my job hunting. I live in a small town so there's not really that many jobs out here for folks like me.
00:21:06
Speaker
which is why I'm trying to be creative and looking outside the box and keeping all my options open.
Podcast Network Announcement
00:21:12
Speaker
Thankfully, I do have the podcast to keep me company, so I'm not completely cut off from the archaeology world, and of course I'm taking the CRM job here or there, which is nice to keep fresh.
00:21:26
Speaker
you know, to keep my archaeological juices flowing. Oh, that sounds dirty. Well, just never, never mind. I didn't say that. Let's move on to some new and exciting news that you may have heard or read if you follow me on the social medias. There is big things in the future for this podcast and I'm so excited about it.
00:21:49
Speaker
If you haven't already heard, The Struggling Archaeologist is going to be part of a new archaeology podcast network! That is right! A network full of archaeology podcasts! Doesn't that sound like heaven, folks? I mean, what could be better? Yes! I am friends with several other podcasters in the archaeology world.
00:22:12
Speaker
who have decided that it would be a great idea to join forces to launch an archeology network full of different archeology podcasts that would sort of act like a hub for people who are interested in archeology to come to, to find all of these different podcasts, different topics with different hosts of different backgrounds, different experiences, different voices, and that way we're able to bring to the public you
00:22:38
Speaker
A really wide variety of topics and outlooks on working in the field in archaeological history and anthropology and all of these different subject matter and each of our podcasts is different and cool in their own way and I think everyone's going to be able to find something if not more than one thing that they really enjoy to listen to on the network.
Anthropology Lecture Series Launch
00:23:05
Speaker
And so I would love it if all of you guys would check it out. We're going to be launching the network in the beginning of December. And so it's called the Archaeology Podcast Network, and you can go to archaeologypodcastnetwork.com to see all about it. That's going to be our webpage. You'll have access to all of my podcasts, new and old, and all of the other podcasts on the network from that hub.
00:23:31
Speaker
And of course, you'll also have access to all of my content through my blog, through my website, through iTunes. None of that is going to change. But if you go check out the podcast network, you will now also have access to all of these other great archaeology podcasts. So if you listen to the CRM archaeology podcast,
00:23:52
Speaker
They're of course going to be on our network the an archaeologist podcast is on our network There's going to be a couple new podcasts starting up that are really exciting like an archaeo tech podcast a sex in archaeology podcast It's just going to be really exciting
00:24:08
Speaker
And if you want to hear more about it, go to the CRM archaeology podcast web page, or go to iTunes and look up the CRM archaeology podcast. Listen to episode 46 of the podcast, where the CRM host, Chris Webster, who I mentioned earlier, and myself and Tristan, the host of the an archaeologist podcast, got together to discuss the future of the network and our each individual shows and how they're all going to work together
00:24:37
Speaker
to make this new network something pretty awesome. So, check out episode 46 of CRM Archaeology Podcast. And, uh, yeah. That wasn't a very inventive song, I'm sorry. It's getting late. And I'm drinking beer, so.
00:25:00
Speaker
Anyways, that was all that I had planned talking about as far as what I've been up to, my future right now as the struggling, struggling archaeologist. I'm really getting into this role. It's method acting, really.
00:25:19
Speaker
And, you know, because I'm an actor, that's kind of something I've decided to do right now, a little bit, to bring some gritty reality to the podcast. And I hope you guys appreciate it, okay? So, yeah, that's all I wanted to cover on that. And then, of course, the exciting news of the Archaeology Podcast Network! Oh man, I gotta stop singing. It's just getting lame now, isn't it?
Human Evolution Basics
00:25:46
Speaker
And so now we're gonna take a short break, and when I return, I will return with the second lecture in my lecture series of the anthropology basics, anthropology 101, the study of human origins with Jenny. There are several other very important differences between human beings and animals that you should know about.
00:26:17
Speaker
Nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel You and me, baby ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
00:26:39
Speaker
I bet you feel like you're trapped back in the mid-90s right now, don't ya? Oh, those are the days! Chokers and Jordan Catalano and good garage band music. I miss the 90s sometimes. Meh.
00:26:58
Speaker
And that's really depressing because most of you were probably like two, and I was old. I am old. Okay, I'm not that old, but I feel old sometimes. Anyway, I'm gonna move on from such depressing matters and talk about something more exciting and full of life, like our seven million year history on earth.
00:27:21
Speaker
For it is time for back to basics with Jenny where in today's episode we will be discussing human origins Very exciting topic subject matter Why you ask are we talking about this? Well, I've had a couple conversations recently about this and I get asked a fair few questions about evolution and human history And I just think it's interesting because even though it's a fairly straightforward process and pretty simple process for me to understand
00:27:51
Speaker
It isn't something that's really covered in great detail in our general education system, so I think there's a lot of misinformation about there, about human origins, and about the very basics of evolution. I've been asked many times how humans could have evolved from monkeys if we still have monkeys. That does not make sense. Um, okay, but...
00:28:18
Speaker
There's a very simple answer to that question, which is that we didn't evolve from monkeys. It's not true. The explanation is pretty simple. We have a common ancestor with monkeys, but we did not evolve from monkeys.
00:28:35
Speaker
There's just a lot of things that people kind of aren't very clear about when it comes to this stuff. And I think the largest problem for people who don't have a background in anthropology to grasp is how do we know everything we say we know about human origins? And so I'm gonna cover some of those questions and the background to how we have evidence to answer those questions accurately today. So Jenny, you ask, when did humans begin to evolve?
00:29:04
Speaker
Well, perhaps I should just throw in here that humans are primates, and primates began the evolutionary process right after the age of the mammal began in the wake of the dinosaurs' end-of-days period about 65 million years ago. The first primates evolved from small rodent-like mammals who were adapted to life in the trees. They were arboreal.
00:29:29
Speaker
And they developed as part of what is called an adaptive radiation, which means that after a large extinction or migration event, there's this environmental niche with lots of resources and food just ripe for the taking that has been evacuated by a large population of organisms. So the remaining animals in that area rapidly evolve to fill the niche.
00:29:58
Speaker
So in the primates case, they quickly evolved and diversified during the Eocene epic, which is when early Prosimians developed. And Prosimians, they would have been similar to our Prosimians of today, just an ancestral version. And this includes today the lemurs, tarsiers, and lorises. So if you've seen Madagascar, those are the guys I'm talking about.
00:30:23
Speaker
So during the next epic, the Oligocene, I think I'm saying that right, monkeys at this point developed when they split away from the Prosimians and expanded through the Old World. And during this period when the continents split apart, the species of monkeys living on what is now South America
00:30:44
Speaker
became isolated and began their own evolutionary path separate from the monkeys that were left in the Old World or like Africa, Asia, and Europe. And so that's where we get the distinction between the New World monkeys who were stuck on the South American island that was continent that was drifting away and sort of their own evolutionary path and the very distinctive traits of the Old World monkeys who stayed on the mainland and
00:31:14
Speaker
started their own evolutionary journey. So, around 21 million years ago, after the Miocene epic began, we have evidence that the first apes developed in the form of a species called Procouncil that lived until about, from 21 to about 14 million years ago. And at that point, a genus of apes called the Dryopithecines had evolved, which was particularly adapted to the hot climate experienced in Southern Europe at the time.
00:31:44
Speaker
Now remember, when animals evolve, species evolve, they evolve specifically to survive in the environment in which they are living in. So the traits that they develop, if the species survives and does not go extinct, these traits will be beneficial for the environment in which they live in. And so when the apes developed, they were in a very hot climate in Southern Europe. But climate started to change around this point, as it is wont to do,
00:32:14
Speaker
every couple billion million years, and so the northern hemisphere began to cool, and when this happened, those apes retreated into Africa, and they settled on the African savannas, where they split into two new groups around eight or nine million years ago. One of these groups led to the gorillas, and the other led to hominins, chimpanzees, and bonobos.
00:32:38
Speaker
And then finally hominins, our ancestors, split from the chimps and bonobos between six and seven million years ago. From there, several hominin genus and many species evolved in a long process of adaption and extinction that resulted in us technically called the anatomically modern homo sapien sapien. That's a great Jeopardy question, remember that one.
00:33:05
Speaker
So Jenny, you ask, how do we know all of this? Well, the most obvious evidence of our ancestral lineage is found in the fossil record. There is actually a pretty good fossil record of our past. And it's studied by paleoanthropologists and primatologists who look at the changes in primate and hominin biology from very minute osteological changes to larger and more obvious ones.
00:33:35
Speaker
They also construct models for how these changes reflect the adaptations to their environments, resources, climate change, and also relate the development of behavioral traits in these species to the changes in their contexts. And through time, the traits of one fossil species might morph into a new version which is different enough to be considered a new species.
00:34:00
Speaker
Scholars agree on what distinctions signify a new species in many cases, but sometimes we either don't have enough examples to say definitively, or people may disagree even on a proposed line of succession. So our family tree is still in the process of being better understood, and probably always will be as the new evidence comes forward.
Timeline of Human Evolution
00:34:22
Speaker
And that's okay. I mean, we have a pretty good idea. And in science, we love learning new information. We love it when new information forces us to rethink our old theories. And so we can only get better from this process of examination, revision, and recalculation. Okay?
00:34:41
Speaker
But through the last hundred years when we've really been able to take this stuff and study it scientifically seriously, we've gotten a pretty good idea of how this process happened and how we read it in the record.
00:34:56
Speaker
So back to fossils. Besides just examining fossils for their physical characteristics, we also examine their context, which provides us with environmental data that we can use in conjunction with the osteology, osteology being the study of bones. We use scientific dating methods and geology to date the specimens we find and their surrounding rock layers when we're able. And when I say scientific dating methods,
00:35:25
Speaker
sometimes people weird out on me because it's a little sciency and they don't understand how it works so it seems suspicious to some people like I don't know there's all these crafty scientists sitting in their laboratories wearing coats and we don't know what they're doing so I'm not really sure if any of it makes any sense or if it's real or if they're just making it all up
00:35:49
Speaker
Well, don't worry. You don't have to be a chemist or a physicist to understand this stuff. I mean, I'm not, and I have grasped the basic concept. So if I can do it, then so can you. So let's talk about scientific dating very briefly. First, there are many, many different kinds of scientific dating methods.
00:36:12
Speaker
Most people are only familiar with radiocarbon dating, which is used on organic materials containing the radiocarbon isotope carbon-14.
00:36:22
Speaker
Radiocarbon was basically the first dating method that began all of it, and it was discovered by a man named Willard Libby in 1949. He discovered that the carbon-14 isotope is created by the effect of cosmic radiation on nitrogen in the atmosphere.
00:36:42
Speaker
and that carbon-14 actually exists in all organic life forms because it becomes part of the carbon dioxide molecule.
00:36:53
Speaker
And radioactive carbon dioxide is incorporated into plants during photosynthesis. It's then ingested by animals who eat plants containing the carbon-14, or animals who eat animals who ate plants containing carbon-14. And now I want to feel like singing, I don't know why she swallowed the flies.
00:37:17
Speaker
Perhaps she'll die. Lots of terribly morbid song. But anyway, that's pretty much how it goes. The plants eat the carbon-14 from radioactive carbon dioxide. Animals eat the plants. Animals eat the animals who ate the plants.
00:37:33
Speaker
And through that process, all organic life forms ingest carbon-14. So when these life forms die, they stop taking in new carbon-14 from their environment and from dinner. And so whatever carbon-14 is left in their system begins the slow process of radioactive decay.
00:37:57
Speaker
And there's a pretty constant ratio of carbon-14 to its non-radioactive counterparts, carbon-12 and carbon-13 in our environment at any given point in time. So we know what it's supposed to be in living organisms because we can study ourselves now to see what that ratio is.
00:38:17
Speaker
But once the carbon-14 begins decaying, that ratio of radioactive to non-radioactive carbon changes. And we can actually measure how long it has been since that change started taking place because we know the half-life of carbon-14. And that's the time it takes for half of the remaining element in the sample to decay.
00:38:43
Speaker
And in the case of carbon-14, it happens every 5,730 years. So after 5,730 years, half of the carbon-14 in the specimen will have decayed.
00:38:57
Speaker
And so from the remaining half after another 5,730 years, half of that remaining sample will have decayed and so on and so forth. So there's a simple algorithm that will tell us based on the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12, how long that individual or animal or plant or whatever has been they'd. When he dies, the clock starts and we can read the clock.
00:39:27
Speaker
So with radiocarbon dating, the limitations are that because it has a fairly short half-life, it only actually survives around 50,000 years before you're out of luck and you can't measure the organic materials in it anymore.
00:39:48
Speaker
So for anything dating older than that that we want to test, we have to turn to other chemical isotope testing because, well not just chemical isotopes, but as an example, we know of other chemicals that behave the same way but decay a lot slower than carbon. So other radiometric dating methods we use are things like potassium argon dating, argon argon dating, uranium series dating,
00:40:17
Speaker
There's more than that, but just off the top of my head. These type of elements and isotopes can have half-lives in the millions of years. So some of them, if you test them and read the amount of time that has passed,
00:40:32
Speaker
that the radioactive isotopes have been decaying, can measure materials into the billions of years. And not just organic, not just like teeth or anything, they can measure minerals, rocks, things like that. And so, through using these type of methods, we can not only date fossils, but we can also date things like the rock layers that they are found in and
00:41:00
Speaker
like botanical remains that may have been found in the same context, things like that. And we have a certain method of calibrating the dates plus or minus a certain amount of time because there are small shifts in the amount of radioactive cosmic radiation in the atmosphere. And so we do correct for that. But in general, the dates within a very specific time period are extremely accurate.
00:41:29
Speaker
So I hope that this was helpful. I won't explain everything today about scientific methods, but just so you know, there are other methods that are not based on radiometric decay that we also use in dating. Some of these are based on measuring the time that has passed since exposure to radiation or heating by measuring the release of trapped electrons in the crystalline structures of materials like minerals, ceramics, and teeth.
00:41:56
Speaker
These are often called luminescence dating methods, and those are pretty cool, like thermoluminescence and optical luminescence and all those luminescences. And then we have some other methods that help us understand evolutionary relationships. The main thing that is kind of our thing when it comes to evolutionary relationships is genetics. Yes, you didn't think you'd get away without me mentioning genetics, did you?
00:42:25
Speaker
Ah yes, so a brief thing on genetics. So all animals on our planet share a certain percentage of our DNA, because if you go back far enough, we're all descended from common ancestors at some point. So looking at the amount of genetic compatibility between species and groups can tell us to what extent we are related.
00:42:48
Speaker
And so in our case, human DNA has been studied and compared to other primates, the great apes, other hominins, whatever, to give us a pretty good idea of when each of these groups split off into their own separate branches of our evolutionary tree.
00:43:06
Speaker
It's like being, you know, if you look at a tree, you've got the base and then you've got all the bigger branches coming off of it. Those are all of our common ancestors in the past. And then we've got little branches that split off into their own paths, and each of them have littler branches that come off of them. And so that's pretty much how evolution looks when you map it all out.
00:43:25
Speaker
So DNA, we can look at small differences in the DNA between us and other species, such as insertions and substitutions in the building blocks of our DNA. These affect the kinds of amino acids and proteins that are produced in our bodies. And proteins create basically everything about us and determine how our genes are expressed.
00:43:50
Speaker
So small changes in our DNA over time through mutations and replication errors, like when we reproduce, as humans and animals all do, sometimes there can be little mishaps in the transfer of our genetic material between the two species that are mating.
00:44:09
Speaker
And that can result in errors in the replication of our DNA. And so there's those type of changes, there's mutations, that result in small changes over time.
00:44:25
Speaker
And these gradual changes, or evolution if you will, of new traits may eventually result in new species. Unless they don't really set the organism up for success in their new environment, in which case they will most likely go extinct. Because pretty much most everyone ever has gone extinct, except for us and a couple other billion organisms that are alive at the moment.
00:44:53
Speaker
So yeah, the genetics of evolution is, I think it's fascinating and complicated, but beautiful. And once you understand it, the entire process makes so much more sense. So I'll have to do a separate podcast about genetics sometimes so I can expound upon it more, because I will not have the time to today, because we are focused on the human and that is my goal right now.
Hominin Evolution and Adaptations
00:45:17
Speaker
So, let's see.
00:45:19
Speaker
Some of the interesting specs, just to throw them out here, about genetic relationships. Humans have the same basic DNA, all of us, except we have about a 0.1% variability between individuals of the human species. Because humans are all different, obviously. So that is the variability. It's a very, very small percentage of our total genetic package.
00:45:45
Speaker
We share most of this DNA also with our closest relatives, the chimps and bonobos. We differ from them at about a 1.2 percentage, which amounts from the changes that we've each acquired since we split off from our common ancestor around seven or eight million years ago.
00:46:03
Speaker
And since both chimps and hominins split off from the gorilla before we split from each other, we both have a 3.1% difference in our DNA from gorillas and so on and so forth. The farther back our common ancestors with another species, the higher the percentage of disparity in our DNA. So we can use calculations based on this theory called a molecular clock.
00:46:30
Speaker
to estimate the time between our cells and older species of hominins, depending on the amount of genetic differences and the projected rate of gene mutation that we observe naturally.
00:46:42
Speaker
So basically, we kind of understand the process of genetic mutation, how they happen, and the general rate at which mutations happen. We know the average person has a certain amount of mutations in their DNA. So you have them, I have them, everyone has them. But we also understand pretty much the rate at which genetic mutations result in maladaptive or beneficial traits.
00:47:09
Speaker
And so we can project based on that rate into the past basically how long it takes for those traits to add up to separate us physically and physiologically from another species.
00:47:24
Speaker
And so this is one of the things we do when we look back at our hominin ancestors to try and figure out our relationship and how long it's been since we had a common ancestor with them and when they split off from the evolutionary path that we were on and what happened to them after they did that and why they went extinct. Because if they didn't go extinct, they'd still be here or they'd be us. So yeah.
00:47:48
Speaker
So, genetic studies have been pretty useful, and they have progressed our understanding, especially of our relationships with our closest relatives, like the Neanderthals, which, if you're interested in, you can hear more about on my very first ever episode of the podcast.
00:48:06
Speaker
in which I discussed the Neanderthals and I think there was something about cloning and I don't know. To be honest, I kind of feel a little bit ashamed now of my first episode or two. I don't think they were my best work, so maybe you shouldn't. Oh well, whatever. Yeah, you can listen to it if you want. Just forgive me for being uncouth in my discussion on Neanderthal cloning.
00:48:31
Speaker
Looking back, I don't really think it was necessary, perhaps, for me to refer to a certain bodily fluid as Neanderthal juice. I mean, really, Jenny? What were you thinking? That's just gross. Right? Right? Am I right? I regret it. I regret nothing! No, I actually do. But anyway, speaking of Neanderthals, our nearest relatives,
00:48:54
Speaker
Let us take a quick trip up the hominid family tree and quickly do a little review of all of our hominid ancestors starting at the beginning as we understand it today and then we'll finish up and along the way give you a little bit of a synthesis on what the process of our evolution entailed and why we turned out the way we did when everyone else seemed to end up, well, dead.
00:49:20
Speaker
So, in the beginning, there was our last common ancestor with the chimps, which was estimated to have split about seven to eight million years ago. Though, I just saw some new research in the Journal of Science that recently claimed that due to realization that male chimps are now known to have a higher mutation rate than previously thought,
00:49:46
Speaker
The molecular clock that we had calculated to figure out the separation between our chimp, our ancestry, and our own at seven to eight million years might now be looking more like 13 million years. So it's a little bit more distance between us, time-wise. But either way, yeah, so we split from the chimp and what happens
00:50:11
Speaker
You may ask, Jenny, what happens, by the way, when two branches split off of an evolutionary line from a common ancestor? Well, what happens is, that common ancestor that we share with the shimps, the shimps, with those darn shimps, yes, the ancestor that we share with them, the population somehow gets separated.
00:50:38
Speaker
And the two groups of the same species in that population become isolated from each other. And once they're isolated and presumably in somewhat different environmental context, the selective pressures of their new environments begin to weed out some of their members. It also allows other members to survive and procreate.
00:51:02
Speaker
And the traits that contribute to either early death or the survival and reproduction of individuals becomes different in each group. And so a range of traits that vary from one group gets passed down from generation to generation, and these are different traits than what gets passed down from the other group.
00:51:23
Speaker
And because each is based on adaptations to a different environment, after a while the two different groups become different species because they become more and more different. And the deal is pretty much sealed at the point when they can no longer interbreed or produce fertile offspring.
00:51:42
Speaker
So that process usually takes millions of years, their paths continue to diverge down roads of yellow wood, and perhaps split into branches of their own trees. So yes, each of those populations continues to change, and they may have their own splits and divergences.
00:52:02
Speaker
which is an excellent YA series of dystopian adventure stories if anyone else here reads YA novels and is interested in a good read. I just finished the first book myself and I found it quite enjoyable and I will be reading the second.
00:52:19
Speaker
So there you go, Book Hour with Jenny is now over. Back to hominin evolution. Where were we? So yes, once they become too different to be considered the same species, then you get kind of two different evolutionary branches developing on their own. And they split off and make their own little different lineages and not
00:52:45
Speaker
All of these species survive, obviously, many and in fact most of them will go extinct eventually. But in the case of the chimps, or shimps, bonobos and humans, they did not, and their evolutionary path brought us all to where we are today!
00:53:04
Speaker
One of these groups gets to watch kids banging on the glass of their zoo enclosure all day. I'll let you guess which one that is. The other gets to buy their kids ice cream and portable gaming devices to keep them from harassing chimps behind the glass at zoos while the chimps contemplate their plan for world domination.
00:53:25
Speaker
Ah, yes. So what forms did man's ancestors take in between this split from our chimp ancestry and our common chimp ancestor, I should say, not to be misleading, and today? And why were these changes so dramatic?
00:53:43
Speaker
because we're pretty different from chimps, but our common ancestor with chimps wasn't that different from chimps, if you get what I'm saying, if you get what I'm putting down on the table right now. Well, to understand this and the basis of why evolutionary change occurs, you have to consider its two most important factors, environment and population. And in this case,
00:54:09
Speaker
The adaptations that allowed our ancestors to survive and procreate more successfully than others and led to what we are today appear to be those adaptations that benefited life in a drier and more unpredictable climate. So this was very important in the development of the traits that make us human.
00:54:29
Speaker
And I will explain this. So, after that divergence from our chimp ancestry 7-8 million years ago, we continued to evolve, but...
00:54:40
Speaker
Um, you know, between then and like 2.5 million years ago, maybe 1.5 million years ago even, we really didn't change that much. We just developed a couple really key traits, but looks wise, we're pretty similar. Um, but okay, so how this is important is because during that entire time we were heading toward an ice age that began about 2.5 million years ago. So the trend over that period was a cooling and drying of the environment.
00:55:10
Speaker
Now, if these two things don't really seem to go together in your mind, just think of it this way. During an ice age or leading up to an ice age or glacial period, more of the earth's moisture is caught up in the glaciers and ice and snow that covers more of the earth than it usually does.
00:55:27
Speaker
So when this happens, water levels actually retract, the atmosphere doesn't have as much moisture as it usually does to rain down on us, and this actually causes droughts, which kill a lot of organisms that aren't very well suited to the arid environment.
00:55:45
Speaker
And what's left after a long period of evolutionary adjustment is an ecosystem that is better adapted to these arid climates. And these included our human ancestors, right? And so this period was very volatile climate-wise. It was generally getting colder and drier, but there were a lot of temperature swings and so adaptations that allowed for versatility in these environments were also really beneficial.
00:56:14
Speaker
So back before this drying stuff happened, our primate ancestors were living in trees, and they were used to a tropical lifestyle, much more so than a desert lifestyle.
00:56:32
Speaker
When they lived in trees, life was full of fun times and rain and lots of vegetation. Our Peruvian ancestors largely ate insects and fruit, and during the change of climate, this period, the African landscape and the Middle East and Southern Europe also changed.
00:56:53
Speaker
and a lot of these were turned into deserts and grasslands. So there were much fewer trees than in the past, and the food sources that were available to them also changed because there were less trees and different fruits and, I don't know, all types of stuff was changing in the ecosystem.
00:57:13
Speaker
And so our ancestors had to adapt to these changes. And how did they do that? Well, they started coming down out of the trees, living life on the ground more often, where they had to traverse larger areas of land in high grasslands in order to find food, and that they had to actually begin gathering a wider variety of food to eat.
00:57:40
Speaker
And so the more successful individuals who had to start living this new type of lifestyle happened to have physiological traits that made walking on two feet for longer periods of time easier than others.
00:57:57
Speaker
And so these individuals with these beneficial traits survived more often. They had children more often than others. And so their children passed down those beneficial traits on and on until their descendants had actually become fully bipedal. Bipedal meaning walking on two feet.
00:58:17
Speaker
And so, how do you know, Jenny, you say, how do we know this, that this is exactly kind of what happens? Well, it's seen, I will tell you, in the skeletal remains, largely. And we can tell things like this, bipedalism or the mode of transportation that an animal uses, by the size, the shape of its pelvis, the shape of their, and connections of their leg bones, their feet, their toes even, and
00:58:44
Speaker
This is an interesting observation. The opening on the skull where the spine meets the back of your head. This opening is called the foramen magnum. And in quadrupedal animals, it's farther back on the skull because the spine goes straighter into the back of the skull when the animal is horizontal. And in our case, because we're bipedal, we have a vertical alignment and so our
00:59:11
Speaker
Our spine sits directly underneath our skull. So our foramen magnum is actually in the middle, underneath our head, not in the back of it. So in bipedal animals, you get a more forward foramen magnum. In quadrupedal animals, it's much more backward.
00:59:26
Speaker
So, and in animals or primates like gorillas, chimps, if you've ever observed them, you'll see they sit up a lot. They can walk on two legs, but they don't walk on two legs all the time. And when they do, it's kind of awkward. They're not really the best at it. They can't run ferociously on two legs. They can't spend a whole lot of time there. Most of the time they revert back to all fours when they're moving around.
00:59:53
Speaker
And so they're kind of half bipedal and this would have been very similar to our oldest hominin relatives. And so they would have had a more similar alignment of the spine and the skull to the chimp and the gorillas. So their foramen magnum is kind of in the middle of where ours is now and where a fully quadrupedal animal like a horse, for example, would be.
01:00:19
Speaker
So these are some of the fossil things that we look at. You can also see evidence of changing traits in our hands, because obviously our hands were adapted to tree living, and then once we got down on the ground, they changed a little bit slightly, became a little bit less curved. So we see that. And also in our teeth, because obviously our diet changed drastically after we came out of the trees and stopped existing on insects and fruit.
01:00:47
Speaker
So, we ended up with the dentition pattern that we see today as an omnivore. This is where we have teeth for grinding and teeth for cutting. And that's a big change. So, you know, these are the things that we're kind of seeing that start happening to hominin fossils, you know, six, seven million years ago, all the way to the present. And these changes are gradual, but over time we can see this transition.
01:01:13
Speaker
from the quadrupedal or semi-bipedal primate into the fully bipedal humans that we are today. So there's that. Now, where is all of our fossil evidence, you ask? Well, most of it's in Africa, because for at least the first five million years of our evolution, I'm gonna say about, our ancestors were in Africa. So the oldest hominin fossils we have at the moment,
01:01:41
Speaker
will be similar, like I said earlier, in traits and form to our chimp ancestry, or not our chimp ancestry, our common ancestor with the chimp.
01:01:56
Speaker
And so, yeah, but we do start to see these significant changes that are propelling them down the path toward humanity that the chimps and bonobos and apes did not acquire, unlike us, because we had already been separated.
01:02:14
Speaker
from them by the time we acquired these interesting traits. Who are these strange hominin man-like creatures, you ask? Well, there have been several groups identified that distinguish species with similar characteristics in our ancestry. The first group, which is full of the oldest specimens we have, is called the Ardipithecus group.
01:02:37
Speaker
And so in this group, we have what I think is considered the oldest hominid fossil, the Suhylanthropus chadensis, which was, he was living in modern day Chad between six and seven million years ago. Isn't that insane? Six and seven million years ago, this little guy, he was just a small little
01:03:02
Speaker
you know, chimp-like guy started walking on his two feet and that was what propelled us onward to today. So after him we get Aurorin to Genensee's Ardipithecus rheumetus and Ardipithecus cadaaba and each of these species has some type of development that we see leading us toward our modern physiology and behavioral traits.
01:03:30
Speaker
So yeah, and those last four specimens I listed ranged between 6 and 4.4 million years ago. So that's pretty cool. Those are the Ardipithecacies. I actually have a friend who named her dog Artie. Isn't that so cute?
01:03:49
Speaker
There's, okay, so there's a famous specimen that was nicknamed Artie, like Artipithecus, like a nickname from this group. And so she named her dog Artie after it. Isn't it cute? Aw, I love puppies. Yay for puppies, named after famous paleoanthropological finds.
01:04:10
Speaker
Maybe my next one. Oh no! You know what? I have a dog named Lucy! Holy crap! I just realized this crazy moment here going on in my head. I actually do have a dog named after a famous
01:04:27
Speaker
Uh, hominid fossil, and that is Lucy, of course! Which we will get to in a minute, because she's in our next Fossil Group! Not that I named my dog Lucy on purpose, she was named that way when I got her from the shelter, but that's still really awesome! And I'm just gonna pretend that she's named after Lucy anyway. Yay for me, anthropology's awesome!
01:04:48
Speaker
Okay then, moving on to the Ardipithecus group. This is the next group of hominins that share kind of similar traits and so we group them together. They also fall within the date range of about a little over four million years ago to about two million years ago. So they happen along just after the Ardipithecus group. And so we have
01:05:12
Speaker
In this one are the Australopithecines, including Australopithecus animensis, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garihi, and Australopithecus afarensis. That's a mouthful. It is. And I'm sorry that I completely botched it, but that's just how it goes.
01:05:36
Speaker
Anyway, so in this group we have the famous Lucy skeleton, not my dog Lucy because she's alive and well, but the famous Lucy, a small little female Afarenzy's skeleton that was discovered in Ethiopia.
01:05:57
Speaker
by the Leakeys, the famous first family of paleoanthropology. And yeah, she was pretty much the first almost complete fossil skeleton of one of these hominins ever discovered. So that was pretty exciting, right? And also in the Afarenzies, famous examples of the Afarenzies species, we have the Leiteoli footprints.
01:06:22
Speaker
which are a group of over 80 footprints of these little afferencies guys who were just walking along in some fresh volcanic ash. Their footprints were preserved when more ash covered them up right after they walked past and then it all hardened into fossil. And so yeah, that's another really interesting find that taught us a lot about the
01:06:47
Speaker
traits of the afferenzies such as the way that their feet were constructed and their ability to walk on two feet. So yeah, that was pretty exciting.
01:06:56
Speaker
So in this group, we see traits like sexual dimorphism, meaning there's a big difference in the size between males and females, which is something that continues to get more pronounced. And then we see, let's see, how do we see? Ah, you know, just some bipedalism stuff and some...
01:07:19
Speaker
some face stuff that's slowly starting to morph and change in their facial bones. But yeah, the group is generally pretty similar. Oh, the one very important thing about this group is that we start seeing some very early evidence of tool making. That's right. So about 2.5 million years ago, we start finding lithics, which are stone tools and weapons that are being made by hominins.
01:07:48
Speaker
And so this group is around when this starts, which is pretty significant because think about the cognitive process that goes in to sitting down, looking for a big core of rock on the ground that you pick up,
01:08:04
Speaker
you decide, oh hey, I can shave this down if I start napping it with another rock into a tool that I can use to kill things, or to scrape the hides off of animals so that I can wear them, or to put on a projectile point, like a
01:08:23
Speaker
like a spear so that I can hunt with it. You can use them for so many things and just think about the brain capacity that had to have been evolving during this time for them to make this humongous step in their development. And so encephalization, which is the brain getting larger and larger, is something that we see happening during this period and in the next group, especially the paranthropus group.
01:08:50
Speaker
Now, the paranthropus group includes paranthropus aethiopicus, paranthropus robustus, and paranthropus face boisei. And so this group is kind of a similar time period, except they
01:09:09
Speaker
are around a little bit later to maybe a little over one million years ago. And they are distinguished by being generally a bit larger than the other more gracile hominins. And so they've got big facial features, something called a sagittal crest on the top of their head, which is this. It's kind of a...
01:09:34
Speaker
I don't know, it's like a crown that they wear straight down their heads and that attaches to these big muscles that connect to their jaws and so they also have teeth that show us that they have very
01:09:49
Speaker
strong jaw muscles and that they're eating really tough foods during this period. And they're generally a little bit bigger and so they're kind of, these are like the badass like 300, these would be the dothrakis of the hominin world, okay?
Evolution of the Homo Group
01:10:08
Speaker
These were the big guys, and nothing too exciting. Unfortunately, they were all extinct pretty much, and we don't have any direct evidence. I don't believe that any of the Paranthropus evolved directly into the next group, the Homo group, which would be our immediate ancestors. But it is always a possibility, so you never know.
01:10:30
Speaker
These poor pyranthropy guys They were around for a while though. They had their run. They had a pretty good time They ate lots of food that was tough and then the dad so such his life on the dangerous plains of Africa for the early hominin
01:10:50
Speaker
And so finally, let's just talk quickly about the Homo group. That's our group, by the way, in case you missed it. Since we're Homo sapiens, these are the hominins we're most closely related to and the ones that directly preceded us.
01:11:06
Speaker
Not all of them, but some of them. And so we start off with Homo Habilis, who is starting at around 2.4 million years ago. And he is believed to be most definitely an ancestor of ours, and most likely led to either Homo erectus, Homo hydrobegensis, or Homo rudolfenzis, who are all in the Homo group as well, and could possibly all be related to us directly.
01:11:34
Speaker
Now, Homo erectus is a very interesting example. A specimen is the most widely traveled of all of the hominins. He starts off in Africa about 1.9 million years ago, and then he leaves. He got sick and tired of all of the dancing
01:12:03
Speaker
more hogs and mere cats and and play not that there's i don't know if there's mere cats in africa but there should be because it's in the lion king so thus it is written and it is true
01:12:16
Speaker
But he got kind of tired of all that and the singing lions and all that. So he left. And so we too also kind of get a separation. I don't think it's species, but they consider the African Homo erectus specimens by the name of Homo aragaster. And then the ones that left Africa and went to Asia and South Eastern Europe, Homo erectus.
01:12:43
Speaker
Yes, he's very well traveled and he is around for a very long time. I think he is the longest-lived early human species of any of these guys. He didn't disappear till about 140,000 years ago. So that's a pretty good run, right? And Homo erectus is doing all types of stuff.
01:13:05
Speaker
He's making hearts, he's making tools, he's spreading out amongst the globe. We have a lot of examples of Homo erectus in Asia, and we believe most likely, you know, the hobbit hominins that we found in, what is it, Java, where Homo floresiensis lived in
01:13:32
Speaker
We think that they were probably related to Homo erectus and they evolved from Homo erectus after they were isolated on the island there. And they became little hobbit people, which is very interesting, but which I don't have time to really go into that much. But anyway, yes, Homo erectus was the man and he had a pretty good time. And so we have Homo erectus spreading into Asia.
01:13:57
Speaker
And then we have Homo rudolfenzis is in Africa. Homo heidelbergenzis is the next most important guy. He is actually leaving Africa and developing in Europe. So he's the first big European. And we see differences physiologically because he's in a colder climate. And so this is where they begin to develop larger bodies.
01:14:27
Speaker
that are adapted to conserving heat because of the fluctuation in temperature and the colder coals that they're experiencing there than they did in Africa. And so because he's in this different environment, not only are they changing physiologically, they're changing behaviorally and they're adapting by learning how to make fire and build shelters. And so we get a lot of development during this period, which for him is about
01:14:57
Speaker
700,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe. And there's a very, very interesting archaeological site where we have a bunch of examples of Hadalbergenses in Spain at a site called Adapuerca, and we've learned a lot about them from that. That site is about 400,000 years old, and it's this, basically there's this huge burial pit.
01:15:22
Speaker
that has like 30 of these individuals thrown into it, into this just pit of bones. And it's just crazy. It's crazy I tell you. But yeah, still pretty cool. So that's Heidelberg Genzis.
01:15:41
Speaker
We also have a difference in the specimens coming from Europe in this example and Heidelberg Genzis as he started off in Africa leading to different branches.
01:15:57
Speaker
It's believed that the European Heidelberg Genzis hominins evolved into Homo neanderthalensis. The neanderthals, or tals, if you say it like that, if you happen to be of that persuasion. And because, like I said, they're bigger, they're more muscular, they're adapted to the cold, and this is exactly what the neanderthals
01:16:20
Speaker
were built to do, to survive in. And so it makes sense that they would have evolved from this other European early hominin species.
01:16:30
Speaker
But the African branch, which is sometimes called Homo rhodesiensis, that is the one believed to have eventually led to the Homo sapiens, AKA me, AKA you, and everyone you know. So yeah, pretty much all coming from Mr. Heidelbergensis there. And so I think those are all of the major
01:16:58
Speaker
homo group individuals we had to talk about today homo sapiens of course are very interesting but perhaps I will leave that for another episode because we've already gone over an hour and I don't want to talk your ear off but I'll just say that homo sapiens evolved well the homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa and there is a
01:17:25
Speaker
Of course we're around today and over the last 200,000 years we've continued to evolve. Now we are called the anatomically modern homo sapien sapien as opposed to the archaic homo sapien of way back in the day. And you know we have our own story of evolution and leaving Africa going you know to Europe and Asia and all these other places where we did intermix
01:17:51
Speaker
somewhat with the pre-existing hominin species who were already there, such as the Neanderthal Enzies and most likely the Homo erectus.
01:18:01
Speaker
who are chilling in Asia, eating some rice. And so that's a whole other interesting story that we will get into at a different time because, yeah, it's just too much, there's too much excitement going on in the last 200,000 years to break down into this one little bit of the podcast here. So I'm gonna cut myself off and I'm gonna end it. That's right. Your lesson on human origins ends now.
01:18:31
Speaker
And that's going to be it for the podcast today and I'm going to get out of here as soon as possible because I know you've been around for like an hour and you're probably, I don't know, maybe you're hungry, maybe you need a snack, maybe you need a drink, maybe you need to pee, I don't know. But whatever you've got to do, I'm going to release you to do that, to have fun, to be well.
01:18:52
Speaker
to make sure you tune in to the Archaeology Podcast Network starting the beginning of December at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com to see all of our fun, exciting new podcasts and check them out and check out the Sarah Markiology Podcast, the Unarchaeologist Podcast, and all the other fantastic, amazing things that we're going to be doing.
01:19:15
Speaker
So, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening, viewers, listeners. I enjoy talking to you, even though I'm really only talking to me right now. It feels like I'm talking to you and that's nice.
01:19:32
Speaker
It feels like having friends. Hmm, I like it. Anyway, I will go make sure you follow me on Twitter at StrugglingArc and follow my Tumblr blog at thestrugglingarchaeologist.tumblr.com.
01:19:47
Speaker
And follow me on Facebook at Facebook forward slash guide to getting dirty. You can always email me with questions, comments, concerns at guide to getting dirty at gmail.com. And that's it. I am going to stop talking. I love you all so much.
01:20:04
Speaker
And as my heroes, the Vlogbrothers always say, don't forget to be awesome. And I'm going to just throw in here, don't forget to support your local heritage organizations.
Conclusion and Social Media Reminders
01:20:14
Speaker
And how about the arts? I'm going to throw the arts in because I really love the arts. Don't forget to support them either.
01:20:20
Speaker
You all have a great rest of your day and I will be back later this month with another fun, filled, exciting podcast for you. I am Jenny and this has been the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty.
01:20:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:07
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com