I've noticed that infighting within species seems to be worse if the possibility of fatal wounding is lower. This is why you often see big animals like bears get in each other's face but they rarely hurt each other because the cost of engaging in a fight is potentially too high. It makes me wonder if humans naturally became less aggressive and learn to cooperate as our weaponry got better and the chance of dying in a conflict became almost certain
He mentioned it in another clip and alluded that the females were likely captured and let’s say had a one sided relationship. I think he mentioned it could’ve been two sided too
@@0xLoneWolf and then theres the theory on that's why we have minimal body hair. Because women would mate with less hairy men due to inbreeding of neanderthal/human. No evidence to suggest this but I heard some guy say it and found it interesting. Also that since childhood we have stories of being afraid of the dark/boogyman, mainly because that's when Neanderthals used to grab us. Most of it has been debunked and this guy isn't a scientist, however you might find it interesting, I know I did :) m.ua-cam.com/video/mZbmywzGAVs/v-deo.html Predation Theory
The meek shall inherit the earth And thanks to Jordan Peterson there’s the interpretation that meek is those with swords that keep them sheathed (potential for being capable and dangerous)
The evolution of our relationship with fire and the evolution of our relationship with the sun present so many questions and it excites me to have people like you exploring these questions.
The “theory” of evolution is one of the most unscientifically sound debacles ever entertained by men. Darwin himself said that his theory could not hold true if concurring evidence of transitional forms was not found. The fossil record shows no transitional forms supporting his theory. Here again, the hypocrisy of liberal unbelievers is evident in that Darwin was clearly a racist and included the term “favored races” in his book. There is much more evidence supporting a worldwide flood, including the main process for fossilization, which is “fossilization through the gradual settling of sediment in water.
If you want to study the true history of mankind, start with the fossil record of human giants. There are thousands of remains of these all over the earth. They prove the Genesis account in the Bible, (mainly Genesis 6:4), which is why governments, the jesuits, and the Smithsonian Institute have made great strides in hiding, suppressing, and destroying this evidence. Your not doing humanity any favors by speculating upon a bad theory that categorically denies the truth contained in God’s Word. BTW, it is the oldest writing in antiquity and was verified again by the finding of the Dead Sea scrolls.
I think that humans are inherently territorial. The culture that you are born into will tell you what to covet. Unfortunately, I also believe that humans suffer from group think.
It always amazes me as to what percentage of people are oblivious to how violent and the potential for violence that's in every individual. Look no further than the Ukrainian famine in the 30s when parents were eating their own kids, if humans had to compete for food, there would be no such thing as "civilized behavior".
@@matrix2297 it was the biggest event of human cannibalism in human history. We are talking millions of people forced into cannibalism. It’s called the holodemer. I know I spelled it wrong. But I have met people from the USSR that have talked about the “mystery meat”. People didn’t question it, they were just happy they had meat.
I grew up in a small town in Oregon. My people thought all the surrounding towns were moral degenerates. I am talking of high school students. Anything wrong was in these other communities. I am really sincere with these feelings. So any other is suspect. These are just a few generations removed from Europe. It showed me we murdered Neanderthals wherever we found them would be my guess.
@@schultemeister6975 In ancient societies? Listen today to anyone (politician and regular folks alike) talk about foreign policy, and all you hear is how every other nation is barbaric and terrible and if only everyone else were like us, the world would be a better more civilized place.
It would be interesting to look back at us in say 20 - 30 thousand years and see what kind of effect our modern diets with high sugar content, high calorie, easy digestion, vitamins, other supplements, etc and easy living had on us.
@@Alexander-ii7wy You might have a point. I guess I'll redouble my efforts to introduce my oversized trouser trout to as many women as I can. I'll use the fact that men in the future will have micro penises so they better get a big one while the getting is good.
Great discussion. It answered many curiosities I had and opened new questions. Thank you for sharing. You are an increasingly important asset to the world. Please strive to do more and become better at asking the questions your listeners would ask.
I think it’s very important he says the controlling almost as in taming instead of creation of fire. Fire is demonstrated In nature and is a result of energy I believe so our ability to harness energy is what allowed us to advance which is a general principle of how we evolve to this day. It’s fascinating. I wonder if we continue to think along these lines as kardashev did. I’ve always thought that controlling or taming gravity would be one of the most important things humans ever do and maybe it’s possible in this line of thinking.
@@barryallen871 yeah if you choose to look at it that way, really its controlled gliding and using engines to reach and maintain altitude for quicker trips. don't know how much gravity control that maintains, but its an interesting topic. Gravity in its entirety is magnetics, look at a magnetic train that propels itself via magnetism, that's more anti gravity than a plane, but one could argue its only controlling magnetism and not gravity.
It wouldn't be that hard to comprehend how to tame - for example - oh a burning branch from a bush fire, oh I can carry it and create more. I don't think its that amazing.
A lot of this is based on tons of speculation-lack of cooperation of Neanderthals, etc.. In gorillas, there is an alpha male and a relatively peaceful existence per Mr. Wrangham’s opinion in another video.
More like everything is bullshit. To think primitive man was less agressive to allow "cooperation" than neanderthals is bad speculation. They keep trying to justify why humans prevailed by downplaying neanderthal's capabilities. "They were agressive dumb and couldn't cooperate" "they couldn't throw very well" Maybe a combibation of factors wiped them out like plagues environment changes etc and not the awsomeness of humans. And maybe humans survived by sheer luck.
I’ve always thought it would be more likely that cooking food was discovered by defrosting frozen food. It would be obvious that things near the fire melts, you have frozen food, you hold it up next to the fire and that would obviously lead to different lengths of exposures being experimented with.
What if they didnt live in cold areas? Not like that had freezers lol and Tesla said he thought he was being sent thoughts from a different universe. The first humans might have just had the intuition to do eventually
@@thedonofthsht76-58 the templars were called templars because they thought the body were temples. 90% of the Haiti population try to go under demonic possession. Demonology is under the rug shit in the same pool as black magic that nobody wants to give attention too, especially In the university settings.
One thing he only half mentions here that I saw in a documentary is that the jaw muscles needed for biting and tearing apart raw food were much larger in our early ancestors, and therefore took up way more space as they were attached around the brain. This was one thing that limited our brain size. Once we started cooking our food, our jaw muscles did not need to be nearly as strong and large and this freed up a lot of space for a bigger brain
as opposed to just growing a bigger skull to accomodate a larger brain or bigger jaw muscles? all these theories are just guesses. nobody knows why sapiens brains got bigger than other homo species or great apes for that matter.
Imagine the number of "Einsteins" that created fire over 100s of thousands of years only for everyone else to get scared and kill them (like they were witches)
@@malinko35 Yeah, definitely in part. But I'd say it would be very easy for wild animals and humans to instinctively know that fire is bad. You make fire. Therefore you bad.
Years ago when I was very young and took my first trip to the Philadelphia zoo. While in the building that housed the primates there was a showcase that resembled a telephone booth. A sign on the top of the booth read in very large black letters read "The most dangerous animal on earth" and behind a set of bars was a mirror.
We don’t know nearly enough about Neanderthals to make these types of claims, but our advantage probably wasn’t huge or it wouldn’t have taken 30 000 years to replace them.
@@Dreamin995 We coexisted for thousands of years with them which is more than plenty of time to adapt to whatever disease. That being said I can imagine that was a factor in the initial meetings.
Anyone know if Neanderthals had similar language skills as Sapiens? Thinking about why Sapiens would be better cooperators than Neanderthals. I've seen that Neanderthals did have similar voice/hearing apparatus to Sapiens, but I can't find any theories about complexity/type of language.
Well, just judging from their lives as small, distant groups, it seems likely that any language was less likely to be similar to other groups, limiting its development and usefulness quite a bit.
We don't know anything about their language, or anything about their brains, except that they were larger than those of Homo Sapiens. All our theories about the Neanderthal are based on our ego: "oh, they had larger brains? Well they were probably smooth and less effective than ours. Yeah their languages were probably shit. We were just such good co-operators". None of these are hard facts. The real explanation is probably far more simple. Homo Sapiens came in more numerous and more aggressive, and we just killed them all due to our small-brained aggression. End of story.
An interesting take on the anthropological record is that the neanderthal genus were canabalistic and night hunters. It would explain why it was an us vs. them interaction post diaspora....
Thats wild and scary, imagine you being an homo sapien back then were all you had to defend yourself was a stick and fire against a bigger stronger more ferocious humanoid that also could eat you?
@@SaintsFan09-z3s There is no evidence it was an 'us vs them interaction' or that 'humans beat neanderthals'. There is, however, evidence of interbreeding between the two species and transfer of knowledge and technologies, such as the use of red ochre in cave art or the process of hand stencilling by blowing red ochre onto a surface partially obscured by a hand. These comments are akin to speculating about the great 'man vs dinosaur' war of prehistory.
"Are we naturally corrupt, or are we naturally kind..." I wish Wrangham would think about this a lot more carefully here and in general. The general populace does not go off to war because they are corrupt, they go off to war because they are altruistic and want to defend their group and/or punish the bad group for the wrong things they have done. This wild mashing of terms together that he sometimes engages in is not helpful or productive. The leaders may have corrupt motives, but that has nothing to do with the motivations of the people marching off. Violence at the individual level may be motivated by corruption, yes, and also by jealousy and many other things.
Children figuring out how to manipulate at such early ages should be a pretty good indicator of this. Violence and altruism are just unavoidable byproducts of how we as a species cope with and survive our environments.
Kropotkin was of a mind that we succeeded as a species through cooperation. We as groups will and did sort out ways of overcoming the trials and tribulations of life. Government came later.
I'm gonna call BS on this take. You need look no further than the Holocaust to refute the notion that citizens are detached from their leaders decisions. The German people knew thier neighbors were being herded onto trains in the middle of the night and did nothing. That was not altruism, it was opportunistic violence for the purpose of avoiding personal discomfort.
@@oddmanout7755 thanks for your uninformed opinion. I suppose all of those millions of German men matched off to fight and die because they were corrupt? Have you thought about this at all, or do you prefer to just have strong opinions for no good reason?
brilliant learner and it seems to both intrigue him in all subjects and provide a fantastic tool for his personal evolution. So fun to watch, thank you 🙏
When my man is saying cooked food, he's not talking about BBQ bananas. Eating meat, cooked meat, was one of the catalyst for us to enter into an age of progression. Farming is what enabled society to propel forward.
5:00 He forgot to add environment of both species in equation, namely Neanderthal lived in a harsh environment like today Alaska where was thoroughly planing a base for surviving it couldn't have a lot of offsprings because of scared resources. Homosapiens on the other hand came from a rich environment where a planning wasn't necessary for surviving and could live in a large groups with a lot of offsprings. Those two philosophies how to live are seen even today if compared Africa as a home ground for the Homosapiens and Europe as home ground of Neanderthal. Not to forget Homosapiens come from much warmer Africa probably with some diseases which could be lethal for Neanderthal.
Yes, I've seen other experts speak of this exact topic. They all came to same conclusion... it didn't matter. It was inevitable. Cooperation was key. Neanderthals were doomed.
Neanderthal also came from Africa -- the early modern homosapiens that came into contact with neanderthal had been out of Africa for at least tens of thousands of years. The big shift was when we surpassed Neanderthal as the apex primate in the Upper Paleolithic -- all Sapien populations became far more robust and had shared culture that came out of Europe, not Africa, in the Aurignacian.
@Lee Juddy well, as I said, cooperation is the key. And muslims don't seem to get along much better with each other than any other doctrine. What with the whole sunni vs shiite infighting and all. So I'm not sold, not yet. But who knows...
Your comment seems questionable. You don’t seem to understand that, like modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans both evolved from Homo Naledi, which was an African hominid.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:02 📚 Richard Wrangham discusses the main ideas in his book "The Goodness Paradox." - Humans exhibit extremes in violence and non-violence. - We excel in proactive violence, unlike most animals. - Our societies are remarkably peaceful, despite our violent capabilities. 05:06 🧐 Wrangham discusses the significance of removing alpha males and promoting cooperation in societies. - Removing alpha males fosters more tolerant, less reactive aggression. - Cooperation becomes central in human societies. - This greater cooperation likely contributed to the expansion of Homo sapiens over Neanderthals. 07:11 🍳 The central idea in Wrangham's book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human." - The emergence of Homo erectus was linked to the control of fire. - Cooking with fire transformed human evolution. - Fire control reduced the difficulty of growing a larger brain. 11:09 🤖 Wrangham explains how cooking allowed for a larger brain and provided a significant evolutionary advantage. - Cooking made food more digestible, supplying more energy. - It drastically reduced the time spent on chewing and digestion. - This enabled the growth of a larger brain in Homo erectus. Made with HARPA AI
That part about the cooked food is so true, I’ve noticed it in my dog (he literally just said your dogs and cats prefer cooked food as I was typing that) I’ve noticed my dog reacts differently when we’re prepping her food, prepping raw meat for ourselves, and when the meat is being cooked/plated. She’ll watch you pretty closely when you get her food ready and follow you to her bowl, sometimes she pops into the kitchen when she smells the raw meat come out of the fridge, but once you start cooking the meat and sit down to eat she goes NUTS. Edit: he mentions a correlation between cooked food and an increase in brain function and size. I wonder if you bread generations of dogs and only fed them cooked meals if you’d eventually start to produce smarter and smarter dogs 🤔
don't think so. there should be a selection criteria for bigger brain size too. in our ancestor's case bigger brains meant higher survival rates, however for a domesticated animal's case it does not matter if it is smarter or not. unless you introduce that to your experiment as an "artifical selection"
@@mzyil Damn. I was about to cook meals for my dog all summer then put him in a suit, and schedule a job interview for him so he can work and I can quit my job
Dogs are actually significantly less smarter then Wolfs because they no longer need to be smart to surivive. Becoming domesticated and understanding Humans emotions and vocals isn't the same as intelligence. Domesticated animals are less smart then their wild cousins.
John Hawking wrote about how human’s evolved to be less reactive due to practising settled agriculture and living in large communities in his book “The 10,000 Year Explosion”, prior to this, modern humans were quite reactive.
My favorite theory is the giant war between the two species. There has been plenty of evidence to show fighting was happening between them everywhere so we might of just wiped them out
@@potomac2445 communication is about sending and receiving. your job is now to explain me so i can understand what you mean. I'm not him, but let me support his theory. there was a time when the early humans were nearly wiped out. scientist believe only 50ooo survived. at that time the bow was invented too. so there might be that we lost a war till our species has established the most creative psychopaths
Neanderthals lived in the north, and life up there must have been pretty darn rough during the worst parts of the ice age. Makes sense most of them would have died off, with the survivors interbreeding out of existence with migrating humans as the ice age eased. Also a lot of the extremely quick and huge floods during the deglaciation especially hit hard in the north, so many of their coastal population may have gotten wiped out in practically an instant.
I'd like this gentleman to examine the current situation in America's big cities where the beta males and females won't allow the alpha males and females (police) to do their jobs. The effect has been the rise in lower thinking alpha males wreaking havoc in said cities.
2:49 ether side violent everything is situational, generally if you have food shelter, medical care and gainful employment available as in you can buy the nice things people produce people are not violent, if these things are lacking the likelihood of violence is much higher.
My last dog, a mongrel mix of beagle, terrier, etc, wouldn't eat a small piece of raw deer meat. I was surprised. He LOVED a broiled T-bone or pork chop. The dog of my childhood, a 30-something lbs mix of Cocker Spaniel, terrier, collie, would kill a rabbit and devour every piece of matter from head to tail, guts and all. But she mostly ate table scraps.
by this point weve bred out the wild in the wolf... that one dog would eventually eat raw meat if he was on his own starving one day but he knows that cook tbone with all that juice and spices is GOOOOOD lol... your cocker mix still had a little wolf in her... i used to have a girl cocker they are pretty smart for being on smaller side of dog breeds and she was super loyal to me because i would always sneak her extra food or snacks. my mom and brother took her when they moved and i went off to college and new city for work so it had been 5-6 years since she had seen me and the look of WTF on her face when i came in the house and called her name she could not believe it... then instant zoomies and tail wagging, she would not leave my side for days and spent the night in my bed even tho she loved sleeping on the couch over anything. damn i miss her... RIP ZOE
Cooking food allowed our ancestors to begin the digestion process before they started eating. This meant our bodies didn’t need to dedicate as much energy to the digestive process, and they were therefore able to dedicate more energy to their brains. The cultivation of the cooking process led directly to an increase in brain size in our hominid ancestors.
@@slapshot1x I've read hundreds of books on anthropology either directly or indirectly through literature, fiction and non fiction, or essays on the human condition. I'm not sure why I singled you out for criticism. What you said was perfectly reasonable. Accept my apologies.
Lex Fridman is the single most amazing interviewer in the world today. Attentive, interested, lets his guests speak and develop their ideas, and always comes up with insightful questions which make the conversation even more interesting. Fascinating.
Is this sarcasm? He’s genuinely a bad interviewer. He’s monotonous, he mumbles, he asks very surface level questions and is clearly very impressed with himself. His guests are good, so I can see why you might enjoy it and mistakenly think Lex is good. But the “most amazing interviewer in the world today”? That’s nuts to say
@@HieronymousLex I´d love to know your opinion on who the best interviewer is. Or name some so I can expand my knowledge. No sarcasm here. Be well fellow human.
Cooking meat increasing the calories, depends on how it is cooked. Prehistoric humans were mostly cooking over an open fire, losing a lot of those calories to the fire. A grilled burger has less calories than a raw burger. Although, I do believe cooking certain vegetables could have promoted brain development in early humans.
Cooking meat changes its chemical makup to a different material/substance. Sure there are less calories but eating cooked meat is almost the sole reason why humans developed a frontal lobe of the brain.
Cooked meat requires less digestive work for the calories gained. This allowed human guts to shrink and brains to grow. A cooked burger might have fewer calories, but a raw burger will provide fewer calories than a cooked burger because you have to expend more calories to consume it
Vegetation was equivalent to psychedelics in that time..that allowed the prehistoric humans to mentally develop and create daily concepts that we abide by today
Very interesting conversation... especially the important of controlling fire and most animals, including apes, prefer cooked food. Personally, I've always thought that less time eating equated to more time thinking and inventing.
That’s the truth we are naturally violent … when the soldiers went to Vietnam and were allowed to kill at Will they all said it was a rush better then Heroin … scary but so is our nature
5:00 He forgot to add environment of both species in equation, namely Neanderthal lived in a harsh environment like today Alaska where was thoroughly planing a base for surviving it couldn't have a lot of offsprings because of scared resources. Homosapiens on the other hand came from a rich environment where a planning wasn't necessary for surviving and could live in a large groups with a lot of offsprings. Those two philosophies how to live are seen even today if compared Africa as a home ground for the Homosapiens and Europe as home ground of Neanderthal. Not to forget Homosapiens come from much warmer Africa probably with some diseases which could be lethal for Neanderthal.
This dichotomy between reactive and active aggression is good, but the governing dynamics (as Nash says in the movie) is between cooperation and opportunism. I think. Alpha males are everywhere, trying to cooperate not be be betta males and betta males…. Etc.
I find the distinction between reactive and proactive aggression very useful. They use diferent brain circuits making it possible for them to evolve independently. Biologically that's the distinction. Behaviorally there is cooperation and competition within groups and between groups. Cooperation within the group improves with reduced reactive aggression, less "You piss me off. I hit you." Competition between groups, improves with reduced proactive aggression, less "Your tribe is funny and you're stealing our game animals. We get together, attack your camp at dawn, and kill everyone." Opportunism within the group requires a different response than opportunism between groups.
The fact that multiple types of hominids roamed the earth at the same time, and us sapiens just happened to be the evolutionary winners, really throws a wrench into the Biblical version of reality.
@@visionaryvalley4347 Your point goes against the great majority of the scientific community. I hope (for the argument's sake) that you have some very good reasons to say that.
Agreed, and so I prefer a more Masonic interpretation: Existence had not been made devoid of potentials, out of respect to life. Now you might ask: what does that mean exactly... Well, how else do we measure the value of a thing, but by how much it contributes to a better existence? If solving a problem (such as world hunger) is inherently glorious, then problems (such as starvation) are entirely necessary in order to improve upon some aspect of existence: therefore also, for meaning, glory and in this case; survival. If we were born flawless into a perfect world, then "God" would have failed to bestow any significant meaning unto his creations. Like an inventor whose invention failed improve upon anything - a solution for a problem that didn't need solving. I suppose however, that is all rooted in the concept that life is inherently a meaningful thing - and to some degree, that is what separates religion from philosophy. That difference is why some atheists might not adhere to any specified religion and yet hold a sacred reverence for the idea at the innermost core of all religion.
@@roboito9130 I think it means that our stomach physically stretches out to accommodate more food. You can stretch your stomach out quite easily when trying to put weight on over a prolonged period of time.
@@roboito9130 Yes, for other primates they need bigger bellies to digest their food. My point was that humans who want to lose weight, should eat food high in volume, but low in calories to get full on lower amount of calories. The diet is called volume eating, lots of info online about it.
Yup. It works. The more raw fruits and vegetables you eat, the less cravings you have, and therefore the more you replace high calorie foods. Also, your body gets a workout just trying to digest raw fruits and vegetables. The only real downside is the farts.
When an anthropologist talks about alpha and beta he probably has very different creatures in mind than what we colloquially refer to when we use these terms
Fire is easily at the top of “discoveries” or “inventions”. It doesn’t matter how intelligent Dolphins or Octopus are, they’ll never be able to play with fire and thus they will never go on to evolve other technologies.
Neanderthals may well have been completely tied into their environment. They may have practiced natural birth control in hard times much like lions and other species do, they won’t have children in hard times keeping their numbers low whereas Sapiens probably just had children whatever, hard times good times. This would eventually mean that Sapiens outbred Neanderthals.
actually, some studies are showing that a huge volcanic event in the todays Italy region could be a very possible cause of their demise... based on these studies, the mentioned event covered almost the whole of Europe in volcanic ash, causing a long term drop of temperatures and plant and animal starvation in the whole region.. due to the fact that at that point in time, Neanderthals didnt use agriculture and were heavily dependent on hunting, this lead to their overall populational reduction and only a few smaller tribes remained close to the sea shores, in Spain... which wasnt enough to save them from going extinct. Based on this, there actually wasnt any real war between Sapiens and Neanderthals... Sapiens were luckier, had better means of survival and in the end overpopulated and mixed with Neanderthals.
@@alexbowman7582 just judging based on the sources Ive read.. in those Neanderthals were mostly described as nomads wandering Europe and hunting based on the availability of animals and their natural living regions... having cattle or sheep would mostly require long term settlements, not sure if that could have been the case for them... yet, even if, the volcanic eruption event I was mentioning, would have most certainly killed off all animals they had due to a general lack of food theyve experienced.
@@Phantus00 there’s ancient European human bones from hundreds of thousands of years ago showing T.B. scars presumably from living close to cattle of some type probably not from just hunting them but either corralling them behind fences, herding them or even living in a home with them much like what still happens in Asia. When does looking after cattle become farming? I would suggest it is farming and if it did happen then farming may be half a million years old.
How do we know a lot of Neanderthals were inbred if we've only found a small percentage of the populations remains. It's rare for things to fossilize. I think most were not inbred.
A fair guess, but I think they are going by the information that they have, instead of the information that they suppose might be hidden from us. This will be the standard to prove incorrect, once more information has been found.
@@Inertia888 The danger of basing a theory on a thin line of evidence is that age tends to harden the "validity" given to it if we don't find new evidence soon enough after the initial discoveries. People tend to prefer nostalgic misconceptions over newer accurate info.
They seemed to live in very small family tribes, and not mix much with other groups or interact with other tribes. So it makes sense there would not be much diversity 🤷♀️
You are correct about fossilization but this assumption about inbreeding is not based solely on fossils. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology analyzed a genome sequence of a Neanderthal woman from Siberia and showed that her parents were half-siblings and mating among close relatives was common among her recent ancestors. It wasn't just her parents. They found evidence of extensive and long-term inbreeding in her DNA. We also have countless lines of evidence showing that Neanderthal lived in much smaller groups which had very little interaction with their neighbors in comparison with sapiens, such as items found in burial remains. Inbreeding is a safe assumption but so is your idea of there being a wider range of gene flow when for instance, the ice melted and they could travel beyond their ranges. My guess would be that because of the waxing/waning of their habitat, Neanderthals went through periods of socialization (and therefore healthier gene flow) as well as periods of isolation. We're talking about tens of thousands of generations so there's opportunity for both but it seems reasonable to assume that Neanderthal's constantly changing habitat and hunting situation probably limited their group size and gene flow capabilities. Especially with the DNA to back it up. But that's the brilliant thing about science. It will never stop trying to prove itself wrong.
With reptiles and amphibians ruling for almost the entire existence of life on the planet, I've always been curious about early humans and evolution and how we finally evolved past nocturnal scavengers, with reptiles and amphibians being extremely oppressive. 11:52
Around 13:45 talking about humans "discovering cooked meat after learning how to make fire". Seems odd they would both draw same conclusion. It would be more likely that before learning how to make fire, they would have found cooked meat after brush fires which occur naturally. I'm guessing that being able to cook meat was one of the stronger motivators for them to learn how to make fire.
Besides fire, the most important invention was the spear - it allowed us to go from being prey to being a hunter. Just think about it, a group of humans walking in the Serengeti with spears or without them.
That's a youtube narrative, modern humans are over 200,000kyrs old. Instead of acknowledging ancient humans, credit is now given to aliens and Neanderthals; ever since 2005/2006 when the Human genome project came out.
If our brains evolved and grew faster with cooked food... and we feed our cats and dogs cooked food... is that why I swear animals are getting smarter and more "humanized"?🤔 🤯🥴
I don't think simply eating cooked food incites evolutionary growth, but rather the act of "learning" to cook food does? Besides our pets have always been smart, unless your dog/cat is learning how to cook food for you I would say animals are not becoming more "humanized"
Interesting point Tabitha. There is recent research on dogs and their adaptation to looking directly at the face of their human family members. It goes to their use of queues between species and I am curious how this effects their brain development and adaptation. Also, please tell your dog to call my dog instead of texting. Lol. Jester is your last name so I had to include the text joke. I can post the research link in a separate reply.
Yes true. You have to be a great investigative researcher into your interviewee's books and subject matter. Lex is a very intelligent man. He works at MIT as a teacher so he has to have an incredible IQ and some great mind too.
That stuff about alpha and beta, don't know maybe he's talking about the monkey stuff but I don't think it worked like that with pre humans I mean, there is still hierarchy among humans, socially, in the work place etc and females are still attracted to "alpha male" stuff (I have been practising this and got results) not ooga booga style tho but yeah that anolagy is a bit strange
Completely ignored the y-chromosome defect in Neanderthal males that prevented breeding with Human females. What this clown is offering is conjecture at best. Frank Church’s data is pretty solid. In a tribal society, natural selection would favor the males that can mate with more partners. Alpha characteristics play a role, but biological compatibility was the determinant factor.
12:17 i imagine it is very much coupled. I mean, you learn to control fire, the first thing a curious human does would be to play with it, to put things in it. Leaves and sticks at first, maybe a rock, and surely a piece of meat before long.
Can we all take a second and realize how blessed we are to have the internet and to be able to learn this information.
You'd know all this already if you read books
@@hmq9052 Says the one who can’t formulate a sentence.
@@5050YT That is a perfectly formulated sentence.
@@hmq9052 ‘you’d know all this’
@@daveinpublic Correct it. Don't repeat it
I've noticed that infighting within species seems to be worse if the possibility of fatal wounding is lower. This is why you often see big animals like bears get in each other's face but they rarely hurt each other because the cost of engaging in a fight is potentially too high. It makes me wonder if humans naturally became less aggressive and learn to cooperate as our weaponry got better and the chance of dying in a conflict became almost certain
no longer does evolution control human behavior. human culture does
👍
thats a question worth of a paper
Or, as the chicken & the egg goes, did bears develop a more robust body due to more aggressive mentalities.
My guess would be this
Chimpanzees can rip each other apart with their bare hands and are notorious infighters
I'm consistently amazed by both the variety and quality of guests.
Was thinking the same thing 👌
Best podcast on yt
It boggles the mind how.
You expect less from pugilists, generally!
It's just that Lex is such a boring talker. His monotonous voice zones me out.
Cooking is simply outsourcing the digestion process. Genius.
Lex is one of the few actually smart Podcasters. It's such a gift
🙄
Joe Rogan thinks he is smart. 😂
@@Allworldsk1 he offers his perspective … we listen. he says he’s an idiot 10 times a show
@@Allworldsk1 no he doesn’t he repeatedly says he isn’t. He’s still managed to help educate countless people.
You know you've made it as s podcaster when you're used by government officials
Fascinating discussion. Off to watch the whole interview.
Haha - same 👍🏼
Very fascinating. And really makes you contemplate a lot about our history.
For real. It ended on a fascinating tidbit.
This is one of the best guests he's ever had on here.
They ignore the cross mating of the species which would have resulted in a degree of assimilation of the Neanderthal.
Definitely not as intelligent as they bolster!!!!!!
He mentioned it in another clip and alluded that the females were likely captured and let’s say had a one sided relationship. I think he mentioned it could’ve been two sided too
@@0xLoneWolf and then theres the theory on that's why we have minimal body hair. Because women would mate with less hairy men due to inbreeding of neanderthal/human.
No evidence to suggest this but I heard some guy say it and found it interesting. Also that since childhood we have stories of being afraid of the dark/boogyman, mainly because that's when Neanderthals used to grab us.
Most of it has been debunked and this guy isn't a scientist, however you might find it interesting, I know I did :)
m.ua-cam.com/video/mZbmywzGAVs/v-deo.html
Predation Theory
Look up nikolai valuev. Boxer. Tell me hes not from the stock of neanderthals haha
@@Ryan-eu3kp Danny Vendramini. I'm still to be convinced he is wrong.
The meek shall inherit the earth
And thanks to Jordan Peterson there’s the interpretation that meek is those with swords that keep them sheathed (potential for being capable and dangerous)
The evolution of our relationship with fire and the evolution of our relationship with the sun present so many questions and it excites me to have people like you exploring these questions.
That we live in a time where these kinds of gents get more recognition can only be a great thing for humanity
The “theory” of evolution is one of the most unscientifically sound debacles ever entertained by men. Darwin himself said that his theory could not hold true if concurring evidence of transitional forms was not found. The fossil record shows no transitional forms supporting his theory. Here again, the hypocrisy of liberal unbelievers is evident in that Darwin was clearly a racist and included the term “favored races” in his book.
There is much more evidence supporting a worldwide flood, including the main process for fossilization, which is “fossilization through the gradual settling of sediment in water.
If you want to study the true history of mankind, start with the fossil record of human giants. There are thousands of remains of these all over the earth. They prove the Genesis account in the Bible, (mainly Genesis 6:4), which is why governments, the jesuits, and the Smithsonian Institute have made great strides in hiding, suppressing, and destroying this evidence. Your not doing humanity any favors by speculating upon a bad theory that categorically denies the truth contained in God’s Word. BTW, it is the oldest writing in antiquity and was verified again by the finding of the Dead Sea scrolls.
@@godslittleman5451 bedommit
oh, the irony
I think that humans are inherently territorial. The culture that you are born into will tell you what to covet. Unfortunately, I also believe that humans suffer from group think.
I think what you think is well accepted science, not exactly a hot take
It always amazes me as to what percentage of people are oblivious to how violent and the potential for violence that's in every individual. Look no further than the Ukrainian famine in the 30s when parents were eating their own kids, if humans had to compete for food, there would be no such thing as "civilized behavior".
WHAT that's wild....real life hunger games
My dogs and cats be plotting on eating me
I caught one of the lil ones rubbing bbq sauce and meat tenderizer on my face while I was asleep
@@matrix2297 it was the biggest event of human cannibalism in human history. We are talking millions of people forced into cannibalism. It’s called the holodemer. I know I spelled it wrong. But I have met people from the USSR that have talked about the “mystery meat”. People didn’t question it, they were just happy they had meat.
Look it up
@@joshuablair252 Communism at its finest
I could listen to this guy talk about his field all day
I grew up in a small town in Oregon. My people thought all the surrounding towns were moral degenerates. I am talking of high school students. Anything wrong was in these other communities. I am really sincere with these feelings. So any other is suspect. These are just a few generations removed from Europe. It showed me we murdered Neanderthals wherever we found them would be my guess.
Stuff like believing other people were barbaric or uncivilized happened a lot in ancient societies
Nah oregons just full of degenerates
@@schultemeister6975 In ancient societies? Listen today to anyone (politician and regular folks alike) talk about foreign policy, and all you hear is how every other nation is barbaric and terrible and if only everyone else were like us, the world would be a better more civilized place.
Be interesting to know if there’s been any attempts or studies trying to teach other animals to use fire 🤔
Maybe a dolphin or killer whale would be intelligent enough. I don’t think you should use fire
ua-cam.com/video/GQcN7lHSD5Y/v-deo.html
put down the weed
I hypothesize primates might be able to learn.
@@king1k463 how did you know 😂
This man has never been on twitter if he thinks betas are non violent!
Or witnessed Antifa lol
It would be interesting to look back at us in say 20 - 30 thousand years and see what kind of effect our modern diets with high sugar content, high calorie, easy digestion, vitamins, other supplements, etc and easy living had on us.
We would all evolve to having micro penises because of it
Definitly physicily weak and fragile.
@@Alexander-ii7wy You might have a point. I guess I'll redouble my efforts to introduce my oversized trouser trout to as many women as I can. I'll use the fact that men in the future will have micro penises so they better get a big one while the getting is good.
@@randomdude7345 not weak because we have easier access to food
@@jasperhenderson3002 food is one thing, but physical exercise is key.
Soo... Basically what you're saying is, teamwork makes the dream work??
teamwork with teeth.
@@Grayto neanderthals didnt have teeth?
Great discussion. It answered many curiosities I had and opened new questions. Thank you for sharing. You are an increasingly important asset to the world. Please strive to do more and become better at asking the questions your listeners would ask.
What are you doing to research your own questions?
I think it’s very important he says the controlling almost as in taming instead of creation of fire. Fire is demonstrated In nature and is a result of energy I believe so our ability to harness energy is what allowed us to advance which is a general principle of how we evolve to this day. It’s fascinating. I wonder if we continue to think along these lines as kardashev did. I’ve always thought that controlling or taming gravity would be one of the most important things humans ever do and maybe it’s possible in this line of thinking.
we already do control magnetics which is what gravity is , the problem we face is not the knowledge but the resources to test and implement.
Isn't aviation in general a form of taming or controlling gravity?
@@barryallen871 yeah if you choose to look at it that way, really its controlled gliding and using engines to reach and maintain altitude for quicker trips. don't know how much gravity control that maintains, but its an interesting topic.
Gravity in its entirety is magnetics, look at a magnetic train that propels itself via magnetism, that's more anti gravity than a plane, but one could argue its only controlling magnetism and not gravity.
I don't think it's that important
It wouldn't be that hard to comprehend how to tame - for example - oh a burning branch from a bush fire, oh I can carry it and create more. I don't think its that amazing.
A lot of this is based on tons of speculation-lack of cooperation of Neanderthals, etc.. In gorillas, there is an alpha male and a relatively peaceful existence per Mr. Wrangham’s opinion in another video.
well doh..we are talking about 40k years ago, of course there will be speculation
More like everything is bullshit. To think primitive man was less agressive to allow "cooperation" than neanderthals is bad speculation. They keep trying to justify why humans prevailed by downplaying neanderthal's capabilities. "They were agressive dumb and couldn't cooperate" "they couldn't throw very well"
Maybe a combibation of factors wiped them out like plagues environment changes etc and not the awsomeness of humans. And maybe humans survived by sheer luck.
@@silviuflorin744 You do realise neanderthals are humans, right?
Most of it is. I started realising that years ago, but you want to keep hearing more. It's strange.
Someone fancies himself and Alpha and got triggered by the big brain dude.
I’ve always thought it would be more likely that cooking food was discovered by defrosting frozen food. It would be obvious that things near the fire melts, you have frozen food, you hold it up next to the fire and that would obviously lead to different lengths of exposures being experimented with.
What if they didnt live in cold areas? Not like that had freezers lol and Tesla said he thought he was being sent thoughts from a different universe. The first humans might have just had the intuition to do eventually
@@thedonofthsht76-58 the templars were called templars because they thought the body were temples. 90% of the Haiti population try to go under demonic possession. Demonology is under the rug shit in the same pool as black magic that nobody wants to give attention too, especially In the university settings.
@@jaboris2536 huh I'll have to look that up.
Ummmm no… most likely a Forrest fire and some animals got burned in the process and it smelled good.
@@SerPapus - You have obviously never been around Forrest fires lol. Ain’t no slow roasted animals in a Forrest fire 🤣
One thing he only half mentions here that I saw in a documentary is that the jaw muscles needed for biting and tearing apart raw food were much larger in our early ancestors, and therefore took up way more space as they were attached around the brain. This was one thing that limited our brain size.
Once we started cooking our food, our jaw muscles did not need to be nearly as strong and large and this freed up a lot of space for a bigger brain
as opposed to just growing a bigger skull to accomodate a larger brain or bigger jaw muscles? all these theories are just guesses. nobody knows why sapiens brains got bigger than other homo species or great apes for that matter.
Human brains have become smaller in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years.
Imagine the number of "Einsteins" that created fire over 100s of thousands of years only for everyone else to get scared and kill them (like they were witches)
Damn- that’s really sad to think about.
@@RAPEDBYBLACKS What television tropes? Twilight Zone or generic Salem witch trials?
The witch hunt was not fueled by people doing supernatural things, it was fueled by moldy bread making people act crazy.
@@malinko35 Yeah, definitely in part. But I'd say it would be very easy for wild animals and humans to instinctively know that fire is bad. You make fire. Therefore you bad.
Brilliant guest, Lex a brilliant interviewer .. asks excellent questions and then gives space to expert guests like Richard Wrangham to answer
"We are one of the worst killing machine species that's ever existed". No, we are the best.
So true
On your own though you're one of the worst
Until we wipe ourselves out🤣
Years ago when I was very young and took my first trip to the Philadelphia zoo. While in the building that housed the primates there was a showcase that resembled a telephone booth. A sign on the top of the booth read in very large black letters read "The most dangerous animal on earth" and behind a set of bars was a mirror.
Richard Wrangham is one of the greatest minds ever.
Ever?
@@Robson7788 I did not stutter did I?
Guy is wrong and a beta lol
We don’t know nearly enough about Neanderthals to make these types of claims, but our advantage probably wasn’t huge or it wouldn’t have taken 30 000 years to replace them.
Maybe we introduced a disease(s) they were unable to overcome
@@Dreamin995 yeah it's called social aggression.
@@Dreamin995 We coexisted for thousands of years with them which is more than plenty of time to adapt to whatever disease. That being said I can imagine that was a factor in the initial meetings.
Anyone know if Neanderthals had similar language skills as Sapiens? Thinking about why Sapiens would be better cooperators than Neanderthals. I've seen that Neanderthals did have similar voice/hearing apparatus to Sapiens, but I can't find any theories about complexity/type of language.
Well, just judging from their lives as small, distant groups, it seems likely that any language was less likely to be similar to other groups, limiting its development and usefulness quite a bit.
We don't know anything about their language, or anything about their brains, except that they were larger than those of Homo Sapiens. All our theories about the Neanderthal are based on our ego: "oh, they had larger brains? Well they were probably smooth and less effective than ours. Yeah their languages were probably shit. We were just such good co-operators". None of these are hard facts.
The real explanation is probably far more simple. Homo Sapiens came in more numerous and more aggressive, and we just killed them all due to our small-brained aggression. End of story.
@@ChrisStavros that plus larger brains consume more calories
humanity first, raaaah@@ChrisStavros
An interesting take on the anthropological record is that the neanderthal genus were canabalistic and night hunters. It would explain why it was an us vs. them interaction post diaspora....
Thats wild and scary, imagine you being an homo sapien back then were all you had to defend yourself was a stick and fire against a bigger stronger more ferocious humanoid that also could eat you?
You seek to explain something that never happened.
@@mangomoon huh?
@@SaintsFan09-z3s There is no evidence it was an 'us vs them interaction' or that 'humans beat neanderthals'. There is, however, evidence of interbreeding between the two species and transfer of knowledge and technologies, such as the use of red ochre in cave art or the process of hand stencilling by blowing red ochre onto a surface partially obscured by a hand. These comments are akin to speculating about the great 'man vs dinosaur' war of prehistory.
@@mangomoon oh, lol, well yeah. But by your first response you might as well have been a young Earth creationist.
Lex asks the best questions of any podcaster
"Are we naturally corrupt, or are we naturally kind..." I wish Wrangham would think about this a lot more carefully here and in general. The general populace does not go off to war because they are corrupt, they go off to war because they are altruistic and want to defend their group and/or punish the bad group for the wrong things they have done. This wild mashing of terms together that he sometimes engages in is not helpful or productive. The leaders may have corrupt motives, but that has nothing to do with the motivations of the people marching off. Violence at the individual level may be motivated by corruption, yes, and also by jealousy and many other things.
Children figuring out how to manipulate at such early ages should be a pretty good indicator of this. Violence and altruism are just unavoidable byproducts of how we as a species cope with and survive our environments.
Kropotkin was of a mind that we succeeded as a species through cooperation. We as groups will and did sort out ways of overcoming the trials and tribulations of life. Government came later.
Interesting point
I'm gonna call BS on this take. You need look no further than the Holocaust to refute the notion that citizens are detached from their leaders decisions. The German people knew thier neighbors were being herded onto trains in the middle of the night and did nothing. That was not altruism, it was opportunistic violence for the purpose of avoiding personal discomfort.
@@oddmanout7755 thanks for your uninformed opinion. I suppose all of those millions of German men matched off to fight and die because they were corrupt? Have you thought about this at all, or do you prefer to just have strong opinions for no good reason?
I can't believe this content is free.
Thanks so much.
brilliant learner and it seems to both intrigue him in all subjects and provide a fantastic tool for his personal evolution. So fun to watch, thank you 🙏
When my man is saying cooked food, he's not talking about BBQ bananas. Eating meat, cooked meat, was one of the catalyst for us to enter into an age of progression. Farming is what enabled society to propel forward.
5:00 He forgot to add environment of both species in equation, namely Neanderthal lived in a harsh environment like today Alaska where was thoroughly planing a base for surviving it couldn't have a lot of offsprings because of scared resources.
Homosapiens on the other hand came from a rich environment where a planning wasn't necessary for surviving and could live in a large groups with a lot of offsprings.
Those two philosophies how to live are seen even today if compared Africa as a home ground for the Homosapiens and Europe as home ground of Neanderthal.
Not to forget Homosapiens come from much warmer Africa probably with some diseases which could be lethal for Neanderthal.
Yes, I've seen other experts speak of this exact topic. They all came to same conclusion... it didn't matter. It was inevitable. Cooperation was key. Neanderthals were doomed.
Neanderthal also came from Africa -- the early modern homosapiens that came into contact with neanderthal had been out of Africa for at least tens of thousands of years. The big shift was when we surpassed Neanderthal as the apex primate in the Upper Paleolithic -- all Sapien populations became far more robust and had shared culture that came out of Europe, not Africa, in the Aurignacian.
@Lee Juddy well, as I said, cooperation is the key. And muslims don't seem to get along much better with each other than any other doctrine. What with the whole sunni vs shiite infighting and all. So I'm not sold, not yet. But who knows...
@@dirksharp9876 damn, in half the words, you managed to overrule the original comment. Nicely done! Her comment was hollow and weak, and now exposed.
Your comment seems questionable.
You don’t seem to understand that, like modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans
both evolved from Homo Naledi, which was an African hominid.
Language is our most powerful tool. We have a greater ability to negotiate, bargain, lie and at times, recognize a lie.
Don’t let Joe Rogan hear about the alpha male thing
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:02 📚 Richard Wrangham discusses the main ideas in his book "The Goodness Paradox."
- Humans exhibit extremes in violence and non-violence.
- We excel in proactive violence, unlike most animals.
- Our societies are remarkably peaceful, despite our violent capabilities.
05:06 🧐 Wrangham discusses the significance of removing alpha males and promoting cooperation in societies.
- Removing alpha males fosters more tolerant, less reactive aggression.
- Cooperation becomes central in human societies.
- This greater cooperation likely contributed to the expansion of Homo sapiens over Neanderthals.
07:11 🍳 The central idea in Wrangham's book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human."
- The emergence of Homo erectus was linked to the control of fire.
- Cooking with fire transformed human evolution.
- Fire control reduced the difficulty of growing a larger brain.
11:09 🤖 Wrangham explains how cooking allowed for a larger brain and provided a significant evolutionary advantage.
- Cooking made food more digestible, supplying more energy.
- It drastically reduced the time spent on chewing and digestion.
- This enabled the growth of a larger brain in Homo erectus.
Made with HARPA AI
Lex is killing it 👊
Fascinating stuff. Nice job Lex
That part about the cooked food is so true, I’ve noticed it in my dog (he literally just said your dogs and cats prefer cooked food as I was typing that) I’ve noticed my dog reacts differently when we’re prepping her food, prepping raw meat for ourselves, and when the meat is being cooked/plated. She’ll watch you pretty closely when you get her food ready and follow you to her bowl, sometimes she pops into the kitchen when she smells the raw meat come out of the fridge, but once you start cooking the meat and sit down to eat she goes NUTS.
Edit: he mentions a correlation between cooked food and an increase in brain function and size. I wonder if you bread generations of dogs and only fed them cooked meals if you’d eventually start to produce smarter and smarter dogs 🤔
don't think so. there should be a selection criteria for bigger brain size too. in our ancestor's case bigger brains meant higher survival rates, however for a domesticated animal's case it does not matter if it is smarter or not. unless you introduce that to your experiment as an "artifical selection"
@@mzyil Damn. I was about to cook meals for my dog all summer then put him in a suit, and schedule a job interview for him so he can work and I can quit my job
Dogs are actually significantly less smarter then Wolfs because they no longer need to be smart to surivive. Becoming domesticated and understanding Humans emotions and vocals isn't the same as intelligence. Domesticated animals are less smart then their wild cousins.
Also would destroy jaw strength over the generations
Our superpower is adaptability. No matter the situation we can adapt
If squirrels could learn to start fires we would be in REAL trouble
So would they....
Middle school teachers deal with these daily.
John Hawking wrote about how human’s evolved to be less reactive due to practising settled agriculture and living in large communities in his book “The 10,000 Year Explosion”, prior to this, modern humans were quite reactive.
I wonder if thats why people, especially children, are afraid of the dark. Stray from the fire = eaten.
Right at the end of this clip, at 18:25, was he saying that our brains have become SMALLAR recently?
My favorite theory is the giant war between the two species. There has been plenty of evidence to show fighting was happening between them everywhere so we might of just wiped them out
No there isn’t monkeys never turned into monkeys or there would be monkeys still turning into humans you have to be a brain dead to believe this crap!
Our Dna says they are us.
@@potomac2445 communication is about sending and receiving. your job is now to explain me so i can understand what you mean.
I'm not him, but let me support his theory. there was a time when the early humans were nearly wiped out. scientist believe only 50ooo survived. at that time the bow was invented too. so there might be that we lost a war till our species has established the most creative psychopaths
@@realmcafee pretty sure this fool doesnt believe in evolution.
Crazy how 1 to 2% of European and Asian people have Neanderthal DNA still. There was also interbreeding
This topic is unbelievably fascinating, can't wait to watch the full podcast!!
Full podcast has been out for a long while now.
Or maybe read one of the hundreds of books on this subject! Just a thought
Neanderthals lived in the north, and life up there must have been pretty darn rough during the worst parts of the ice age. Makes sense most of them would have died off, with the survivors interbreeding out of existence with migrating humans as the ice age eased. Also a lot of the extremely quick and huge floods during the deglaciation especially hit hard in the north, so many of their coastal population may have gotten wiped out in practically an instant.
Neanderthals originated from Africa and migrated with humans to Europe and Asia.
@@meritorioustechnate9455 wrong
@@kylekissack4633 You’ve come to be educated. Should we begin with Neanderthal, Denisovans or the unidentified subspecies linked to both?
@@meritorioustechnate9455 I'm confused. Are these people denying the existence of Neanderthals?
Very interesting guest and a highly informative subject!
I'd like this gentleman to examine the current situation in America's big cities where the beta males and females won't allow the alpha males and females (police) to do their jobs. The effect has been the rise in lower thinking alpha males wreaking havoc in said cities.
Interesting and so true.
Police are collectively one of the biggest groups of betas on the planet lmao
2:49 ether side violent everything is situational, generally if you have food shelter, medical care and gainful employment available as in you can buy the nice things people produce people are not violent, if these things are lacking the likelihood of violence is much higher.
My last dog, a mongrel mix of beagle, terrier, etc, wouldn't eat a small piece of raw deer meat. I was surprised. He LOVED a broiled T-bone or pork chop.
The dog of my childhood, a 30-something lbs mix of Cocker Spaniel, terrier, collie, would kill a rabbit and devour every piece of matter from head to tail, guts and all. But she mostly ate table scraps.
by this point weve bred out the wild in the wolf... that one dog would eventually eat raw meat if he was on his own starving one day but he knows that cook tbone with all that juice and spices is GOOOOOD lol... your cocker mix still had a little wolf in her... i used to have a girl cocker they are pretty smart for being on smaller side of dog breeds and she was super loyal to me because i would always sneak her extra food or snacks. my mom and brother took her when they moved and i went off to college and new city for work so it had been 5-6 years since she had seen me and the look of WTF on her face when i came in the house and called her name she could not believe it... then instant zoomies and tail wagging, she would not leave my side for days and spent the night in my bed even tho she loved sleeping on the couch over anything. damn i miss her... RIP ZOE
Cooking food allowed our ancestors to begin the digestion process before they started eating. This meant our bodies didn’t need to dedicate as much energy to the digestive process, and they were therefore able to dedicate more energy to their brains. The cultivation of the cooking process led directly to an increase in brain size in our hominid ancestors.
Absolutely fascinating. So much to learn. Love learning from lex and his amazing guests.
Sure. If you're an unread dunce, everything seems amazing
@@hmq9052 Tell me about your contributions to Anthropology....
@@slapshot1x I've read hundreds of books on anthropology either directly or indirectly through literature, fiction and non fiction, or essays on the human condition. I'm not sure why I singled you out for criticism. What you said was perfectly reasonable. Accept my apologies.
Lex Fridman is the single most amazing interviewer in the world today. Attentive, interested, lets his guests speak and develop their ideas, and always comes up with insightful questions which make the conversation even more interesting.
Fascinating.
Is this sarcasm? He’s genuinely a bad interviewer. He’s monotonous, he mumbles, he asks very surface level questions and is clearly very impressed with himself. His guests are good, so I can see why you might enjoy it and mistakenly think Lex is good. But the “most amazing interviewer in the world today”? That’s nuts to say
Sean Evans is the best
@@HieronymousLex I´d love to know your opinion on who the best interviewer is. Or name some so I can expand my knowledge. No sarcasm here. Be well fellow human.
Cooking meat increasing the calories, depends on how it is cooked. Prehistoric humans were mostly cooking over an open fire, losing a lot of those calories to the fire. A grilled burger has less calories than a raw burger.
Although, I do believe cooking certain vegetables could have promoted brain development in early humans.
Cooking meat changes its chemical makup to a different material/substance. Sure there are less calories but eating cooked meat is almost the sole reason why humans developed a frontal lobe of the brain.
Cooked meat requires less digestive work for the calories gained. This allowed human guts to shrink and brains to grow.
A cooked burger might have fewer calories, but a raw burger will provide fewer calories than a cooked burger because you have to expend more calories to consume it
Same reason you dont put snow right in your mouth for water, just collect it and let it melt
Vegetation was equivalent to psychedelics in that time..that allowed the prehistoric humans to mentally develop and create daily concepts that we abide by today
Can any of you recommend some books on this topic ?
Lex, this is a first class podcast. Richard Wrangham is a wonderful speaker. Well done both. 👌👌👌👌👌
Love this episode Lex. Thank You.
How old is this interview? The information seems to be quite Antiquated compared contemporary primatology, anthropology and neurons science
"Humans can kill all other animals on earth with a sharp stick." -I heard that somewhere
Very interesting conversation... especially the important of controlling fire and most animals, including apes, prefer cooked food. Personally, I've always thought that less time eating equated to more time thinking and inventing.
While yes I agree some did tinker and think. I honestly think we just did more mating and killing after eating.
Lex "Your going to get eaten." Richard "Your going to get terrified and your going to get eaten."
Loved this conversation a smile the entire Time 😂 thank you gentlemen 🎩
That’s the truth we are naturally violent … when the soldiers went to Vietnam and were allowed to kill at Will they all said it was a rush better then Heroin … scary but so is our nature
We ate them all.
We actually absorbed them...a lot of the human race today have a tiny bit of neanderthal DNA...yep, we jumped them outta existence
*humped not jumped...my autocorrect is a prude
No we didn't, we had heavenly copulation with them.
@@john12152 there is a calculation that roughly 40% of the neanderthal genome is spread out in our genome, 1% here and there in different population
5:00 He forgot to add environment of both species in equation, namely Neanderthal lived in a harsh environment like today Alaska where was thoroughly planing a base for surviving it couldn't have a lot of offsprings because of scared resources.
Homosapiens on the other hand came from a rich environment where a planning wasn't necessary for surviving and could live in a large groups with a lot of offsprings.
Those two philosophies how to live are seen even today if compared Africa as a home ground for the Homosapiens and Europe as home ground of Neanderthal.
Not to forget Homosapiens come from much warmer Africa probably with some diseases which could be lethal for Neanderthal.
"Proactive violence high, reactive violence low" - this sounds similar to what Rene Girard talks about in the scapegoat mechanism
This dichotomy between reactive and active aggression is good, but the governing dynamics (as Nash says in the movie) is between cooperation and opportunism. I think. Alpha males are everywhere, trying to cooperate not be be betta males and betta males…. Etc.
I find the distinction between reactive and proactive aggression very useful. They use diferent brain circuits making it possible for them to evolve independently. Biologically that's the distinction. Behaviorally there is cooperation and competition within groups and between groups. Cooperation within the group improves with reduced reactive aggression, less "You piss me off. I hit you." Competition between groups, improves with reduced proactive aggression, less "Your tribe is funny and you're stealing our game animals. We get together, attack your camp at dawn, and kill everyone." Opportunism within the group requires a different response than opportunism between groups.
Id like to know more about the habilis dude, because they did the hardest part of getting from the trees to the ground.
The fact that multiple types of hominids roamed the earth at the same time, and us sapiens just happened to be the evolutionary winners, really throws a wrench into the Biblical version of reality.
No. Humans devolved from etheric beings. Evolution is a fraud. And I'm not even a "Christian"
@@visionaryvalley4347 Your point goes against the great majority of the scientific community. I hope (for the argument's sake) that you have some very good reasons to say that.
@@joseribeiro5894 exactly.
@@visionaryvalley4347 lmao
You got me. You re a troller right?
Agreed, and so I prefer a more Masonic interpretation:
Existence had not been made devoid of potentials, out of respect to life.
Now you might ask: what does that mean exactly...
Well, how else do we measure the value of a thing, but by how much it contributes to a better existence?
If solving a problem (such as world hunger) is inherently glorious, then problems (such as starvation) are entirely necessary in order to improve upon some aspect of existence: therefore also, for meaning, glory and in this case; survival.
If we were born flawless into a perfect world, then "God" would have failed to bestow any significant meaning unto his creations.
Like an inventor whose invention failed improve upon anything - a solution for a problem that didn't need solving.
I suppose however, that is all rooted in the concept that life is inherently a meaningful thing - and to some degree, that is what separates religion from philosophy.
That difference is why some atheists might not adhere to any specified religion and yet hold a sacred reverence for the idea at the innermost core of all religion.
This discussion had me at full ear.
Are we naturally corrupt or naturally kind?
Yes.
I enjoyed this interview!!
10:46 That's a good arguments for volume eating raw vegetables to lose weight.
I'm confused. Isn't he saying that if we ate more raw food our guts would be bigger? So more weight?
@@roboito9130 I think it means that our stomach physically stretches out to accommodate more food. You can stretch your stomach out quite easily when trying to put weight on over a prolonged period of time.
@@roboito9130 Yes, for other primates they need bigger bellies to digest their food. My point was that humans who want to lose weight, should eat food high in volume, but low in calories to get full on lower amount of calories. The diet is called volume eating, lots of info online about it.
Yup. It works. The more raw fruits and vegetables you eat, the less cravings you have, and therefore the more you replace high calorie foods. Also, your body gets a workout just trying to digest raw fruits and vegetables. The only real downside is the farts.
When he described beta males as something good he lost me.
Yeah. I wasn't sold on this idea either.
When everyone's a beta, no one's a beta
When an anthropologist talks about alpha and beta he probably has very different creatures in mind than what we colloquially refer to when we use these terms
The story of who beat who has not yet come to an end.
Reminds me of the beginning chapters of Yuval’s Sapiens.
Great book
Dog's helped us evolve by protecting us while we slept and helped us hunt
I can’t stop watching what Richard is doing with his hands lol
Specifically around 9:47
Fire is easily at the top of “discoveries” or “inventions”. It doesn’t matter how intelligent Dolphins or Octopus are, they’ll never be able to play with fire and thus they will never go on to evolve other technologies.
@alan kinsella that.. that was the point... that you can't get fire... underwater....
Neanderthals may well have been completely tied into their environment. They may have practiced natural birth control in hard times much like lions and other species do, they won’t have children in hard times keeping their numbers low whereas Sapiens probably just had children whatever, hard times good times. This would eventually mean that Sapiens outbred Neanderthals.
actually, some studies are showing that a huge volcanic event in the todays Italy region could be a very possible cause of their demise... based on these studies, the mentioned event covered almost the whole of Europe in volcanic ash, causing a long term drop of temperatures and plant and animal starvation in the whole region.. due to the fact that at that point in time, Neanderthals didnt use agriculture and were heavily dependent on hunting, this lead to their overall populational reduction and only a few smaller tribes remained close to the sea shores, in Spain... which wasnt enough to save them from going extinct. Based on this, there actually wasnt any real war between Sapiens and Neanderthals... Sapiens were luckier, had better means of survival and in the end overpopulated and mixed with Neanderthals.
@@Amatsuichi how do you know they didn't use agriculture? They may have corralled cattle or sheep and fed them on grasses, isn't that farming?
@@alexbowman7582 just judging based on the sources Ive read.. in those Neanderthals were mostly described as nomads wandering Europe and hunting based on the availability of animals and their natural living regions... having cattle or sheep would mostly require long term settlements, not sure if that could have been the case for them... yet, even if, the volcanic eruption event I was mentioning, would have most certainly killed off all animals they had due to a general lack of food theyve experienced.
@@alexbowman7582 The domestication of animals as resources came about 8,000 BCish while the Neanderthals became extinct roughly 30,000 BC.
@@Phantus00 there’s ancient European human bones from hundreds of thousands of years ago showing T.B. scars presumably from living close to cattle of some type probably not from just hunting them but either corralling them behind fences, herding them or even living in a home with them much like what still happens in Asia. When does looking after cattle become farming? I would suggest it is farming and if it did happen then farming may be half a million years old.
No more full episodes?
How do we know a lot of Neanderthals were inbred if we've only found a small percentage of the populations remains. It's rare for things to fossilize. I think most were not inbred.
A fair guess, but I think they are going by the information that they have, instead of the information that they suppose might be hidden from us. This will be the standard to prove incorrect, once more information has been found.
@@Inertia888 The danger of basing a theory on a thin line of evidence is that age tends to harden the "validity" given to it if we don't find new evidence soon enough after the initial discoveries.
People tend to prefer nostalgic misconceptions over newer accurate info.
They seemed to live in very small family tribes, and not mix much with other groups or interact with other tribes. So it makes sense there would not be much diversity 🤷♀️
You are correct about fossilization but this assumption about inbreeding is not based solely on fossils. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology analyzed a genome sequence of a Neanderthal woman from Siberia and showed that her parents were half-siblings and mating among close relatives was common among her recent ancestors. It wasn't just her parents. They found evidence of extensive and long-term inbreeding in her DNA. We also have countless lines of evidence showing that Neanderthal lived in much smaller groups which had very little interaction with their neighbors in comparison with sapiens, such as items found in burial remains. Inbreeding is a safe assumption but so is your idea of there being a wider range of gene flow when for instance, the ice melted and they could travel beyond their ranges. My guess would be that because of the waxing/waning of their habitat, Neanderthals went through periods of socialization (and therefore healthier gene flow) as well as periods of isolation. We're talking about tens of thousands of generations so there's opportunity for both but it seems reasonable to assume that Neanderthal's constantly changing habitat and hunting situation probably limited their group size and gene flow capabilities. Especially with the DNA to back it up. But that's the brilliant thing about science. It will never stop trying to prove itself wrong.
With reptiles and amphibians ruling for almost the entire existence of life on the planet, I've always been curious about early humans and evolution and how we finally evolved past nocturnal scavengers, with reptiles and amphibians being extremely oppressive. 11:52
I learned so much. Thank you for the lessons.
Around 13:45 talking about humans "discovering cooked meat after learning how to make fire". Seems odd they would both draw same conclusion.
It would be more likely that before learning how to make fire, they would have found cooked meat after brush fires which occur naturally. I'm guessing that being able to cook meat was one of the stronger motivators for them to learn how to make fire.
Turns out fast food is the true hero all along
Besides fire, the most important invention was the spear - it allowed us to go from being prey to being a hunter. Just think about it, a group of humans walking in the Serengeti with spears or without them.
Neanderthals had fire prior cooked their food also created art, jewelry, buried their dead, created structures, some lived in huts new studies show
What type of jewels did the neanderthals have access to?
Sea shells mostly but they also could of made them out of rocks and stuff they found that were pretty
Jewelry don't need to be jewls
They died out.
That's a youtube narrative, modern humans are over 200,000kyrs old. Instead of acknowledging ancient humans, credit is now given to aliens and Neanderthals; ever since 2005/2006 when the Human genome project came out.
Lex gonna be the new JRE one day
Equally as good as JRE!
Lex has more science based guests, for that sphere of guests Lex’s podcast is superior.
Way better
We didn't beat Neanderthals, Nature did. We are the last of our species that we know of.
If our brains evolved and grew faster with cooked food... and we feed our cats and dogs cooked food... is that why I swear animals are getting smarter and more "humanized"?🤔 🤯🥴
I don't think simply eating cooked food incites evolutionary growth, but rather the act of "learning" to cook food does?
Besides our pets have always been smart, unless your dog/cat is learning how to cook food for you I would say animals are not becoming more "humanized"
Interesting point Tabitha. There is recent research on dogs and their adaptation to looking directly at the face of their human family members. It goes to their use of queues between species and I am curious how this effects their brain development and adaptation. Also, please tell your dog to call my dog instead of texting. Lol. Jester is your last name so I had to include the text joke. I can post the research link in a separate reply.
Amazing! 🙌
Such and easy interview wish more ppl did this. If u invite a very smart person to your show ask good questions and just let them speak
Exactly 💯
Yes true. You have to be a great investigative researcher into your interviewee's books and subject matter. Lex is a very intelligent man. He works at MIT as a teacher so he has to have an incredible IQ and some great mind too.
loved this podcast!
That stuff about alpha and beta, don't know maybe he's talking about the monkey stuff but I don't think it worked like that with pre humans
I mean, there is still hierarchy among humans, socially, in the work place etc and females are still attracted to "alpha male" stuff (I have been practising this and got results) not ooga booga style tho but yeah that anolagy is a bit strange
Completely ignored the y-chromosome defect in Neanderthal males that prevented breeding with Human females. What this clown is offering is conjecture at best. Frank Church’s data is pretty solid. In a tribal society, natural selection would favor the males that can mate with more partners. Alpha characteristics play a role, but biological compatibility was the determinant factor.
12:17 i imagine it is very much coupled.
I mean, you learn to control fire, the first thing a curious human does would be to play with it, to put things in it.
Leaves and sticks at first, maybe a rock, and surely a piece of meat before long.