Daily: ANOTHER KIND OF HUMAN – Why Neanderthals were more like us than you think

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Neanderthal” is a common term of abuse but should we stop feeling so superior towards our close evolutionary relatives? Did they think like us, even at the abstract level? Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of the “insanely fascinating” Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death And Art tells Ian Dunt what we know about the astonishing sophistication of Neanderthal mind, manufacturing and material culture… and why there are traces of Neanderthal in us today. “If we could scan a Neanderthal brain it’s very possible we’d see they didn’t think so differently from us.” “We assume we’re ‘better’ than Neanderthals because we dominated them… That doesn’t fit with the idea of different human groups meeting and interbreeding.” “We shouldn’t be surprised that we could breed with Neanderthals. They are another kind of human” “Homo sapiens are weird in the evolutionary tree, with our big balloon heads.” “Neanderthal women were highly muscled. You wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle them.” Presented by Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production C8muVeosxCVXdHDLSwLs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker daily my name is Ian Duntt and today I'm talking to Rebecca Ragsikes, author of Kindred, Neanderthal life, love, death and art.
1:17.6	It was just that the second book that I read in my sort of foolish and I think internally contradictory idea of trying to read all about human history chronologically.
1:27.6	And also the first book that started on the premise of everything I thought I knew about this subject was completely wrong.
1:36.0	So thanks for coming to talk to us Becky and for correcting what I presume I'm not the only person to have these assumptions about Neanderthals every single one of which is wrong.
1:44.3	Thank you for having me but well it's easy as an archaeologist you know I know that I know the data
1:50.1	but yeah it's it's been really nice actually that even archaeologists have said, you know what, I didn't know that.
1:57.0	Can you answer the question that I think is probably the most Google search questions from the And soyl just to get us started which is on the
2:03.3	and the Andetol's human.
2:04.4	Absolutely they are a kind of human.
2:07.8	When you're dealing with fossil species you've basically just got the bones and now so we have some of the genetics.
	...

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