Cavemen Rock, Part XI: The Thrilling Conclusion

Hi everybody, welcome back to the show that’s Proudly Irrelevant: Office Hours with the Brofessor. Today we’re wrapping up our paleoanthropology series, known as “Cavemen Rock” to the elite. Last time we learned about the emergence of Homo sapiens and the transition to behavioral modernity. That expression refers not just to looking like modern people anatomically, but also acting like modern people. Behavioral modernity seemed to emerge around 70,000 years ago, while our species has been around for almost five times that, as our friend Old Jeb has demonstrated. This intermediate period, known as the Middle Paleolithic, seems to suggest a period of agonizing trial and error covering thousands of generations—though even this progress would have been faster than the glacial pace of Lower Paleolithic development. 

But finally, between fifty and a hundred thousand years ago, people who thought, spoke, and acted exactly like us were spreading across the world. This brings us to a period called the Upper Paleolithic, in which modern human behavior can be inferred from archaeological remains. During the Upper Paleolithic, people spread out around the world, either displacing or assimilating all other Homo species in their wake. These ancient species, known as archaic hominins, include not only Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, and other species already discussed, but some surprising new species that have only recently been unearthed and studied; we know, furthermore, that at least some of these stragglers managed to hold on until a startlingly recent date, suggesting that perhaps even more surprising discoveries await science.

 

Species 1: Behaviorally Modern Humans

 
Behaviorally modern humans, henceforth “we” or “us”, seemed to have arisen in Africa, and by 50,000 years ago had spread to Asia, Europe, and Australia. Throughout this series, we have been doing an interesting exercise: imagining our interactions, as people, with the creatures we encounter. Thus far, every species we have encountered has come up wanting, despite increasingly frequent flashes of pseudo-modern behavior. But finally, we can say definitively that, by fifty thousand years ago, there were people living who we could interact with as other people—we would be able to talk to them, befriend them, go to war with them, and marry them. There was no apparent cognitive or behavioral disparity between us today and us fifty thousand years ago. How do we know this? The intricacy of tools suggests critical thinking, innovation, and the ability to teach skills using language. Meanwhile, the Upper Paleolithic sees an explosion of creative expression; art becomes not only ubiquitous but beautifully made. Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the period: 

Engraved ostrich shells from Diepkloof, South Africa (60 KYA):

(1) 

The Oldest Extant Naturalistic Art (from Sulawesi, 44 KYA)

(2) 

Lowenmensch “Lion Man” (Germany, 35-40 KYA)

(3) 

Animal + Genitals Painting, Chauvet Cave, France (30-35 KYA)

(4) 

THE FRENCH: BIZARRE, PRETENTIOUS ABSTRACT ART SINCE 30,000 BC 

At the same time, this is only what has survived over tens of thousands of years. During this time people had other aesthetic experiences, such as music, storytelling, and ceremony that have not survived to the present. How I would love to meet the people who made these works, and be able to hear their stories and listen to their music! Their lives, now long gone beneath the surging tide of ages, were just as rich and dramatic as our own. 

Species 2: Post-Contact Neanderthals 

“OAAAAAAAAA!” 

That’s a quote from one of my favorite movies, “Ao: The Last Hunter”. Good movie. It’s a slightly cheesy look at what interactions between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens might have been like during this period. Check it out! Be warned, there is a pretty gross caveman sex scene. Neanderthals thought we were pretty cool. Or at least, they thought our whole “culture” thing was pretty cool. As soon as they made contact with us, we start finding more and more tantalizing hints that they borrowed elements of true culture from Homo sapiens, such as scratching geometric patterns into cave floors (5) and decorating themselves with feathers—black was their favorite color (6). Furthermore, the oldest known cave paintings, dating from over 60 KYA, were Neanderthal in origin (7):

We also have neanderthal paintings of seals, apparently the local food source, that are roughly concurrent with the buffalo painting above (43kya):

It seems, therefore, that interaction with behaviorally modern people brought Neanderthals into something approximating behavioral modernity. Could we, and did we, really interact with them the same way we interact with one another? Sadly, we will never know. BUT. Another thing that Neanderthals did when they met us is make babies. Yes, with us. Which meant, if you’re at all familiar with the process of baby manufacture, that at least some humans and Neanderthals actually found one another attractive. That’s right: humans and Neanderthals could fall in love:

Amazing artwork from Tom Bjorklund (8).

Tell me Neanderthal girls aren’t cute! That’s right, you can’t! 

We know we had children together because, having sequenced the Neanderthal genome, geneticists have located Neanderthal DNA in the genetic makeup of many modern people—myself included! 

Species 3: Relict H. erectus on Java 

Before we get into the recently-discovered species, let’s mention someone else we’re already familiar with. On the island of Java in modern Indonesia, long outlasting the other members of their species, a relict population of Homo erectus survived until as late as 108,000 years ago (9), at the same time behavioral modernity was emerging among H. sapiens. Once spanning all across Afro-Eurasia, Erectus had now been relegated to a tiny toehold in the rainforests of Java. This makes H. erectus by far the most successful Homo species, with a tenure of 1.8 million years stretching back beyond the old days of Grandpa George (Homo georgicus). That’s almost seven times the age of our species, and seventeen times the age of behavioral modernity.

It’s entirely possible that behaviorally modern humans may have even run into these guys as they migrated along the Indian Ocean coast, which would be a very interesting interaction to see. How much of our culture could Erectus have picked up? Could we have communicated with them at all? If there’s one thing Erectus loved, it’s symmetrical hand-axes, and we know that even these had some degree of aesthetics to them, not least in their striking symmetry. In some admittedly non-Indonesian cases we see the incorporation of naturally occurring fossils, or hand-axes too large to be practically useful. When I was at the Met in New York, I had the opportunity to get a load of this absolute unit:

Let’s also not forget, these are the guys who made the Trinil shell doodles. Would that potential for aesthetics have been enough for them to learn language, or develop a truly human culture, once they came into contact with us? Finally, what was their ultimate fate? Could they have assimilated into our communities, or had children with us? Did they die of our diseases, get outcompeted for resources, or were they so different from us that we simply killed them on sight? 

Species 4: Denisovans 

Now we’re getting into archaic species that have just been discovered. Denisovans, named for Denisova cave in Siberia, were cousins of the Neanderthals that lived in northern and eastern Asia—so far their presence has also been confirmed in Tibet. Touchingly, the latter find is accompanied by the hand-and footprints of Denisovan children (10), like you might see a child’s handprint in concrete today.

The Siberian finds, which yielded some bone fragments, have given us enough DNA to know that these creatures were a separate species from both us and Neanderthals, but also that they contributed to the genes of some people living today. Amazingly, the people who carry their genes are not from Siberia, as you might expect, but are instead the Indigenous people of Australia, New Guinea, and parts of the South Pacific (11). This, I think, goes to show how much we still have to learn about these fascinating prehistoric migrations. Also germane to the discussion is that they were apparently making abstract art, as these 100,000 year-old etchings from Northern China show (12):

Here is an artist’s interpretation of a teenage Denisovan girl whose remains were found in Siberia, from the PBS series “Eons”. Also worthy of note is that she’s also Neanderthal; her DNA tells us that her Dad was a Neanderthal, and her mom was a Denisovan.

(13) 

And now, a shout out to some cool modern kids who may have Denisovans among their ancestors:

Species 5: Homo floresiensis 

Speaking of the South Seas, this is a relatively new species found in Indonesia that turned the paleoanthropological community upside-down. You might have read about these guys before—they’re the “hobbits” of the prehistoric world, who due to isolation on a remote island stood only three feet tall.

(14) Here’s another image that I wish I had the source for, but don’t. Sorry. I think it’s from National Geographic.

They also hunted Komodo Dragons, which is awfully badass in my book, especially if you're three feet tall:

Now how does this happen? If you’re stuck on an island for hundreds of thousands of years, you gradually get smaller, since there are fewer resources. Compare, for instance, Shetland ponies. Now here’s where things get interesting: on the Indonesian island of Flores, where these guys were discovered, there have been stories told of weird little caveman dudes living in the jungle and stealing farmers’ crops…and sure enough, here are skeletons of weird little caveman dudes. Could these stories have been grounded in reality? Could a relict population of H. floresiensis have survived long enough for the modern population to remember them? Now, if you’re a real scientist, you’re probably rolling your eyes at my pseudoscientific speculation…but you have to wonder! 

Species 6: Homo luzonensis 

Not much to say about these guys yet, except that they lived in the Philippines, and probably used boats to get there (15).

Species 7: Homo naledi 

Yet another species just discovered in the last few years, this time in South Africa. These guys are interesting because of how ancient-looking they are. There’s a great Nova special, Dawn of Humanity, that discusses this. They almost seem more like H. habilis or even Australopithecus…and yet, here they are, roughly 250,000 years ago, or roughly the same age as our own species. Huh. Scientists weren’t sure what they were seeing with these guys. They had small brains, and were apparently designed for climbing trees and rocks rather than running—which is a big divergence from pretty much everybody since the emergence of H. erectus.

Despite their apparent atavism, they seemed, amazingly, to intentionally bury their dead. The cave where they were found was so inaccessible that it required special expert spelunkers to access; and yet, the skeletons of multiple H. naledi individuals were found here—too many for it to have been an accident. This suggests that the place was some kind of tomb, or ritual repository for corpses. So with these guys, not only are we seeing an very ancient-looking species at a very recent date, but they’re practicing the very modern behavior of deliberate burial.

(16)

(17)

(18) 

Species 8: The Red Deer Cave People 

Last but not least, we have the Red Deer Cave people, from what is now Guilin, Southwest China, right next door to Guizhou, where I used to live:

I don’t know about you guys, but the cheekbones remind me of Darth Vader’s helmet. 

Anyway, the Red Deer Cave people are the most recent pre-modern human relatives that we know of, although they may technically represent a hybrid group with both archaic and anatomically modern ancestors (19). The remains we have currently are astonishingly recent—only 14,000 years old. By comparison, the last Neanderthals probably lived around 35,000 years ago. This is a big deal. Scientists are debating right now if they really are another species, hybrids, or just weird-looking H. sapiens. But if either of the former two possibilities is the case, it would mean that we shared the planet with our non-H. sapiens cousins far more recently than anyone has heretofore dared to imagine.

 
Conclusion 

So, the Red Deer Cave people bring us to the date 14,000 years ago, or as I like to say, 14 KYA. Following their passing—pending further discoveries—Homo sapiens is the last hominin* standing. In geological terms, we have passed the Last Glacial Maximum (20), which means that from now on, the ice sheets are receding into what we have today. 

Following the last glacial maximum, we have the planet, along with human culture, gradually undergoing a trajectory into what it is today. The paleolithic, which was characterized by big-game hunting, phased into the Mesolithic, characterized by small-game hunting. This transition happened between 14 and 10KYA. The Neolithic began between 10 and 7 KYA, when people started the practice of sedentary agriculture, in places like the Near East and New Guinea, and ended with the development of metal technology. Around this time came the emergence of true civilization, with urban centers by 6kya and the written word by 5kya. Of course, for some remote hunter-gatherer groups, the Mesolithic never really ended until modern times. Even today, in some parts of the world, there are people who can remember the first time they or anyone in their culture saw metal. 

To finish our journey through the days of cavemen, I’d like to draw attention to a find from Jordan, dated to 14kya and therefore contemporary with the Red Deer Cave People. Here, associated with what archaeologists call the Natufian culture, we find the remains of an oven, complete with 14,000-year-old bread crumbs and even traces of mustard seeds (21):

Which is great, because I like to spread mustard on my bread too. I’m in good company. Although there may be other evidence of cereal grains before this point, this find is most significant to me because here we’re finding bread crumbs, with a condiment still used today, that shared the planet with archaic hominins. Crazy stuff, and a good place to finish our series as it really marks the segue into the settled agricultural way of life that has been predominant in human history to the modern age. *hominin=bipedal hominids** 

**hominid=great ape 

Sources: 

1. https://www.pnas.org/content/107/14/6180 

2. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432604-300-44000-year-old-hunting-scene-is-earliest-painted-story-ever-found/ 

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man
4. https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/venus_sorcerer.php 

5. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28967746 

6. https://www.pnas.org/content/108/10/3888 

7. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/neanderthals-cave-art-humans-evolution-science 

8. https://www.facebook.com/tombjorklundart 

9. http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/last-homo-erectus-07934.html 

10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927321006174?via%3Dihub 

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan 

12. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2210461-oldest-denisovan-art-discovered-on-100000-year-old-bone-fragments/ 

13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20pXB20Mog 

14. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/feb/21/hobbit-rewriting-history-human-race 

15. https://www.u-bordeaux.com/News/A-new-species-of-human-Homo-luzonensis-discovered-in-the-Philippines 

16. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/09/150915-humans-death-burial-anthropology-Homo-naledi/ 

17. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-latest-on-homo-naledi 

18. http://www.early-man.com/homo-naledi.html 

19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people 

20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum 

21. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/24/631583427/14-000-year-old-piece-of-bread-rewrites-the-history-of-baking-and-farming?t=1640114496180