Recent finds in the Atapuerca site in Spain have confirmed and expanded our understanding of the tates and culinary practices of Homo antecessor.  This species is enigmatic and its place in the evolutionary tree unclear. 

But what is very clear is that it was cannibalistic. And on a large scale.  It had a taste for young hominins, probably from competing tribes. How, you ask, could we possibly know that?

In this epsiode of The History of Being Human, we cover everything we know and how we know it.  Height, habitus, habits, diet of animals and hominins, and behavior.  

This episode expands significantly on the previous consideration of archaic human cannibalism in episode 3.  

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Rhys Taylor Lemoine is a postdoctoral researcher in extinction, megafauna, rewilding, and novel ecosystems. Today he speaks to us about the late quaternary extinction. 

We discuss what megafauna are, their key roles in ecosystems, and the worldwide number and types that died off during the extinction of the late quaternary period (including the present).  Rhys discusses the two main theories about what drove -- and still drives -- these extinctions, overKILL and overCHILL. He then tells us why he and his research team posit that climate change was a lesser factor driving these extinctions. 

For Rhys, the extinctions are best explained by the introduction of a novel, insatiable, armed predator. One that could attack the largest and most dangerous animals from a distance with relatively little risk to itself. In other words, humans did it.

One of the evidences he considers is that the extinctions of the late quaternary continue to this day, and the current culprit in large animal extinction is not in dispute.

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In the late quaternary period, from about 50 to 10 thousand years ago, vast populations of large animals died out.  Among them are some of the most iconic of prehistoric creatures -- mammoths, mastodons, woolly rhinoceri, dire wolves, smilodons, giant sloths, cave bears, and on and on.  In North America, more than 70% of species over 40kg (about 100lb) disappeared. In South America, it was even more.  Eurasia and Australia lost most of their large animals, including mammals, birds, and reptiles.

What happened?

Did the opportinistic pathogen known as Homo sapiens sapiens wipe them out?  Or was it the climactic upheaval of the ending of the last ice age?  Something else entirely?

Lively and ongoing debate surrounds this topic still.  In this episode we go over the theories proposed and the relative merits of each.  

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In this episode we begin a groundbreaking, never-before-attempted, altogether unprecedented series on the history of being human.  

We are going to cover some of the best people who ever lived. Aside from my Dad, that is.

Today we cover the "Moral Circle" concept, as a way to introduce just one of the criteria that will be going into deciding who is truly good, and who is truly not in the running.



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On this episode we cover the famous, ancient "Ship of Theseus" thought experiment, and then stretch it into relevance for the very modern possibility of tranfering our psyche, and possibly our very identity, to a digital format.



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Being Bipedal was a key step in becoming human. Many of our other abilities, and liabilities, began with bipedalism.  On this episode:

When bipedalism?
Why bipedalism?

We dispell some myths and establish some likelihoods about this uhique and pleuripotent trait.

See the video of this episode here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZa3WwVyNeo&t=390s



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Borges wrote:

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire”

Time is the dimension we all inhabit, through which we propelled in only one direction. Why is this? Can we account for time's arrow? Can we reverse it?  Why does time only move in one direction?

See the youtube episode here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbXv7vMOjJ8

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Most of us have had the feeling that we have experienced something before that we know we could not have expereinced before.  It can vary intensity from a slight familiarity to a sure conviction that we have seen, heard, smelled, or othewise lived through what we know in our mind to be novel.

What is this feeling? What does it mean if anything? Is there any point to it?

See the Youtube Episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdqn4mAh-ZY


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Today we go in depth about the death of John Allen Chau in 2018, including a complete reading of his own personal diary of the terrifying, disturbing events around North Sentinel Island. Events that he willingly waded into.  

Was he a hero or a villain?  Selfless or Narcissistic?  Chances are very high the verdict you render will depend greatly on your own temperament, backgorund, and beliefs. In other words, your opinion of John will depend on which tribe you are a member of.

Art by Ian Armstrong

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Part 1: The most tribal of tribes, the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island

We don't know much about them. We don't know what they call themselves, what they think the world or universe is like, what they believe about the rest of humanity. 

We don't know how they are organized, what they worship, how they see right and wrong.

What we do know is that the North Sentinelese are the most tribal of tribes -- hostile to outsiders, uninterested in changing or developing along 'Western' lines, and unwilling to extend any moral status to vistors. 

In 2018 a young American Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, was killed by these people. Was it murder of an innocent or defense against an invader? Sadism or self-preservation? 

To understand what happened, we will first look into the history of interactions between the people of North Sentinel Island and outsiders, contacts that went occasionally acceptably, but usually very badly, for one party ot the other. 

To support this podcast:
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Hitler was a failure who achieved the opposite of nearly all of his stated intentions. 

But was he insane as well?  

His life and legacy might argue he was, but what do the experts say?

If he was insane, what was the diagnosis? And if he was not insane, how do you account for his actions?

Was he a meth head, dragon chaser, narcissist, psychopath, schizophrenic, oedipal conflicted anal regressive, or what?  

In this episode we explore the body of literature devoted to explaining the motivations and actions of Adolf Hitler, and ask the question of whether he should be explained at all.

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He's one of the most reviled people in Western history -- a man whose cruelty, jealousy, and violence are proverbial. And yet his legacy is much more nuanced, his person more complicated than most of us know.

One thing that is not in question is that he died a miserable death; in pain, angry, and resentful. Was it, as Josephus said, divine justice? Was it foul play?

Spoiler: as bad as it was, it appears to have been neither, and can be easily explained.


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I have released my first TouTube video and this is the audio -- see the episode here:

https://youtu.be/uVfn5Ar1rmg?si=e3TE_6tCWEuQxf7h

Schrodinger's Cat Quick and Easy

Yes, this is based on a longer podcast episode -- but hey, you've got to start somwhere!

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The OG, greatest generation of Human ever! At least if your metric is a dogged determination to keep existing.

For 2 million years these prehistoric hominins wandered far and wide, high and low, filling every available lakeshore and riverbed.

What can we know about them? Their looks, abilities, traits? Did they use fire? Language? Clothing? Where did they come from and get to?

And why, after such a successful run, did they exit the world stage?

Today on the History of Being Human, the essential guide to all things Erectus.




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This week I wander off the topic of Life Extension (more next episode) to take advantage of an opportunity to interview an anthropologist about the White Sands footprints.

Not since the Laetoli Australopithecus prints has a set of human footprints rocked the world of paleontology like those found in White Sands, New Mexico. Studies have dated these prints to 21-23,000 year ago, more than 6000 years older than humans were known to have arrived in the Americas!

Many scientist are convinced the date is accurate; but if it is, it means a reshaping of an entire paradigm.

In this episode I speak with Dr. Edward Jolie about his work, and about those prints.

Dr. Jolie is the Clara Lee Tanner Associate Professor of Anthropology (School of Anthropology) and Associate Curator of Ethnology (Arizona State Museum) at the University of Arizona.

In this wide-ranging discussion we cover:

0: 00 Intro to Dr. Jolie and his work
12:10 Were the Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblo people) cannibals? (Sorry, I couldn't resist the Man Corn debate!)
14:40 The White Sands footprints
16:40 The "Clovis First" paradigm (ie., the "Standard Model" of peopling of Americas
20:50. Why the White Sands prints are potential paradigm changers
28:40 The reliability of oral cultural transmission
30:40 Two objections to the 21-23K year old dating

Thank you to Dr. Jolie for sharing his insights with us. See him here: https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm%3Fid%3DA09EF77D-2A1B-47FD-A9B9-B9F1EC9BD00E



Graphic by Ian Armstrong




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It is time to take a trip to that Undiscovered Country and visit our greatest teacher. How long do we live, how long did we live, and why don't we just keep on going?

Never mind that we do the world and our gene pool a great service by only taking up space for a finite time, what are the chances we can extend our time for a while? Indefinitely?

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In this episode we cover the underpinnings of the either/or, cause-then-effect, deterministic, distance-separates-things, no-info-travels-faster-than-light, orderly world of classical physics. It is the world inhabited by such luminaries as Newton and Einstein.

Then we descend into the merely probabilistic, action-at-a-distance, neither/both world of Quantum Physics to cover the most bafflng and counter intuituve (nay, SPOOKY in the words of Einstein) phenomenon in nature -- Quantum Entanglement.

If you have not listened to the episode on Schrodinger's Cat (HBH 50) it is recommended you do so first. Superposition is a necessary precursor to this topic also.

For more info:

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/proving-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real#:~:text=The%20Freedman–Clauser%20experiment%20was,2010%20Wolf%20Prize%20in%20physics.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-entanglement-isnt-all-that-spooky-after-all1/

Art by Ian Armstrong

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To paraphrase Richard Feynman: If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.

Along the same lines, if you have made sense of Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, you don't understand it.

But that's not to say it can't be explained. Which is exactly what we do in this episode of the history of being human - present one of the most enduring, and most popularly recognizable, legacies of early quantum theory.

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At Long Last - Pilate's Old Question Will Get an Answer!

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In this episode, the massive, rapacious king power lizards of the Cretaceous are finally taken off the board by an asteroid. We trace the origins and progress of the skulking night vermin that are unleashed in their absence. These night vermin, with their whiskers and fur and fancy new brains, become the superpowers of the Cenozoic (our current era).

This is the story of the mammals, from a time long before their origin until the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees.

Although this is a re-release of a previous episode, it contains never-before released material about the latest estimates of warm-bloodedness ariiving on the stage.

Illustration by Ian Armstrong




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