What Happened To The Neandertals?
Eons: Surviving Deep Time
PBS
4.9 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2022
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Studies have found Neandertal DNA in people living in - and descended from - populations in Europe, Asia, and, most recently, Africa. So, in a way, these ancient relatives of ours are somehow both here and gone. We know we shared the planet with them in the not-so-distant past… But what happened to them?
Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're enjoying this podcast, we would love to tell you about Common Descent. |
| 0:04.0 | Common Descent is a podcast about paleontology, evolution, and the history of life on Earth, |
| 0:09.0 | hosted by two paleontologists with an unending enthusiasm for the wonders of the world. |
| 0:14.0 | Each episode cover science news, followed by a deep dive into a main topic requested by the audience. |
| 0:19.6 | Recent episodes of feature topics like eels, hibernation, and fungi. |
| 0:23.5 | In addition to the main series, Common Descent also features side projects that explore science and pop culture, |
| 0:28.7 | where the host examined the science and movies or speculate on the hypothetical evolution of fictional monsters. |
| 0:34.4 | Listen to Common Descent on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:44.8 | It's August in 1856, and you're hard at work coring ancient limestone from the south wall of a valley in western Germany. |
| 0:53.8 | The walls of this valley are pockmarked with caves and rock shelters, |
| 0:58.2 | some large, some small. |
| 1:01.1 | When you run into one of these holes, |
| 1:03.1 | you have to stop excavating the limestone to remove the clay |
| 1:06.0 | that's been deposited there over millennia, |
| 1:08.3 | so it doesn't contaminate the rock you're actually after. |
| 1:11.6 | Sometimes there are bones mixed in with the clay deposits. |
| 1:15.6 | Cave bears used to live here, but they're long gone now. |
| 1:19.6 | The latest cave you've encountered isn't that big, maybe five meters deep by two or three meters wide, |
| 1:26.6 | about the size of a standard American parking space. |
| 1:30.6 | Its narrow entrance purchased 20 meters above the valley's floor. |
| 1:36.0 | There's about a meter and a half of mud deposited on the floor |
| 1:38.8 | that you have to remove. |
... |
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