Oh What A Time... - #79 Prehistory (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re taking a look a Prehistory and specifically; how clever were the Neanderthals? What was early mankind getting up to? And finally, what did the Flintstones get right in their depiction of Stone Age man?And also this week, we’re discussing one of the greatest inventions ever: the humble ‘hot towel’. If you’d like to get in touch with the show, you can do so at: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple podcasts. Hello and welcome to part two of Prehistory. Let's get on with the show. OK, I'm going to tell you now about Neanderthals. There was a time when West Ham fans were described as Neanderthals and that was seen as a bad thing. But hey, now West Ham fans, if you are called a Neanderthal, you can turn around and go, yeah what, clever, because increasingly that is what we're finding out about Neanderthals.

Yeah what, clever. Officer. Officer. Officer in unison, all of them 70,000 turning around. Yeah, what? Clever. Homo sapiens had only one serious rival in the Homo genus, the Neanderthal, who mainly lived in Europe from Wales through to Greece,

but also in parts of Anatolia and modern day Uzbekistan. The word Neanderthal passed into English in 1861 following analysis on a discovery in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf. The Neander Valley is literally Neanderthal in German. Weird to think of German Neanderthals. I don't know, Germans are quite, I don't know, refined. Not as weird thinking about Welshmans. Interesting you skirted over that Chris. I used to watch Dirty Sanchez. That was very The Anatho...

Oh, Pancha? Yeah. Man. We've all been to Tlantris, son. Those initial studies on the anathols revealed them to be shorter, robust and had certain physical adaptions like fat storage which suited them to be shorter, robust, and had certain physical adaptions like fat storage, which suited them to a colder climate. Now I'm reading that, that is the description of Pancho from Dirty Sanchez. That is shorter, robust physical adaptions

for the colder climate. Will Barron Ellis, you're short, sir. You're robust. And you have a famously large bottom. Which I see as... How do you describe those large... What was those? An energy deposit? Is that the phrase? Will Barron You know, they think that some humans have got as much as 3-4% Neanderthal DNA. I did my ancestry DNA test. 10% me. Will Barron Is that true? Will Barron No! 10%! I'm not 10% Neanderthal you fucking twat!

You never know! I wasn't judging you! Twice as much Neanderthal as the most Neanderthal person! I would look so different if I was 10% Neanderthal, you silly son. Well, I don't know what you look like under your clothes. You might be just completely massive hair. So hairy. Do you think that would be front page news if a man was discovered that was 10% Neanderthal?

I think it would be. I'd get a news alert on my phone. I'd become a global celebrity, I think, if I was 10% Neanderthal. What are you doing to justify that celebrity? You're supposed to be going on talk fairs, aren't you really? Yeah. Also, I'd have some odd skill when I'd be able to crush a can in between my thumb and forefinger swing. So I'd be doing all that. I'd be doing all that kind of stuff. You can wrestle a tiger to death and then eat it for your lunch, which you do every day on

American television and just going from place to place to place. Yeah. Well, I'd watch it if that's in it. If it is true, then you've got a viewer here. Neanderthals, so they're already living in Europe at the time of Homo sapiens when they turned up, but Neanderthals had a quite sophisticated distinctive society and culture. Like Homo sapiens, Neanderthals could produce stone

tools. They could make fires for cooking. They had lighting, they had warmth, they had defence. They were actually able to manufacture clothes and a sticky tar from birch trees, which could be used as a glue. And they understood botany. I thought you said sticky tar. I thought they were making sticky tart for your body. The first cheesecakes ever made. Or it would be a Black Forest Gatto, I think. In Germany, I guess. Yeah, so they knew how to use plant botany, like plants and herbs, as medicines. That's amazing.

So they're really advanced, far more advanced than you may otherwise think. Tom mentioned about, you used to have your profile picture on X Twitter used to be in Neanderthal, right? Yeah. Why was that? He's 10% Neanderthal, that's why. We've just covered it, Chris. Please listen.

For ages I was just the egg because I couldn't choose a photo without it looking ridiculous or possibly veins, so I thought I'll just leave it. And then my friend Ben Partridge from 3B Salad said, it just makes you look like a bot else, you need something. And I thought it was funny to put a neanderthal up. So yeah, I think I still am a neanderthal. On Twitter, not on Instagram. Because it's good to have that consistency across the socials.

That's what they all say. Oh yeah. That's one of the key things. All the really big people on social media have a different photo of everything. Whatever you do, don't put an actual picture of your own face. Will Barron No, God no. That has cost me following it for years. But now it's a thoughtful Neanderthal. Will Barron Yeah, is it?

Will Barron Yeah, yeah. Because I think they changed Twitter. We all- Will Barron Is he thinking about what Twitter's become? Will Barron Yeah. So I went from just a Neanderthal in a sort of desert, to like a Neanderthal, he's resting his hand on his chin. And he's like, oh yeah, wash away for dinner tonight. Sticky toffee pudding. Here's what we know about Neanderthals. So they would treat dental abscesses with like a poplar bar, which has the same ingredient in it

as aspirin. Wow. Yeah, it's clever, isn't it? Amazing. They use chamomile flowers too as a form of tea and also as a lotion to combat itches and animal bites, et cetera. Really? Switched on.

Incredible. So yeah, everyone until the kind of 1920s, especially around the 1920s, thought that the term Neanderthal was like derogatory. So it was used in the 1920s, for example, as a way to describe a backward looking clergy in the Church of England. The Republican Party in the United States were described as Neanderthals. In the 70s, someone said, it's a creature from the Dark Ages, a man of violence, and Neanderthal is very popular in the UK, that term Neanderthals.

We know that Neanderthals, very popular in the UK, that term Neanderthals. We know that Neanderthals lived in caves, they were quite literally cave people, but they did make use of open air sites too, particularly for like unclean activities like butchery. So they're not butchering the animals in the cave, they're doing some stuff outside. That's interesting. Yeah. So when they're butchering, they're producing the meat for eating, they're using the bones for tools, hides which were scraped and turned into like little ponchos. And these were clothes were worn for the winter once.

Ponchos? Yeah. Poncho is such a funny word. Like a music festival. Yeah, exactly. Or like you're going on a log flume at Legoland. Like Princess Diana. Neanderthal with a sort of like Voldodafone poncho, because it's raining.

Yeah, and a warm cup of carling watching Casabians. Carling. Yeah, so they've got nice clothes and they're warm in the winter. And we know that some of these clothes were tied around the waist, we can tell that. Exactly, if it gets too hot, tie them around the waist, exactly like a music festival. That's amazing. All I can imagine now is Neanderthals at Glastonbury. The question is, which has troubled people for a long time, is what happened to the Neanderthals?

They were thought that the Homo sapiens kind of wiped them out of prehistory, that they kind of took them over because they were more sophisticated, more intelligent. But that's not necessarily the truth. Some other theories thought that homo sapiens were stealing their food, stealing their shelters. This kind of perspective was very popular in the Victorian era. But now we know a few things. We know that Neanderthals, some did die out due to changing conditions of the climate, availability of food and arrival apex predator. But that essentially just kept Neanderthal populations quite small. And what happened was they eventually started intermingling with Homo sapiens.

So Homo sapiens arrived from Africa, L touched on this earlier. And the two, these two versions of humans rattled it out in some cases, but mostly they essentially began mixing. And the latter it seems to what happened. So yeah, hence my bum. L owes his bum. Tom, you owe your adaptions, your winter storage, shall we call it, around your belly. You owe that to the one to two percent of Neanderthal DNA that most Europeans have in

their genetic makeup. Wow. On average, it's thought that 20% of Neanderthal DNA has survived somewhere in modern humans. So 1 to 2% is direct, like in the genetic makeup, about 20% of Neanderthal DNA has arrived somewhere in modern humans. So we've sequenced Neanderthal DNA and we know that Neanderthal DNA is responsible in humans for the following things. Neanderthal DNA makes us more susceptible to nicotine addiction, which is a strange thing.

Does it? Yeah. Neonatal DNA causes fat to build up in the arteries. Neonatal DNA causes hypercoagulation of the blood. It also makes the human brain both prone to depression and able to dispel symptoms according to the genetic variant inherited. It gives Europeans a stronger capacity to deal with the cold, and also makes carriers more likely to suffer from diabetes, Crohn's disease or gut inflammation like IBS. So I've had gut inflammation before. Thanks very much Neanderthals for that. Thanks great great great great great grandma.

Nice one. Wow. Neanderthal DNA was decoded in 2010. Scientists used samples recovered from female Neanderthal's toe bone, a single female Neanderthal's toe bone. And they've been, they've compared it to large scale DNA databases such as the UK Biobank. And so it's interesting,

because the things that those symptoms I just described there were really useful for Neanderthals. For example, hypercoagulation of the blood kept out poisons and caused wounds to heal quite quickly, but given modern lifestyles, it increases the possibility of a stroke or a pulmonary embolism. That is so interesting. And fat storage, great for Neanderthals in cold climates where food stocks were likely to run low or be exhausted.

Yeah, of course. But it's thought it lies now at the root of contemporary society's obesity problem. Well, well, well. There you go. So yeah, what happened to the Neanderthals? Well, in a weird way, they're still here. They're still all around us and here specifically in El's bum. There you go.

Because you'd think that it would make us like super people because they're so robust. When you see pictures of reconstructions in Neanderthals, they're so tough and hard-looking. They all look like Carlos Tevez. Yeah, they all do look like Carlos Tevez, crossed with a bouncer. All the doorman in South London are part Neanderthal, they're all hard men. Can I just say, I'm just so glad I'm not a hunter-gatherer. Absolutely. What a rubbish lifestyle.

Yeah. Difficult to rest on your laurels, isn't it, if you not a hunter gatherer. Absolutely. What a rubbish lifestyle. Yeah. Difficult to rest on your laurels, isn't it, if you're a hunter gatherer? It's difficult to have a day off. Absolutely. You could just do one day, we're just doing a bit of gathering, not much hunting, I suppose. Sort of half day.

Yeah, like if you're feeling under the weather. I'd much rather be in the gathering department than the hunting department. I'd rather be an admin. How many berries have we got, El? Oh, loads actually. Can I have an exact number? Not an exact number, but enough I'd say. Are you taking your admin role seriously? No, not really, no. I'm the handful accountant. So to finish today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about the Flintstones and what they got right about the Stone Age. I think we can agree it's a superb subject. Happy

with that sort of thing. I wish I'd been taught in school. I wish that's what history had been like. That's what we're going to find out. The Flintstones, what did they get right? Let's start by asking, did you like the Flintstones? Did you watch the cartoon? Will Barron The cartoon, I must have watched every episode. Will Barron Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, the cartoon. Will Barron I don't think I ever saw the film. Will Barron What were your thoughts on the cartoon? Will Barron Loved it. I mean, I didn't take it as a sort of canonical historical text. And I oddly

did take it more seriously than the Jetsons, which was made by the same people. Don't know why that is. But yeah, I was a huge fan as a kid. What about you, Skull? The thing that used to bother me about the Flintstones was, remember they used to have a little waste disposal dinosaur that sat under the sink. They used to eat the rubbish. It's like, what a terrible... One, what is that animal doing the whole time? Just hiding under this. It's quite bleak. And then also it's just being fed rubbish.

Yeah. And I also used to question how quick their car would do. When it's just feet powered. When it was feet powered. Especially uphill. I did use to think, hmm, not sure about that really. I imagine downhill they could pick up a sort of liquor speed, but... when it's just feet powered. Mason haven't watched the Flintstones or for people who might be interested. The Flintstones cartoon was originally designed for adults. So you were kind of ahead of your time, Ellis, as a young kid watching that. It was actually for adults. And it was launched in the United States on the 30th of September, 1960, and then in the UK on the 5th of January, 1961. So early 60s is when this all kicked off. And like all good cartoons, it offered easy

entertainment and a bit of social commentary basically, with modern technology, suburban living all coming under scrutiny. So you talk about the dinosaur cobbling up the food, that sort of a comment on waste disposal stuff, all these sort of things. There's lots of references that reference modern life, but with a sort of Stone Age spin on it basically. So the family dynamic in the show, I'll just tell you this, was heavily influenced by a live action sitcom called The Honeymooners, which was aired in American television in the 50s. It's kind of very similar tone, very jokey, sort of bumbling dad,

all this sort of stuff, that sort of family dynamic. And the Stone Age setting had also been tested before the Flintstones kicked off in action. It was tried in a series of 1940s animated shorts for the American market called the Stone Age Cartoons. And these Stone Age Cartoons feature things that you see in the Flintstones. So things like there was a granite hotel that offered rock bottom prices. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. It is good stuff. A dinosaur operated car washers, a diplodocus

fire engine, newspapers made of carved stone. Basically, all the things that you associate with the Flintstones in the way they covered modern society. But this is not why we're here. We're not here to discuss where did it come from. We're here to discuss what did the Flintstones get right? Do you think they got much right? Should we start by asking that? What do you think? Do you have a feeling they'd got anything right? Will Barron I mean, at the time, it just felt like a cartoon, so I was imagining that none of it was based in reality. Will Barron Well, interestingly, there is some stuff

which really inadvertently is correct. What about you, Chris? Chris McDonnell I think the ability for humanity and dinosaurs to work well together in a professional context. That always felt to me, that chimed with me. Which Jurassic Park got so wrong, didn't it? Is it at the start, the Flintstones, that Fred like, like scoots down the spine of a dinosaur then flings it? Yeah, of a dipnidocus. Yeah, yeah.

So that's the first thing they got right. So theme parks in Bedrock, all the… no, in Flint, yeah. OK, we'll start with the first point. Where did Fred Flintstone work? Do you remember? Where did he work? Was it a quarry? Correct. So Fred Flintstone worked in a quarry. Oh yeah, he had a little hard hat, didn't he? He did. As did his best friend Barney Rubble. They both worked… Barney Rubble. They both worked in a quarry. Well, researchers have identified Paleolithic quarries. These existed, particularly in Egypt and the Levant,

where Stone Age humans extracted material they needed for their tools. So, in fact, these sites were so important that generations of ancient man would return to them for hundreds of thousands of years. The same place, the same quarries. Such was the importance they placed on the stone they found there. What's interesting about that is nearby identical rock formations or places where you would have got the same stone were untouched. They simply used these key places where they would go back and they'd look for stones over and over again and they'd work the terrain and they genuinely were used as quarries. So quarries did exist.

Wow. In the Paleolithic era. Isn't that interesting? So we can give that a tick. It's going to be hard work, isn't it? Lifting any kind of stone. That is hard work of all the jobs. And chipping away, constantly chipping away with another stone to get, you know, yeah. I think we can agree it's a tough job. Imagine the repetitive strain injuries you'd be getting there. It'd be worse than being in status quo. Did I say status quo?

You did say status quo. Status quo. Well, that was the Flintstones version. So we can give that a tick. But what next? Well, how about pets? Can you remember the three pets the Flintstones family kept? Can you remember? Not the one who lives under the sink. Is he a pet or is that? Yeah. I think he's not considered one of the pets, I don't think, in this one. Dino.

So there was Dino, a purple dinosaur. There are two more. There was the kid. There was the bamba. There was Baby Puss, who was a male saber-toothed cat. Yes. And one other, a classic animal from that time. One of the big ones, literally one of the big ones. Well it had been a dinosaur. Oh, a mammoth? Yes. Woolly, who was a small woolly mammoth. Woolly. Yes. Well yeah, we've domesticated animals for thousands and thousands of years. Even though they are wider than marks, Stone Age

humans did keep pets. In fact, Paleolithic humans were probably, they think, the first to tame dogs, or canis familiaris, as they're known. Would you like to guess how they did this? Now, this is not a job I'd have wanted. How did they domesticate dogs? So let's find out. Will Barron I'd have no idea where to even start. Will Barron Just by leaving them food, wouldn't you? And… Alistair Duggin Well, they did it by breeding the aggression out of wolves in East Asia around 15,000 years ago. Will Barron Yeah, I don't want to stroke a dog enough

to breed the aggression out of a wolf. Alistair Duggin I would need that job. I'd want that job after a minimum of maybe 4,000 years of breeding. That's when I'm coming here. I'm not… The early doors, the people who were first trying to breathe the wolves and chill them out a bit must have been such a stressful job. I do not want to pioneer that. How does that job even work? Okay, there's a big herd of wolves, right? The ones who

try to kill you, they're the ones you don't want. You want the friendly ones, okay? Can I go get them. Like what? Well, maybe they're getting the young. Yeah, a maniac saying, don't worry, I'll do it. I'm at a loose end. The really tame friendly wolves aren't the ones making it to the front of the queue. But then maybe they... So I imagine they're probably pilfering the young cubs and then rearing them by hand and then breeding those and trying to domesticate in that sort of way, I guess. Will Barron

Yeah, you have to keep them fed. Like it is amazing, like with, obviously they have been domesticated, but if you treat a cat, it's amazing how they will come back for more and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, okay. Will Barron So they did have pets. We can give that a tick too. Interestingly this sort of want to improve life, generation to generation with pets and all these sort of tools that we're learning is another thing that Flintstones got right. In Bedrock the acquisition of technology is kind of all important to the characters, while in real life, in Stone Age life, learning, honing, invention, these are all features

of Stone Age life as humans move from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, they're constantly looking to improve their lot, seeing what they can tweak, see what they can change. And that is part of what life was in the Flintstones. Everyone wants the newest thing. They are letting technology improve their lives. But what about pleasure? So in the Flintstones, Fred Barney and the family's often seen singing, playing instruments. You talked about instruments earlier, Al. So you're right, bone flutes, animal horn trumpets, all been found. I was thinking about this with a time where there's like saber-tooths wandering around, your cave obviously doesn't have a front door.

I'm not sure how much sort of music practice I'm looking to do. I don't want to mark out where I am loudly. I can't get the idea of doing trumpet practice when I know there's things out there that want to eat me. Will Barron Oh, I don't know. I mean, I often, if I've got a lot on my mind, it's what I do for a bit of escapism. So if I thought I was going to be eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger, I can imagine to myself, do you know what, I'm just going to get the old bone flute out actually. Will Barron Play the last post.

Will Barron Yeah. Will Barron But they didn't just play instruments, they also sang. Studies have suggested that people painted cave paintings in parts of their caves where singing and humming sounded best. That's what they've inferred from there. So scientists have gone in and have found that these images are normally found in the areas with the best acoustics, which suggests that people gathered there, they probably would have sung there. This would have been part of the community experience of being a sort of a Neolithic man. And there's also another final half tick we can give the Flintstones. And this is one

that comes from anthropology. So do you care to guess what that is? This is sort of the one that I find most interesting. What is the thing that anthropologists have suggested that Flintstones may have got right, in a way? This is a half point for this one. Will Barron Would it be the sort of living arrangements? Because they live in a small town, don't they, Flintstones? Will Barron Yes, they did. I thought you were going to say it's a bungalow.

Will Barron Is that what they lived in, a bungalow? Will Barron I don't know. I don't remember having stairs. Will Barron So it's not that. It's a weird one, actually. So it's not that. It's a weird one actually. So the Flintstones have TV, okay, and cinema also exists in the Flintstones universe. And it's believed that the act of watching images created by light is not a modern phenomenon. So the theory goes, this is what the theory is, that in the flickering light of a campfire inside a cave, the wall paintings appear to come alive as though they were animated. So recently, scholars have re-examined a series of carved stones and paintings what once thought to have been part of a hearth. And these were

found in France in the 19th century. They bear the images of animals, horses, reindeers, that sort of thing. And when a fire is lit beneath them, they feel like they're coming alive. It really feels like there's movement in the pictures. And when a fire is lit beneath them, they feel like they're coming alive. It really feels like there's movement in the pictures. And most importantly, they were produced in the very context that they were then displayed. And this is seen in a variety of places. The places where they were most likely to have lit the fire is where they would have drawn these images. And the suggestion from anthropologists is that actually part of that was that the light made the images come to life.

So people would sit there and look at the images, almost like you would TV now. Prehistoric telly. Yeah, exactly, prehistoric telly. Yeah. A bit of noise always stuck on the same channel. I don't think whether you have different things on different walls. Do you know, that touches on something that I often think. There is something so magnetic and interesting about a fire. I could just watch a fire. Oh yeah, yeah. That touches on something that I often think. There is something so magnetic and interesting about a fire. I could just watch a fire. Oh yeah, yeah. I was on Netflix last night and one of the top view programmes was a fire. Four hours of a fire, someone else's fire burning.

Yeah, we go camping to Derbyshire because friends of ours have got a campsite. They always light a big campfire and I will just stare at it for hours. Just before you finish, out of curiosity, did anyone else find Wilma attractive? Yes. Yes. No, I like, that's not Barney Rubble's wife, is it? Yeah. Is it Barney Rubble? Yeah, yeah. She's the best. Oh yeah, yeah. And Betty.

Betty. Betty Rubble. Yeah. Not Wilma. Which was, okay. Betty Flintstones, I'll give you an answer here. I was Betty Rubble. Yes, yes, yes. She is. Very nice. Very nice cartoon. Although her head is eight times too big for her body, which is the one downside. But I don't want to body shame. Yeah, yeah. I would, you know, I don't want to... Well, you're sort of more head shaming

than body shaming, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd take her to the doctor and I'd say her head's eight times too big for a body. Is there anything we can do about this? But other than that, she seemed very nice. Good mother to Bambam. We'll be very happy to get them. Nice person. Sorry, Fred. So there you go. So there's a few things there. TV-ish, the fact that they played music, they sung, these things are all correct. The fact that they had pets, that's correct. And there are, so some of these things too are correct.

And also, I think probably most amazingly all, the fact they had these quarries, these places where people worked constantly, they would get stones. So Flintstones, as ridiculous as it was, did get the odd thing right-ish. By watching the Flintstones and learning about the inhabitants of Bedrock I was actually basically doing homework. God, I wish this podcast had existed in 1988. I'm trying to be a good student mum! Alright that's it for prehistory, thank you for listening. Lots to get in touch with there, from the fork to the spoon, the milk mitten, so much, neanderthals, etc.

If you want to get in touch with the show you can email hello at owhatatime.com and don't forget if you want bonus episodes of which there are lots to be accessed you can get those with a Full-timer subscription at another slice or you can join Wander E plus and get everything there the options are limitless Well, actually there's just two of them, but you can get both those options at owhatatime.com. Alright, that's it for this week We'll see you next week. Bye. Goodbye. Bye I'm going to go ahead and start the game. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com

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