The Ancients - Homo Sapiens vs Neanderthals

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

Tristan Hughes is joined by Ella Al-Shamahi, paleoanthropologist and presenter of the hit BBC series Human, to explore what interactions between early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals may have been like, from communication and cultural exchange to interbreeding and the possibility of hybrid children navigating belonging. They discuss how new research is challenging “primitive” stereotypes to reveal how Neanderthals were complex beings who used pigments, pierced shells, talons, feathers, and created cave handprints.MOREThe Last Neanderthals with Chris StringerListen on AppleListen on SpotifyRise of HumansListen on AppleListen on SpotifyWatch this episode on our NEW YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcastPresented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight. Edited & co-produced by Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Europe, 45,000 years ago, two species of humans coexist. On the one hand, you have our ancestors, early Homo sapiens, who have recently dispersed out of Africa and are now reaching the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea, bringing their own technologies and lifestyles with them. On the other hand, you have a species that has already been living in Europe for well over 100,000 years, robust in their body structure, and well accustomed to the colder climates this far north, they are the Neanderthals. Now we know that early Homo sapiens and Neanderthal

groups did interact with each other, and not always violently, but how they communicated and the nature of these interactions largely remains a mystery. Could they have exchanged to knowledge and ideas? Could there even have been friendships, and alliances between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. We know they interbred with one another. There would have been early humans with one Homo sapiens and one Neanderthal parent. What might that have been like?

It's questions like these that we're going to delve into today. We're going to explore this fascinating area of human evolution, how the paths of Homo sapiens and Neantzol's finally crossed after hundreds of thousands of years. And why it was ultimately homo sapiens and Neanderthals finally crossed, Homo sapiens that won the competition for survival, why Neanderthals went extinct, and we did not. Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the ever-developing story of Neandertals and Homo sapiens. Our guest is the paleoanthropologist, presenter, comedian,

and author Ella Al-Shamahi. Ella's new tour, becoming human, continues in the UK on the 28th of May. Ella, it is such a pleasure. It's an honour to have you on the show. An honour. Jeez. Thank you for having me. You've been very busy. You've been everywhere at the moment of your paleoanthropology stuff. It's really, really great to have you on. And to talk about homo sapiens and Neanderthals and their interactions with one another, their stories. It is such a fascinating moment in our evolutionary story. Just thinking about those early meetings and how these two types of humans would have interacted with each other. It is something that I think captures people's imagination. Like, I will say if even Hollywood are interested in the Neanderthals, we're probably

on to something in terms of subject matter here. Yeah, I think, I have to say, I mean, obviously I am fascinated by this period, but when you actually study it, how could you not be? Like, these are people who in so many ways were similar to us, and I cannot help but wonder. about those interactions, like the very first Homo sapien and Neanderthal who met each other, what would they have made of each other? You know, would you have looked at each other and recognized each other as being part of the same genus? You know, would you have been like, yeah, they're like us? Or would you look at each other and think, who on earth are you?

You look funny, you look, yeah, kind of thing. You know, it's interesting, actually. I don't think I've mentioned this to you before, but there was a really old joke. amongst pale anthropologists, you probably heard it, but it's basically this whole discussion about whether Neanderthals are the same as us or not. And this one pale anthropologist says, look, they're the same as us. If you gave one a shave, you washed it up a bit, put it in a suit and gave it a bowler hat to cover. It's like weird bulge at the back of the skull and put it on the New York subway.

Nobody would notice. And then another paleoanthropologist was like, yeah, maybe that says more about the New York subway, but it does want about Neanderthals. And I think it really captures, I think, for me, that recognition issue. Like, would we recognise each other? And actually my very first TV show, when we were just pitching it and playing with it, I was like, guys, we need to bring this scene to life. And it's like one of my proudest moments of television that we managed to put a Neanderthal

on the London Underground and ask the audience, would you effectively swap carriages? Would you look at that person and be like? And it really split the audience. Some of them were clearly like, no, they look weird. And others were like, I mean, I've seen stranger things. That's the thing, isn't it? Or just be polite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

British politeness. And it's so weird being a paleoanthropologist because everybody talks about the tech revolution and how like now is the moment for tech, etc., etc. Like now is the moment to be studying paleoanthropology because like there's a new discovery. like every week and it's they're not even small discoveries anymore the kind of discoveries which are so big that they make you question so many things including who in earth the neanderthals are

you know and so it's just a fascinating time to also be studying this because i feel like if i had been studying this even 40 years ago the conversations would be so boring by comparison whereas like literally we are now having a conversation about oh we think it was probably Neanderthal males and homo sapient females interbreeding, which is just a fancy word for having sex. And I'm just like, what have we got to this point? You know, where we're discussing this now. But that is the state of the research.

I mean, just imagine, like, with the technology to say, what, I mean, how different our conversation on this same topic could be in like five to ten years time. That's how quickly things are changing. Yeah, and that's the terrifying thing when you're writing a book, by the way. I'm writing a book and I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, God, I'm going to have to be careful about this, but I'm going to have to be careful about this,

because as soon as that book is published, it will be outdated. Neanderthals have had such a bad rep for so long. And yet you can't help with all this information coming out and all this promotion, like your new series and so on, you can't help but love them. You can't feel that actually they're not too different from us. What's really funny is so many of us who study Neanderthals or talk about Neanderthals to the public, you know, a lot of us give talks or what have you. And I have to say that it is not uncommon to the point where I've known how to tell

people stop doing it, for women basically to drag up their poor husband and be like, could you please feel his skull because I'm convinced he's a Neanderthal? And I'm like, oh my, so that kind of association with them being like, blessed, like morons is still very much present. But what's really interesting is that I've been a paleoanthropologist now for a minute, but I've only been in television since, I don't know, 2017 maybe. And when I started, that stereotype of the Neanderthals being knuckle-dragging ape men, basically. I feel like it was very, very strong with the public. And the first show that I ever did was called Neanderthals,

Meet Your Ancestors. And we were really trying to kind of essentially do a PR job on these Neanderthals and kind of portrayed them in this scientifically accurate light. We dragged it in Andy Circus and... Oh, amazing. Yeah, we used like motion capture and all this stuff. And what's wild is that now when you talk about to the general public about Neanderthals, yeah, it's still an insult.

nobody's calling you a Neanderthal and being like, oh, you're so smart and brilliant and pretty. But so many people now know that the stereotype is incorrect. I don't know if you're feeling that as well. I am. And also on The Anast's podcast, we've done a few episodes on Neanderthals and their stories. And people love the story of the last Neanderthals as well.

But yeah. Have you had Ludwig on? We had, no, for that, we had Chris Stringer on. Amazing. Learning about DNA and the lack of genetic diversity, variation we'll get into, I'm sure. But, like, learning from that, the interest in it, yes, we still had a comment just like, no, the answerals aren't extinct.

I saw one down the pub that last week. But yes, there is just a real fascination actually wanting to learn more about who these people are because we now have the information to give like a detailed 40, 50, 60 minute podcast episode about it. No, completely. It's interesting because I think also just DNA testing because now people can see some DNA within them and maybe people don't want to think, oh, I've just, my ancestors or, you know, whatever. But yeah, it's been really, really interesting to see that kind of people come to terms with who they are. And I think one of the things that I argue a lot, and I'm actually preparing a tour right now,

so I'm kind of thinking about the kind of, you know, the messaging that I want to put out to the public. And one of the things that I'm arguing quite heavily is like, look, when we portray these other species like the Neanderthals as incredibly primitive, not only are we doing an injustice to them, like bless them, they're not here to defend themselves, do you know what I mean? But I would argue that we actually make our story less remarkable because those other species were incredible. And if you were to get a lot of paleontropologists together in a room, and I mean, we don't agree on much. But if you were to say, all right, like between us and the Neanderthals, who was going to make it? A lot of us would not be betting on ourselves until right kind of much more recently, shall we say. Like even Chris, Chris Stringer is like, yeah, 100,000 years, he doesn't,

he wouldn't have been betting on us. And so for me, I'm like, if we keep portraying them this scientifically inaccurate way, we actually do our own really remarkable story more of a disservice because how on earth are we the only ones left when the Neanderthal seem to be doing? okay, they seem to be more experienced than us. Numerous times, they were not going locally extinct, and we were in the same geographies sometimes, in fact, often, and you just think, right, that's a change in fortune. So, yes, I think it's kind of important to give them their due.

I think absolutely, and as you say, it does make the story of homo sapiens, us today, being everyone, even... It's all for our own purpose, yeah. It's all for our own narcissists. Just an ego boost fast and everyone on the planet today. They were amazing. and therefore we must be even more amazing. Something like that.

All right. Well, let's start with like the background of Neanderthals and then Homo sapiens and then how they interact, which is very interesting. So Neanderthals, how far back in time are we going? Where in the world are we going with the Neanderthals before they meet our ancestors? Okay, so basically, the reason why I'm like sighing

is that the Neanderthals keep getting older, bless them. And what I mean by that is we used to kind of think. And when I say we used to, I'm really talking like within the last 10 years. What am I talking about? It was even more recently than that. We used to think Neanderthals were kind of 200,000 years old, went extinct 40,000 years ago. Like that's kind of classic Neanderthals. For years before that, like up to 350,000 years, there's kind of this, for a while.

We'd see it as this grey zone where you could kind of see Neanderthal features coming in. There was some Spanish Neanderthals, a quite famous collection of Neanderthals who people were always arguing other Neanderthal, are they not Neanderthal, the Sima de los Quesos Neanderthals. And you can hear probably from the fact that I'm calling them Neanderthals that the genetic evidence started coming in, and it was overwhelmingly clear that they were the Neanderthals. So then very recently the date got pushed back to, okay, well, Neanderthals are 350,000 years. I just imagined, like, you know, they're probably taking a lot of offence that keep getting older. But then, oh, it's been a real stir recently, because Chris Stringer, who, for those of you who are maybe under a rock, or just

new to paleoanthropology, Chris Stringer is the dawn of paleoanthagology. We're going to his shrine right after this, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. He's living shrine at the Natural History Museum because he's kind of still there. But yeah, he's an absolutely incredible paleoanthropologist, and he and a number of Chinese colleagues, they have new dates on another species called Denisovans. Now, bear with me, right, because I'm talking about Denisovins, but I'm talking about Neanderthals.

So the thing with our family tree is we consider that. the Neanderthals to be our sister species. And by that, I mean that they are our closest relatives and we share a common ancestor. Okay. So, yeah. Yes, exactly, like a, this shape, basically, like a triangle. But then the Denisovans, we also consider to be the sister species of Neanderthals or very, very closely related. So it's kind of like actually now, like a, there's a three-way thing going on. Yes, like a fork. Yes, exactly. And by implication, because we are kind of sister species, the implication is that we will be simile. ish

ages because whenever the split was with our grandparent or our parent species you kind of

broadly expect that those species will be the same actually doesn't necessarily have to be true but broadly speaking

Chris and some Chinese panes anthropologists are now of the opinion that they have a Denisovan around a million years old

so the implication and if it come from many others. I think we wouldn't have been taking it seriously. But the implication is that therefore if the Denisovans are a million years old, the Neanderthals are something similar and we therefore are something similar. So surprise, you're a lot older than you think you are. I feel this is a topic that we could delve into for a long time, but it's worthy of another episode in the same rights. But I mean, that length of time is mind-boggling, especially with the human, homo sapiens and Neanderthals interacting. It's very late in that story.

Yes. But with Neanderthals, are we largely then just going to be thinking Eurasia? Yes. Neanderthals that we know of existed in Europe and into Central Asia. We don't have any Neanderthals in Africa. I mean, if you held a gun to my head and we're like, are you trying to tell me that no Neanderthal ever made it to North Africa? I'd be like, of course they did. They must have done, right?

She's got no evidence for it, so I probably shouldn't say that. But, you know, there are parts of Spain where you could see Morocco. back then, and I find it plausible, but there's no evidence for them in Africa. There's no genetic evidence either, although, yeah, I mean, that's a slightly different topic. We'll get into interbreeding, I'm sure, on a second, so let me stop there. Well, if we go forward to, let's say, 200,000, 300,000 years ago, when, it's just seen by that time you've got the idea of the classic Neanderthal. And also, I say Neanderthal, you say Neanderthal, is there a right or wrong way, or is it both? My way is right. No.

Okay. I need it. That's fine. Okay, so this is taxonomy. So we're in a nerdy bunch and we have all these rules about how you, they're called the a priori rules in taxonomy. And basically what that means is when you name a species, whoever names the species first, you call dibs. I know that sounds insane, but it's, this is... Makes sense, it's fair enough.

So if you found a fossil and just think of the most ridiculous name for it. Oh, that's like that, that's like that. Yes, there we go. although you can't call it after yourself, so somebody else would have to name it. So essentially, then you've called dibs on that species. And anyone that comes after, if I come along and I want to give it like a more respectable name, I technically have to go by your name and colleagues have to then take your name as well. Does that make sense?

So basically, the thing with the Neanderthals is it was a mispronunciation and a miskind of spelling, I guess, of a German name because it's Neander Tal Valley, but the Anglos were basically saying Neander Thal. And so technically it's an incorrect thing, but because it's there, it then becomes complicated. But now if I was to, oh my God, this is complicated, but if I was to write Neander Tal with just a T and not a T-H, that would be incorrect. But pronunciation is a bit more ambiguous. So I would argue that we should probably do TH because we made a mistake and we should live with it. And the laws of a priori, the rules of a priori are such that you have to stick with it.

But other people very respectably point out that it's pronunciation, it's not written, and it was a mistake, maybe grow up and just go with the actual German pronunciation. The truth is it does not matter. It's really fun to annoy people. I'm going to show you how malibol I am now. I will now, for the rest of this episode, try and always say Neanderthal. No, don't. Don't. Don't. Stick with Tal, because it's honestly, it does not matter. I just have real fun.

There we go. There we go. Tomatoes, tomatoes. So the classic Neanderthal, let's go through it through to the minute. Physiology, cognitively. I mean, what picture should we have of a Neanderthal? So think us, but Stokia, you're talking the most. the males were

I mean, it's debated but maybe 5 foot 5 on average but you've got to remember Homo sapiens would have been more slender especially back then and a bit taller so you know so there was that kind of difference also in terms of the head itself

it was once described to me and I really love the description it's like you got a Homo sapiens skull and then you just put it on one of those grid systems in a computer and you can't you know those grid systems where you could like manipulate and you kind of bring out the front so it's kind of jutting or

Phognathic, as we say, and you bring out the back, so you've kind of got what we call an occipital burn at the back. So with a lot of Neanderthals, if you touch the back of their skull, they have quite a big bump. Now, if you touch a lot of people's skulls, women tend to be slightly smoother, men have a bit more ridging, it's a bit rougher, but with Neanderthals, I'm talking about a proper bump at the back. And then they don't really have chins. Chins are actually a very modern invention. There's no real species of human that has chins besides us. they had also very prominent brow ridges and yeah very very prominent and also you see your forehead and my forehead they kind of go up and the Neanderthal forehead

is kind of, it's much shorter and it kind of just kind of recedes straight into the rest of the head basically so there are different physical characteristics that broadly it's been argued a kind of in line with you're in a slightly colder climate it kind of makes sense if you're in a colder climate to have a bigger chest comparative to your limbs. Although honestly, it's constantly debated as to whether...

It's really funny, actually. People keep suggesting... That is the prevailing theory. But every time people test it, sometimes it proves correct. Sometimes there's something about nasal size that Neanderthals have slightly bigger noses. And there was thinking about that being about, you know,

cold air and what have you. The testing is always... It's never conclusive. But I think broadly most of us kind of buy. that it's because it were cult adapted. And then bigger body mass, so then they have to hunt more, but we think you have Neanderthals with like spears and the like. And I mean, the classic image is then with woolly mammoths or...

Yeah, but also even the hunter, like, you know, once you... I don't know that they're necessarily bigger because they might be stockier, but they're so short by comparison. So not necessarily... But what we do think is that they were doing a lot of short-range hunting. So not really project our weapons. Protetal weapons are quite an incredible invention. Oh my God, especially when you get to arrows.

You can suddenly be incredibly deadly. Obviously, the force velocity and what have you speed is increased, but it's less deadly for you on the other side. Neanderthals have so many injuries, we think partly because they're doing close-range hunting. Think about the logic. How interesting is that? Once you're kind of doing close-range hunting,

you're risking your life so much more. So, yeah, we think, you know, very similar hunting to us though in terms of the prey that we were eating. I mean, every so often you get a headline that's really interesting, like some archaeologists years ago now, started looking at different assemblages, like different within the archaeological record, the animals that were being consumed by us versus the Neanderthals.

And they were of the opinion that the Neanderthals were hunting less small animals like rabbits. And so they came to this conclusion that we survived because of small animals. And the logic of that was that we had smaller furs that we could kind of cover ourselves better with. And that's the thing, I think, in the field, you can, everyone's always going, maybe it's this. And you just, you know. That sounds slightly barmy to me, but just go with it. Shall we also mention that, get away this idea. Neanderthals, I always would have been fully naked.

They wouldn't have had clothing. I mean, this idea of Neanderthals with ornaments, with arts, which is really coming to the fore now. This also feels a really big part of their story to explain, you know, even before they meet modern humans. Yeah, it's worth saying that Neanderthals did have similar size brains to us. If you correct for size, maybe a teeny bit smaller, but they did have similar size brains to us. And we know that they were playing around with, for example, ochre, red ochre like pigments. We know that they had shells that they had pierced holes into that they were putting pigment on. so it looks like they were beaded.

They have talons as well from them that seem to have been worn. Also, we've got Brunichel. Brunichel is a massive headache to anyone that sees Neanderthals is primitive. So Brunichel is this one site in France that, you know, we had understandably assumed as Homo sapiens because it's basically full of these stalactites. Staclycumites or stalactites, one or the other. I know what you mean? Those big things, yes.

Exactly. And they're basically maimed into these like concentric circles. So it's these crazy structure. And everyone had just always assumed it was Homo. I mean, you know, it looks potentially ritualistic, but it certainly looks creative. Do you know what? And it doesn't seem to have a structural purpose. It doesn't seem to have been because it's an abode and a home and that kind of thing.

And then they did the dating on it a while back now, maybe 10 years ago. And they were like, oh, it's really old. It's over 100,000 years old. And in Europe, that's not really Homo sapiens. I mean, it's possible that a homo sapiens group got to France at that point. It's absolutely possible. It's just got no evidence for it. The only evidence that period is Neanderthals.

So if Neanderthals are, I mean, what are you doing moving around stalemites, making them into these strange circles in a cave? And like, that seems incredibly creative to a lot of us. They also, we know now we're doing cave. I mean, handprints, if you want to call that cave art. I personally would. Some people wouldn't call it cave art. But I mean, you know, I don't know any other species that we know of

that was putting their hand in pigment and putting it against a wall. You don't get chimpanzees doing that. Don't get Hummer Hyde-Begenzis or any of these other species that we know of doing it. Dennis Fins were probably doing it. But the others, there's no evidence for it. That's them. And I remember seeing this when watching one of your episodes on Human, talking about the feathered.

Oh, thank you for reminding me. Well, I feel I had to because, I mean, I forgot about that. It was shocking. Yes. And I think that for a lot of us is incredibly visual. So for those of you who didn't watch the series, human,

I won't take it personally. But there is this moment where we're talking about feathers. And I think what's really interesting is, obviously you can imagine, as you know, these things you kind of talk to your whole team about them, or the production team and the directors and what have you. And we were all kind of just like, feathers will hit at home to people

because if the Neanderthals were picking out feathers so we know this, we know it from Italian assemblages, we know it from so many different assemblages in Europe, so many, that the Neanderthals seem to be collecting birds, specific birds. You know, they weren't just after any birds. They seemed to favour birds with iridescent feathers, the kind of feathers which are more attractive,

look more beautiful, shinier, that kind of thing. And that, you know, that takes your breath away. And as a team, we were like, yeah, we think for an audience, this challenges that assumption of the Neanderthals being knuckle-dragging ape men. Because we today know of so many cultures where they still use feathered headdresses, but not just that, like, you know, teenage girls would best, I was a teenage girl, and when I say, I mean, yesterday, like, you know, just feathers in, in, like, ornaments

for your hair, you kind of like it. You know, it's considered to be very beautiful, it's whatever. It's attractive. There's something shiny about it. And to think that, you know, these Neanderthals who, the way we've told their story, they're just uninterested in survival and procreating, they're doing that. And then they're building these strange structures in Brunuchel in France. I think it forces us to reevaluate the way we see the Neanderthals.

So if we go towards like say 100,000 years ago and the islands are up in Europe, all these amazing artefacts and so on. And into Central Asia, yeah. And in Central Asia, thank you. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, we've been on our own path. I mean, our evolutionary story,

even up to that point, before we leave Africa. Yeah. Has already been. It's been quite a journey in itself, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Basically, we're an African species. And for those who are kind of like,

hold on a second, so how exactly are we thinking we're related, The basic thinking is that there was some kind of ancestral species. We used to call them Heidelbergensis. Now we don't even know if that's a species or not. But anyway, so let's just say species X, for example, right? Species X started in Africa, we think. Then some of them broke off and went into Asia and Europe

and gave birth to eventually with time the Neanderthals. The ones that stayed behind eventually became us. That's the broad thinking. now we were in Africa we started in Africa we used to think hopefully we're not going to go back there million years again because I know well up until before COVID I think it was

we thought it was 200,000 years then they found the incredible Jebel Arhood fossil in well they didn't find it they just started dating things more accurately in Morocco and then they were like oh hold on a second we actually think we're 300,000 years old and now obviously if you're to accept Chris Stringer and colleagues' interpretation of things were even older than that. And every so often we would leave Africa.

And this was a thing. We constantly actually left Africa. But we would leave and we never really got a foothold and we'd become locally extinct. And it was just this pattern that just kept going on. And so actually the first time we think we left and we interacted with the Neanderthals was probably in the Middle East. Okay. In fact, it would have been in the Middle East.

There's a lot of evidence for us being contemporaneous with the Neanderthals in that region. an incredible mountain called Mount Caramel and Israel that has two caves. One cave is called Tabon, which is an yantithal cave. And around the same time, so 90 to 120,000 years, there was this overlap with the occupants of another cave called Scholl. And Scholl had, well, it was a Homo sapiens cave. And, like, firstly, let's just acknowledge how amazing that neighborhood must have been. Like, the same mountain.

we think the same time you've got a cave of Neanderthals and a cave of Homo sapiens and what I love about this is we actually included this in the series Human in the first episode it was kind of like an on-the-fly edit

we were kind of like actually let's include this this is such a cool story and the Daily Mail in their review of the episode and I cannot emphasise this enough wrote one of the most amusing reviews because they spent most of that review

just going oh my God what was it like to be on that mountain that gives you a sense but that does give you a sense of the human mind and the interest in Neanderthals to date. It is that, as we said, right, is that first contact idea almost right? 100%. Like what was that like?

Now, the interesting thing is, the fascinating thing, I might say the bunkers thing is, one of those species became locally extinct and disappeared. And in the way that we've told the story of us and the Neanderthals, you would assume it was the Neanderthals, turns out it was us. And you see this consistently. And it's to the point that there are, some who, when you look at the pattern of Homo sapien movement and what have you, they're of the opinion that the reason why Homo sapiens appeared to have favoured going east instead of

going north is because the Neanderthals for the longest time were a formidable force. And yeah, this is a, it's a very respectable theory that, you know what, the dates are very interesting because we leave Africa, but we seem to favour the East, at least that's what the current evidence suggests, and we're not in Europe as much. Like, we'll dally in, but the number of Homo sapiens settlements in Europe seems to be very small, and the argument is, yeah, maybe the Neanderthals were a force to be reckoned with. And this is when the interesting evidence, you know, trying to find more evidence from like the Arabian Peninsula, right, to think homo sapiens is doing that bridge across the Red Sea further south and going that way.

And that's another great story, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To learn a bit more about that potential eastward movement of them. Yeah. So this is, you know, the traditional telling is we go via the Sinai of Egypt. And honestly, the way it used to be told is kind of you'd hang around in the north of the Arabian Peninsula, which isn't really the Arabian Peninsula by that point. It's the Levant because you're looking at like Syria, Israel, Lebanon, those areas and Iraq. And then, but actually increasingly there's evidence to suggest that Arabia was green at various moments.

and that that whole area was used and was actually at times a refuge and in fact there's some people that would argue it's not out of Africa it's out of Arabia stroke the Middle East and of course our ancestors and the Neanderthals had no sense of

what a continent was you know what I mean they weren't like well that's the African continent and that's Asia like no this was just land masses to them so I think there's probably some truth to that I think so quite as well It's really interesting that story.

But if we do focus a bit more on Europe and Homo sapiens, I mean, do we know when they do manage to be a bit more successful and get into kind of Europe proper and then imagining interactions between them and the Anstel groups there? So I would say starting, I mean, there are so many different incursions within two. I mean, you know, once you start looking at Central Asia, there's quite a lot there,

but even within Europe itself, you get incursions, I mean, you get incursions technically starting from about 220,000 years ago. You've got some Homo sapiens teeth in Greece. It's grease. It's very confusing. Let me tell you, when that came out, we were like, can we just not think about that for a second? It's confusing enough as it is. Here's the thing.

About 60,000, 50,000, you do start seeing us. I need to check exactly where in the 60,000 mark. By about 54,000, you start seeing us very present within Europe. But it's interesting because for the years before then, there's a lot of like, you know, we turn up, we disappear. We turn up, we disappear. We're not quite getting the foothold in Europe. And then things kind of start changing. And then by the time you get to 40,000, it's just us.

But we can imagine, let's say, between 55,000 and 60,000 years ago, something about that. Like almost, can we tell from the evidence now that there would have been clear interactions between Nianz-Dorys and Homo sapiens there? Yeah. Peaceful, do we think? Buncha peaceful? Difficult. It's so difficult to prove whether it's peaceful or not. Steve Churchill, Frus of Steve Churchill suggested that there might have been some interspecies of violence based on some.

I think it was maybe some Iraqi material. Was it Iraq? But I think it's very, very difficult to prove. something being into species. Really the way you do it is it's like if the injury looks like a projectile injury as opposed to a close-range hunting injury, projectile is as it's not them.

But I think what you do tend to find, though, is culture being transmitted. So there are a few examples that are used. It looks like there's a particular kind of glue that we actually might have picked up off the Neanderthals. We might have learned how to make this particular glue off the Neanderthals. There is a tool that actually is still being used, I have been told, in some very kind of, let's say,

au-quature French fashion houses to prepare leather. And that looks like it was picked up from the Neanderthals as well. It might not have been, but that's kind of been a suggestion. but then also people that really, really have incredible sites. There's a few people who have the kind of sites where there's a lot of resolutions so they can really start seeing things in different layers. They will argue certain things. They will argue that it looks like there's some kind of technological exchange or information exchange,

but that there are parameters on it often. I think Maurice Seresi and Ludwig, both of them, have argued similar things, that it does look like there's information exchange, but they're not necessarily, or at least some people are not necessarily arguing that we're sitting there going, so how do you do it? It might have been,

some people have argued that it might have been observation. It might have been that people are nosing on each other, basically, spying on neighboring communities. And when you say Ludwig, that's Ludovic Sliman? Yes, I'm so glad that you're pronouncing his son of not me. Who is a fascinating archaeologist with just one of the most fascinating sites. I hope we'll probably talk about that site in a bit of this event, which happens in a bit, a lot of cold coming in. But what you were saying there, I have to then ask about you,

communication, that potential of communication. You've done a lot of work on the handshake. Yes. Do you think it's likely that there would have been a Homo sapiens Neanderthal handshake? I know this sounds bonkers, but I have thought about it and looked into it extensively. And I do think the handshake is probably biological. Okay. And I argue this because chimp's a bloody shaking hands. Like we know this now. Researchers who observe wild chimps because it has to be wild, right? Because if they're in a zoo, they might just be copying what some keepers are doing. But wild chimpanzees have been observed shaking hands and the meaning being broadly similar. So, So it's basically, it was actually some researchers out of St. Andrews.

They showed that these two male chimps of kind of fighting each other. And after the fight, they come up to each other to shake hands to work out. And the thing is, if chimps are doing something and we're doing something, it's a pretty obvious argument to argue that is by dissent. And the thing is, because we do the handshake and we like to see ourselves as being these fancy people, we assume that the handshake is just like a purely cultural thing. but a number of hidden camera experiments have shown that actually handchecks are a really good way of passing on chemo signals.

I don't know how familiar are the audiences with chemo signals or the listeners are with chemo signals. You might need to explain that one. Okay, so chemo signals are basically chemical signals, and we emit chemical signals all the time. We like to think that we're very, we're beyond that, but as I always argue, we haven't evolved our way out of being animals. So there are, and by the way, if you want to pass some time

and just have your mind blown, read upon chemical signals and chemo signals for humans because there are all these experiments which show that we give off sense when we are happy, when we are sad, when we're scared. And if you think about this with the rest of the animal kingdom, you're like, oh, that makes sense because they can't communicate as well. So, you know, oh, the person next to me is scared. Maybe there's like, I don't know, a wolf nearby or something, right? It turns out we have a similar thing.

There are these experiments where they basically get people to put gauze under their armpits. they're not allowed to wash or use Yoda or what have you, and they get them to watch like happy films or sad films. And then they take that gauze. They give it to a different group of participants, and they're accurately naming the emotion. It's wild stuff. And so the argument has been that a handshake is a good way

of passing along a chemical signal. It's a good way of assessing somebody upon a first meet and actually using hidden cameras, they were able to show that people are more likely to put their hand to their face and sniff it after a handshake. Yes, and suddenly, as us seeming very prim and proper, we seem more like dogs just smithers, I think,

but the reason why I'm talking about all this is that I think that the handshake is very old, and if the chimps are doing it as well, the general kind of evolutionary biology principle is that if two very closely related species are doing something, there's a good chance that it's by descent. And so therefore, if we're doing it, and the Neanderthals are also part of that lineage,

they would also be doing it. I think it is possible. I mean, we were having sex with the Neanderthal, so let's just put out there that maybe we'll shoo in my hands as well. I mean, you kind of preempts my next question, which is like, obviously there is some sort of interaction because we know they're shagging with each other. Yes, yes. But it's just fascinating that communication to wonder what that communication was. I remember talking to Chris about this, you know, could there have been the equivalent of a Neanderthal homo sapient translator, as it was, someone who was kind of working to bridge the gap? There's a fascinating question of how it happened, right?

And I think what I love about this, and I can I think about this a lot, is that I think in the way that we talk about history, we often assume that everybody's the same, right? And my personal observation is that people within a group, within tribe, can be very different. And in my mind, it's always like Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob is always the one. Because there's always one person, right? It's usually an aunt, but sometimes it's Uncle Bob, who are just way too friendly. They want to talk to everyone. They want to talk to the strangers.

And it's like, in my mind, it's like Uncle Bob is constantly the one going off to. talk to the Neanderthals and all the other species and just being out and his wife's like, oh my God, can you stop it? It's weird. But as much as I'm being like slightly, I'm taking the pace there a little bit. But actually, am I? Am I? I think realistically, in times when things weren't so bad, I reckon we would have been

more comfortable talking to, you know, these strange other humans than Neanderthals, when times were maybe more difficult, maybe we weren't. But maybe if actually working with them helped us survive, we were. but I also think within a tribe there would have been variation because we know that's what we're like. Some people would have been much more like suspicious of them and other people would be like, huh. Which actually always makes interviews sometimes like this

so difficult because you always need to make clear that everyone is not the same, right? And that's one of the beauties of it of how one homo sapien viewed in the answer compared to how another one viewed, which I guess might also be is evidence through the fact that some homo sapiens chose to have sex with Nia.

Yeah. And, and, you know, I mean, you say chose also. I mean, okay, so we know, what we know now for sure is that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were having sex with each other. We do not know obviously what was going on with those interactions. So I often, you know, I'm always like, oh, was it like, they were like, oh, that's the bad boy over there kind of thing, you know, was it attraction? For all we know, you know, it might have been part of a trade agreement. You know, it might have been very, very practical. It might have been a bit darker. We just don't know.

I think there were so many instances of it, though, that it's also possible that it was many different things. Now, one thing that has been really, really interesting is trying to work out, was it, like, how was that? And was it like, Yandthal females or Neanderthal males? Like, what was that? And this is where genetics is kind of real. interesting because we have Neanderthal DNA all over our genome if you are from outside of

Subtaharan Africa. If you're from inside of Subtaharan Africa, you have some Neanderthal DNA and you may be, but not necessarily. Outside of Subtaharan Africa, it's about 2% on average for an individual. And it's spread all over your genome. So it's important to say that my 2% is going to be different from your 2%, right? But there are a few places where there are these Neanderthal deserts where you don't see much Neanderthal DNA. and the main place you see it is on the sex cropisomes. And that usually indicates that Haldane's rule is at play. Now, Haldane's rule is, we would probably talk this at school, the biological species concept.

So biological species concept is that two things are two different species, two animals are two different species, if when they have sex, the offspring is infertile. Right? That's like, oh, you're two different species. Now, one of the things about that is that the sex chromosomes will basically have less DNA from the other because of Haldane's rule. It's kind of the way it goes. So there is that. So initially we were like, okay, well, Haldane's rule is at play. It's that we're becoming two different species or we are two different species. And that's why there is this desert there of Neanderthal DNA.

Only, oh, just in the last few weeks. There's been some research coming in. And the suggestion is that actually there's another possible explanation for why there's no Neanderthal DNA on the Homo sapiens sex chromosomes. It's that it was Homo sapiens females running off with Neanderthal males. And that really makes me laugh because I'm like, even back then there was a precedent for liking a Neanderthal. The Neanderthal bad boy, there you go. Yes.

I have an image of like, because it would have been our grandmother. If this is correct, it would have been our grandmother. Right. And I just have an image of her looking at the great grandmother being like, but Mama, I love him. I love him. And it's just being her and Uncle Bob at the wedding. It's then also very interesting to think that like if it's a M.Sapian woman giving birth to a Neanderthal. Well, but then like, you know, they've got big heads. Well, that's another question entirely, isn't it? It's like the actual process of giving birth and they're like, but also like community wise, what that would have been if your dad was a Neanderthal if your mum

was a Homo sapien. It's another of those fascinating questions that, you know, people can think about for ages and just think about it. I, yes, and it's so interesting because I think one of the things that I was really keen on with the series, Human and just generally with my stuff generally when it comes to communicating science, is that I think in the, often the way we do paleoanthropology, it's quite emotionless, shall we say? And I can't help but do emotion. Some people might say it's because I'm Arab, I don't know. But I come to it with emotion. And it was really interesting because we had quite a lot of discussions with the BBC about this.

Because I think, you know, they want to make sure that they're doing justice to the science. And I came in very loudly and very strongly being like, we need to put the human back in human evolution. I was like, we are doing a disservice to these species and our ancestors by Portuguese. by portraying them as if they're devoid of emotion because actually emotion is so central to being human, I would argue, the magnitude, the gamut of emotion that we have is remarkable, right? And the ability to articulate it.

And so I'm like, what are we doing? And, you know, it got to the point where I was so firm and I was just like, look, you know, you allow David Attenborough to give more emotion to ungulates than you allow me to give to our ancestors. And it was really interesting because everyone went, oh, okay. And my argument, like, one of the arguments, because they were like, but we're in speculative territory. And I'm like, that's okay.

We say, we make it clear. We don't know for sure. But I'm like, just based on anthropology and ethnography, how can we not ask if a hybrid child would feel belonging or not? We know from ethnography, from anthropology, that people that are mixed outside. it is complicated. Now we know some tribes much more welcoming towards individuals than others. Sometimes as well it's dependent upon the individual, right? But we know that these are discussions. We know this consistently. This is like so well documented. And so for us to feel nervous about having

that conversation is wild. And I was like being that I'm a third culture kid especially, I think it is. And being that I'm a woman, it would be even more insane for me not to say, as a third culture kid as somebody who's parents, Arab who I was also partially raised by my nan who's white like how how would that have been

would that have been complicated would the mother have been terrified for that child would she have been like oh I hope they look like my species and not the other species because I don't know how I was like it is absolutely

within our right to ask these questions we shouldn't be giving answers unless we know for sure but we can be speculating within the realms of what we know of anthropology and ethnography.

And it was really interesting and everyone accepted it. And we went for it and it's really interesting to see the feedback from people. Because people are like, oh, there are us, aren't they? Because it's no longer people think, oh no, they were too simple brain to have any thoughts like that. It's like, no, that thinking's out of the window now. Yeah. I mean, if you've got a hormone leady burying their dead, I'm sorry, we can be talking about

where the hybrid Neanderthal or an homo sapient kids felt that they belonged or not in a tribe. Yeah, we're within, I'm comfortable with that discussion. If we go more like homo sapiens against Neanderthals, and we've mentioned earlier how the AnzTools, like for much of the time, it seems like they're better, better at surviving and so on, and we have the local extinctions. So there seems a great example of this some 55,000 years ago.

The climate in Europe gets colder, and this is not the time when the Anstools go extinct. This is still the time when it seems they're better prepared than we are. There is a little bit of a discussion about the exact, the exact dates, but yes, there is very clear evidence of homo sapiens in Europe, and then it seemed, and we were kind of in some of the same geographies, and then we just disappear from Europe, but the Neanderthals don't. Now, we do know that the climate was getting quite difficult, but, you know, the Neanderthals weren't exactly having a heyday either, but they just seem to be able to

cope with that harsher climate better than us. And we do generally see a pattern of that with the Neanderthals. Don't get me wrong, the Neanderthals, also when the climate got bad, you would notice them, you know, more in the south, for example. But it was, they were still

able to cope with those climates a bit better than us. And then sometime after 54, 55,000 years, the tide starts very, very very, very slowly changing.

And it's really difficult to square it all up because, I mean, there was some research coming out of Germany, for example, that was showing that the Neanderthal sites in Germany were having a heyday from like 40-something thousand years to, you know, for 10, 20, I think it was probably until about 70,000 years. And there were so many sites in Germany, etc., etc., and suddenly there was this complete crash. Wow. So it's also a really difficult. Like it turns out it's very difficult to stalk ancient people

because it's really hard to get demographic data and to be really sure. But what we do see is this pattern. You see this pattern of us being in Europe, hanging on for a few thousand years and then just disappearing. And you get it actually, in Ludwik's site, actually. You get this one layer where the technology just changes.

And it's homo sapient technology. It's homo-same. And it's interesting because Ludwig was looking at its technology going, this isn't the technology in all the other layers. The layers above and below. The layers above and below this layer are the same kind of technology. And then suddenly you get this like alien technology in the middle. And then they found a tooth.

And when they did the DNA analysis on the tooth, it was a homo sapiens tooth. So they realized they had an incursion of homo sapiens in this one site in France. And there are some other places as well. and then they just disappeared and the Neanderthals came back to the site. Isn't that remarkable? And then basically you see this decline

and it's just fascinating. It's only a very few thousand years that you get it where we just kind of and you can probably tell I'm avoiding dates here because I am I just, I'm so stuck on dates

I feel so frustrated by it because I think it really helps. You guys, you know, the listeners and the audience kind of visualise stuff. But the frustrating thing is we just, the dates keep changing and also we keep hearing rumors that the dates are about to change again. So, I mean, not particularly in this case, but we just know it's a thing. But I will say when I talk about overlaps, you know, I'm not talking

like, you know, 30,000 years. I'm talking much, much, much less than that. And then basically, the Neanderthals just slowly just disappear. There's like this, you know, or if you want to look at the German case, there seems like a crash, but generally speaking, they just disappear. Which makes the question, why? I mean, why do we think that it's, in those following few thousand years, that the Ants Tools, I know there's evidence of cannibalism around that time, but it might not be, is like, does it seem to be a combination of factors all coming together? If this was a game show, they'd be like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, yay, he won.

Well done. So I was thinking of the Oprah, like, you get a point or you get a point or you get a point or something of that, but I couldn't quite do it in my mind for the NANDT to play. No, in my head it was the game show where it's like the noise of, you know, you know, when you've like, struck gold. And it's like, right answer. Anyway, sorry, that was my sound effect. Okay, so, if you were to put

100 paleoanthropologists in a room and ask them why the Neanderthals weren't extinct, it would be hilarious because the Venn diagrams would be everywhere. But anyway, and there's always like one person that's not even within the Venn diagram. They're just to circle off somewhere in Siberia. You're saying, ah, but did they actually go extinct?

Yes. Yes. You say that. Yes, some people will argue that actually they never went extinct and that they just, it's a bit like when London just kept getting bigger and bigger and just usurping all the towns around. Fair enough. No, some people actually, and you know what, there's an argument for that, right? I think it is fair to say we cannot agree, and I think there is a reason for that.

I think it's because the evidence is, there's a lot of different reasons, I think we can say. I personally find it very, very hard to ignore a few pieces of evidence. I think the Neanderthals were clearly doing fine for a very, very long time. although they were surviving much better than us in those climates for a very long time. It makes sense because they were adapted to them for hundreds of thousands of years, whereas remember we were the immigrants, we were the new ones, we weren't adapted. Neanderthals, you are right, had very, very small, effective population sizes. What I mean by that is they were really in red.

For those who are kind of interested in genetics, they had very, very, very low levels of heterocygotity, which means their DNA just wasn't very diverse. It reflects a really small gene pool. And as a result of that, you interpret that as being, okay, so they are small in number, which basically means that they are more likely to be riddled with diseases, which we do know, for example, there are some Neanderthals from a cave called Sedron, or Sedron where, you know, they had the kind of diseases you associate with very, very severe inbreeding. But beyond that, what does a small population size lead to?

I would argue a small population size means the cumulative culture which I am obsessed with is not as strong of a play in our cumulative culture is this idea it's a mainstream theory but I will say not necessarily everybody accepts it

it's the idea that every generation builds upon the previous generations art, technology, science like Miley Cyrus, like just everything every generation just gets better than the previous generation in terms of the ability to accumulate knowledge because there's, you know, and the thing with cumulative culture, yes, it requires a brain that

likes to copy and is plastic, likes to copy each other, but the really big thing that community culture needs is numbers. And people, I think, sometimes get lost with cumulative culture, because it's just harder to visualize, but the best way that I can explain cumulative culture to people is that if, let's say, you and I were part of a tribe that was only like, I don't like 20 people, suddenly you and I would have to get really, really good at hunting, gathering, and just about everything in between to survive. If our tribe consisted of 500 people, 5,000 people, we are suddenly taking a massive sigh of relief because we're, oh, we can take a breather, but also it means that you can go off and specialize and I can go off and specialize.

But the other side of it is that, like, I don't know, for example, if one of us invents, like the most basic cake in the world, like a sponge cake, right? Sorry, I'm obsessed with sugars. He's probably guessed from a little earlier when I had a lot of sugar. Anyway, when Ella came in, yeah, you needed a sugar rush straight away and we were happy to provide. Yeah, something like that. So basically, if one of us invents the Victoria, like just a normal sponge cake and our tribe is only 20 people, it's going to realistically say as a sponge cake for generations. But if you have hundreds of thousands of people in that group, even tens of thousands, that sponge cake is going to turn into a red velvet quicker, right?

Because there's just more people looking at each other, copying each other, there's more brain power on it. Homo sapiens, we know, had a much, much, much, much, much bigger population than all the other species that were on the planet, and certainly than the Neanderthals. That gives you a massive advantage. Let's say our brains aren't actually superior. I think they probably was slightly more plastic,

but let's say they weren't. Just numbers alone could explain the better technology because there's just more of you on it. And best technology, I mean the hand axe type, the bow and arrow technology. Bow and arrow. Even weaving. I mean, Chris Dringer argues that weaving is potentially a thing. And weaving, I know it might not sound as sexy.

Folks, for those of you who are listening to this and watch this right now, I'm sorry, weaving is not as sexy as a bow and arrow. Let me explain that the thing, once you invent weaving, your kids are going to stay warmer because you can invent like, you know, the side bits as opposed to you flappy bits. Your nets also become better. Your ability to transport food. Yeah, we need to make weaving sexier. That's what I'm getting at. But yeah, but also I will say there's one other thing. The advantage of homo sapiens, in my opinion, is that we had Africa as the mothership. And Africa as the mothership, Africa is kind of an incredible continent. And one of the things about it is that if we had an offshoot of pioneers, for example, in Europe,

if the climate got bad and they went locally extinct and so did the Neanderthals there, we can replenish from Africa. The Neanderthals couldn't. That's a long-winded explanation for why I think they went extinct. And watch as soon as another person sits in this chair, there will be another theory. And they're in run. No, I don't think so at all. I think that was great.

And I think, yes, to finish on that Africa point and the fact that, yes, we had failed incursions before, always came back, like the Romans in battle and the like. But like, A was come back and adapt and that larger gene diversity and all that stuff. You know, it does explain how homo sapiens emerge the top dogs at the end, which I'm sure would explain a bit more in our next chat together.

But Ella, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thanks for having me. A great episode, yeah. It just goes me to say, Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. You're so appreciate it. Thank you for having we. Well, there you go. What a fun chat that was to record with the brilliant Ella al-Shemahi,

asking these more human questions around Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, getting a sense more of what might it have been like, these early interactions, could there have been handshakes between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens? What might it have been like for someone who was born with a Neanderthal parent and a Homo sapiens parent? fascinating questions to consider, I really do hope you enjoyed listening to this episode just as much as I did recording it. Just to let you know that Ella's new tour, becoming human, it continues in the UK on

the 28th of May. So book your tickets now. Now, if you've been enjoying the ancients recently, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for 100. of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.