Recent breakthroughs in dating ancient samples of DNA and human remains have led to a radical reassessment of human origins. At least ten other early human groups-some with the cognitive capacity to make art, jewelry and herbal medicines-occupied the planet at the same time as our ancestors, Homo Sapiens, and some of their genomes live within us today. Leading archeologists and paleoanthropologists join Brian Greene to discuss how these surprising new insights are transforming our understanding of early Humans.
This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
Participants:
Rebecca Ackermann
Thomas Higham
Sheela Athreya
Viviane Slon
Moderator: Brian Greene
- SUBSCRIBE to our KZhead Channel and "ring the bell" for all the latest videos from WSF
- VISIT our Website: www.worldsciencefestival.com
- LIKE us on Facebook: / worldsciencefestival
- FOLLOW us on Twitter: / worldscifest
#briangreene #anthropology #paleontology
This is a really wonderful conversation. For those stuck in the physics/quantum-classical/mathematics/astronomy mindset (as followers of Brian Greene tend to be) this is a breath of fresh air because it opens a whole new vista of discoveries and science, something new to get interested in! Fascinating stuff. Thank you Brian for offering this up.
NEANDERTHALS ARE NOT WHITE.. THEY WOULD BE AFRICANS AND BLACK..
One of my favorite topics outside of physics and quantum mechanics. Btw, Brian Green, you are my hero. I wish I could attend your courses at Columbia.
NEANDERTHALS ARE NOT WHITE.. THEY WOULD BE AFRICANS AND BLACK..
Greene is a great moderator and this channel is fantastic at covering all the dimensions of science. Brian really strings everything together into a rich tapestry. (I couldn't resist the string theory puns)
Mr Greene you are a national treasure
Global Treasure
I think he is subtly sarcastic with the exaggerated hand gestures.
this is a great vid so far, thank you science festival!
Simply marvelous...great panel....terrific conversation...thank you all so much.. ...
Professor Greene thank you for another wonderful topic, these are so informative.
I love this channel.
It's so cozy watching this channel
Finally an update on time lines!
Nice to hear experts discussing the braided stream. This seems so obvious to me and has since I first heard of it.
I’m always surprised how many more views and likes the space videos get over human evolution and hominin evolution/paleo anthropology. This is most fascinating subject and it’s about us 😊. It’s our history and where we come from.
The human evolution question is still not probable, where space exploration is. Think that's the explanation
@@annettegustafson1435 tf you talking about
As someone who knows quite a bit on these issues, I find hard to like when they hammer on stuff like 6 Ma divergence from Chimps, when we know way too well that 8 Ma is the bare minimum. Or when you get a guest that claims that "globular heads are European" (they are modern human, all H. sapiens have that trait as much as chins and other H. sapiens specific traits). I end up having too many mixed feelings to put a like: it can be done much better and it should be done much better.
@@annettegustafson1435 That makes absolutely no sense. You must be a religionist.
Hello "World Science Festival"! Thank you for showing us such a wonderful video! I feel so happy! I'm looking forward to your next work! Have a nice day!
Best part of this whole dialogue is the acceptance that we really know very very little. Known known. Unknown knowns. Unknown unknowns. Trying to ignore the self-implied racism and such that is unnecessary in this kind of discussion. Rather recognizing ancient populations were not primitive idiots but intelligent.
Great to see Prof Green back on KZhead 🙌
Outstanding discussion. Thank you
Damn… I simply love this subject
Two excellent speakers and a semi activist
Fantastic !! so much to think and re-think here - human exceptionalism and clear cut categoric notions of what we have defined as 'intelligence'. The roots of our necessarily culturally influenced subjectivities are clearly revealed here as are the lines of what we regard as 'hard' and or 'soft 'sciences' - LOVE this stuff - thankyou !!
Sneaking CRT into Paleoanthropology
Yes. And mind you that "Critical Theory" is absolutely not at all critical but dogmatic. Critical thought is another thing altogether.
Perhaps you might want to look into exactly what CRT actually is or infers? You may want to cover up…your bias is showing 😮
Literally fall asleep with these types of videos in my earphones , absolutely love them
The snooze factor is important
Hate those midroll ads though
I love this channel! ❤️ Always a pleasure to tune into and think about something new or something old, differently 🙂
Absolutely fantastic. Great progress in our understanding and approach in this field.
I saw Brian Greene as a younger person in one of my favorite films (Frequency) and when he was thirty years older. He was wonderful.
I don't know why you can't see it, but these ancient people just blended in. I can see neanderthal traits in people, prominent brow ridge, large head, broad shoulders. But they just assimilated into other tribes.
@Ali Al-Mahdi Lay off the wacky weed
@Ali Al-Mahdi seek help
@Ali Al-Mahdi And this of course true as I red it me book of silly stories, lies and magic, if yew avent red it calld the biblokoran. its grate.
What about the folk who look like Vampires, Werewolves or thesists?
@@davidfiler7439 Are you talking about democrats
Thanks for bringing me up-to-date on this important field of science. There was also a bit of humor along the way which made it special.
It is nice to see someone sharing skepticism about the old 19th-20th century "scientific" timeline.
This symphony of life being continuously orchestrated by the instruments. How very fortunate we are being able to share newfound concepts adding to this wonderful journey of understanding through discovery. and so caught in the whirlwinds and vortices of deep time, I listen, then add my own thoughts to this great harmonic. What a privileged life. Thank you all for the music of life.
31:10 that was a great presentation
Imagine a pot of spaghetti sauce permanently simmering on the back burner. Every day ingredients are replenished and new ones added as the sauce is dipped out. The sauce evolves over time but remains attractively aromatic and familiar. Instead of the hominid bush, we have a stew.
I like the metaphor. However that's not how it actually goes: we have a dish, a recipe encoded in our DNA, and as it becomes popular (it expands geographically) it meets other related dishes and gets very small amounts of slightly exotic ingredients (what if we add a bit of chili?, etc.) In the most extreme case you may have changed 6% of the ingredients, usually much less and also you have selected for those ingredients that works best and against those that really were not productive in the experimental first dishes.
nice to see those extinct denisovians, neanderthals and so on alive in his studio talking in english
Amazing! Many thanks 🤩
Great topic!!
I feel cozy watching this channel.
This is real
@@wissamtekarli3704 it really is. I don't know why it makes me feel that way. Cuddled up just listening
Like a good book. Keeping me up late.
Couldn't be more true🤌
These were much better when you did them in person.
The definition of species has changed so much since I was a kid, I’m not really sure what it means anymore.
I'm glad to see Brian Greene back, he always asks the right questions
I'm not sure why they get so sensitive about groups of humans who separate have genetic changes and then come back together. It reminds me of polar bears and grizzly bears. They're all bears but polar bears definitely changed and diet and habitat from grizzly bears for a long time. Now that the polar bears environment is disappearing they are coming back to the habitat of the grizzly bears and they are mating and producing offspring. Same exact thing with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
I love when they do science other than physics. I love physics too though.
love this channel
Yery entertaining and educational as usual, thanx
Viviana Slon will, I hope, be given the highest prize science has available. She is both brave and smart for her breakthroughs in DNA in ancient man. .She actually used the words that describe a mixing of species. Science wont "like" that.
Im sure topography and geological obstacles played some part in the seperation . I bet if you follow trade routes, the variations would show a higher percentage of intermixing .
Always look forward to these events. Please consider 3 guests instead of 4. Would like to see and hear more from less.
Great information in the video, unfortunately the audio volume is very uneven and the music is too loud in spots making it hard to understand the speech.
Good show.
How far can genetics go! Just splendid‼️ Seems the discovery of more members of the family from yonder would increase some before long.
Good one. We are probably not intelligent enough to realize some other earth species are more intelligent than us, and in a different way.
WSF, when was this talk held?
This was great. What an interesting moment to update new discoveries of ourselves (and the "maybe" ourselves) of other human species. I will certainly watch this more than once to help retain the information and make conclusions.
Bravo 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
As usual, a masterpiece.
Hello, first of all, thank you for this awesome conversation. But what's exactly was so special about the finding of the hybridization of Denisovans and Neandertaler?
Dna is amazing. 😊 we learn so much from so little.
Interesting...!!!
I do not mind anyone doing research, so long as there is an agreed upon guideline to follow that rids of biases inherent or explicit. Tough but necessary. Looking forward to more discoveries of import.
How good of you, do scientists require a letter from you before they start, or can they just obtain clearance once they've reached a conclusion?
@@davidfiler7439 Guess what they do. Are you not satisfied? Waiting for my well-written letter pronto. Can you, please?
@@hochathanfire0001 Nothing you say makes sense, English a second language?
@@davidfiler7439 It surely is yours because you make sense right? Take your garbage elsewhere. Do you understand that? Is English your 5th language?
The conversation goes south, gradually at first, and then quickly once the topic of intelligence is introduced. Sad, really, but it's a reflection of the state of academia presently.
Interesting where the panel went when Brian brought up intelligence. Several of the panel jumped to humans. An entire episode could be devoted to intelligence. Currently, finding microbes on other planets would be considered to be amazing! I think the panel members might be getting ahead of themselves.
I miss the chemistry of guests on stage ...
12:45 51:04 ( 54:32 the question of changing the taxonomy )
I watched from 54:32....could u be more exact... where exactly were they talking about changing the taxonomy?
@anonymouspreme3425 when she says the out of Africa model is pretty much demolish that's more controversial than anything that I've ever said, yet you can't understand what that means!!!
@panafricandesignsandapparel she talking about 1 way migration(listen to the context of her statement...AND....she only one person stating her opinion...that doesnt change anything)...I'm trying to get your point bro but it's not there....they say nothing about changing taxonomy.
@@anonymouspreme3425 I'm not going back and forth trying to prove something to someone that's NEVER studied the subject matter...go study the human & Neanderthal genome projects like I have and maybe in a couple of years we can have a SERIOUS discussion...best wishes homie!!!
imagine the love story between the parents.. truly remarkable...
Good talk. I can’t say I really understood, though I did give the benefit of the doubt, the racist undertones that Becky and Sheila tried repeatedly to disperse. At some point I swear I thought Sheila was suggesting that our modern racist ideas permeated onto classification of ancient hominids. What? Becky’s comment at the end that it matters who has been given the opportunity to do the research. Again, What? Do we have to drag woke politics into everything we talk about today? I felt like Sheila was worried about offending Denisovans, and Becky suggesting that marginalized groups’ research would surely produce much needed breakthrough in our understanding in the field. You know here’s an idea- the harder you try to push something away, the closer it might come near you. You end up sounding ridiculously racist by seeing racism EVERYWHERE.
I have to say I picked up on this as well, wasn't even that subtle. Surely the data gets presented 'as is' and worth an honest discussion, regardless of whether or not it makes a person 'uncomfortable'. Not sure the data shares 'feelings' one way or the other. Was waiting for the lady in yellow top to say Neanderthals were racist (ha ha). I would guess there priorities were survival, not wokeness. Just on the 'needing a conversation to interbreed', don't we have that with certain lions / tigers, grizzly bears and polar, and no doubt others, think there's a zebra as well. Clearly no zoologist here.
When I had my genome done I had the normal amount of Neanderthal genes but twice the normal amount of Denisovan genes.
The pursuit of AI/AGI is helping humanity slip its anthropocentrically focused lenses too. Giving us a platform to understand pure intelligence. Great talk, valuable. Thank you all.
Exactly. I'm grateful for this wonderful content.
What do you think about Spiritual divination vs. technological advancement in terms of human evolution paths?
By spiritual divination do you mean observation & deduction, speculation?
An educated adult who doesn't believe human evolution hasn't been conquer, conquer, conquer is deluding themself.
This is what KZhead is for.
There is a touch of political correctness here. love the idea that I am part Neanderthal it speaks of a time of innocence.
I'm sorry, but more than "a touch" - groan!
A flood rather than just a touch. I'll grant you it's a bit of a touchy subject but some people go overboard from old misconceptions to new totally opposite ones... but still misconceptions.
How do we explain so much fertile hybridation?
So maybe Neanderthals were not replaced at all, but mixed totally with the sapiens. But there happened to be many more sapiens than Neanderthals. Or they produced more offspring.
I have 2.4% Neanderthal ancestry (I presume, never tested but that's standard in my area) how does that make me into a surviving Neanderthal? It doesn't. I also have some, probably more, virus DNA, does that make me a virus?
Nonsense.
The more we learn, the more we realize how little we knew. In the future, they will realize how little we knew. We don't truly know much.
I love this music! Who is the composer?
There is a problem with this discussion in that the Neanderthal contribution to modern humans is order 1-5%, while the Denisovan contribution is also 2-5%, with at most 10% in the most Denisovan heavy areas. This is not suggestive of large amount of interbreeding with modern humans, but of near total replacement. I am sure you will find 2-4% Tasmanian DNA in modern people living in Tasmania, but that island wasn't the product of respectful coexistence, but of genocide.
That " intelligence is a social construct " woman did not belong there. She's trying to politicize archeology.
Loved this, as always
Master Communicator indeed!
The real question is “will videos on these scientific topics ever surpass the views of cat memes?” 😊 Great video!
Unfortunately, not lol!
Great clarity, new perspectives and findings as I have come to know I will get from watching the World Science Festival videos. This was very enriching as usual. I am also compelled to strongly object to watching a great production which is then tainted with an obsessive mindset boiling over with what could be mistaken for hateful animosity. So much so that little else was offered. This is a poison which is being remade and refined at such a destructive level, it can be seen as more harmful than if what is wrongly perceived were actually true.
Since there is adaptive Denisovan DNA in many (most?) Tibetans, I wonder if any Denisovan DNA has been found in natives of the new world.
This gave me flashbacks to viruses for better or worse. Living or dead, species or group?
"paleolithic penthouse"? Please.
Intelligence is NOT a social construct. Its drfinition is valid in much a greater dominium.
51:00 thier not different, they are just different
Shame THIS kind of logic, tripping over it's own legs, found its way into this otherwise interesting and informative presentation.
For all the discussion of bias and colonialism the most fascinating part of the talk was watching all three women aggressively trip over their own deconstructionist bias, nearly to the point of incoherence. Poor Tom just checked out of the discussion for like twenty minutes to avoid conflict. I kinda picture him sitting back and eating popcorn while watching the intellectual horror show.
@@tjhoffer123 Well said.
There is so much coincidences that had to happen for the solar system, the galaxy, our place in the galaxy, the right star, the Earth being hit by a mars size object that didn't destroy Earth, which caused our planet to tilt the correct way, etc., and the list goes on, makes me dubious of other life in the universe. For instance, as far as I know, no human fingerprints have been found for a match, and my favorite analogy is that no snowflake has been found with a twin, and the odds of that happening are astronomical. it's sort of like never having the value of Pi come out even...
I'm trying to understand how one can say that intelligence is a cultural concept, when culture arises as a result of intelligence.
When Germans got cultuerd their intelligence rose, same with Russians, English, French, Japanese, Jews, Singaporeans, Chinese and so on. Now lets look at Middle East and other Muslim countries. They are not producing any Nobel prize winners in their native countries, why because of culture. All the smart muslims live in western countries, where the culture allows them to trive freely.
Defination of intelligence is cultural construction
The reason you find it hard, as anyone mostly would, is because you can't say intelligence is simply a cultural concept, even if partially - at least if we act in faith of a baseline, scrutinised definition of intelligence, which to me seems is something supported by science and very real even if it needs to be refined over time and that we should be cautious as to how we use it. People may think that just because some groups' intelligent feats are recognised or applauded more than others (for whatever reason) that that must mean intelligence as a characteristic of human behaviour should be discarded with, but such is silly because it assumes there is no baseline that helps us determine whether there are genuine cognitive differences between individuals, and yet any person would know that such is the case. Even if you talk about intelligence based on experience rather than genes, there are some things we can do that inherently have value over others, or there are things we can do that would indicate a higher cognitive ability no matter how it was attained. IMO, because of this I think it is silly to say that intelligence is not a thing or that it is a social construct, because that would imply that all kinds of judgments of intelligence are simply due to the culture they come from and are not archetypal or pervasive across culture - but we do know that there are indeed markers of intelligence that all or most cultures have recognised and value, and that that would mean it's not merely arbitrary. We know this, because, well, how else could different communities and people agree to things if there was no baseline of intelligence? Only someone who supposes that intelligence can only be defined as how smart someone is judged to be rather than what they actually are would say such. And whilst, yes, every evaluation is a judgement in a sense and there can be biased or illogical evaluations, I think we know for a fact and have come far enough that there are ways to critically and fairly appraise someones cognitive ability by standards of some scrutinised logic. Else, if we purport intelligence as social construct, what does that mean for things like psychology and all its apparatuses?
When it was first disclosed, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Neanderthal genenics composed a minor percentage our present genome. Sadly, extinction of this format human lineage should simply be accepted. Are there presently populations of Neantherdal whose genome is similarly hybridized with our genes composing a small percentage of their genetic variation? It's a lovely thought, but...
Wow ! I'm a hybrid .
Introgressed at best. Deny was a true hybrid (50-50) but you and I are mere distant relatives of other true hybrids (IMO Skhul 5 looks like a plausible Neanderthal-Sapiens hybrid and was in the right place and at the right time to be part of that ancient hybridization but more research is needed).
I heard the voice and wondered whether Brian Greene now does paleontology.
I just want to take a long look at Antarctic. That bad boy has a story to tell no doubt.
The far more intriguing period would have been perhaps 12 million to 5 million years ago, when different populations would have been refining the morphological and physiological bases of bipedalism. Any population and possibly species that made a great leap forward would have triggered an evolutionary contest, and it's possible that the first group to begin the process was not on our direct ancestral line.
Wait a minute, how do you know that Denny is the child of a Neanderthal and A Denison? As opposed to the child of two hybrids?
'Believing the evidence' is kinda like 'having faith'... philosophically speaking.
The principle conclusions are obvious, yet remain unstated… Conclusion 1: Running deep, deep down into our core, guys are basically Frat-boys. We’ll screw anyone &/or anything? Corollary to Conclusion 1: Women ain’t that picky, neither!
Plants are the only entities that sustain 100% of all life in the entire known universe. Hence, in order to acquire exhaustive knowledge of how all beings appeared on this earth and how they at present are (and in future can be) sustained, it suffices to discover the mathematical model of the mechanism how particle interactions inside the earth compose (completely controllable by us) seeds, water and fertilizers to develop plants on its surface, and then deliver and sustain beings on it through them. As this model would provide everything necessary to control all motion in the entire universe through plants, analyzing the resultant beings (humans and animals ~ social sciences, biology), minerals (physics, chemistry ~ quantum physics) and celestial motions (astronomy, cosmology ~ relativity) to discover that mechanism is analogous to dismantling and analyzing a car to discover the structure of the factory that manufactured it. On the contrary, the discovery of that mechanism demands interpretation of digits as unique particles followed by identification of Laws of Particle Interactions inside the core of the earth as the 4 basic arithmetic operations to derive growth of plants as functions of so composed seeds, water and fertilizers and the rest of the laws (of mathematics and physics, hence all sciences including those called "social" at present) would follow automatically from that, without any additional axioms at all. If you still insist The Experimental and Observational Science as it works at present ~ without any specified purpose, but with the motto "knowledge for its own sake" through "curiosity" dependant selection of topics and the fatalistic FAITH in the existence of an uncontrollable by us system of LAWS OF NATURE represented by the undeniably accurate axioms of mathematics ~ would discover that mechanism, then GOOD LUCK to you and GOD(?) SAVE HUMANITY. The fact that none of the whole team here even mentioned a single word about the role of plants in the origin and sustenance of life clearly indicates how far detached is TEOS from inventing (NOT DISCOVERING) the laws that would enable sustenance of "a pleasant to all beings" life function in the universe, the single ultimate task of all search for knowledge.
I am curious. Has anyone taken dna samples of us maybe 100 years ago and measured their Neanderthal percentage?
I understand this is outside the scope of this discussion but the implications of 200k year old human footprints in N. America must finally make the hypothesis of a land bridge from Asia and an ice free corridor 12k years ago moot. Orangutan have been filmed mimicking spearfishing locals. How many generations of homowhatever children watching logs float down a river before one of them goes for a ride? How many generations of play before they try a hollow log? From that point how long until the 1st outrigger canoe? We have 12k years of recorded history. The oldest human remains are how old? 300k? That's a whole lot of sitting by the river.
The great discovery was that Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA was 15-16ths human and 1-16th chimpanzee. The ape-men were not human ancestors. They were the result of human-ape hybridization.
Have you seen some humans that walk among us. ❤🇨🇦🌎
Who is the narrator? He seems very intelligent
brian greene
@@sasukiiii thanks
Human race spent thousands of years to dilute the Neanderthal influence on our genes. It did us lots of good. I don’t see the reason to talk about Neanderthals as a gift to our genome except maybe for Tibet (breathing in high altitude) .
Brave New Prehistoric CGI World.
interesting the "lenses" the study is seen thru .. excuse pun but those with a "bone 2 pick" .. let the scientific evidence speak 4 itself .. fearlessly