Episode 276: Hominins and Art

It's Nicholas's episode this week, and Nicholas wants to learn more about hominins, the ancestors and cousins of modern humans! Happy birthday to Autumn! I hope you have a great birthday! Further listening: Humans Part One Further reading: Were Neanderthals the Earliest Cave Artists? Neanderthals Built Mysterious Stone Circles DNA reveals first look at enigmatic human relative What does it mean to have Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA? Hand and footprint art dates to mid-Ice Age Risky food-finding strategy could be the key to human success A stone circle in a cave was probably built by Neandertals: A deer bone with carving on it probably made by Neandertals: Some cave paintings probably made by Neandertals: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast! I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week is Nicholas’s episode! Nicholas wanted an updated episode about hominins, our ancient ancestors or species closely related to modern humans. The last time we talked about hominins was way back in episodes 25 and 26, so it’s definitely time to revisit the topic. But first, a big birthday shout-out to Autumn! Happy birthday, Autumn, and I hope you have the best birthday so far! If you haven’t listened to episode 25 in a while, or ever, I recommend you go back and give it a listen if you want background information about how humans evolved and our closest extinct relatives, Neandertals and Denisovans. I’ve transcribed that episode finally, so you can read the episode instead of listen to it if you prefer. There’s a link in the show notes. Results of a study published in January 2022 in the journal Nature has finally dated the oldest known Homo sapiens remains found so far. The remains were found in Ethiopia in the 1960s but the volcanic ash found over them was too fine-grained to date with any certainty. Finally, though, the eruption has been determined to come from a volcano almost 250 miles, or 400 km, away from the remains. The Shala eruption was enormous and took place 230,000 years ago, so since the remains were found below the ash, the person had to have lived at least 230,000 years ago too. We’re still learning more about humans and our closest relations because new hominin fossils are being found and studied all the time. But the fossil record doesn’t tell the whole story. Only a small percentage of bones ever fossilize, and of those, only a tiny fraction are ever found by scientists. But technological advances in genetic testing means that scientists can now extract DNA from the soil. All animals shed fragments of DNA all the time, from skin cells and hairs to poop. A study published in 2021 was able to isolate Neandertal DNA from sediments in three different caves. The DNA matched the known fossils found at the sites and gave more information besides.