The Myths of Human Origin

The reason why I ask, have you ever seen images of indigenous people in the Amazon that walk around barefoot and their feet literally start to look like hands? They splay out in a very bizarre way. I haven't seen those particular pictures, but I do know that people that walk around unshod, you know, so in other words without shoes tend to develop toes that are more divergent. Not opposable like a primate, but for whatever reason about being unshod, it just gives you, you know, you look at the toe and it's like visibly separated. Yes. We're looking at a picture of it right now on the screen. We're showing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very strange where it's almost like they're gripping the ground with their toes and the toes are very thick and strong because they're constantly walking around barefoot and they use their toes and the toe muscles in a way that we don't use them anymore because we're essentially we're in casts with our shoes. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, what's really interesting about me when we look at like modern adaptations, adaptations of modern humans, you know, in all these different pockets of the world or you know, particularly when you look into all these ancient species, which are even weirder, is he realized there's nothing about our form that's like an end destination. There's nothing about our form that is like we know we have arrived at this was, you know, we're primates. We're going the whole time. It's you know, if you want to talk about who are the weird ones, it's not all these other things. It's like the modern humans are weird. We got these big heads. We got this funny way of walking. We're bald, you know, and we've very so much. Yeah, and we vary and then, you know, there's there's all these kind of myths about why I mean, God, there's so many myths in the field of human origins. But one of them is he probably heard about like the divine proportions or like golden ratio that humans were constructed, you know, according to these ratios and so-called golden ratio. And this is just storytelling. You know, I mean, there's nothing about our proportion. Proportions are just a function of adaptation. They're a function of evolutionary biology. And you know, when certain chemicals are released in developmental process that governs how long your limbs grow or your digits or whatever. But there's, you know, we're just all variations of primate. We're just one of them. And so, yeah, so sometimes you see literature or people positing that, you know, somehow there is something like an end. We've reached some sort of end state or and I'll tell you, we're not reaching an end state. We're just a variation of, you know, creatures that have been adapt, you know, it's just these common elements and adapt them, you know, for different, you know, for different uses and modern humans, though, we do vary size wise much more than ancient apes that we find though, correct? We don't like, for instance, like we, you know, mountain from the Game of Thrones, that enormous giant human being. That's a human being. I don't. I should confess I am I am sort of illiterate when it comes to pop culture. Oh, OK. Well, my kids would know I need to turn to them. You know, I'm kind of like he's literally one of the world's strongest man. He's like seven plus tall, 300 plus enormous. But my point was that like that he exists as a human being. Also Chris Rock is a human being and he's a very thin, very small man. Like, but there are both human beings. We don't find that when you're looking at things like Neanderthal or were you looking at you find much more uniformity. Is that correct? Well, no, not necessarily. Actually, actually, in some cases there's there's a lot of variation. I'll give you one good example. So Lucy, you know, there's this famous fossil. Lucy was the species is called Australopithecus aparensis named aparensis after the afar. You know, this part of the world where I was describing the Afar depression. She was discovered in 1974. She's very petite, probably a female. And I forget how tall she is, but it's like three foot something. And Artie Artie is a female, too, correct? Artie's a female. Artie's taller. Artie's, you know, I had taller than than Lucy. But anyway, so with Lucy, you know, when her skeleton was found, you know, this was, you know, the only skeleton of that species. They had a lot of other pieces of things, but no skeletons. But there was this assumption that that species was small and or at least that the female and now thanks to some other work that's done in Ethiopia to place cotter or anzomile. A few years ago, a team announced discovery of another skeleton of Lucy species. It's a male. It's a lot bigger than Lucy. They call it catanuma, which is a word for big guy. But it's the same species as Lucy, but it's it's a big guy, you know, substantially taller. So it sort of falsifies this idea that all Lucy's species was was petite. So interesting. And why is that? Is that because it's a there's a so-called sexual demorphism of males are bigger than females or is it just a different population or is that just, you know, just a difference in in, you know, the normal range within a population, you know, like, you have short people and tall people, you know, in our, you know, in any population. I don't know. But they're both mature specimens. Yeah. Yeah. And they are both attributed to the same species. So just to give you an example of a paleo species where there is actually a substantial variation. How much difference is it between Lucy and this other one? It's I don't know. Actually, I wish I had looked this up before we talked because I love to give you a number. But it the big guy is substantially taller and bigger than Lucy. But the skeletons they have, you know, the anatomy is similar enough so that they are attributed to the same species. Interesting. And they're similar age like Catanoumou, I think is like three point six million years old and Lucy's I think three point two. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Mmm. Mmm.