Hear about a new archeological site that suggests humans arrived in Europe 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, what a giant fossil could teach us about the fearsome sea dragon, and a massive archeological find in Egypt!
Hear about a new archeological site that suggests humans arrived in Europe 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, what a giant fossil could teach us about the fearsome sea dragon, and a massive archeological find in Egypt!
European humans.
Dragons of the sea.
Lost city.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/neanderthal-roommates-sea-dragons-hidden-egyptian
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery.
Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim
to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about a new archeological site that suggests humans arrived in
Europe 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, what a giant fossil could teach us about
the fearsome sea dragon, and a massive archeological find in Egypt!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I’ve got incredible, and surprising, news about human origins. New research
suggests we may have interacted with Neanderthals for thousands more years than previously
thought!
NATE: Wait, I didn’t know we interacted with them at all?
CALLI: Right. So, let's take a step back. Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa more than 300,000
years ago, but it would be another 100,000 years or so before we started leaving the continent
to explore. By the time we made our way to Europe thousands of years after that, though, much
of the land had long been inhabited by a close relative of ours, the Neanderthal, who was more
naturally inclined to survive cold weather, though they would soon die out.
NATE: So when did we actually make it to Europe then?
CALLI: Most anthropologists had believed we didn’t make it all the way there until about 46,000
years ago, but recent discoveries in a rock shelter in southern France suggest that homo
sapiens lived in Europe more than 10,000 years earlier, about 56,000 years ago.
NATE: What did they find in the shelter that proved humans lived there?
CALLI: Archeologists excavated a rock shelter called Grotte Mandrin perched 750 feet above a
river valley. Inside they found various artifacts and stones that had been heated during tool
making. By using carbon dating, and looking through each sediment layer, researchers were
able to create a timeline of who lived in the cave, and it wasn’t just homo sapiens. There was
proof that Neanderthals had lived there as well.
NATE: Neanderthals? You said they died out eventually, so how long were we all running
across the same territory?
CALLI: Before this discovery, anthropologists thought Neanderthals died out a few thousand
years after Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe. But with this discovery, it seems the groups would
have interacted for more than 10,000 years.
NATE: Well were the homo sapiens in this cave really living there or were they just passing
through?
CALLI: Researchers found evidence of a first homo sapien settlement with dozens of
inhabitants who lived in the cave structure for about 40 years. These weren’t hunter gatherers
just passing through, they were trying to establish themselves in the shelter and live there!
NATE: If they were there for so long, were they brushing up against Neanderthals?
CALLI: It seems the groups learned from one another. Researchers found flint that the homo
sapiens used to make tools. But the only place to find that kind of flint is pretty far from the
shelter. Finding it would have required local knowledge. Knowledge only the Neanderthals who
lived there and knew the landscape would have had.
NATE: Oh that's incredible. Did they live together there?
CALLI: Researchers found that the site likely changed hands, from homo sapien to neanderthal
and back and forth for about 14,000 years until Neanderthals left for the last time about 42,000
years ago. This back and forth habitation was one of the most important conclusions from the
finding.
NATE: Well if they had so much contact how do we know they didn’t have more… intimate
…contact?
CALLI: There is a bit of controversy around just that. Some researchers say that homo sapien
remains near those flint tools doesn’t necessarily mean they acquired the tool making
knowledge from Neanderthals. The groups may have formed a hybrid offspring who made the
tools. Now the research team is trying to extract DNA to get a more accurate picture of who is
who.
NATE: We are lucky they settled in caves where these remains could be so well preserved.
CALLI: Well Nate, what’s even more interesting is that researchers found small homo sapien
made blades in Grotte Mandrin. We’ve previously found the same kind of blade in Lebanon.
This means we can’t eliminate the idea that humans may have navigated the waters of the
Mediterranean and made landfall in Europe long before they settled and left evidence in the
stone shelter.
NATE: So this isn’t just about living somewhere before we thought, it's totally recoloring how our
ancestors traveled the world, and interacted with its various species.
CALLI: Exactly, 10,000 years makes a big difference. We have always been a wandering
species, and now we know just how far our ancient ancestors went to expand their horizons.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, researchers in England recently found the largest fossil of the extinct prehistoric
sea reptile Ichthyosaur. The giant fossil of the “fish-lizard” is more than 30 feet long and gives us
new clues about the life of one of the most dominant apex predators our oceans have ever
seen.
CALLI: Fish lizard? What exactly is this thing?
NATE: Imagine a long, smooth body, with limbs like big paddles and a tail that looked like it
belonged to a fish. It used that tail, and wiggled its body, to move through the water. At the front
it had a 6-foot-long head that weighed a ton and was packed full of sharp teeth. That’s why it's
also known as the sea dragon. It would have been one of the biggest animals in the ocean, and
an apex predator. Which is saying a lot, since it lived in the sea during the Jurassic Period when
dinosaurs walked the earth, about 251 million to 65 million years ago.
CALLI: Ok so where would I have gone to avoid this thing?
NATE: Only land really, because fossils of them have been found in waters near China, the
United States, Canada, and Europe.
CALLI: Well where did they find this biggest one?
NATE: In the UK 100 miles north of London at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve. It’s a
landlocked area now, but during the Jurassic period it would have been covered with a warm
tropical sea. It’s pretty cool, an employee was walking across the Nature Reserve when he saw
what he thought were pipes coming out of the mud. He looked closer, and realized they were
vertebrae. So they called in the experts.
CALLI: What kind of shape was it in after millions upon millions of years?
NATE: Since this fossil was in Jurassic clay, it had not turned completely to stone. Rather,
researchers described a consistency more like biscuits... They couldn’t dig out the entire fossil,
as it would have crumbled as the mud around it broke apart. But even on site, it didn’t take long
to realize the caliber of the discovery.
CALLI: Well how do you study it if you can’t lift it out of the mud?
NATE: They encased it in plaster to give it strength and protection and pulled it out in large
sections. They were also careful, though, to create 3D model of the bones to know where they
were laid out. Even the location of the bones can help us learn how the creature lived and
hunted.
CALLI: Well other than its size, did they find anything interesting?
NATE: The rear fin was incredibly well preserved, but it was also facing the wrong way. This,
along with a kink in the spine, made researchers think the sea dragon may have been
scavenged after its death by other creatures.
CALLI: But those scavengers didn’t take a bunch of bones?
NATE: Thankfully not. The fossil is the largest, and most complete found in the UK, so
researchers are understandably stoked. They still have a ton of exhaustive work to do
processing the fossil, especially given the fragile nature, and massive size, of the bones. Many
suspect that working through the fossil, removing clay, cleaning and conserving the bones, and
making permanent supports to protect it from its own weight will take about two years.
CALLI: Where do you do this with something so large? It's not like you can clean a six-foot,
one-ton skull on a museum desk.
NATE: Some researchers think moving forward with this work might require an entire wing of a
facility… When they get it though, they will not only be able to study the bones, but also any
diseases it might have had, and they’ll be able to study the contents of its stomach.
CALLI: All from a fossil?
NATE: That’s right. These fossils are incredible, researchers have even found other sea dragon
fossils with offspring inside their birth canals. There is so much we could learn.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I’ve got a story today about an era of history I know you love, ancient Egypt!
NATEL: It's a fascinating time period for science, architecture, and culture! What did we find this
time?
CALLI: Well archaeologists recently discovered an ancient Egyptian city, and the quality of the
site’s preservation is drawing comparisons to Pompeii. The 3000-year-old city “Rise of Aten”
may be the largest Egyptian archeological discovery since King Tut’s tomb. That discovery
completely changed what we knew about ancient Egypt, especially the important process of a
king’s burial. It was a tidal shift in our knowledge, and this recent discovery is big enough to
have the same effect.
NATE: That’s incredible. But how does one go about finding a whole city? Especially if it has
been lost for thousands of years?
CALLI: Archeologists were looking for a temple beside King Tut’s tomb and instead found this
new city. When archeologists started looking for the temple, they found mud brick walls, and the
more they dug, the more those walls just kept extending and extending and extending. It wasn’t
one building, it was one after another after another after another. It is in a really important area
of ancient Egypt, known as Luxor, the southern half of the ancient city of Thebes on the western
bank of the Nile River. There are already a bunch of ancient monuments in the area including
King Tut’s tomb and the Valley of the Queens.
NATE: Were these just walls though? Or were there buildings we could go inside?
CALLI: That's what's so incredible. Buried beneath all the soil, the city was incredibly well
preserved. When they started digging, they found buildings left as if the inhabitants had walked
off a few days before. The city is packed with the random things that make up daily life.
NATE: I don’t know if I’d want the understanding of our society to be based on what I had lying
around my house.
CALLI: Be that as it may, archeologists found vessels of wine and boiled meat and many of
these vessels were inscribed with the names of city leaders. These vessels alone are giving us
a much better understanding of both diet and bureaucracy in the ancient world. They also found
evidence of weaving and spinning, work sites to produce mud bricks for temples, and a site for
making decorations for temples and tombs.
NATE: Did we learn anything from the layout of the city itself?
CALLI: Well the gates and entryways to the city were also really well preserved. This is helping
us understand how the ruling class might have controlled how people moved in and out, and
how they may have secured the city to protect its inhabitants from outside threats. But there
were other finds that are harder to decipher, like a burial site for two cows that researchers are
still investigating, and a burial site of a person who still has the remains of a rope around their
knees.
NATE: Oh that's kind of spooky. Were there any other human remains in there? It is a whole
city after all.
CALLI: There is a whole section of rock-cut tombs that they haven’t been able to fully explore
yet. This is still a relatively new find, and there is still so much to look into. Some researchers
have already said, though, that this is already one of the most important finds in Egyptian
archeological history.
NATE: Wow, this makes me think back to Howard Carter.
CALLI: Absolutely! Carter was the archeologist who found King Tut’s tomb all the way back in
1922. That discovery opened up a world of knowledge of, and interest in, ancient Egypt. The
archeologist who discovered this new site, Zahi Hawass, draws a lot of comparisons to Carter,
and Indiana Jones too! Hat and all. He’s long been an adventurous leader in archeology in
Egypt, and this most recent discovery is his biggest find yet!
NATE: Tough to get much bigger than a whole city.
CALLI: (laughs) The impacts will probably be even larger. There is still so much to explore and
we are already learning what daily life, worship, and social structures of the ancient Egyptian
world looked like. This find is likely to fill in, if not change, so many blanks we have about this
fascinating part of human history.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Anthropologists found a new site in
southern France that suggests homo sapiens arrived in Europe about 10,000 years earlier than
previously thought. This new finding changes how we consider our ancient ancestors, and their
interactions with other human-like species.
CALLI: Researchers in the UK have found an incredibly large and complete fossil of the
terrifying sea creature known as the “Sea Dragon.” This fossil, more than 30 feet long, will give
researchers the opportunity to better understand one of the ocean’s most dominant apex
predators.
NATE: Archeologists recently discovered a previously unknown 3,000-year-old city from ancient
Egypt. The quality of the site is drawing comparisons to Pompeii and giving us insights into daily
life in ancient Egypt.