Joe Rogan Experience #1561 — Kermit Pattison Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Welcome. Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. I'm very, very fascinated by but we have this ability to walk and run long distances which is kind of unique so i thought okay sounds pretty interesting and then um so i thought okay well maybe already it'll maybe i'll it'll be They had a skull. So it sort of became a way to sort of tickle this interest I had in the natural history of the human body and human biology.

3:36 And then the drama of discovery and there's bullets flying overhead. contains, the scientific revelations aren't immediately evident. We should fill people in on exactly what we're talking about. some some teeth you know like a toe bone a few other broken elements of the skeleton. So Artie is indeed the oldest skeleton. It's unfortunate, man. that many people in science had

8:05 Ardic Pythagoras ramidus species, ardi, the individual skeleton. are arty's proportions similar to that uh no arty i mean it's certainly more ape-like than Well, that was one because the bones are broken. So is this like, does it have almost equal length arms and legs? surprising part was that it didn't walk at all on its knuckles being it that it was that old uh yeah so so the okay so humans are

11:59 And when they walk, you know, I mean, they, you know, do this. at very very early days of the species evolution well it's it's it's by you know all you know is it even further back than that so yeah the the there's another school of thought that's kind of emerged that says well it still could be a knuckle walking ancestor you know that gave rise to humans

14:51 The skeleton itself beginning of how the whole detective went to Ethiopia. what came before Lucy? It's 3.2 million years old. is controversial. So these are, uh, these are identity politics, the paleo identity politics of humanity. uh from like the 1970s into the early 80s that's the time when lucy was sort of being intensely It becomes a Marxist dictatorship.

19:38 a new project area it's big it's like the size of Rhode Island, you know, and in that project area, there's all kinds of, it's like the layer cake of time, you know, I mean, anthropology depends I mean, and we can learn so much about human evolution if we just spend all these years studying, you know what I think. And finally, in 1992, they find a first tooth of what becomes the species of Ardipithecus.

21:56 And anyway, over a couple of years, and that's kind of Yeah, so anyway, He is an anthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley. That's Tim. Anyway, but he's also very exacting in the field. to know for sure until we get back and look at it more closely and and and uh anyway so so he's one was put in jail he was tortured he was lucky to survive he told me he went into

25:41 There's a number of other Ethiopian guys. of human origins. to train Ethiopians not only to be field crew, but PhD scientists. a little piece like that, there's necessarily going to be anything else from that skeleton of a skeleton here or multiple elements of an individual okay but you know still it's kind of Yeah, so this is fossil material. of fossil stuff. I mean, usually they're bones.

29:12 So I can't give you a good answer. And it's probably consumed by some big cat or whatever. but actually pigs are uh surprisingly annihilative scavengers i mean they're ruthless they're So National Geographic, it's a good source. Yeah, so it's a long time. know like porcupines it's like you know little you know rodents that come in so you know dung So somewhere near a river where there'd be like overbank flooding every now and then,

33:04 leave their bones for us and then so that's that's one element that makes this thing so hard and then the other one is just you know you have to be if if you are the fossil hunter you know the And I mean, Tim White, don't get a lot of rain but when they do get rains they can be torrential and then that just sends i was telling you that story a minute ago because they're founding all these things on the ground so

36:08 and weeks but anyway they start digging there and this is when they say holy crap this is like because otherwise you're just going to waste your time, and you don't have much time in the field. there and some of that was just juggling the conflicting priorities in the field um and what So that's kind of an example of what is not at all there are using

39:23 one individual. but Tim White is a relentless record keeper. you know this thing that i would normally have to reconstruct you know after the fact which you know know the fact that they're playing the grateful dead in the background or bob margaret you know I shouldn't give you a number because I don't remember. Other individuals or other species? bigfoot and they're aging these they're aging these creatures based on the biological material

43:55 to answer the question that you just asked. on that if you're yeah okay so as i meant so so basically uh uh you could think think of geology And so that basically means that they find volcanic ashes and lavas that are – because this is on the edge. because they can take these ashes So this gives you a yardstick to measure how old something is. and another one below it.

47:05 And for something of this age, that's actually really precise dating. a margin you know of of uncertainty margin of error in there that they reported. well okay so it's different in some important parts but but then again if you're an expert on And to me, that was actually one of the fascinating things about this, And then they, I mean, I don't think they've gotten anything more than some jaw bones and teeth.

50:30 It's a primate. So they've got this complete skeleton. how its spinal segments are divided. The pelvis, they have a lot of, but it's pretty So do they lay it out on a table in the form that they think that it came in? been a question about one of the hand bones. There's other parts that took a long time, like the skull. just by the force of biology.

54:17 you know, It was reconstructed by a scientist from Japan named Gen Suwa. who work with him and they've uh he's a very unassuming guy, but he kind of leaves all of his colleagues in awe because of his acumen. Most other primates have these interlocking canines. I mean, like chimps and gorillas are two closest cousins both do that you know the big fangs right and uh they they sharpen themselves

56:53 because when you get back in time the things that um the clues that that tell you that this is a vegetarians and their canines are for defense right right right i mean yeah this is this is So natural selection for the case of gorillas would favor these big, sharp canines and then these big, brute bodies. instead of like the harem or a mating structure like chimps or bonobos, which are more promiscuous,

1:00:25 monogamy so it's it's wrong to kind of understand that in kind of like our modern moralistic way It is a legitimate way to describe a baiting strategy that exists in many places in nature. Yeah, as far as we know. yeah so that's that's the part we may never know because if there's something like a stick that but the early tools are things like choppers and then hand axes,

1:04:21 a couple lines of evidence um one is the microscopic striations in the teeth. C4 plants tend to be more like open sunny sort of thing c3 plants tend to be you know more shady it did have some C4 in its diet, they think it's probably omnivorous. with the the the announcement the series of papers when Artie was finally revealed to the world in 2009. theories than you can shake a stick at you know i mean darwin said okay now people stood up because

1:07:34 I mean, you name it, right? but anyway his early career he worked with um scientists who designed artificial joints. And so he grew up, you know, as a scientist, and you know standing upright also causes these in the child rearing, and this increased survivorship. And then the reduction in canines is part of that theory Even if you were able to find skeletons know skeletons right you know older than arty

1:11:35 So we don't know, basically. in Africa when the sun is going down and, you know, the hyenas were coming out, I would be So Tim White, the main paleoanthropologist on the he's he's very experienced he's been working in africa that are etched by digestive acid. You know, if you know, just by great luck, they did. At least, like the carbon dating of the upper and lower layers, the fact that you have so many bones, the fact that they're not repeating, the fact that it's clearly some sort of a primate and that you've put all this stuff together and reconstructed the skull.

1:16:32 this um i don't know almost in some people this this uh uh almost like nihilistic view that you controversy is it is it in our the human lineage uh another one is um the arguments that the anatomical very esoteric anatomical stuff so if you if you read the book if you're interested it evolved about this skeleton, actually, because a lot of fodder there for debate

1:20:15 Well, ancestors of the human lineage. the estimates that are kind of furthest out are in fact 12 million but you know somewhere between I mean, this is like, of course, another quest for science. And which, you know, for me, of course, made them great material. you know either it studied them in the field doing observational studies or studied them in the lab to try to find clues about the origin of human locomotion or anything.

1:23:27 across this thing at just the right time and that this person has to be a skilled researcher and humans were humans were confined to af, as far as we know, whole mythology you know it's sort of about like, this place or that place is like the Eden of humanity or whatever. has a fossil record. And this is not an easy – I mean, I've spent a couple – gone out to the field with this particular group a couple of times.

1:27:33 where it's just too dicey to go into the field. how much people have stumbled upon where they didn't have that skill or they didn't know what that could answer all kinds of questions for us. how many different humans have they discovered now i know it was what is it called denisovans neanderthals you know neanderthals are of course of these famous you know fossil species known from

1:30:52 either out-competed So there was like a little bit of biological material there where they could start to knit together you know these ancient genomes and that science has advanced a lot i mean it's interbred at least to a limited degree with Neanderthals. You know, maybe it's just like a variation of that or, you know, slightly older, slightly younger, slightly like, you know, physically different.

1:33:42 And there's many other things that have been discovered. But, you know, I think the thing that's difficult here is that the whole idea of species is people say, oh, something is a species. ahead i was gonna say um that little guy that they found on the island of flores uh homo floreensis the sea levels change, and are there more of these things i mean that's

1:36:06 Homo floriensis, a very small person, when when they found this homo floriensis i think a lot of the people that were proponents of this The little foot, yeah. Yeah. breed with each other okay so you can make babies you have the opportunity to make babies you're a species so it's this big inclusive thing right and uh but of course you know a lot of the fossil species

1:39:00 what do you, you know, and I don't think biology has has at least i mean i'm sure and suddenly your old categories are leaking all over the place. I mean, that's absolutely necessary, but you can't be too dogmatic about your categories because nature is not dogmatic. I mean, those are all these snapshots. And, you know, I mean, this is an old metaphor.

1:42:16 species that look different from i'm trying to center my hand in the frame here here we go caution about the tree i mean the tree is a really powerful metaphor for the diversity of life but artepithecus like there's multiple different types of what we call a human being and that they're called gona which is basically another project area that's adjacent to the Middle Awash. They're

1:45:47 At this Gona creature, they have something that they're calling a skeleton. so around it's like 4.4 4.55. So anyway, so the point here is that there is, you know, Is it speculation that they were living in the same specific type of environment? a primate but for whatever reason about being a unshod it just gives you, you know, you look at the toe and it's like, it's, it's like visibly separated.

1:48:50 Yeah. Well, you know what's really interesting about – I mean, we look at like modern adaptations of modern humans in all these different pockets of the world or particularly when you look into all these ancient species, which are even weirder. And we vary. whatever but there's you know we're just all variations of primate yeah we're That's a human being.

1:51:26 But my point was that like that he exists as a human being. So Lucy, you know, there's this famous fossil. Artie's a female. Artie's taller. Artie's, you know, a head taller than Lucy. 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 How much difference is it between Lucy and this other one?

1:54:28 So when we look at humans like the Denisovans, and we consider that to be a different human than Homo sapien or than Neanderthal, do we have any idea how that came about? discovery, right? Yeah, it's within this is you know some people call it these are all it's speciation it's just like an adaptive contemporaries but yet they're still closely enough related,

1:56:52 from the northern areas or whatever. But if I were a scientist in this field, it's an important, you know, cutting edge right now. like how that genetic code really translates for the big questions. What did you intend? i mean so i was you know there was this interesting story about this fossil, the oldest skeleton ever found in the human family. the field work uh through the interpretation of the skeleton um they i mean they provided a service

2:01:27 that's a good question. I, And, I have to do a lot of legwork to see And then, you know, as I kind of went along, I kept having to stop and learn about, you know, the geology and all these component sciences or about Ethiopia. were not visible at the outset, reduce it down to just one brick that I could just sort of put in the wall of this story but yeah there was

2:05:06 It's been a pleasure.