Exploring the El Castillo Cave Site

Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tutterburg forest? what secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? or what made Alexander truly great with a subscription to History hit You can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War two. Just visit historyhit dot com slash suubbscribe. So how did Rome begin With a throne, a triumph, or a murder between brothers Well, according to legend, the mighty city was founded by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus abbandoned as infants, suckled by a she wolf and destined for greatness until ambition poisoned their body I'm Tristin Hughes and I cannot wait to get into the explosive story of Romulus and Remus on the ancient live tour in Australia and New Zealand this August I'm going to be joined by the fantastic Jeremy Armstrong. He's a professor of Ancient history and an expert on early Rome. Ketather We'll follow the myth from Divine origins to blood soaked Fing legend teeasing apart what the Romans believe archaeology can actually tell us and How a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the second of August And we're going to be in Auckland on the eighth The tickets they are selling far, so book yours now at fame. com. au. Can't wait to see you there fifty thousand years ago. In a cave, nestled high up in a hill in what is today Northern Spain A group of ice age hunters gather for a special purpose Firelight illuminates the cave wall in front of them as they begin their work. Mixing their saliva with rich red ochre, they artfully blow this prehistoric paint over the vertical rock surface, creating a line of bright red diss. Markings, they all with meaning Next, they place their hands on the wall and do the same again, creating striking red outlines, handprints that will remain there for the next fifty thousand years Today, those markings have become the legacy of those Ice Age painters But those painters, they weren't modern humans They weren't homo sapiens They weren't ans And they were leaving behind some of the oldest known art in Europe So what do we know about this archaic art What types of images did Neatthals draw? What did it mean How much neeanderal art have influenced that of our ancestors of the first groups of Homo sapiens that interacted with them. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host This is the fascinating developing story of Neanderal art with our guest Genevve von Petzinger Genevve, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show K I'm so happy to be here. So it's always a pleasure to talk about my favorite subject with people who actually want to hear me talk about it. Oh, absolutely. go wild on this topic as well. So I mean, Nans a lot first of all This belief that it has been there for so long that it's only modern humans who can make art, it seems that More evidence is coming to the fore now that that is not the case. No, not okay So much of this goes back to, I mean, again, this is we could go deep down the rabbit hole, but the really fast version of this is Darwin evolution Thoughts that humans are special. everything goes back to the eighteen hundreds, right? Basically. And the fact that they're like, oh, well, you know, we're humans, we're special. We're the stewards of the Eth, everyverybody else are animals. and E again amongst humans, we had issues with thinking that everybody was equal. So we're already dealing with that problem and then We have another species. Now the thing is is that in order for us to be special, that means everybody else has to not be special And it didn't help that the very first Neander Hall we ever found, so from the Neander Valley, Neander Hall in Germany was in the eighteen hundreds and this poor fellow had like arthritis and stuff. He was an older guy. He would have hunched over like You know, and then they would look, he's like this hunchback, you know, sort of like half ape thing And then that reinforced their beliefs at the time which was that we're the only ones that are like us. And it's really interesting to see how like justust they got really deeply ingrained in the field And it's been like this huge fight like Throughout the twentieth century and now into the twenty first century even because there's still people now today who would still argue with me in my field. that Merals did not make art. Isn't that crazy? Like You know, so this is where I understand at this point, probably I'd say eighty per to ninety percent eighty percent of the field probably is on Team Nander Hall with me However, there is still a piece who would disagree with us. Just keep that in mind that this is When I'm talking about neanderthals, this is my opinion and this is not necessarily everybody in the field. att this point, it's probably the majority, but, you know, it's still being contested Scholars love to fight about things is kind of partially what they do So that though, is the deep story is that everything's been a fight. So step one, oh my gosh, they're burying their dead. Well, wait a second, that sounds like they cared about people. Maybe they aren't such animals Oh what They're putting things in their graves as though maybe they thought people went somewhere after they died or they cared for people. like we've got examples of very serious injuries that somebody cared for somebody, they healed and lived for years afterwards, even though they would have been no use to anybody from a physical point of view because they couldn't have provided or hunt or like hunted or gathered. However someomebody cared for them or they have no teeth left and somebody you know, mushed up food for them. Like there's so much evidence of kindness and care. and connection there, right? And so it's like slowly, but surely All of the barriers of what make modern humans, homo sapiens special different here on ourtbal pedestal have started to knock away, right And so, oh wait, they're wearing jewelry. Oh look, they're choosing special colors to use, right? Like with pigments. Oh look, they're carefully collecting eagle feathers and like raven feathers for real and talons and they seem to have been doing something that maybe was a headdress. What a crazy concept. So You can see how Art was like the last bastion of like but they didn't make art. Like that was it was so funny that like this was a thing And so it's been really interesting because this has all happened over the course of my career Like when I was an undergraduate, which now is like just about twenty years ago And so it's not very long ago At that point We were taught as undergrads that humans and neotaterolals did not injure breed and that Neanderthals may have been doing some things, but they don't seem to have quite been us. Like that was and I'm not slamming my professors, like that was just that was the common thing. And then, you know, fast forward about five years Sonte Pabo and his team there and Max Plantt sequenceced the genome. Oh wait Our ancestors interbred with them. Well, now we need to rethink What is a neeateral? Like if our ancestors are sleeping with these people then like How ape like were they? now were different. Like they probably talked and stuff. L, you know, you're probably not gonna to go run off to the bushes with some guy who's like grunting and, you know, sort of scratching his leice. like one would hope So, you know, it's like suddenly Almost for our own like like, oh, dear Lord, like what did our ancestors do? Like they were like, okay, well, maybe we need to revisit what is this the And resal thing like they're talking about. How's that? So that would be that that's the fast forward through I mean, that was brilliant Genevve. and I must admit a topic for another day, by remember talking to Chris Stringer about this is imagining those first contacts between a Nanal and Hom sapien group and imagining, you know how that language, you know, the language barrier would have been they would have got past it. kind of these ideas of the translators of the prehistoric age of these early humans and modern humans, like how they communicate is that's another fascinating thing to explore for another day. and art is just one part of that larger story Well and because it is such a I mean, art is a form of communication Right? So I think to think about that as well is that it is actually a way provides potential connection between people, right? Be art is part of culture. and so this is kind of where I think we could see it that way We should probably back up for the listeners slightly because I would like this huge like brown I know come on. let's do with the basics. Shall we explain What exactly are the anstwools? Talk us through this or who exactly are the anstools? Here is the latest evidence, and I say this in a field where we can whiplash with like new genetic information. This is what we know We are a sister species with Neanderthals, meaning we have a common ancestor who we believe to be Homo erectus We do not have genetics back that far, so we can't prove, prove it, okay Everything points to Homo erectus as being sort of the common point They moved out onto the other continents. They survived till about two hundred fifty thousand years ago, maybe even longer in Asia So Very successful widespread species neck down They looked like us, fully fully functional, able to run very similar Their brains were a little bit smaller than ours, but already making excellent progress They're doing complicated tools, they're doing really interesting things Personally I actually think they might be where the very earliest graphic marks were made was actually with those guys. We might cover that quickly,. And the reason why I will say that is again, this so this is wherere understanding the the family history story is actually really important, which is that So around seven hundred thousand years ago, two groups of homo erectus went in different directions and never saw each other again And so what you see happening is that it's called sort of genetic diffusion You know, the group that went this way certain things in the environment may have nudged certain traits to be more successful, right? in the other direction, other things might have also nudged it. but they had like the same basasic package, if that makes any sense, probablyably the same cognitive package when they left. So different the same toolkits, same things. And then they would have started to kind of move in their own direction. in both in both locations The under tools seem to be born bred raised in Europe, and our ancestors are from Africa So both descendants of hom erectus just in different parts of the globe, and a fascinating example of what happens when different environmental conditions shape your upbringing So this is what's really fascinating to see too is that you know, there's the similarities and there's the differences. So We got these guys. they've split off And then we have this extraordinary site called Simo deas Hesas in Spain. where we have around four hundred twenty thousand years ago, the very first example that we know of at the moment in the world where They're intentionally placing their're dead in a pit. And so people have argued whether this is homal hydrobogensis or if these are early Neanderthals. So it's kind of like somewhere around four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand They're starting to split enough that they might be different species now, right? Can you see how it's kind of like the slow progression And so they were intentionally placing their dead in the bear in this pit. S what the Lestis, this means pit of bones, basically. And They were able to do genetic sequencing on these people from like four hundred forty thousand years ago I think So what they were able to show is that these were early Neander halls. they'd probably call them archaic But the important thing from our point of view is this is rightate before Neanderthal split again to become neeanderthals in Europe, and there was an offshoot of them who became the Denisevans, the new species who went to Asia And so that happened around four hundred twenty thousand. So now we have the players. we've got Natertholals in Europe, we've got Denisvans in Asia, and we've got our own homo sapien relatives in Africa And we would consider homo sapiens to be a full blown different species by around three hundred thousand just years ago. though again, that number could change. It was two hundred thousand not that long ago The bottom line is We're still incredibly similar And so Neanderthals, again, like they have sort of this vision of them kind of being like short and squat and, you know, kind of like hanging around up just in the ice, but Neerrphals had a huge range They actually came all the way down to the Middle East I've seen Nander Hul sites in Jordan, for instance. So again, they were actually much more flexible and adaptive than we would think. And I think one of the big things know for your viewers as almost a takeaway to today is to keep in mind because it's so interesting that we do this about hundreds of thousands of years of a species history today. We treat them as one group Isn't that crazy? That would be like us pretending that like Mayans and Romans were like exactly the same. Oh yeah, of course, they're just humans. I guarantee you differences occurred in their culture and in their behavior and like the things they do, the way they organize themselves. It's so funny because we've often treated them as oh Neanderthals do this or Neandertholals never they don't do this or this is what in, you know There's lots of variation And one of the coolest things that's come into our field and I personally think is one of the most important pieces moving forward is the genetics And what this is allowing us to do is to actually identify groups of humans. and then also groups of Neanderthals. so that we can recognize like, hey There's these western Neanderthals who seem to have been doing certain things and then oh, isn't this neat ice sheets move up and down because again, Iice age is not just one thing. They're kind of constantly moving and shifting We see the Western guys go trotting over all the way into Russia. And so You know, this is the thing. They're very mobile, they're moving around, but there's huge genetic variation betweenween even the neanderal groups. Now, when I say huge, obviously this is teeny, teeny, tiny, tiny changes at a full DNA level, but enough that we would consider them again that we're like, oh this is we can actually track their differences And just so we know the date range as well, Genevve. So a large area, quite robust in there Buddy features, but as you say that diversity, that variety as well But time period four Nanstals do we think roughly over the last five hundred thousand years or so down to about forty five thousand years ago That sounds about right. Yeahah. So something like that. So again, very successful species. You know, it really makes you wonder too Speaking again of like sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. keep in mind We're trying to rebuild entire worlds out of one tiny piece which is that with that kind of time depth, most things have not survived it's if it's organic materials, if it's wood, if it's, you know, skin, if it's anything like, we don't have it only have bones and stones And so you know, I often say it this way, which is it's almost like we're like it's like we' peeking through like a tiny keyhole in a door and we're trying to rebuild their entire world from it, right So' it's a really This is where sometimes, you know,re we have to really try and figure out what Not just, oh, this is the thing, but what could this thing tell us about either how they see the world or how they are thinking about the world And that's what we're looking for in the archaeological record. That's what we use it for is We try and be like, oh, well, this is interesting. They're doing this new thing That suggests something might have changed in their brain or maybe they have this new culture thing or like this is why we care. L it's neat to just make lists of things, but really what makes it so interesting is how we're able to try and understand these like mysterious and yet very closely related ancestors And that feels certainly even more the case when trying to find examples you know potentially of neanderal art. I mean, because generally How basic can we go with trying to describe what we believe could be art left by Neands. What types of t Yeah are we going to be talking about? Okay. So first off, we need to start with what is what is art? Well let's go all philosophical is firstop We're getting all existential. Okay We in the field use the term art because it's a very convenient f letter word, right? Okay? so that When we're speaking amongst ourselves, we might use it as shorthand, but think of it as an umbrella term Same way they use AI to mean like everything that is machine learning. We're using art in a similar way, which is that when we say art, We mean everything from graffiti in the bathroom to the Mona Lisa. So it's the full range. We are referring to any type of visual mark making And so If I was being technically correct or if I was giving a talk at a conference, like with my fellow academics, or if I was writing a paper If I use the word art, I'd probably use it in quotation marks, and I'd be more likely to say graphic communication or graphic marks. Okay. so that that way we're pulling out because almost has like a lot of Western connotations to it of like aesthetics and like what is what is art and what is beautiful and what is Right? So let's pull that back And what we want to talk about is the actual function of our ancestors making visual graphic marks on things with intention That's what we're aiming for So art writ large would be any intentional making of a mark in some sort of durable location, surface, etcetera. So that at some point someomebody else could potentially read it or understand it. So we're not thinking at the moment sadly no as of yet neanderal Mona Lisa has been discovered or prehistoric Sistine chapel equivalent. We're thinking more like This is non figurative drawings that have so far been discovered that we link in the anstels. Yeah Okay. so I think this is th this is a really interesting thing I'd like to point out though, which is that We again, because we're human, obviously, we're coming from our own perspective. And then also we're all the products of our own culture and upbringing and everything like that We, whether we mean to or not We treat the Ma Lisa as being more impressive, important, high prestige than the macaroni art that your kid makes you and you put on your fridge Right We treat it that way because of our own eyeglasses and our own filters in the world, right? We're like we've been told this is worth millions This is adorable, right? But like you know, that's really cute. You know,ait way to draw that stick figure. But you know, so we don't treat them as having the same value And I think we want to be really, really careful with that, which is that We don't know what the intention was with making these marks likeike making something look pretty or having aesthetic value may not have had any relevance to them Right? Sore we don't want to just because they weren't making, you know pretty mammoths and prancing ponies like the humans were doesn't mean that they weren't doing meaningful making which was absolutely what they needed. Like I think that's the important thing. It like is almost to sayf It's not like There's a pinnacle of awesomeness and art and that you need things like that lovely painting behind me or the picture behind you. like Those are not the best. They're just one version of art. And so I think that as an archeologist, that's what we want to be really careful of is not accidentally privileging the pretty stuff, which has basically been my entire career. And again No shade to anybody in the past, but you know In a way, it's easier to study the animals because you're like, you know where to start And I've read some really interesting stuff from some of the early French you know, archaeologists and paleo people who studied the art in France and who were sort of like I don't know what to say about these abstract marks, but the beautiful thing is if it looks like a bison at least you know it's a bison has start point. And these are the famous sites like Lasco and Chauat Cave An't they and Altimirror in Spain, you know, those iconic ones if you type in cave pot. Yeah or Altamiror in Spain, right? Like the big ones that everybody they call them showcase. That's what they' called this a showcase end up And that is one particular Outlet for graphic mark making, but again only relevant or important in a certain context. I mean, it's not necessarily terribly useful if you're trying to count the number of days in a lunar cycle Right? or if you're wanting to, you know make some No, like you know, leave some sort of useful, like you're trying to make a map of your landscape Right You don't get points for making the trees look extra nice. it's functionality or like do you see what I'm saying? So there's different properties of what makes things valuable. So there you go. I'm now stepping off soap box but I just think we need to frame it that way so that we're not thinking of Nanderthals as being lesser than because they did not make shiny recognizable picture art what they seem to have been doing seem to have been working like what is success, right whatever it was they were doing seemed to be working very well for them And so at that point, it is a success. And so maybe they just didn't need figurative art. I know we're talking about Nanals today, but just for fun, I gott to drop this, which is One of the craziest things about humans. And so again, we've got Neanderthals are making lines and other simple things on bones and stones back to the bones and stones You know as of about four or five hundred thousand years ago, we start to see simple zigzags, lines on things. You know, we're starting to see these first actual making graphic marks. And so we've got all that going on. Our own ancestors are doing similar things. we've got Multiple continents around the world are all doing very similar stuff, which is also where you're like, gee, I wonder where this comes from since nobody else has ever decided to do this and knowing they all come from the common ancestor It seems like an interesting route to explore What makes humans so fascinating is Somewhere between the lines and the zig zags and the little cross hatchings and stuff We go from that Three different places on three different continents, like Europe We've got in Indonesia and we've got in Australia. Suddenly they're making animals Like what the heck happened? It's a black hole. We have no idea What happened in there We don't know where it happened and we don't know what happened. But somewhere we went from nobody drew animals to suddenly somewhere And again, because it comes out of nowhere It's very unlikely that multiple groups of people all simultaneously decided after hundreds of thousands of years to just start drawing animals, right So somewhere, probablyrob before our own ancestors left Africa or quite recently after they did. Because again, for people who don't know, we're descended from most about seven billion people liive today are descended from about ten thousand people So we're really closely related. And you know, so again, same culture group, same language probably took what they could do, so we don't know where it happened, but somewhere Humans went in their own direction, which again, it is not surprising,' our own species were doing our thing But that doesn't mean that Neanderals or Deniseens are not just as cool Land the Viking Lship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisonous cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week We are going tove into a few of these key sites so we can really explore these you know, these artworks that have been associated with Ne anstals, I'm very happy that you mentioned in passing that earlier simple marking of Homo erectus. It's on a shell, isn't it? in Indonesia, or is it Java, one of those places? but it's like five hundred thousand years old, The Trinil or Trinill yeah, the Tinil, and it's a zig zag. Okay so what matters again here for viewers and listeners is We sort of have like a mental checklist we go through, which is first of all Is this even an actual external made mark or is this like a natural crack in something? Okaykay? And so once we're like, o okay It appears to be a purposeful mark. The next question is, is there some functional reason they might have been doing it, like trying to cut am out of the shell or you know beat off a bone. Is that why there's marks on this bone?' because they were butchering it, right Once we've ascertained it's not for those utilitarian functional reasons, then we get to, okay, we have a purposeful mark It wasn't being done for typical food function, utilitarian reasons. so think there must have been some other meaning or purpose, even if we're not sure what it is And so this is what makes that shell so exciting. is it's currently the oldest known example of something that is absolutely intentional, made with a tool, but serves no practical purpose . Now that doesn't mean it's not important for some other reason, but it's not your food shelter warmth So that's what makes it such a key piece. Though in more recent, you know, in more recent years, there are justust like smatters around the globe. And again, I wonder how much is that You know, like when people have gone back to sites and revisited things, they find artifacts sometimes that had marks that they just earlier generations had presumed it was not there and therefore had not looked. If that makes any sense No absolutely. and it aice it's a nice example to highlight. and it's also just such an amazing artifact if you type it type it into Google. But come on then, let's have a look at these sites associated with Neandal. I know they've done a lot of work around. and it seems like they're largely in Spain, in Western Europe And we're going to go through them one by one Geneve and we kind of kind of describe the site itself and then we'll explore the art associated with N anerals there. And the first one I have in my list is El Castillo Now, not in Mexico, not the Maya, not the Great Pyramid at Cichenitsa, but this is something slightly different. Can you tell us what El Castillo is, Go? Absolutely So just to set the stage here, which is that We El Castillo is It's it's a big cave, like a bigs it's one of the other show caves, honestly. And for the record, it's open to the public still mostly. So if you're ever in Northern Spain go because I don't know how much longer they're going to leave it open for, but it is extraordinary It is up on the side of a little They call it Monte Castillo, but I'm from Canada with the Rockies, so it's a cute hill. But it's a hill overlooking a very important valley, where there would have been herds that moved through during the ice age. So this is Northern Spain inland, not too far from Altimira, that kind of region. What we have is that El Castillo at the time It was a big cave mouth with a huge overhang So a lovely place to live if you wanted to be where you had a good view, you could see the herds, you could things see things coming, you had good cover there But again, keep in mind, people don't tend to live like inside caves because they're wet and drippy and muddy, but they often will live in the entrance or near an entrance, right? Be it provides some shelter. So that's kind of what we're dealing with at Monte Castillo So Montecasto If you go there, the entrance is fascinating because they've been excavating there for decades And the scaffolding drops like At least thirty, forty feet. L There's people lived there in the entrance for like one hundred fifty thousand years. So this is like way before modern humans ever got there. Neanderthals And again, Kima didn't necessarily live al year around. Maybe some did some didn't. It depends on what's happening with the ice age weather around them. P People lived there for one hundred fifty thousand years And so that's one hundred fifty thousand years worth of archeology sitting at the front of the cave and in all these beautiful little layers So There is a very long history of peopleeople of all sorts living there. and What you find then is that there are these smaller entrances back of what would have been kind of like the main chamber. there would have been a couple of smaller passageways that then took you into again this cave that just opens up into this huge, like theirre huge like the big chamber when you first go through the little passage and then you come out the other side is enormous It's like, you know, the Lord of the Rings when you go into like the dwarf hall, Like it's huge. L it's really big. So you walk into there and You go now there's stairs. so, you know, which we appreciate makes it less slippy and dangerous. but you can go down the stairs There's art. In all the not so much in the main area, there's a little bit in the main area, but most of it is in offshoots and in side chambers or in like really lovely panels. And one of the things that makes El Castillo so amazing is that There's panels, like lots of so a panel is were talking about but we're talking you a piece of w which you know, seems to be sort of bounded likeike we're in a chamber, there's one big nice shiny whitish wall because it's that limestone, right and There's a bunch of them where it's like there's three or four different Groups of people left marks on the same wall Like these walls are complicated And so there's one in particular which is where the very first time old dates came out, I think it was like twenty twelve. was the forty thousand year old They did the first dates. And so for this, they're using what's called uranium series dating, which right Okay. Cacked open everything. Be Before that, we only had carbon dating, which requires charcoal or like organic material and it's only good back to about forty thousand dishes. And that's quite difficult for art as well, I'm guessing to try and date something on the wall. Yes,es. So again, you've got this things like so it's quite limited, right? You can only do black paint. it has to be charcoal There has to be enough of it that you can, you know, get get a good sample from it. Uranium series because it's uranium has a very long half life. so you can much further back because of those properties of it And what we're measuring specifically is that when Limestone, which is what these caves are all made of, when it interacts with water, it me it melts a little bit and it makes it come down the walls and make those beautiful translucent sheets that are called calcite And that's what makes caves look so pretty, right? Is that sort of the constant dripping down and creating all these pretty white sort of translucent sheets In groundwater all over the world, not in scary levels or anything, there's tiny amounts of uranium And so as they come down the wall and then they stick the uranium sticks too. And what we can measure is the fact that over time, uranium because it's radioactive breaks down into other things. like there's a type of thorium it breaks into and a type of lead it breaks into thoseose don't occur naturally So people can measure how much of these other elements are now on the wall And they can backtrack to figure out how long it would have taken for that much to show up. Oh amazing. Actually so cool. Yeah. And so what we're measuring here is not when it was made, we're measuring when it was covered up. So it's the minimum age of things Isn't that craz So sometimes you could be talking about something' twenty thousand years older, but it got covered up then. That's what we know is what we can tell you is the minimum age of it 't ne So there go there's your crash course in your rium sereries dating. Well, I mean, the next big question then is you've got these new dating techniques available and there seems to be lots of amazing cave art on these walls which to explore. What were the dates that people started to get back when they'd started to date these various bits of art? Oh yeah, it changed everything because now it didn't matter if it was an engraving or if it was red paint or black paint. if it got covered with calcite, you could date it, right? So this is yeah, it cracked the whole field open and that was about fifteen years ago now. So that's kind of that was the other genetics and dating methods like uranium or changing everything El Castillo was the first cave where they successfully got some really cool dates, which was there was these sort of they're called discs and they're basically spit painted. so like Blowing it on the wall and these discks were made at least forty thousand years ago because that's when they were covered up. And so the thing is though is there was no humans at that cave forty thousand years ago. There were just at that cave. So this twenty twelve was the moment When suddenly people were like, there was the group who were like, Hey guys, guess what? Looks like Nairare tools were making art And then there were the people who were like, No, they didn't So then we got to a fight. And this is where the fight has been going on ever since. I think it's like I said more and more people are joining as we go, because one Uranian series date And again, with a new technique, and this is where there's nothing wrong in science with questioning things. It's important Jeanl, who's like one of the grandfathers in our field Aazing amazing archaeologist in his own, right? He pointed out that one date is not really a date. Like you need corroborating it. You need you know, so They had these good dates, super intriguing, you know, but now we've done uranium series not just at El Costillo, but at other places. But what I'd like to sort of just fly with allk stew, which is so interesting is that these painted discs actually go like this. you can sort of see like they they're almost like these little te cup saucer size things, like they're kind about c size And they're obviously kind of curling their hands We Wherever you find them, like they're not common. but again, because I study geometric science, I take an interest in all those non figurative non shiny ponies, right So All the caves I've ever inventory, they're always the oldest most covered up with calcite. And you know, so I had already started going, hmm This almost looks like if I had to guess, I would guess this might be a Neanderthall motif rather than it being a human motif that our Neanderthals happen to be making I'm just having I'm just having a look at a picture of them on Google search now. And they're just kind of big red spots on the side of the wall, aren't they? Yeah. And they just like so again, they were spit painting them on the wall.ain. There's a whole gallery of disks, if you look too. I think I may have sent you guys a picture of those, so so you're welcome to use it. Deep in different sections of the cave, we find these desks. And there is Nanderthals all through the entranceway, so we know they were there the wall the where the discks were found, for instance, and there was also a hand that was covered up thirty seven thousand years ago. But so again, it was covered up It's right near the disk. It looks similarly faded. If I had to guess, I would guess it was probably about the same age But you know, so this is where we've got those guys Then we have twenty seven thousand year old hands on the same panel, which would have been modern human. Right That's called seventeen thousand year old yellow bison And then I believe there's even some later stuff too from about thirteen thousand on the wall. So that same panel And so this is part of the problem too is it's because the Neanderths were like the first they're the OGs, right? They were there first. So their stuff is really faded and has more layers of that calcite. So it's starting to look it's harder to see with the eye And then later groups of people came in and it's a very nice wall and they made their marks too And so there's lots of reasons why And then of course, keep in mind that until about fifteen years ago. I mean, frankly, the people who said Neatotolals made art almost were like given like tinfoil hats. Like that's how crazy it was seemed to be So u You know, this is where all of the inventories and this is where I would argue that half of our problem is that We were working under the assumption that Neanderthals did not make art Therefore, everything has been assigned to modern humans by default. whether it makes sense or not And so now our job is to start pulling that back apart and figuring out based on age motifs, etcet. Is there a neatertal tradition of art that is distinctly theirs? I think there is I mean, Genevie, this is so interesting. to clarify, with the dating that's now available. Let's say in the case of E Castillo Cave., if the dating comes back forty thousand years all the way back to maybe one hundred fifty thousand years. That age range there, you know from other artifacts. I'm gettingessing like bones and u stuff like that and tools you mentioned that there's we knew that there were N anors in this cave beforehand living there that you can then say, okay, that's when the ans were there Anthing younger, okay, that's when it's like it was modern humans. to then have those dates come back on that same stretch of wall where you have evidence pre forty thousand years that we believe is the An' tools and then hands probably left by early early modern humans. And then that development in art with actually a bison being shown on the same wall. That's amazing to have that all in the same cave that you could still go and see today. You can literally go stand in front of that panel. Yeah. And you can see Nan'sool remains artistic remains probably and early Homo sapien remains in the same place. That's incredible. That's what That's why I if you can go go because like I'm again, they're they're doing they monitor the cave very closely. like they have CO two monitors and stuff throughout the cave Becauseuse the thing you have to worry about is people breathing in it too much and triggering the growth of like fungi and stuff However, because it's such a big cave It has more tolerance, right? It's more like when you're in the little ones, you have to be really careful because just two people breathing in there can make a big difference. But so this one' a good cave that way. One of the things I just wanted to flag too is that There is a seventy thousand year artifact that came out of the like the front layers, which is a little speaking of bones and stones, it's a little flat stone. It's actually in the museum at Santander. so if you're going to area, Santend there is the capitol and the museums there. It's got four engraved couupils, which are basically engraved dots in a row with one more either above or below in an orientation. It is absolutely intentional Like somebody didn't just accidentally make marks in a row with one more on top or bottom and that kind of has the same feeling to it as the Gallery of Dks, which is down in the heart of the cave where there's all of these spit painted disks all along this wall So I mean, I think that this is where Maybe it's been in front of us the whole time, but because we couldn't Because those are seventy that's from a seventy thousand year old dated layer. Like we know that layer's at least seventy thousand years old Those discks may actually be older. It's just that they were coverred up later. L we don't even know. So it may be that they're more in line time wise with the artifacts and this is where you can see that it's such a puzzle, hey. L this is what we do is we try and put little puzzle pieces together to try and rebuild and understand what's happening And so it's like it happens slowly, right? Be you need all the evidence to kind of weave together And then you've got, for instance, a burial at a place called La Feracie, which is in the Dordin in France, which is a neeanderal burial of it's a little girl. There is a stone slab in the burial with her, which has those engraved pupils on it Like it is absolutely intentional. and they buried it with like It had to be it was buried with the theerthall by theaterthallals before modern humans were in the vicinity. like so This is again, like it's been there Because of the way that we were looking and understanding the art, we didn't think neater Halls were capable of doing it, and so therefore we didn't see it which I think is and that's what I mean. I really hope I'm not slamming because like I' We all stand on the shoulders of the generations that came in front of us, and they did really important good work But I think that it's such a good example of how are we limited? by our own preconceived notions, right Like I'm sure I am too. And I'm sure future generations will be like, man Im ting her lady. How did she not know like whatever, right? Like But you know, this is how science works is that we're constantly, there's new things, there's new stuff coming out And this is where El Castillo And these other sites are so important becausecause I actually think the next stage for us should be to start getting more serious about Can we identify specific motifs are Neanderthal in origin rather than sort of because right now, like I built this big thing of geometric science anythingything above about forty thousand in there is fair game to be Neandertthons. yet We all have it classified under one species right now, which it shouldn't be But we have to figure out how to crack it apart And then the really interesting conversation I was having with some of my colleagues the other day, we were talking about the fact that All the oldest hands in the world actually come from areas Wh N neander tolds of Deniseibanss were What if they taught us to make hands? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves too much. We still got other sides to' just slide that. I understand, understand. We'll get to that in a moment. I must I'm still looking at that gallery of red discs and I must have. Well, it is extraordinary. I mean, move over Mace House, this might be my new favorite prehistoric place in the world. You need to go I will need to go exactly. I mean is So I want to move on to the next example, now the next cave in my list. But Genevie, just to clarify is it that gallery of red discs? Is that the art from Ella Castillo, the main art that is now believed to be neanstals. There isn't any others we should mention U the discs and the hands are the big thing there and then that artifacts sitting there. So those are the big ones. The thing I would like to point out though, which probably a lot of people don't realize Is So Monte Castillo has five sites, five different caves in it, all of which have art in them Oh, amazing. Yes And one of the other cys, this one's close to the public, but this one is laa Facciaga, which has the ladder shape in it whichich dates to sixty five thousand plant. Right, Well, let's do that one next, because I do have Be it's literally, I think, two hundred meters further along. Okay. so we've gone on our trip to El Castillo and now we're like you must as to do La Pasiega or And we've been allowed in somehow we've sneaked in explain this site, this cave to us, how different it is. So Ocastillo seems to have been the living cave It It had big, you know, a big, beautiful vernda out front, basically, right? Like it had the big overhang, great view. It was the big cave it makes sense La Pasaga does not have any evidence of really living at the entrance, so it's probably more a cave they visited with a purpose And it's got again, several areas and there is again here, we've got There's definitely multiple layers of art Like probably again at least I would say I would guess Neerthal stuff that's around twenty five thousand plus years and then there's stuff that's probably around the to seventeen thousand in there. So again, lots of layering of things. So keep that in mind because that's one of the things that's confusing about the latter is that in one of the passages of La Pasciaga There is this faded out thing that' sort of officially is called the scalara form, which is Latin for ladder shappe And this one again was dated based on a little chunk it looks like a little cauliflower of calcite that grew over top of the paint. And so again, they were able to date that and to show that that grew there sixty five thousand years ago, roughly So W the ladder, it's confusing for people, I think sometimes because there's it's basically like a big vertical thing with like crossbars, right? Doesn't mean it's an actual ladder, but it looks like that to our eyes And there's also though somebody's drawn a deer in it, but using different pigments from a different time period. so probably later Be again, we don't have any evidence of Neanderthroals making Animal art, right But yes, so it's very complicated and there's some dots nearby, but if you look at it using an algorithm that allows us to actually identify Very specific shades of red you can see that it's different colors. So that gives us a clue that things were made in a layered way at different times. But the oldest piece The one where the little cauliflower is is the sixty five thousand year old roughly, you know masomenos as they would say in spain, so more or less the lder And so this is where it's important to note, though how close it is to El Castillile because it's right down the way. So it would not be surprising if you have mark making people living there that they might have used other caves for similar things a very different, a very different example of art from the disks that we were just talking about. and from what you were saying much older as well. I've got once again, an image of it up at the moment. It's incredible. and you can see the rear end of that deer, which is created later as well, those dots nearby and that other weird symbol to the right of it. I it's amazing So this is what I'm saying is it you can see that yeah, I mean the art is It's just fascinating the way It's all done as well and the way that people keep kind of coming back and doing more over top of you can see where it's incredibly complicated to peel the layers back, right And so this is where again, modern technology, there's this thing called Ramen spepectrometry, which actually analyzes pigment chemical like the atomic level And so they can see the different ingredients in the different paints in the different layers, and then you can split them And so this is the kind of thing, the work that's being done now to understand Okay, what was made at the same time with the same paint recipe? what might have been made differently So this is where my colleague Amy Chase, she's working on her PhD right now. So I can't I can't tell you the results because ha't published it yet. However herer PhD, which is just such a cool one because this is the kind of work that needs to be done She has gone through and analyzed you know, sort of at the atomic level, the mineral level, what what the pigments were because they found red pigments in the neeaterroal layers at El Cuciillo So we know they were using these red ochre pigments to which are on the walls. So her PhD is actually looking at How similar are the recipes that are on the walls to the ingredients that are in those layers becausecause if it's the same or very, very similar, right? Because usually the way you make paint is you start with it Oh actually I have some ocher So does. So the obaining yes, so explain the process. So the obtaining of ochre and making something on the wall. No is ochre. It's found all over the world. That's just the sort of the catch all term for iron oxide or hematyidide. Okay. Which is basically like rusty sediment And so different parts of the world, you get different variations of red, purple, things like that. So different vibranies that kind of stuff What that means though is that each of these has slightly different chemical signatures because they come from different places with other sort of like some might have like bits of quartz in it or bits of tk or titanium. like just depends where you are. That way you can match up the pat recipes. Isn't that cool So this is another whole new thing that's just been cracking open in like the tent last ten to fifteen years. is also being able to directly read paint recipes and then figure out which chunks of ochre were used to make whichich things on the wall Right. So like they say so potentially this like that ladder was made with a type of ochre that originated from twenty kilometers from where they were and it dates to six thousand years and we found ochre in the cave on the floor which also came from chemical profile. And would suggest that that oak on the floor was used by these people to create that particular pattern. and then you can join the dots and there you go more more of a story. It' fascinating. Yeah. I'm sorry from the outside. I'm sure it seems excruciatingly slow, but these are kind of complicated things that like we're having to sort of develop as we go We're at the start of this. Like I think we're just Like I just gave a paper at a conference this year where I actually said like, hey guys, let's all work together on this because this is a big project Can we split off Neanderthal motifs, So like the specific shapes or types of things they were making, can we actually for the first time speak about a Neanderthal or tradition is separate and distinct from a human tradition And how do we figure out what those things are? Because that will also help us understand who was in what caves Do what Right? And then we can start to figure out the order of things If we're going to ask crazy questions like what if Neanderalss taught humans how to make an hands Where's the oldest hands, right? Like we need to know enough information to understand if we're all the oldest hands we're finding are with Neander Hols and Deniseis evvans. then it's illogical that humans invented it first Right? But I think that so this comes, we have to change our own mindset about it first and to think about them again as not and also not being a monolithic entity, which is that In Crimea and in Eastern Europe We have Neanderthals who seem to be not doing paint stuff so much, though again, there's some ochre Our colleague Francesco Derrk and his team just identified ore crayons in the Crimea that have that appear to have been used and screreeped which looks like they were being used to make pigments. which is cool. But at those sites they have stones and bones, back to our stones and bones with series of parallel lines, very intentionally carved parallel lines And so that seems to be more their thing, as I would call them like the parallel line people over there And so those are one set of neeanderthals are doing that while these other neeanderthals seem to be doing paintings or making little, you know, engraved circles, but we're not seeing the engraved circles over in easastern Europe and into the Crimeer area we're seeing lines and more linear art. So we could be again, we're probably not talking about one neeanderthal art, we're probably talking about culture groups who created their own traditions Isn't that fun land a Viking Lship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisonous's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week back to what you were saying at the beginning that know, we're covering a large range of time in different groups over a large area and we just class them as Nads to but you need to think a bit more than that. Yeah. Okay Before we go to the summarizing questions, Genevve, I also add in my notes Adez cave, but are there any other key cave sites you'd like to mention where we also potentially have examples of Neanal art amongst you know, early Homo sapien art as well that we haven't covered yet. Well, mean I think Ardeles is a really fascinating cave. I have worked there lately with some of my colleagues, but it's not my cave, but there's Pedro has been working there for like thirty plus years. He's amazing. And so this is his site. He just published a book actually on Neander Halls andardallas. So I'd like to shout him out. I don't I think it's like an academic book. I don't know if you can download it. I think you might I don't think it it's not a moneymaker book. This is him wanting to share all his research But what makes Ardalis so fascinating, And I have another colleague Barbara Ostraf and her work is on how people interact with caves very physically, like the embodiment of like putting paint on your hands and actually touching the cave Neoterthilals seem to have done that more than humans So again, there seems to be different patterns. And our dollars is a fascinating example Be as my our colleague Pedro, because again, he's done all the archaeology as well as the art analysis The antholals appear to have been returning there regularly for very short periods of time almost thinks it might be some sort of ritualistic likeike they were going to the cave in order to perform rituals And there are hands all over the cave. There's little blown marks all over the cave So Again, that idea was, did they keep coming back in order to do certain ceremonies or rituals there? And the archaeology shows a whole lot of very tight layers, but returns. which is just fascinating. And so I didn't go down. There's one part down in the depth of there, but one of the things about Argales is really neat just to help give your viewers and listeners an idea. And again, by the way, you can actually book a tour to go to Argalas. It's controlled, but you can actually go to part of it It is one of the most sparkly caves I have ever seen It is all quartz calcite in there. Like it is like you're walking into Winter Wonderland. like it's sparkling. It's just extraordinary. So From, you know, again, an aesthetic point of view, if you were going to have a cave that was maybe your special ritual cave, it is a pretty darn cool cave. And it has huge like stalactites that look like massive chandeliers coming down from the ceiling. likeike, is it a really neat cave? So you can see where It would have been a bit of an experience just to walk through there, I would imagine. But my colleague Barbara, she studied, I guess down in the One of the really deep sections it's quite dangerous to get to There's handprints there where actually they touch the wall and then just slid their hands down the wall Like so again, they're interacting with the wall in these really interesting ways. Now Modern humans also appear to have gone in there and done things too, but there's a very definite heavy presence of Neanderthal Tols, sites what we think is art and the reason why we're bringing up Artlles is because some of the other really old dates, again, using calcite and uranium series come from some spit painted dots, so smaller ones that are on some of the it's It's just a beautiful curtain of calcite there And so there's these little sprayed dots and those were also dated to around sixty five thousand. So that's why people mention te is because it's such a neat example of that they didn't live there, but they appear to have returned frequently at least during one period of time I was actually talking to my colleagues about it a while ago We think there might be like a hole Neanderthal culture sitting down in southern Spain that just really hasn't been properly recognized because Northern Spain has gotten more attention and has been sort of studied more. but as Things are starting to open up. It's looking like there may actually be quite a heavy presence of Neanderthals down south. So this is kind of a stay tuned There's lots of work underway right now. But, you know, and So think about it this way too. These are areas that have been studied for like, you know, one hundred plus years. like France and Spain have a long history of Paleolithic art studies, you can do entire programs at university in them. There's an emphasis on it, there's funding Think about what else is sitting out there in the world in other countries where maybe just Nobbody's, you know, there's not just And again, this is not as a slam to anybody because some countries are just too poor and they have other priorities they need to pay attention to. Other countries just may not have thought of themselves as potentially having a lot of ancient art in them or it just hasn't been an emphasis in the country. But you know, there is so many blank spots on the map between say there and like Denisa McCave in Siberia where again, we know that Neanderthals lived there with the Denise evans Like we have Denny from ninety thousand years ago, It's a little girl who had one Nandral parent and one Denisman parent. But that's wild And so to think that, you know There's this huge spread of them and we don't really know what they were capable of. We have these remnants, but we need we would need to get serious about it and actually start tracking it down and tracing it a bit more to understand. And so ourdal is though looks like it could be another really good spot. And I think frankly around Malaga down in the south of Spain in general has huge promise for exciting new nearorall information to come out in the future about the art there. newK and new art. and just to kind of summarize what we've been talking about then Genevve. so It At least in caves, they're say in red ochre paints that we associate with anstoolals now The main types of signs, the main types of graphic markings that you see, is it largely kind of the spit painting discs Th those ladders, maybe a few hands. Is that the main types of art that we're associating with the anntels right now? Okay. so this is, I mean, this is off the top of my head And so this is this is what I would call this is this is what we would call in the field like anecdotal evidence, which means as somebody because I've at this point, I think I've worked in like one hundred and seven caves. I've worked in a lot of caves. So part of it is just the pattern recognition piece, right? Like when you've worked in that many sites, you start to kind of get a feel for like, oh, I'm seeing this again. this's interesting If I had to anecdotally classify some art as being neonotthal I would say Hands not exclusively in circ, becausecause we definitely have humans making them too, but hand prints for sure, especially the negative hand prrints and spit painting, Spit painting seems to have been a thing for them My colleague Barbara has some amazing sites where they were just going around Like blowing red discks onto like stalactites and things in caves, like they were just marking the cave with them, right So I would say Fit painting is definitely one of their techniques that they like to use, for sure Hands dots, these bigger discs pupils. So again, like an engraved dot lines also a series of lines. So that don't forget of course the famous hashtag. from hashtag froms cr Garn's cave down in Gibraltar, which is again, there was no humans anywhere in sight. Like it's N neanderal. And our colleague, Francesco Jericho, who does a ton of like experximental archeology, and he's the guy you call in if you need to verify something He went in and he verified that again, this was not just made because somebody was trying to sharpen a tool. Like There was something going on here. So Goram's Cave has this amazing hashtag in it And again, there's some other potential grids in other places. Th hashtag em marks, which could now, though we should be looking and assessing calmly, like, presume it's human because we've always presumed all these things were human So this means we're going to actually have to go revisit it. but I would still not and cross is this what we're thinking. Series of lines. simple crosses in some places, zigzags, like I think that there's and it could even be too, though that some of those are almost like the beaked in ancestral kit. And which again, I think and again, people are going to disagree with me. So please assume this viewers and listeners, which is this is my opinion Not everybody agrees with me, but fromom what I'm seeing and this is just based on what I'm seeing, it appears to me that this does track back to even earlier than we had previously understood. and it's just that Each of them then moved in their own direction and developed out theirt traditions in their own wayays.' no different than how different humans. have moved around the planet and then really developed their own art traditions, right? Like if you think about how different Polynesian art looks from say, like, you know Western Italian Rnaaissance art, like it's extraordinarily different both cly cool in their own way. come from the same species, but very different ways of doing their art. And so I think that we want to really flag that with humans and neandertthals and stuff like that, and even within these groups that there's a lot of variety and that Maybe we just haven't had the tools before to see it, but I think we might be starting to now. So I think stay tuned. It's an exciting time Very exciting, and I guess also one of those big questions, which there must be so many theories about now, Genevve, and I'm sure you've got your thoughts as well is trying to figure out what these signs, you know, what they all mean, what's the purpose of them, whether they're made with ochre paint or whether they're, you know their're markings carved onto a portable object that N anwors are taking along with them Yeah. when I mean, I think so I think that this is where I mean, I'm so sorry to disappoint every. I don't think we'll be able to like decode it, right? Like so it's just for one thing, we don't have enough repetition and examples, like usually you would need something with more Like if you think about what they were able to do, hieroglyphs or something like that. It's a very big set of symbols. which is repeatedly used across time so that you can get patterns of use from them, right? And then you can start to figure out, oh, these things use your this so few things re do that They don't seem to be using their graphic marks quite that regularly and in quite a standardized way yet. But again, so it's probably more that what they were doing was that there was important things to them that they were murking Right? Like they were making marks in order to send information or messages about things that were important to them. And that information could have been this is my piece of ochre, don't touch it Right or this is the plan of the bison's cave, right? Like for real. L that could be stuff like that. There's other examples where could be path markers in caves. like take this passageway. Bad cave bear lives down there. Like there really are examples of what look like path markers too. So there's a huge variety of things What I would say, though, is that I do believe that a lot of these geometric marks, certainly with the humans be actually figurative things that we just haven't quite identified what they are. Because if we're looking at some of the the geometric marks They look like stylized real world things So I think on some level, certainly with the human stuff because they were making figurative art that looked like was meant to replicate real world items, I think we could probably at least get to a point of maybe figuring out some of what they were depicting. Like what is this thing, right? Like, oh, maybe this is an arrow or a spear or That doesn't mean we can understand what it means, right? Because if you think about it Like if you think about likeike a Christian cross. If you are part of a group of people who understands Christian Cross is tiny symbol. Think about the folder It unlocks in your brain, right? Like it unlocks two thousand years of history. It unlocks the crusades, It unlocks the churches and the Reformation and the printing press, like boom, right? That's all that's all this is And yet it's like So I mean I think I was saying about it the other day, which is I mean, language is one of the most compressed algorithms. ever been invented, right And so this is where with With the neer tools with other things, I mean, you know, if they're doing non figurative stuff, it's going to be harder for us because we don't know why they were making it. Like we don't know what was important. Now if we can kind of start to Ididentify repeating examples of things we might be able to try and figure out a little bit like, do they seem to have been counting? L was this some early form of counting, especially and you and things we could look for would be, do we see the same number If we've got a row of lines on a bone Is it always eight lines? you know, is it always five lines? Like what are they doing? Like so I think That's where you can start to find some signal in the noise It doesn't mean that you can necessarily get to the point of being able to read it. And I think that's where we have to be really careful is I wish, I wish, but I just don't see how we could because we don't have the cultural context And so this is where, but I think we we can definitely learn more. And with the human stuff, there is the possibility of maybe even identifying some more like, oh, maybe these actually represent little dwellings and houses. or like we could probably get to that level Genevie, we could do a whole another episode on the early signs of you know humans after Neandals and what their meanings could be. I think I'll leave it on This last question, well, this last kind of statement, I guess, is to ponder is we mentioned earlier how the evidence is very clear now that Nans and humans, they did interact in Europe for a period of time. And it fascinating to reimagine communicating with each other. And you mentioned how one of the ways they could have communicated was through art It's fascinating to think whether You know, given all of the information that may well have been embedded in the ends you maybe their discs or their hand markings or the ladders and so on. whether they were able to communicate that knowledge across to humans that they interacted with and then you know, the humans kind of take it on, embrace it and bring it on to the next level. That would explain why, you know, Neandla is so close to Human art in some of these caves that we've explored And so I think it's a fascinating question about,ah, who taught what who likeike who taught what to who And then also keeping in mind that the place The place in time where the interbreeding seems to have taken place is more like in the Middle East which means they might be picking up art making traditions from Middle Eastern Neanderthals, which could be completely different from European Neanderthals, right That's also a fascinating question because we don't know much. L we have caves like Shanidar. So when you have Ella on you have to ask her about because she she's been to Shanadar, which is so cool. That's an arraack You know, so again, we've got these, but maybe we don't know we don't know where it happened. And one of the things I'll sort of finish with because I know we're hitting our time here. So two things, firstirst of all This really great Japanese video game company actually created a video game. Using the signs, like from the geometric signs, that's called I mother. And it's about a Neanderal woman. who gets separated from her tribe It's such a cool game. It's really hard. It's a puzzle game. so be prepared. But like you can actually she uses symbols she's finding made by humans and stuff to start decoding things. L it's really they actually explored that whole idea. So I just had to throw it in there because it's a really interesting educational Like how do we do something educational with ancient history The other thing I wanted to just flag is so If we want to answer these big questions, because you can see we're talking about intercontinental questions. We're looking for patterns across continents. We're looking for patterns across Hundreds of, you know, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years We could not live in a better time. than right now. to be asking those kinds of questions. Like it feels like just that incredible intersection of technology meets capacity, right? which is that we have all this data, which we've been busy squirreling away for the last hundred years And we've been asking questions as big as we could, but we could be asking bigger And a lot of what you're asking about goes to those really large questions of We need to understand at a civilizational scale, bothoth in terms of homo sapiens and in terms of neatthals and Denisopans. What were they doing And then where were the interaction points? What was happening? And then who had what first? And then do we see things move afterwards? And are they moving with different groups of people as they come together and then they separate So first of all, we need to start filling in the blank spots on the map We cannot do this without starting to fill in the world map. And so that is one of my big pushs right now is one of the reasons why I'm not working so much just in Europe is I'm starting to work at the global scale And so this is actually what I've been I've been hiding in my own hermit cave for the last year and I have designed a AI integrated research system which is for the whole field. And it will actually be the public will be able to interact with it in the future as well. So we basically turned the AI into our librarian