Thinking About Human Evolution

Jack Adams' channel: / pebblestudio
CORRECTION
As user 'P' pointed out in a comment, I mistakenly typed 'stepmother' in the slide where the chimpanzee was cleaning the teeth of a dead relative. I should have written 'adoptive mother' (which I luckily think I said in the voice-over). Here is a link to a paper discussing adoption of orphaned individuals within chimpanzee communities: journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
Other Further Reading
A 2005 article about one of the rare occasions that fossil chimpanzees have been discovered: www.nature.com/articles/natur...
A 2015 article about primates producing tools for future use: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f...
An overview of of the subject of empathy in non-human apes: www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepos...
A 2006 paper on the late survival of Neanderthals in Gibraltar: www.nature.com/articles/natur...
Tom Björklund: / tombjorklundart , @tombjorklundart .
Homo naledi: elifesciences.org/articles/09560

[@zebragoboom]

Title reads like Simon can consciously resume evolution as a human and is only considering doing so

[@helenahandkart1857]

😂

[@sidarthurgortimer355]

And his facial hair makes it look like he's decided to evolutionarily regress a bit instead.

[@johngavin1175]

@@sidarthurgortimer355 Not a bad thing,wish I could regress myself at times.

[@marcasdebarun6879]

@@johngavin1175 Im sure we all wish we could return to monky every now and again

[@kolaloka9573]

@@johngavin1175 return to monke

[@PebbleStudio]

Such a truly important point to make at 3.26: evolution is about adaptation to existing environmental conditions. Love it Simon.

[@simonroper9218]

Thank you Jack - I'll try to reply to your email tomorrow, and we'll discuss it further soon! I'm sure you've got a lot of wisdom to share.

[@yerdasellsavon9232]

This reads like you're talking about a Bible verse from a book about evolution

[@subplantant]

I tend to conceptualise evolution by analogy to water taking the shape of its container.

[@keithoutsidethebox6707]

@@simonroper9218 Simon, I've been watching some of your videos in recent months. Excellent presentations. To date, my favourite Theory, in regards to Behavioural Modern H.sapien sapien evolution is the Vendramini’s Neanderthal Predation Theory. Many people are shocked/thrown off by the Theory, but the more I read it, the more I agreed with it. I think the negativity behind it, is that we can't have the opportunity to anthomorphise H. neanderthalensis, or any species/subspecies of the Homo genus, which ourselves love to do.

[@cam-gv2gf]

thanks captain obvious

[@rvail136]

the dot matrix tree is an excellent example on how to show spciation. Well done sir

[@GotPotatoes24]

is no one going to talk about the picture of his pal toby

[@lionhartd138]

Oh yeah, he's cancelled now for sure. Sheer audacity I tell you...

[@bryanr1868]

Paused the video and went to the comments straightaway. Cheers to Toby

[@misterfox5475]

One of my favourites so far. …'behaviour can't be fossilised'... - my mind went off in so many directions. Great work. Your delivery is ASMR like and the language so very accessible.

[@That-Google-Guy]

Dude. I’m 38 years old. I’ve been obsessed with anthropology and paleoanthropology, modern humans and evolution my whole life, and this video just taught me so much. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

[@arta.xshaca]

You're obsessed with "modern humans", huh.

[@Lausanamo]

​@@arta.xshaca Maybe he is an alien?

[@animavideography1379]

A subject I've found endlessly fascinating since I was a spotty 70's teenager. I was already subscribed to your channel for your Enlish language medieval content. You're knowledge base is even more impressive than I had realised this video is thought provoking & very fresh in it's approach to such a wonderfully evocative subject. More content like this in future please!

[@simonroper9218]

Thank you - I've similarly been fascinated since I was a spotty (10's) teenager! It's just a constantly-changing field, and it would be great to do more on it - it's good to see somebody else as interested in it as I am :)

[@animavideography1379]

@@simonroper9218 I can never understand why most people are NOT fascinated by this subject Simon, I mean how could one NOT be very curious about whete we literally come from in deep time?! And agreed yes it's currently the golden age of discovery both in the field & lab with genetic research into our origins...I eagerly await the next breakthrough in a succession of recent ones as no doubt you do too Simon!

[@multi-purposebiped7419]

@@simonroper9218 I've been contemplating evolution a lot recently. Thanks for this new insight, which has certainly expanded my conception.

[@akpeterson21]

11:41 you painted that- you’re an artist Simon?

[@Rockypf2]

He's posted art a couple of times in the past kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2ecpZWVfZ5nl9E

[@Rockypf2]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/j3-Zp5iLZct8b6M

[@Kurzes_Spiel]

Simon's beginning to look like a pirate.

[@RealUlrichLeland]

@@jamesalfredburchiii4052 Lol we were all thinking it

[@CatastrophicalPencil]

How else did you think he got the name Roper?

[@billythedog-309]

Darwin would be envious of that beard.

[@SoxExcalibur]

i mean he is british

[@buttercxpdraws8101]

That last painting! Extraordinary. I felt like the eyes were looking into my soul.

[@bioniclegoblin6495]

She seems so alive... and normal, in her own way. I feel there's less distance compared to some other depictions of palaeolithic humans.

[@alexbriner8845]

Can you do a video on how laughing developed as an important way to communicate (and crying, by the same token)? Loved this video btw.

[@clappedoutmotor]

Isn't laughing an evolutionary throwback to chimpanzees showing their teeth to another chimpanzee, thusly showing that they don't consider the other chimp a threat? I remember reading that once.

[@FeedsNoSliesMusic]

@@clappedoutmotor How does showing your teeth show that you're not a threat? That sounds like it's patching up a couple of holes, as it were.

[@adehl4805]

@@clappedoutmotor chimpanzees & other great apes do have laugh like vocalizations during play in captivity & in the wild iirc

[@clappedoutmotor]

@@FeedsNoSliesMusic You are probably right. The act of baring teeth is definitely an aggressive move. Maybe its the vocalizations I was thinking of.

[@jeromecarney]

A book I read many years ago on comedy writing, that dissected the interplay between laughter and tension, led me firmly to the hypothesis that laughter evolved in mammals from the sigh of relief. A hearty guffaw permits the rapid release of stored oxygen, heightened energy and the bath of hormones that humans summon whenever faced with a fight or flight trigger, real or perceived. Once the threat has passed, it is in our strategic biological interest to return our bodies to stasis as quickly as possible, rather than waste precious resources unnecessarily. Laughter not only relieves the tense situation at hand, but can also help release previously stored tension that has yet to be expelled. In other words - the saying is old because the saying is true - laughter often is the best medicine.

[@Desdinova721]

Dibs on "The Human Chimpanzee Divergence" as a band name

[@tomrogue13]

I'll play bass

[@garethparsons3902]

You will need a crazy drummer

[@c4call]

Not sure this is the platform upon which to claim dibs on a band name 🤔

[@ingwiafraujaz3126]

I love how you're going down the same rabbit hole as I did. From language to archaic language to the origins of language to human evolution.

[@simonroper9218]

I actually went the other way round! I think evolution partly led on to the interest in language. I'm glad other people have also found these interests through their connections to each other! :)

[@thinking-ape6483]

@@simonroper9218 What do you think of Dan Everett's challenge to traditional Chomskyian assumptions about language?

[@johannageisel5390]

"Any animal can think something that's not true in our opinion." ... That reminds me of Billi the "talking" cat - and also other housecats - who seem to assume that humans can control the weather. If they want to go outside and it rains, they complain to their human and seem to demand the human makes the rain go away.

[@erink476]

or there was one video on Instagram where it appeared that Bunny, a dog who has word buttons, wanted her human to stop the waves under their beach house. Or maybe she was just complaining that the noise was bothering her. But it's not entirely unreasonable for cats and dogs to think these things, after all, we can make the shower and the kitchen sink stop and go, and turn the lights on and off, and make food appear out of hard round things, why can't we control the weather?

[@johannageisel5390]

@@erink476 I don't know exactly about the waves video - as far as I can remember Bunny only mentioned the waves. But there was another one, when they lost power and some contractors came and fixed the power line and Bunny was like: "Make them go away, I want to sleep!" (At least, that's our interpretation.)

[@tenns]

I really like the title of the video, it seems like an invitation, but also clearly says what the video is, and is about.

[@seyeruoynepotsuj]

I've been needing another Simon Roper video. Great stuff!!!!

[@d.2605]

I always try to be conscious of conformation bias, but today I learned about preservation bias...

[@PerksJ]

Can’t wait for the hunter gatherer video!

[@vortimulticompte7177]

really, you calmness makes your videos very likable, even more so when presenting a well presented topic

[@AlexSalikan]

I'm just about to finish my MPhil in human evolution at Cambridge, and I did my undergrad dissertation on the origins of language and symbolic thinking at UCL. Feel free to message me if you need any more material, I've got loads of interesting references.

[@odinfredrikrustad7450]

link to any introductory content on your work? gl on your efforts

[@AlexSalikan]

@@odinfredrikrustad7450 Do you mean content that I've written, or just introductory reading to get you started on the subject?

[@kuningas1101]

@@AlexSalikan I would be interested in either one!

[@AlexSalikan]

@@kuningas1101 No problem. It sounds stupid, but I always start with Wikipedia. The Wikipedia page for Timeline of Human Evolution is a really good place to start, in my opinion, and so is the Wikipedia page for List of Human Evolution Fossils. Those pages will link to all the relevant species, and there you can see what man-made objects are associated with what species. That should give you a really good idea of the big picture, and from there you'll probably start forming your own initial opinions about just how smart each species was, and what they were able to imagine in their mind's eye. It's also important to remember how smart our closest living relatives are. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have all been successfully taught to communicate with humans using basic hand signs. Is that proof that they're capable of symbolic thinking? If so, could our common ancestors have been capable of symbolic thinking too? You decide. Let me know if that's a bit too introductory, or if there's anything in particular you'd like to know about. Edit: I also recommend watching Sarah Hrdy's presentation called "The Origin of Emotionally Modern Humans" on KZbin. That will get you started on why we're so different from other apes.

[@kuningas1101]

@@AlexSalikan Alright, will do. I've had a decent amount of encounters with 20th century French anthropology (Lévi-Strauss, Leroi-Gourhan, Durand, etc.), but it might actually be good to go back and try to figure out the basics, since I can't lie and act like I know all too much about evolution. Thank you for your response!

[@njujuznem6554]

I'd love to watch more videos on stuff like this as well as the linguistics videos. This is really interesting!

[@apehole6248]

My favorite subject to learn about and you do it in such a concise and engaging way, thank you!

[@fukuokainternationaldemocr1974]

What an absolutely outstanding video. Well done! More of this please!

[@flerpfloop9019]

Absolutely love your content!

[@ianreynolds8552]

Great vid Simon ! Straight forward and easy to understand

[@paulh2832]

Excellent, thoughtful video Simon, thanks.

[@valinhorn42]

Thanks for the heads-up about the syntax video at the end, I absolutely would have missed that and it would have been a shame! Very interesting video as always, and I really like your style of presentation!

[@carolinewithers1647]

I wish I had had your presentation to use with my Senior IB biology students. You make many great points.

[@eduardoeller183]

Love your style, looking forward to the next one

[@wasteyelo1]

Yet another fascinating video Simon.

[@Davida-sv7ir]

Simon Roper, keep going mate. Love your videos Fascinating incite to the past.

[@CharlieRabbit87]

Really enjoy your videos, Simon

[@craighughes536]

Amazing video Simon...great info

[@trudiebrown4284]

This is so interesting, thank you for creating this content

[@kx6146]

another great video, thank you Simon

[@niqpal]

thank you simon. love these videos

[@ameeeeeeela]

Very interesting video, thank you for this Simon

[@shuddupeyaface]

Wonderful stuff. Enjoyed watching thanks!

[@jamesnoyes6316]

Excellent video once again Simon!

[@omarghulam6106]

superb talk. Absolutely wonderful, informative and paradigm expanding. Thank you very much, from a very impressed writer in sunny Manchester :)

[@herrfister1477]

I enjoyed this tremendously, thank you.

[@SnarkNSass]

Love the shirt! You are rockin 1971!!💖💖

[@helenahandkart1857]

It's a beauty!💗

[@johnhaller7017]

@@helenahandkart1857 Cycle dealick!

[@kirthanasivakumar640]

This is so interesting! Love it! Simon, please do more videos on Evolution!

[@mistyminnie5922]

Super interesting :) love your content and your interests

[@trapd00rspider]

Great video. Evolution is so commonly misunderstood. This treatment was thoughtful and really interesting too.

[@stefanocalesini3923]

Excellent. Very interesting video (and I could hear no noise)

[@alisonjane7068]

i loved this, and i look forward to more of your thoughts on this, and related, topics.

[@gorimor]

Excellent video, I really enjoyed listening.

[@jonnyrocket3659]

very interesting video... thanks Simon

[@cooper8515]

I love your painting!

[@KeefsCattys]

Really fascinating . Thank you

[@esquare807]

Very informative. Please keep posting

[@PAB929]

Thanks Simon excellent explanation

[@nothandsomecody7469]

For some strange reason I watched the whole video. You're good at this.

[@petespensive6578]

Fantastic video, Simon. Some lovely art presented here, I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the quandaries of artistic reconstructions of the subjects of anthropological and archaeological study, be they illustrations, sculptures or dioramas. I agree with you that making some kind of effort to create images and impressions of these things helps hugely to expand the ways we think about them, yet I'm always left wondering in which ways the artist may have missed the mark, and how much it matters if they did. I then think that there seems to be little way of knowing for sure, at least until new evidence comes along.

[@eddieparr1038]

Classic Roper, wouldn’t be the same without roadworks, cars, planes... Good stuff Simon 👍

[@baronesselsavonfreytag-lor1134]

Love this departure from the usual fare!

[@Catwoman1464]

Its refreshing to listen to you, since you don't proclaim to know the absolute truth, but show differentiated research

[@unraed]

Love your channel! I am from Kazakhstan and here I don´t have any resources to have such knowledge as you do. But thank the Internet, and may God bless the souls of people who invented it)))

[@pabmusic1]

Really good. Look forward to more.

[@JamesBrown-mt5ru]

Re: disposal of the dead. It is noticeable that there is a recent trend regarding "lost at sea" whereby people in some cases wish their drowned relatives to be brought to the surface for burial or cremation on land (e.g. sinking of a fishing boat). 'Buried at sea' was once thought of an acceptable fate.

[@bioniclegoblin6495]

Till recently, there was not much to be done about it, I reckon.

[@davidweihe6052]

I assume that the corpses were expected to be buried, rather exposed to vultures or cremated. This could be from a desire for them to be visitable, rather than located somewhere hundreds of feet below the surface at a location hard to get to, like on the Andrea Doria. Also, the dead must be fairly recent, or you just have the leavings of local crustaceans (ugh!).

[@LordLove]

Superb video, great art and a nice shirt! If I was to guess the brand by the naked eye, I'd say Jenson and Samuel. You may like some of Joe Browns shirt offerings as they also do paisleys and distinctive patterns (I wear 'em myself!).

[@jackpalmer8250]

excellent video, thank you for the information S imon

[@helenahandkart1857]

Really fascinating, Simon, thanks for lending your mind & knowledge in creating this bridge for many of us. You've some good painting skills there, too, did you use a model to some degree? How d'ya reckon those people shaved & clipped their moustaches? (Just being cheeky, this last!) Thanks too, for all the great links! 🐵🦧🦍🧔👍

[@squeezyjohn1]

Just the most perfect lovely video ... thanks Simon. Thank you. I am (through experience) naturally wary of KZbin videos with titles like this ... you have categorically not followed that format.

[@johndelong5574]

I am impressed by the fantasy art associated with these vids they become more modern with every episode. Once upon a time far far away.My daughter loved the three bears.

[@nathanhobson1142]

Another fascinating video.

[@Aengus42]

A splendid video to listen to with my morning toast & the dawn chorus starting up. More please! I think a short pause when new text come up. Just long enough to read it. Even after being online since '97 I can't properly absorb text if I'm listening closely to the spoken word. I hear kids who've grown up online can do this. I'm sceptical until I see experimental results. Does comprehension suffer if doing both at the same time? I'd put my money on Yes! Great subject though. I enjoyed it.

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

So interesting - think I'm going to have to rewatch this one to fully shake my ideas into new patterns! It's a little scary how much "pop anthropology/paleontology" (along with pop psychiatry!) influences majorly important parts of our collective thinking? Particularly in terms of what constitutes "civilisation", how we relate to nature, and what group behaviors are considered inherent vs learned... BTW really like the long hair + beard/mo look for you, Simon, it really seems to suit face shape etc! 👍

[@robertmcdonnell3117]

Fantastic video

[@manorueda1432]

Great content.

[@coocaran]

Lovely Paisley shirt Simon. I have the same one in green

[@simonroper9218]

Thank you! It would look good in green, I might try to track one down :)

[@masstv9052]

At 9:54 the chimps are just trying to play a game of Wall Ball, but it's kinda difficult to find walls and balls in the jungle. So competitive "Tree Rocks" is there next best option.

[@ikeekieeki]

i hope many students find your video channel

[@joshmartin4136]

Simon Roper what a cool guy good man thanks for the video

[@sordidspectacle7393]

Simon should make more videos like this

[@BeatlesBiitch]

AH! Thank you Simon! This video so succinctly and eloquently targets the dangerous misconceptions that undergird the the """lay""" understanding of evolution. Going to save this one for the next time someone comes at me with some bullshit about "the direction of progress"

[@reeyees50]

nice stuff my lad

[@connormitchell4863]

hey simon. do more stuff youre great.

[@jillroyson4589]

Cheers Simon

[@johnhaller7017]

Just as we were geo centric in the past, we tend to be, understandably, species centric now. Simon reminds us that this is just a view and that this can be revised at any time, by greater knowledge and by any number of external phenomena. Solar flares are top of my random phenomena list. The Carrington event of 1859 is a good starting point to clarify our centric assumptions. By 1859, we had only just established a global, telegraph system! And then.......? A version of that graph of our human origins with the crowning glory of city dwellers at it's apex, may well be rediscovered as a petroglyph on some cave wall at some remote time in the future. Keep up the good work Simon.

[@kennethgoldie5257]

Will your video on hunter-gatherers be specifically about Western Hunter-Gatherers? Your picture at 16:55 reminded me of the lost phenotypes of those populations and the challenges they may have faced with the arrival of farming populations from Anatolia. I always found the idea of these lifestyles clashing together absolutely fascinating. Keep up the good work young one

[@marksimpson489]

Thanks for this video. I'm not convinced by the theory of human evolution - but your student-beard look is beginning to persuade me again.

[@emilyb5278]

It's not theory there are skulls bones fossils and dna it's pretty factual that we evolved just like other animals. In some snakes they still find hip bones from when it had legs

[@charlesq7866]

This is quality content.

[@arkaig1]

The hallway metaphor in the opening to TV's "Get Smart" might be a good metaphor for speciation (removing the humorous part, perhaps)?

[@LimeyRedneck]

We're often blinkered and sometimes by ourselves.

[@saiyajedi]

12:33 “Some people keep them and socially interact with them...” What’s that, Mother? A new guest?

[@lsporter88]

Very logical, rational, and well put together presentation.

[@autonomousthought4106]

the most interesting thing in this video (not because it's uninteresting but because i already know this stuff) is how you mentioned that our ancestors lived in grasslands and that this is why our fossils were preserved so well. this seems like it's possibly a similar error to the idea that our ancestors lived in caves, because we found most of their bones preserved in caves, when really it was not the case that they especially lived in caves, it was just that the ones that did had their remains preserved more.

[@mondopinion3777]

Great observation ! You just erased another false narrative from my mind, planted there by media and educators. Thanks :)

[@alexbowman7582]

Classical evolution is somewhat like Newtonian physics, it’s not the complete truth. Rather than evolution being driven by chance mutations it’s actually driven by previous forms stored in DNA and reappearing and combining to form a new species. There’s many stages in human evolution that have immense benefits and would have rapidly driven further evolution such as upright walking, modern hands, invention of tools, invention of fire, invention of complex language etc.

[@cathjj840]

Thanks for that tantalizing clue. Will be looking out for more, as I just couldn't get the chance-mutation narrative as the main driving force. It's just too damn slow and random. Epigenetics surely plays a role as well, and also have a strong component of things coming back from the past as adaptations to a new or newly recurring/similar present.

[@alexbowman7582]

@@cathjj840 there’s also a feedback loop keeping species the same till the species needs to change.

[@GraemeMarkNI]

Can’t believe I’m crying about the chimpanzee stepmother 😥

[@Story-Voracious66]

❤️

[@paulohagan3309]

Oh man, I've seen some pictures of Chimpanzees and their rituals with the dead and elephants too. Would break your heart ...

[@walteradair7738]

Well done! Nice way to include and contra social and physical anthropology. You might want to clean the door in the background up a bit.

[@douglasgrant8315]

Simon your painting looks nice. Those that say you got the look wrong well that is there perceptions no one know what they looked like...

[@simonpenny2564]

Nicely put Simon. Really apprecIate your unpretentious intelligence. Important the clear the air of spurious teleological ideas. Interesting to see you branching out from your euro-linguistic territory. I've become quite a fanboy of genomic archeology - denisovans etc. I'd be interested you hear your thoughts about that work - seems to me it might defuse implicit racism in archeological thought - ie H Sapiens was not the (white) victor over weaker species/races, but successful because inherently hybrid. As Jenny Holzer said - random mating is good for the species. And who knew, you're handy with a brush too.

[@johannageisel5390]

Looking forward to the Hunter-Gatherer video.

[@iain349]

INteresting - thanks Simon. Can I ask, are you familiar with Yuval Harari's work, and his views on religion and culture? What do you think of those?

[@thomasalvarez6456]

This reminds me of Alevel Archaeology and now I’m missing it.

[@ofconsciousness]

I absolutely loved this! Thank you.

[@neilwilson5785]

Che Guevara has got back in shape. He can save Bolivia easily now.

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

You know, if he stops killing the innocent

[@Varra1]

lmao he really does look like che guevara

[@gyorkshire257]

@@celtofcanaanesurix2245 Not really many credible accounts of that, a channel called Bad Empanada did a very good video on this topic.. There is one account of him shooting a comrade who had informed on the guerrillas, leading to a massacre of peasants by Battista's forces. There is also a lot of evidence of him ordering the execution members of Battista's secret police and security apparatus, but neither they nor the informer were "innocent" by any stretch of the imagination.

[@lcmiracle]

@@celtofcanaanesurix2245 The word "innocent" is pulling a lot of works here.

[@cathjj840]

Whatever the real Che was like (the CIA is certainly responsible for a good part of the narrative), please leave our paisley-shirted Simon out of it. Besides, the present day Bolivians are doing a great job of getting their country together despite the CIA, NED, their own oligarchy and other corporate vultures wanting to thwart them.

[@marcuscohen191]

Hey Simon, wondering if you've read/have any opinions on "Catching Fire" by Richard Wrangham? He advocates the thesis that preparing/cooking food was the primary engine driving the development of basically every unique trait of modern humans. E.G, more efficient calorie extraction allowed our guts to get smaller which freed up energy budget for our brains to get larger. I had to read it for a lower level undergraduate course, and had some reservations about it both due to the quality of the class, the pop-sci nature of the book, and the monocausal way he seems to explain everything. Though the arguments themselves seemed logical enough. Where do serious academics stand on the "cooking hypothesis?"