SGU Episode 13

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SGU Episode 13
14th September 2005
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 1                      SGU 300
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Quote of the Week
Death is an engineering problem.
Bart Kosko
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Introduction

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, September 14th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me tonight are Bob Novella.

B: Hello everyone

S: Perry DeAngelis

P: Good evening.

S: and Evan Bernstein

E: Hello fellow non-believers.

Science or Fiction ()

S: So we are going to start off with Science or Fiction tonight

E: Good start.

S: It's time to play Science or Fiction (echos).

S: Again Science or Fiction: I scour the news for interesting scientific facts or news items and then I present three items, two of which are true or real, and one of which is false. The theme this week is early man. These are all -- the three things I going to give you are either abilities or technologies or things that early man was doing by approximately 30,000 years ago.

E: That's early

S: Yes, we are talking about Homo Sapiens, which is our own species. So by 30,000 years ago which one of the three things were we not yet doing. Now of course the evidence for all of this is mostly inferential, but there is reasonable compelling evidence for the two that are correct. OK, you guys ready?

B: Hmm-hmm

E: Ready

S: The first one is footwear. So did humans 30,000 years ago wear footwear? The second one is using fire for cooking food. Not just using fire, but specifically cooking food. And the third one is the use of transporters. No, I'm kidding. The third one is domesticated horses.

P: Thirty thousand years ago?

S: Thirty thousand years.

P: OK. I'll go for its obviously horses, because that one is the most difficult to believe. There you have it.

S: OK, simple enough. Bob?

B: Hmmm. I don't think they had footwear. First thing that comes to mind is a lot of primitive tribes that are extant today, and I don't think they wear anything on their feet. Fire for cooking: my first thought is that they would have had it by then. And yet domesticated horses: I mean that seems too obvious, and maybe that's your whole plan is to make something that is too obvious actually be the right one.

P: Always go for the most obvious, the most obvious answer. This is what we are taught by Occam's Razor.

B: Yeah, I might have to go with the domesticated horses as well.

S: All right. Evan?

E: Boy, they all sound very plausible don't they? Something -- I have a feeling it's fire, the fire one, and I don't really know why. I think obvious ...

P: Harkening back to the Flintstones?

E: Well, I'm just -- to put it in that specific context of cooking their food with fire.

B: That is my second choice. It's a close tie.

E: I'll just go with that. I can't really give an explanation as to why, but I am just going to guess it.

S: It's your gut feeling.

E: Yes.

S: Well you all agree apparently that 30,000 years ago people were wearing footwear. That's actually only fairly recently discovered, and the evidence for that is indirect. There is direct evidence for more recent footwear going back thousands of years. The problem is that the kind of shoes that people would have wearing, I guess just basically slabs of leather on the bottom of their feet wouldn't really fossilize or preserve very well. So the most recent published evidence for the use of footwear going back between 27 and 30 thousand years was published in the Journal of Archeological Science by a man named Trinkhouse who measured the foot bones of ancient people, and around 30,000 years ago in certain populations the size of their little toes became smaller, which he reasons ...

B: Right

S: ... when you walk barefoot you use your small toes for traction, and therefore the bones would be bigger from use.

B: OK. They're superfluous if you have footwear.

S: If you have footwear you don't need the traction so they don't stay as big; they would be smaller. So indirect evidence for that ...

B: So that would just be some sort of genetic drift toward smaller ...

S: Well they just so you know muscles and bones are bigger with use and smaller without use, so it could not have been genetic, just ...

B: OK

S: ... just a measurement, just a measure of use. The second one using fire for cooking food -- now the evidence for this is pretty compelling, and it is in fact the discovery of scorched animal bones in the fires, in the hearths or what would have been the hearth of the dwellings of primitive man. The question is how far back does that evidence go. It actually goes back all the way to Homo Erectus ...

B: Wow!

S: ... about a million and a half or more years ago.

Others: Wow! No way!

S: So we've even been using fire to cook food for a long time.

E: Good for them.

P: Smart!

S: Domesticated horses is the correct answer. Bob and Perry both got it right.

P: Hah! Goes without saying.

S: The evidence for that mainly comes from the wear on the horses teeth from wearing a bridle

E: Long in the tooth

S: So yeah, the teeth would wear a certain way only if they had a bit in their mouth. Although there is some contention about whether or not the horses were truly domesticated or if they were just tamed in a way and how could we tell the difference. A tamed horse would be one that was say raised from a foal, but the horses would not be considered technically domesticated until they could be bred in captivity. But the evidence for this only goes back about 3,000 years, so shorter by an order of magnitude, so it is actually fairly recent.

B: How long have primitive men and horses lived near each other? You know, maybe we haven't lived in close proximity until you know, I don't know.

S: Horses ranged throughout Europe and Asia for a long time, .

B: OK.

S: It wasn't that they were never present in Africa, the closest thing to a horse in Africa is a Zebra. They made several migrations across the Bering Strait into North America, although they evolved in Europe and Asia.

P: Why do you suppose they didn't domesticate Zebras?

B: I don't think you can. You can't.

S: Yeah, they are not domesticable. They don't follow a herd stallion the way that horses do. So in order for an animal to be amenable to domestication, they have to have certain behavior patterns that could be exploited.

B: Yeah, an alpha male.

S: They either need to have built in some kind of subservient or loyalty behavior to either like with dogs to a pack leader or with horses to a herd stallion. And some species just can't be domesticated.

P: Hmm.

S: So some people credit the rise of European civilization to the fact that we had a lot of species that we could domesticate: oxen and horses and cows and pigs, and there really are no domesticable animals in Africa, and that may have been a significant impact on the rate that at which they were able to wage war and raise civilization.

B: I would think that would be a huge factor.

S: Yeah! Imagine the military advantage of cavalry.

B: Oh, sure.

S: Can't be underestimated.

E: Good one.

References