00:00.00 Cornpop Welcome back to episode 1 Oh 5 of a live rooms podcast. We're here with our good friend Stefan Milo it is his fifth time you're in the five timers clubp man. Ah, we should get you a bathro like they gave Tom Hanks on Snl that was hoping but. 00:14.23 archpodnet So there you go making promises. We can't keep again. 00:16.48 StefanMilosavljevich Yeah. 00:18.19 Cornpop I was waiting for that. Ah yeah. 00:18.30 Connor I Everyone who comments and leaves us review will get a bath robe with the number of episodes they've been on so make sure and follow that at the end of the show. 00:27.60 Cornpop Um, we ended. 00:28.76 archpodnet We We should give out taekwon dough belts and like give out different colors and stripes for every every time they build on. 00:33.54 StefanMilosavljevich Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm up for that but make them silk silk Ikondo robes. Yeah. 00:37.23 Cornpop Ah, um, oh yeah, like a kung fu one. 00:40.73 archpodnet The out of the finest linens. 00:41.94 Connor Voo. 00:45.40 Cornpop We talked last segment or we ended talking about neural crest cells and how that like kind of suffocates the like facial prognosticism of dogs and like sheep and like if you look at a like an ibex or ah, a mufllon or extinct now. But like. What they look like like and then versus a sheep or a goat It's a lot smaller dogs are a lot smaller cats kind of stay the same but is that happening with humans and this domestication with humans. Um I remember where I was going with this now. It's not necessarily like. At the rise of agriculture Ten Thousand years ago was happening before that like we were in 30000 so do we think maybe it has to do with like people starting to live in like not sedentary villages but like we're living in camps and traveling around more around that time. 01:40.82 StefanMilosavljevich There are. 01:41.20 archpodnet I don't know but like yeah for me though, like domestication like we did a whole series on domestication If you haven't listened to it. Go back because we we actually go through the processes of domestication right? like part of domestication is selective breeding. We didn't do that. 01:42.97 Cornpop It's more of like. 02:00.21 archpodnet You know what? I mean like intentionally I think there's like there's so many factors at play right? because moveflon ibexs wild horse all these pre-demysticated animals that all of our you know everything that you can find at Mcdonald's came from. 02:02.33 Cornpop Intentionally I. 02:18.19 archpodnet Um, was and 1 intentionally bred but 2 like we're the only species that we know of that can communicate very complex like there's so much going on right? like we have language our communication style is very different. We have like far more. Robust toolkits you know and I mean so I think like you can't just compare humans as a society at a population level to like other species at a population level because like we have so many factors going into it. Um. 02:48.22 Cornpop Me. 02:52.72 StefanMilosavljevich That's one of the criticisms or problems with the human self-domestication is that without a farmer guiding our so sexual choices. Ah, how did it happen. Why Why would it be advantageous to select against. Aggression in the context of human society and why would it. 03:12.12 archpodnet And yeah, and there's just so much gene flow like and especially with globalization we have access to you know, reproductive partners that we otherwise wouldn't have right? So I mean like we've had so much like there's not selective breeding right? like you have pug breeders gold retriever breeders you know. Hitler tried it and you know his program got shut down after 6 years 03:36.49 Cornpop What can you do the? ah but. 03:39.56 Connor So I don't know if calling it a program is the most appropriate way to describe what was going on there. Maybe. 03:47.80 Cornpop Agenda Yeah I know um, that. 03:50.10 archpodnet I mean yes I'm not comparing it to like the Atkins diet. It's not like a 5 step diet but he had she had the final solution was a program. Yeah. 03:52.39 Connor Yeah I mean like. 03:53.27 StefanMilosavljevich You know he step by step to the master race. 03:53.93 Cornpop Sure sure. 04:01.98 Cornpop Live from madagascar all right anyway that was dark. Let's go. Um, so in my Tiktok videos where I was talking about like neanderthals because people kept asking me questions on those comments where like that was a cesspool of racism in there. Ah home. The interesting thing that I always find in like talking to other people about this stefan I think you and I had this conversation via text 1 time like when you're meeting with neanderthals like humans mean with neanderthals I personally think it'd be a little more peaceful that I would have been violent because like you need to know. Like you're gonna communicate you're going to trade. You're gonna have sex with them sex could also be violent and that's part of it. But if we're not selecting for less aggression. It's like humans at this point have the choice to be like a little more. Peaceful then like aggressive with each other when they're meeting and then we start spreading around everywhere like maybe that's part of it more so than selecting. Yeah. 05:01.67 StefanMilosavljevich Well I mean there's so much at play. There's so much a play So this idea doesn't suggest that we are unwilling to kill and destroy other groups. But it's that we're less willing to snap and be aggressive. 05:16.15 Cornpop Mim. 05:20.42 StefanMilosavljevich Those around us. Um, that's where that the reactive aggression part of the title of that paper came in. Obviously we're still extremely capable of terrible acts of violence. Um, generally though they seem to be directed at people we consider. 05:24.92 Cornpop Ah. 05:39.95 StefanMilosavljevich Ah, different group rather than those immediately around us. Um, but yeah I mean you know if the idea is that we have been on this domestication process and neanderthals were on it to a lesser extent then maybe it's hard to explain our interbreeding with them because when we met. You know we were similar enough that we bred and the offspring of that interaction was successful enough in their communities that their genes were passed on because we still have that neanderthal Dna within us to this day or Denisovan Dna if you're from Asia Australia. The Americas as well. Um, so that you know might be hard to explain if if we were so vastly different to other archaic humans and again you know why? Why would it be a disadvantage for us to be. Aggressive you could argue is is another is another thing that's hard to explain perhaps because we can't look watch them. We can't observe these groups interact. That's the hard thing. So. 06:40.45 Cornpop Um, yeah. 06:50.55 Connor Well I wonder how much I mean you can see obviously you see pictures of like anatomically modern humans in neanderthals but like encountering them on on like a randomly on somewhere like how. How much are you going to be able to recognize as like at the difference between you I mean like you can I don't I don't know how like fundamentally how much you could see that they're different I mean eventually like maybe like ah later on you'll see different like the cultural differences and and whatnot but like that interaction. Doesn't seem like my first guess would be like oh these those people are different than me you know. 07:28.36 Cornpop Yeah, because there's not that many people on the the point like it's not extremely populated So like they just look like another bipedal like oh they're like us but it could have been different. Ah. 07:35.24 archpodnet Yeah, we've talked about this before like what connor' is referring to is the Subway test like if you were to take a homon and drop them dress them in human clothes. Modern day clothes and put them on a Subway Are you going to call the zoo or be not bothered by it. Right? Like if you were to take a neanderthal or denissovan like trim up the beard give him a manbon put him in a suit. You're not going to think anything of it right? And at the end you know at the end of the some crogs. Um I don't think they're that primitive. Um, but I think. 07:57.32 StefanMilosavljevich Give them some crocs. 08:09.79 archpodnet and and I've alluded I've said this before there's like more genetic variation within human population today than what we know of between ancestral homo Sapiens Danerthhelensis and homeman ancetral homo sapiens sapiens back then. 08:22.80 Cornpop Yeah. 08:23.46 StefanMilosavljevich Yeah, it's hard. It's Hard. You know it's hard to a lot of these ideas about human self-domestication revolve around ideas that are sort of cultural or linguistic like oh smaller Homo sapiens could have used their language to team up on more aggressive members of their community. And like scheme and plan their downfall when their backs not turned but how do you test for that in the archaeological records Impossible realistically and again you know Archaic humans probably had some form of communication. Um I would I would Bet. So. 08:48.62 Cornpop Yeah. 09:02.50 StefanMilosavljevich It's it's a difficult idea to test for and yet our physical features do resemble those of a domesticated animal and they're starting to see signs within our Dna of similarities between homo sapiens and domesticated animals. But how this. 09:17.24 Cornpop Interesting. 09:21.94 StefanMilosavljevich Mechanism and process went down. It's really hard to say. 09:25.30 Cornpop Um, within like wolves versus dogs like wolves are obviously extremely socially intelligent. That's like how we got them to be dogs but the difference between wolf intelligence and dog intelligence is like staunch and. Dog intelligence with their shrunken heads and shrunken brains are more socially intelligent with humans or as wolves don't really interact with humans the same way but they're very socially intelligent with each other so it definitely changes the communication. And the brain but we've selected for dogs to be more like us in the beginning. It was probably a little more natural but along those lines than applying it to humans like I guess we kind of like you just said are selecting for people who are good at diffusing interpersonal violence I don't know. 10:15.74 StefanMilosavljevich I Mean we couldn't oh go ahead guys. 10:15.81 Connor Well I was just gonna say yeah and you're saying I think that's you could say that's the act of the the farmer or the person in the background is that the domestication of animals is more pronounced because there is that greater person Behind. Making these decisions like what does self- domesticsation really look like without someone else making these big selective things is the question you know like we there's that director versus like nondirector thing that I think you were kind of highlighting there. 10:50.48 StefanMilosavljevich Yeah I mean it could be connected to group survival obviously in you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago it's really like group survival that is probably going to be beneficial in passing on your genes rather than any individual efforts on your part. Perhaps. So if there was hypothetically this group that cooperated better worked together better. They might have a survival advantage against more aggressive perhaps homo sapiens who are terrible at working together. And even though you know they're an absolute tank. Ah you know I got a whole crew with me who can take you on. You know, that's some of the ideas. But again, how do you test for that. It's so hard and there are so many factors at play like increasing sophistication of tools and all sorts of things. That that could have also affected this. 11:49.19 Cornpop Wrangham who also wrote this paper wrote one I Forget what it's called, but it's like a controversial paper and it's on chimpanzee aggression and whether or not humans are innately violent or not and like if you just watch chimpanzees in a documentary.. They're extremely violent and they rip Monkeys Heads off and eat them and they rip each other apart. So therefore we would think that like humans are inherently violent and he did this experiment where they like observe chimpanzees and like the chimpanzees would essentially like go on like war parties and just I think is. Conclusion was that like it's just random. They just decide to like Curb stop another group. There's no provocation for it. They just do it. But the criticism to that study is that like we're encroached upon their territory now chimpanzees behave differently than they did because now that it's environmental pressures and they're a little more. So It's just like you could say it's completely human messed up now or not but it was an interesting Study. You guys should check it out I'll try to remember the name of it. But. 12:53.47 archpodnet I yeah I read it for theory I mean imagine Connor you did too. Um for bio theory but I mean like as you said it's controversial and there's been a bunch of articles because I also part of that he stipulated that more aggressive chimpanzees have access to greater mates and the. 13:10.30 Cornpop Yeah. 13:10.78 archpodnet Follow-up studies have shown that like female chimpanzees have like far more agency than most people thought like they have a number of different mechanisms to make males think they have a chance or like the the one I'm thinking of is tyranny of the testes is the article that actually goes into like actually female chimpanzees Dev a. 13:28.68 StefanMilosavljevich That's the best idol for any article ever. 13:29.99 archpodnet No yes, they have a number number of different mechanisms to like make sure that they actually have the choice and who they're breeding with and so oftentimes they will trick like those most dominant violent males into thinking they had um a breeding session when in fact, they used various apparati to. Ah, keep the semen from doing any any any of their work. Highly Recommend. It was one of the most fascinating articles ever read? Um, and so. 13:51.61 StefanMilosavljevich Wow, That's crazy. 13:55.84 Cornpop Um, I'm pulling it up right here. It's ran him at all 2006 I just can't remember the name of it. Let's see open up bio theory. 14:06.69 archpodnet And I mean and and we've kind of we've talked about this several times now like there's so many more factors when it comes to humans other than just and like how are we measuring violence like you know what determines it you know you could be argued. Maybe it was like. 14:16.82 Cornpop The. 14:23.87 archpodnet Religion that domesticated folks who can look at how after christianization Scandinavian populations didn't go rating as much. Um, like there's a number of different I think case studies we can look at to show like different cultural apparatus apparatus can change your behavior. 14:42.36 StefanMilosavljevich For sure. Well let's let's get on to let's ignore human domestication then and let's get on to some of these other factors like the world'srest time period. The neolithic. 14:43.30 archpodnet Right. 14:49.75 Cornpop Take on. 14:56.75 StefanMilosavljevich So one of the other ideas behind this ah brain reduct for those that don't know haven't listened to my other 4 appearances that's because these guys hate on the neolithic and I love that time period. But but anyway that's true. That's true. Yeah. 15:07.49 archpodnet I'm on your team like like I'm on your side in this. 15:11.72 Connor Oo boo. 15:15.23 Cornpop I'm Messolithic now mostly because every time I ask a tori to paint something. 15:17.24 StefanMilosavljevich Visually, there was that melithic that's not even a proper time period? Yeah yeah. 15:17.90 Connor So that's a cop out. Yeah, that's a cop out come on choose 1 or the other. 15:21.85 Cornpop Ah, our tools are more complex at that point Anyway, anyway. 15:24.80 StefanMilosavljevich Ah, yeah, so 1 idea for our brain size reduction is that um, our bodies also seem to have gotten smaller since probably the neolithic and there are various reasons that might have explained that but probably just you know. Nutritional stress which is the posh academic term for starvation and like no food but people might have been under nutritional stress and our body sizes seem to have gotten smaller. Um, and there are various estimates flying around but at least the one in the papers I read. Is that we have lost five kilograms of body mass in the last ten thousand years which would naturally decrease our brain size too because a smaller body doesn't need as big a brain. Ah how ever the criticism to that idea is that our brains have shrunk. Much more than um would be predicted from a five Kilogram body size reduction that would presumably result in like a 20 to twenty five cubic centimeter reduction in brain size. And the average loss of brain size observed is somewhere between 10050 so it could be a factor though are just small weak pharma bodies caused our brains to get smaller but it perhaps is not the only factor because. They've decreased so much seemingly. 16:56.47 Cornpop Yeah, um, and at that point too, we're I guess going back to what I said earlier but I don't know if this is right or not. But at that point we're living in more complex and complex is a subjective word now. But we're living in bigger numbers together. Um, communicating more and we're also living domestically like in huts and stuff in big villages. So like maybe those 2 things have symbiotic prop I don't know what the word symbiotic property like maybe they work in tandem I don't know but it's that's only been 10000 years 6 in some places and then does that apply to the old world versus the new world and like I know it's interesting. 17:40.15 archpodnet So right? and this is all coming from the article by just silette all correct. Yeah. 17:46.36 StefanMilosavljevich Yeah, John yeah John Hawkes did the criticism of the ah the idea that farming reduced our brain size because he thinks our brains have decreased by more than should be expected. Um, and then this paper that you referenced by. 17:59.19 archpodnet Got you. 18:06.00 StefanMilosavljevich Silver and various others Jeremy de silver argues that our brains reduced in size much more recently than either the self- domesticistication hypothesis or the farming hypothesis would suggest. And he thinks like based on this study of nine hundred and eighty five skulls I think that our brains have decreased in size as recently as like 3 to say 5000 years so real recent evolution. 18:43.86 Cornpop Ah I wonder what that has to do with like. 18:43.99 Connor Yeah, yeah. 18:45.63 archpodnet And then they want to know if of brain evolution ants can also help solve the problem which is a whole other as a whole at the whole that candlew worms and with that we'll be right back all right? Well we'll be right back with segment. 18:52.39 Connor Can of ants. 18:55.19 Cornpop Remind me to talk about babies when we get back all right. 19:02.80 archpodnet We're right back with Stefan Milo here in episode 1 on 5 stay tuned.