Ross is away today but undergrad student Zach Hoorman is filling in to help us review the first episode of It’s About Time (1966), a sitcom from the creator of Gilligan’s Island about two astronauts who accidentally “break the time barrier” and find themselves stranded one million years in the past. There’s not much real palaeoanthropology to talk about in this episode, so instead Josh does a poor job of explaining Einstein’s theory of special relativity.

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In this episode:

Watch It’s About Time on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QguKIuhEiI

Neanderthal eyes and brains: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21759233

Just-so stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Hair in the Palaeolithic: https://www.academia.edu/81780985/Bad_Hair_Days_in_the_Paleolithic_Modern_Re_Constructions_of_the_Cave_Man?f_ri=2403396

Einstein’s theory of special relativity: https://www.space.com/36273-theory-special-relativity.html

The speed of light on a train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVKFBaaL4uM

1960s car crash songs: https://riffmagazine.com/mp3/rewind-20220122/

Firebringer (2016) is a musical play about the discovery of fire by a tribe of polyamourous, matriarchal ancient humans. They also invent stone tools, art, hunting—they pretty much hit all the classic caveman tropes, and even subvert some of them. The only problem is... it’s a musical.

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In this episode:

Watch Firebringer (2016) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVuNlu0LCk

The earliest controlled use of fire: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743299

The oldest stone tools: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177

Neanderthals hafted tools with birch tar: https://www.science.org/content/article/50000-year-old-tar-smeared-tool-shows-neanderthal-smarts

The oldest cave paintings: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap7778

Divje Babe Neanderthal “flute”: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/holes-in-a-bone-flute-or-fluke

Palaeolithic Lithophones: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.1985.tb00229.x

Homo naledi: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-naledi-your-most-recently-discovered-human-relative.html

Early art at Blombos Cave: https://theconversation.com/south-africas-blombos-cave-is-home-to-the-earliest-drawing-by-a-human-103017

Goog Enough on Twitter: https://x.com/goog_enough

Sima de los Huesos: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-sima-hominins-an-ancient-human-cold-case

The Mauer mandible: https://efossils.org/page/boneviewer/homo%20heidelbergensis/Mauer%201

Bae et al. (2023) Moving away from “the Muddle in the Middle” toward solving the Chibanian puzzle: https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22011

Roksandic et al. (2021) Resolving the “muddle in the middle”: The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21929

The Middle Pleistocene was renamed to “Chibanian”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chibanian-age-earths-newly-named-geological-period-180974224/

Evolution (2001) is a star-studded soft-disclosure propaganda film masquerading as a shampoo commercial intended to prepare us for extraterrestrial butt stuff. I think? I mean it doesn’t seem to know what evolution is. In this episode we discuss organic chemistry, asexual reproduction, and Lamarckism, and also firetrucks for some reason.

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In this episode:

Evolution (2001) production information: https://www.cinema.com/articles/458/evolution-production-information.phtml

Tillers and Quillers (i.e. fire trucks): https://www.fireapparatusmagazine.com/features/cantankerous-wisdom-tillers-quillers/

Head and Shoulders “Intensive treatment”: https://reference.medscape.com/drug/selsun-blue-tersifoam-selenium-sulfide-topical-343485

Lamarckism: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/early-concepts-of-evolution-jean-baptiste-lamarck/

Asexual reproduction in plants: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Biology_(Kimball)/16%3A_The_Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Plants/16.03%3A_Reproduction_in_Plants/16.3E%3A_Asexual_Reproduction_in_Plants

Stephen J. Gould (1989) Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History: https://archive.org/details/wonderfullifebur0000goul_r6i5/page/n7/mode/2up

Multiple sexes in fungi: https://www.the-scientist.com/this-fungus-has-more-than-17-000-sexes-69930

Starfish Regeneration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_regeneration

Hypothetical types of biochemistry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

Natural Gas Odorizers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odorizer

Evolution wouldn’t follow the same path twice: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190709-would-humans-evolve-again-if-we-rewound-time