Dr. Genevieve von Petzinger

But Neanderthals had a huge range.

They actually came all the way down to the Middle East.

I've seen Neanderthal 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 for your viewers as almost a takeaway today to keep in mind, because it's so interesting that we do this, we're talking 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 Mayans and Romans were 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.

Like it's so funny because we've often treated them as, oh, Neanderthals do this or Neanderthals never, they don't do this or this is what, you know, there's lots of variation.

And one of the coolest things that's come into our field, and I personally think it's one of the most important pieces moving forward is the genetics, right?

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, an ice 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.