Dr. Penny Spikins

Somebody else was encouraging that this would happen.

There's a kind of all sorts of social support afterwards for looking after them until they felt a little bit better.

I mean, to be able to stand back and think this is going to hurt more in order to make it hurt less in the future.

And that's quite of itself shows a lot of intelligence.

And it fits into a much bigger picture of people that were genuinely caring for each other and integrating that capacity to care with intellect in ways that's probably quite unique to us, isn't it?

It's quite unique to humanity to be able to integrate our emotional capacity to care with the intellect to kind of bring it out, bring it forward and be able to help people in a really thoughtful way.

So, you know, it's fascinating, I think.

Well, it's not necessarily an easy life, is it?

I mean, they are at risk of being injured.

And we know there are all sorts of predators around as well.

And there are various Neanderthals that have actually, you know, been quite possibly killed or certainly hurt by predators.

And they're taking on quite risky hunting behaviors.

So life isn't necessarily easy.

Easy in those terms, but we really do get that sense that they've got each other's backs as well.

And that's really interesting to see.

This is not, you know, we kind of imagine both ourselves and our evolutionary past as a time of kind of like.

invulnerability, you know, independence.

And when you have this kind of like, I don't know, particularly today, we have this idea of this paleo fantasy that, you know, back in our past, we were like really strong, really independent, really invulnerable, you know, and really competitive.

And actually when we look at the archaeological record... Eating a high-protein diet.

Yeah, eating a high-protein diet, obviously big and muscly.