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okay hi again dan also with making history and today i'm going to do another reaction video this time to something that came up in my own youtube feed and this is a clip of neil degrasse
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tyson appearing on the joe rogan podcast actually a couple years ago in the summer of 2018 and the clip is called columbus
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discovering america was a great achievement and so i am going to play it and then i'm going to stop it from time to time like i did with the other video and comment on it so
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let's begin something else okay okay i think him coming to america was the most significant thing to ever happen in our species
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whoa so this is a bold statement tyson says that he thinks that columbus coming to america was quote the most significant thing to ever happen in our
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species this is a really bold statement and at this moment in the video i'm actually impressed i'm overlooking little potential quibbles like he didn't really come to america at first he came to the
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caribbean and then he landed later on south america but i'm impressed not an internet porn no that's just porn in another medium right
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wow yeah so yeah internet porn is just a matter of degree not a matter of yes does it exist or does it not right okay i think it was the most significant event to happen in our species kind of
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amazing when you stop and think about the fact that at that point in time other than the native americans who lived here who are living a nomadic tribal existence very few people
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that had the wheel that had firearms that had all these things that had already been achieved in the rest of the world had made their way to this point so now watch okay okay wait a minute let's just stop there for a second this is a little bit of a
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problem when you think about it right mayan astronomy incan and even pre-incan stonework which we still don't really understand how they managed it and then
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the chinampas of tenochtitlan the city in the center of this lake in mexico which were floating gardens that they built around their city which were five times more productive than the best
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results that agriculture could achieve in europe or asia or africa also the aztec city was one of the largest in the world it had more than 200 000 people living there when cortes
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arrived there so they weren't all nomads running around without any technology here's how it worked right so you're gonna hear so i i presume that you have
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some skepticism of this claim as most people would especially the columbus haters who are out there all right i don't really have any so tyson didn't point out any of those
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issues instead he launched into his bit he says that he presumes joe is skeptical of his claim like so many of the columbus haters out there joe is about to say that he doesn't really have an opinion on columbus and then tyson
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will push on episode to be honest with you okay so let me let me describe to you why i think this is true okay and then you can tell me whether you agree or not all right
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uh we are hunter gatherers we haven't settled down yet early humans and we're basically wandering we're following the herds all
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right okay and then the ice age hits well what is an ice age oh wait a minute yeah and ice age hits one of many as a matter of fact in the
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last million years there have been quite a few of them and the ancestors of humans had lived through many even us even homo sapiens itself had been around
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for the last one and had survived the previous ice age only just barely but we did sage means it is so cold that when the moisture evaporates from
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the oceans goes to the clouds the clouds go over the land it doesn't rain it snows and the snow falls and then it stays
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so the water that had lifted up from the ocean does not return to the ocean it accumulates on the land and this accumulation when it's significant and sustained
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we call glaciers glaciers is not itself a snowfall it is compressed snow that's basically change state into this
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this ice river that flows very slowly back to the ocean but the oceans are getting drained faster than they're getting replenished so during the ice age the ocean levels
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dropped okay so tyson explains this ice age to joe and his viewers or listeners like they are three years old
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and this is a typical tyson move and one of the reasons that i find him very tedious but after a minute or so he does get to the valuable part that the oceans are being drained faster than they can be
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replenished see levels do fall how much do they fall neal that might be something people would be interested in knowing answer about 360 feet at the glacial maximum
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so sea levels were about 360 feet lower than they are today exposing the bering strait land bridge between asia and what is now alaska
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basically north america the our ancestors who come out of africa go into europe some stay others kept wandering some just a sec the bering strait land bridge
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here's a picture of the region that scientists now call beringia it wasn't a bridge the idea of a bridge implies something that is narrow something that's built by
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people something that's relatively temporary and especially something that is going someplace you cross a bridge to get to someplace else this wasn't narrow it wasn't going anyplace and it certainly wasn't
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temporary it was as wide as alaska and it probably lasted over ten thousand years and ten thousand years is twice as long as all of recorded history so the people who
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live there as tyson does go on to say thought of this as just more land stayed low above the mediterranean others went high they populate asia they
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keep walking because there's a land bridge there they don't even know it's a bridge it's just more land so they walk and they enter north america and from there that's kind of only way you can go south at that point the
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weather gets a little better yes the people go south that's correct when they can for several thousand years as it turns out they can't go south they're blocked by the glaciers but by
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at least 15 000 years ago they are able to get into the americas and we know this because they left remains at a place in southern chile called monteverde which
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have been dated these remains to about 14 800 years ago there's actually a lower layer that seems to date to maybe as far back as 18 000 or 18 500 years ago but
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that one is still controversial so we're not making any claims about that yet the ice age ends the glaciers melt back into the oceans the oceans level ocean levels rise
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closing the land bridge stranding a branch of the human species tyson is rightish about the end of the
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ice age beginning about 12 000 years ago sea levels do start to rise and by about 11 000 years ago the beringians who are left in burundia are cut off from asia
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and then another migration into the americas apparently begins about this time when the glaciers on top of alaska and canada begin to separate and a land
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route between them begins to form and so this migration begins about 11 000 years ago which probably produces the clovis culture that created the clovis
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stone tools that were once believed to be the earliest evidence of humans on the north and south american continents so yes a branch of the human species is in the americas without the ability to
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contact their cousins back in europe asia or africa for about 10 000 years of course they don't think of themselves as stranded and in fact when native americans develop creation stories for
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themselves of course those creation stories take place here in north and south america for ten thousand years those humans who made it across that land bridge and spread out into north
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america central america south america have only a few families as their parents genetic as their genetic origin this genetic
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origin stuff is fairly accurate geneticists do believe that the parent group of what they call the paleo indians was probably only several hundred to a
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couple thousand individuals that could have been a few large clans it's not a couple of families this two separate branches of the human species
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is one way to put it i guess but it's a very dramatic and it's not a very revealing way i don't think okay oh it's like that some research says it's like eight family lineages populated the entire north and south
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american continents then the land bridge breaks now you have europe asia africa and north and south america and they know nothing of one another
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two separate branches of the human species the vikings notwithstanding maybe they found came over they didn't i'm that even if they did their influence was near zero relative to the europeans so
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we're talking about you okay the viking thing is for real neil you should have read up on it a little when you were preparing this bit but yes their influence was near zero relative
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to the later european conquest the reason for that is that they came to what's now newfoundland northern newfoundland in canada where it's cold and where they weren't as able to spread
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their germs in the way that the later conquistadors and spanish and portuguese did owen's here this is a branch had this continued this is how you speciate
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this is why the species on australia that's why you have mammals there that have pouches all right no other mammals do that they split off and they evolve their own way okay
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so no no no no not okay had this continued this is how you speciate good grief neil i know you're an astrophysicist and you're used to dealing with big time frames so this is kind of unforgivable
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it takes a million years to speciate google it ten thousand years is one tenth of one percent of the time required to form a new species also
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there are marsupials in north and south america today too scientists say they actually evolved in north america 90 million years ago and then migrated to australia and new zealand in the late
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cretaceous period they didn't evolve in australia when it was isolated neil in fact they actually walked there while it was connected to antarctica a thousand years is not enough
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to grow three heads or you know 12 fingers but our species is separate now columbus crosses the atlantic makes contact with humans
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this is the first time that has happened in 10 000 years yeah 10 000 years is not enough to grow three heads it also isn't enough for the people in the americas to be
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significantly different from the other humans back in the old world the thing that did happen as tyson begins to kind of ham handedly describe and then runs away from is that
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the people left behind in europe and asia and africa became resistant to diseases that spread to the human population from domesticated animals that they domesticated after
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these two populations split that did not exist in the americas pigs cattle and chickens primarily we have rejoined
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two branches of the human species we are now one common genetic group we always were and that genetic cross breeding now continues to this day
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we we fly to any corner of the world and mate okay and the mating already began immediately yes there were diseases that columbus brought to north america much written about that less written is that heap
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much written about that that's all you're going to say about the fact that 90 to 95 percent of all of the people living in north and south america were killed by these eurasian diseases within a
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couple of generations but syphilis back to europe first cases of syphilis of 1492. whoa whoa incorrect
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first documented cases of venereal syphilis in europe are 1495. this was something that alfred crosby the author of the book the columbian exchange actually had a lot to say about
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the jury is still out there are many different types of this disease family that includes yaws and venereal syphilis and so there's still some controversy and doubt about where
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it all originated and how it developed what there isn't doubt about however is that eurasian diseases were brought by europeans to the americas and killed between 90
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and 95 percent of the entire north american and south american population which was probably a population of 65 to 75 million people at least
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so i'm not exactly sure why neil isn't interested in talking about that and then syphilis from the native americans what did they have no problem with it well i don't know the details of how
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the physiology of the natives dealt with that or whether it mutated uh you know i don't and there may be people who know that i'm not among them that's fast but just look at you look at the graph of siftwood okay wait a minute
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there might be people who know that but i'm not among them well then why bother bringing it up reported syphilis cases in europe it all began in 1492 when he came back
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so what i'm saying is this was a hugely significant event the rejoining of the branches of the human species well yeah no i would imagine that that makes sense that is the most important
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event then and by the way native americans you know this famous infamous problem with metabolizing alcohol okay with native americans you know who else has their problems the chinese really yes
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really yes yes so it's an asian issue well so who stayed in it so you look at who populated north and south america after the you know before the land
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bridge is whoever was right at the edge of asia right then the land bridges so so asians and and north american and uh the natives of north and south america
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have more in common with each other because of this than most other pairs of groups you might grab around the world but my point is obviously we there's a lot to blame columbus for but he just happened to be
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the guy who did it first europe was coming to the new world no matter what everybody was trying to find a faster trade route to the indies and so if what if it wasn't columbus it would have been arnold schmednick whatever it doesn't
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matter somebody did that and the rest is as they say history wow so personally i think the most significant thing to happen in our species otherwise we'd still be two-stranded
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branches of humans we wouldn't it would be fascinating though like australia's stranded to see what would happen if it this has gone on for hundreds of thousands of years we have hundred thousand that would have been a different story right yeah
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and your immunities would be different you're oh yeah yeah well that people's immunities were different that is exactly the point but that is not the same as being two separate branches of
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humanity that are on their way to being different species that's just absurd so i hope you can see why i was a little bit frustrated with this now you may be asking why am i taking
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the trouble to complain about this am i just being mean or am i fishing for views i don't think so my beef with neil degrasse tyson is that he is so convinced that he is the
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smartest guy in the room that he's begun to allow himself to just talk about whatever happens to be on his mind even when he doesn't really
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know the issue or understand the details and of course because he's doing this on joe rogan's show he's reaching joe's six million subscribers this video has been watched three and three quarter million times on youtube
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there are over 12 000 comments the latest comment was only 26 minutes before i started recording this so i think this is still a relevant issue people are still getting this bad
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information on a regular basis and this is something that i teach to my undergraduates regularly every year it's part of several courses that i teach
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so i think that i have a platform from which to speak and obviously i also care about these issues so i felt like i had to kind of intervene so i hope people found that a little bit
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interesting thank you very much for watching and i will see you again next time [Music]
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