Name: Learning All About Neanderthals... with Steven Rinella
Uploaded: 2026-01-03T17:30:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Learning All About Neanderthals... with Steven Rinella' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Learning All About Neanderthals... with Steven Rinella' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-03. Transcript available.

Did humans always eat animals, do you think?
Yeah, since they could.
It'd be hard not to, I think, if you saw.
I'm trying to think if I went back in time.
That would be cool, too.
You go back, some guy.
The first dude to eat meat.
You'd have to go back some far ass.
You'd have to go back.
That's fine.
We can go back that far.
There's an idea that, like, in anthropology, there's a debate about at what
point in time did you have behaviorally and anatomically modern humans.
This is not, we're getting way outside of biblical understanding, but we're
talking about, like, from the non-biblical science world.
Okay.
Okay, so stepping outside of, like, the biblical confines and going into, like,
purely scientific world.
Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75,000 years ago, put him
in, grabbed him at birth, and he could learn to fly an airplane.
He could go to college.
He could do well, blend in.
You'd see him going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it.
Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
That was a hunting, that was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal
flesh.
That was.
Yeah.
So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on
animals.
Oh, yeah.
And then there's this other idea.
And you know how you wind up liking the ideas that confirm your own perspective?
For sure.
There's this other idea that the great, in a scientific understanding, that
when we had, when humans had this kind of renaissance, like,
like, um, we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out.
And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly, uh, to eating huge
amounts of animal flesh.
It's so efficient and so full of energy.
That was our intellectual renaissance.
Like, that, that's when humans became bright and developed, like, religion and
organizational structure and language and all that.
That's when we discovered meat eating.
Right, because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then
also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had, uh, a
new source that was really, uh, replenishing us constantly.
Yeah, we were broken from, we were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low-grade,
low-grade, low-calorie food all the time.
Yeah, right.
So then you're constantly just sitting there snacking, whereas otherwise you
can have a nice meal, then you need to sit back and kick it and think of
something creative.
Like, deer is on this really strict schedule of, like, eating a bunch of low-grade
food, sitting, ruminating, eating, you know.
So, deer's always, so there's this idea, yeah, that's the idea that, like, and,
and, of course, I like it because it reinforces, like, that, that's what I like
to eat, deer meat and stuff.
So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck yeah, bro, that's right.
That's the truth.
Because we just like the stuff that.
Oh, yeah, we want to support our own ideas and causes, our own truths.
Here's a weird deal.
I, I, I wrote this one time, and one, I wrote this in the, in a forward to one
of my cookbooks.
I was writing that, you could have been, like, at a certain time, you could
have been in Spain.
Okay.
Okay.
You could have been in, in, in Spain, you could have been in the Iberian
Peninsula, you could have been in northern Israel, and see a campfire, often
burning in the distance.
And you would have had to have asked yourself, what kind of, what kind of human
is that?
Do you follow me?
Like, you, you mean you would have had to been, like, what race or class or
something like that?
What kind?
What species of human is that?
Oh, like, is that a, somebody who's, like, kind of, like.
Is it Neanderthal dudes?
Somebody's a little more monkey?
Yeah, is it, like, Neanderthal dudes?
Yeah.
Is it, like, like, the same way that we, we're talking about deer.
Somebody eating a, somebody eating a banana, somebody who has a sandals, at
least, on.
Some eating one of me.
Yeah.
Like, the same way you got, like, white-tailed deer and mule deer.
Like, where I live, we have white-tailed deer and mule deer.
They're so similar.
Like, it takes, I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but, you
know, someone from another country would look, and it might take them a few
days for, like, oh, they're different.
Yeah.
They're just going to see and be like, whatever, you know, deer, deer.
But at a time, it'd be that, at a time, it'd be that you'd be like, oh, no,
there's the one kind of human, and there's these other kinds of humans.
Like, fuck, that guy's about 2,000 years back.
Yeah, and they don't mix, or they get together, or they kidnap each other,
whatever the hell they got going on.
They still have bad breath, all that.
Yeah, but when you see that you're, like, Joe having that, like, as high as 57%
more Neanderthals, because it's, like, it's, you know, we, under deer ass.
Was it, like, an act of passion?
That made you evolve?
No, I'm saying that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed.
Was it coercion?
Oh, you think they're separate beings?
Or you think there's one more advance in the...
Neanderthals were a far more successful species than we are.
Like, Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe.
But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors, though?
No, I wouldn't.
You can't really...
I wouldn't really...
Yes, in that it seems like direct human ancestors, like Homo sapien.
Yeah.
Okay?
It seems like, at times, they were able to have viable offspring.
That, at times, Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer, they were in
Europe long, long, hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the
scene.
Got it.
And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from Neanderthals,
this is not my field of study.
I'm just a curious onlooker.
Let's take a look right here.
Ancient human species, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and
others, did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and
upper Paleolithic periods, leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern
populations.
Dude, I didn't even know this.
I thought, have you seen that chart where it's one man like that?
That's a deceptive chart.
He has a briefcase, and then he has Nikes on or whatever?
That's a deceptive chart.
Dude, that's fucking, I can't even believe that.
This is one of the main things I talk about with my kids.
Wow.
Trying to explain.
They're like, what do you mean we came from monkeys?
I'm like, don't look at it that way.
Yeah.
So.
Oh, and I want to start talking about my next hour comedy is about the middle
monkeys.
Like, why don't you ever see that middle monkey?
Like, you know what I'm saying?
Like, you'll see a monkey, and then you'll see a dude, you know, who's a
mechanic, right?
But you never see that middle motherfucker.
You know what I'm saying?
What happened to them all?
The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrenching the other.
Fucking just, they don't know how I'm going to work to register, because he's
just like,
whoop, whoop.
You know, but he can change a tire and a fucking, just with his lips.
You know what I'm saying?
You don't see that chimp, that chimp man, that middle man.
So, I'm just amazed.
There's lots of ways somewhere.
Yeah.
But dude, I never thought that you'd be sitting there, and you'd be like, oh,
shit.
Oh, yeah.
You'd be like, uh-oh.
You and your buddy, like, dog, let's go, let's go, let's go do a lap, right?
Yeah, we better go figure out what kind of dudes it is.
But the fact that they, the fact that they, the fact that they interbred.
Why didn't they tell us this?
Well, I think that, well, you might have missed that part.
Oh, I wouldn't know that.
Let me get to my point, though.
The fact that they interbred leads to this question of, was it a romantic
bonding?
Was it like a romantic, right?
Was it something that was, like, under coercion?
It was coercion.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like, was it like a, like a sort of, like, conqueror's choice kind of shit?
Yeah.
It was like when those guys that worked.
Do you know what I mean?
It wasn't that they, that they would, like, meet and, and, and over, like, like
the Capulets
and, you know, from, like, uh, Romeo and Juliet's family.
No, Stephen, it was not like that.
Did they come together despite family condemnations and produce offspring?
No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those
hospitals take advantage
of them.
That's what I think it was.
I do wonder.
That'd be another good time machine burner up right there.
You just go back, and it's a, but here's the tough thing.
If a person who was more mentally advanced, hypothetically a homo sapien, if
they tried
to, if they tried to, like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little
bit of
love, you know?
Because they're easy to trick.
Right.
Yeah.
But they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to, I bet.
You got to trick them.
But even if you trick them.
With shells and stuff.
Right.
Even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something, get their
attention, I bet
you can't, you're going to have to, how quick can you make love and still enjoy
it and
get away from them?
I, I wouldn't, that's not a risk I'm taking.
No, it's time machine questions.
I'm not, that's not a risk.
I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70,000 years.
I'm going to try to fuck them.
I'm out.
You know what I want to put out a call to, you don't mind me doing a call for a
guest
that I'm trying, I've been trying to find on your show, but I want to find them.
So it's like, I'm like using your, I'm using like your audience to find someone
that I might
not find on my own.
What I've been trying to do for years is I've been trying to find a really,
really good.
A really good Neanderthal, you can say Neanderthal or tall.
You sound a little bit smarter.
I understand.
My understanding is you sound a little better to say Neanderthal.
It's a valley in Germany.
It is?
Yeah.
It's a valley in Germany?
Yeah.
And you sound a little more, like I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying
Neanderthal
because they're like, this dude knows his shit.
I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist.
Hard R in that Neanderthal too.
Yeah.
A Neanderthal researcher.
Okay.
To come on the show and talk about what they know, but it can't be just like a
writer who
spent a month researching.
It's because our audience doesn't like those kinds, right?
It's got to be someone that like, it's got to be someone that lives and breathes.
It can't be like an interloper.
Yeah.
Like I need like a legit, a verbose animated Neanderthal researcher.
I don't want some halfway house.
I want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years
with information
about motherfuckers who would just like, who could digest a stone if they need
to.
Yeah.
Like that, like a really good Neanderthal person to come on the show and you
just reach out
to us and I want to interview you.
Okay.
There you go guys for Steve.
They would like that.
And here's what I would have a lot of Neanderthal researchers on that listen to
the show.
I mean, I bet we have some consumers who would rank high on a Neanderthal scale
or whatever,
but I'll say this.
I want somebody who has a high amount on their 23andMe, an extreme.
I don't want, they don't need to have that.
I know what you want.
That's what I want.
I want somebody who's 80%, 80% Neanderthal.
Yeah.
Find the highest guy.
And when I get them, I'm just going to send them over to you too, Steve,
because I think
you would do well and because you might be able to notice some patterns that
they have
or behaviors that they have.
Yeah.
Who, if whatever I had low, who's the highest?
Who's the highest?
Somebody has to have the highest Neanderthal amount.
I know that there is a, I was reading a book.
I read a lot of anthropology books.
I can't remember if it was the seven daughters of Eve.
I was reading a book about human history and in it, they were pointing to some
controversy
around this question.
Okay.
It's not always, people don't always look upon this.
This is not something that everybody likes to talk about.
Really?
Where you see, like as much as I'd be whatever, proud of it or whatever.
There are places, there are places in the world where these geneticists see-
More N-tals?
Yeah.
More Neanderthal in certain areas.
And it's a sensitive subject.
It winds up being a sensitive subject.
So you might wind up having not only a fascinating show, but you might have a
show that courts a
certain level of controversy.
I like that.
Yeah.
But what I've found, because I am interested in this subject, I've found that
there's a
sort of trend in academics to, that we're, there's a trend in academics of
being that
we're like rebranding Neanderthals.
So it winds up being like, oh, they had art.
Oh, they like wore jewelry.
Oh, they were free divers.
Right.
They, do you know what I mean?
Like every, like-
Why do you think we're doing that?
Do you think that-
I don't know why.
It's like, because there's this, there used to be this idea that there were
these like
thuggish brutes.
Right.
You know, but there's like, when you look, when you, if you kind of follow Neanderthal
news, like I do, there's a theme.
A fucking Twitter feed.
Yeah, there's like a theme of, of this kind of like, this delight, like this
kind of delighted
realization about how come, like how complex their culture was, how complex
their society
was.
It'd be like, like, you don't find like, man, it turns out they were dumber
than we thought.
Right.
That's not like a news story.
It would be like, oh, they appreciated the finer things in life.
Well, it's like the branding.
It's like, even when it goes back to like, you were talking about the bald
eagle, it's
like just that PR, that spin.
I wonder if they have a very, very good PR agency.
Wow.
Neanderthals right now, or I have a good one on retainer and they're getting a
lot of good
ink about that.
They liked art and movies, you know, and it's like, they're just getting cooler.
They're getting cooler.
Oh yeah.
These, they love stand by me.
You're like, that's insane, dude.
I'm telling you, dude, start paying attention to Neanderthal news and you'll
see what I'm talking
about.
When I get my guest on, he'll tell you all about it.
Oh, I love that.
I'll send you the episode.
I love that.
You're going to have that, man.
Dude, listening to, dude, what would be better?
Listening to, of course I could talk about humans all day long, bro.
But listening to two Neanderthals talk about themselves, they wouldn't know a
lot, but they
would try pretty hard.
You know, that could be us, dude.
That's awesome.
That's a good point.
Thank you.

Learning All About Neanderthals... with Steven Rinella

Did humans always eat animals, do you think?
Yeah, since they could.
It'd be hard not to, I think, if you saw.
I'm trying to think if I went back in time.
That would be cool, too.
You go back, some guy.
The first dude to eat meat.
You'd have to go back some far ass.
You'd have to go back.
That's fine.
We can go back that far.
There's an idea that, like, in anthropology, there's a debate about at what
point in time did you have behaviorally and anatomically modern humans.
This is not, we're getting way outside of biblical understanding, but we're
talking about, like, from the non-biblical science world.
Okay.
Okay, so stepping outside of, like, the biblical confines and going into, like,
purely scientific world.
Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75,000 years ago, put him
in, grabbed him at birth, and he could learn to fly an airplane.
He could go to college.
He could do well, blend in.
You'd see him going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it.
Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
That was a hunting, that was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal
flesh.
That was.
Yeah.
So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on
animals.
Oh, yeah.
And then there's this other idea.
And you know how you wind up liking the ideas that confirm your own perspective?
For sure.
There's this other idea that the great, in a scientific understanding, that
when we had, when humans had this kind of renaissance, like,
like, um, we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out.
And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly, uh, to eating huge
amounts of animal flesh.
It's so efficient and so full of energy.
That was our intellectual renaissance.
Like, that, that's when humans became bright and developed, like, religion and
organizational structure and language and all that.
That's when we discovered meat eating.
Right, because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then
also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had, uh, a
new source that was really, uh, replenishing us constantly.
Yeah, we were broken from, we were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low-grade,
low-grade, low-calorie food all the time.
Yeah, right.
So then you're constantly just sitting there snacking, whereas otherwise you
can have a nice meal, then you need to sit back and kick it and think of
something creative.
Like, deer is on this really strict schedule of, like, eating a bunch of low-grade
food, sitting, ruminating, eating, you know.
So, deer's always, so there's this idea, yeah, that's the idea that, like, and,
and, of course, I like it because it reinforces, like, that, that's what I like
to eat, deer meat and stuff.
So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck yeah, bro, that's right.
That's the truth.
Because we just like the stuff that.
Oh, yeah, we want to support our own ideas and causes, our own truths.
Here's a weird deal.
I, I, I wrote this one time, and one, I wrote this in the, in a forward to one
of my cookbooks.
I was writing that, you could have been, like, at a certain time, you could
have been in Spain.
Okay.
Okay.
You could have been in, in, in Spain, you could have been in the Iberian
Peninsula, you could have been in northern Israel, and see a campfire, often
burning in the distance.
And you would have had to have asked yourself, what kind of, what kind of human
is that?
Do you follow me?
Like, you, you mean you would have had to been, like, what race or class or
something like that?
What kind?
What species of human is that?
Oh, like, is that a, somebody who's, like, kind of, like.
Is it Neanderthal dudes?
Somebody's a little more monkey?
Yeah, is it, like, Neanderthal dudes?
Yeah.
Is it, like, like, the same way that we, we're talking about deer.
Somebody eating a, somebody eating a banana, somebody who has a sandals, at
least, on.
Some eating one of me.
Yeah.
Like, the same way you got, like, white-tailed deer and mule deer.
Like, where I live, we have white-tailed deer and mule deer.
They're so similar.
Like, it takes, I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but, you
know, someone from another country would look, and it might take them a few
days for, like, oh, they're different.
Yeah.
They're just going to see and be like, whatever, you know, deer, deer.
But at a time, it'd be that, at a time, it'd be that you'd be like, oh, no,
there's the one kind of human, and there's these other kinds of humans.
Like, fuck, that guy's about 2,000 years back.
Yeah, and they don't mix, or they get together, or they kidnap each other,
whatever the hell they got going on.
They still have bad breath, all that.
Yeah, but when you see that you're, like, Joe having that, like, as high as 57%
more Neanderthals, because it's, like, it's, you know, we, under deer ass.
Was it, like, an act of passion?
That made you evolve?
No, I'm saying that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed.
Was it coercion?
Oh, you think they're separate beings?
Or you think there's one more advance in the...
Neanderthals were a far more successful species than we are.
Like, Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe.
But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors, though?
No, I wouldn't.
You can't really...
I wouldn't really...
Yes, in that it seems like direct human ancestors, like Homo sapien.
Yeah.
Okay?
It seems like, at times, they were able to have viable offspring.
That, at times, Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer, they were in
Europe long, long, hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the
scene.
Got it.
And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from Neanderthals,
this is not my field of study.
I'm just a curious onlooker.
Let's take a look right here.
Ancient human species, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and
others, did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and
upper Paleolithic periods, leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern
populations.
Dude, I didn't even know this.
I thought, have you seen that chart where it's one man like that?
That's a deceptive chart.
He has a briefcase, and then he has Nikes on or whatever?
That's a deceptive chart.
Dude, that's fucking, I can't even believe that.
This is one of the main things I talk about with my kids.
Wow.
Trying to explain.
They're like, what do you mean we came from monkeys?
I'm like, don't look at it that way.
Yeah.
So.
Oh, and I want to start talking about my next hour comedy is about the middle
monkeys.
Like, why don't you ever see that middle monkey?
Like, you know what I'm saying?
Like, you'll see a monkey, and then you'll see a dude, you know, who's a
mechanic, right?
But you never see that middle motherfucker.
You know what I'm saying?
What happened to them all?
The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrenching the other.
Fucking just, they don't know how I'm going to work to register, because he's
just like,
whoop, whoop.
You know, but he can change a tire and a fucking, just with his lips.
You know what I'm saying?
You don't see that chimp, that chimp man, that middle man.
So, I'm just amazed.
There's lots of ways somewhere.
Yeah.
But dude, I never thought that you'd be sitting there, and you'd be like, oh,
shit.
Oh, yeah.
You'd be like, uh-oh.
You and your buddy, like, dog, let's go, let's go, let's go do a lap, right?
Yeah, we better go figure out what kind of dudes it is.
But the fact that they, the fact that they, the fact that they interbred.
Why didn't they tell us this?
Well, I think that, well, you might have missed that part.
Oh, I wouldn't know that.
Let me get to my point, though.
The fact that they interbred leads to this question of, was it a romantic
bonding?
Was it like a romantic, right?
Was it something that was, like, under coercion?
It was coercion.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like, was it like a, like a sort of, like, conqueror's choice kind of shit?
Yeah.
It was like when those guys that worked.
Do you know what I mean?
It wasn't that they, that they would, like, meet and, and, and over, like, like
the Capulets
and, you know, from, like, uh, Romeo and Juliet's family.
No, Stephen, it was not like that.
Did they come together despite family condemnations and produce offspring?
No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those
hospitals take advantage
of them.
That's what I think it was.
I do wonder.
That'd be another good time machine burner up right there.
You just go back, and it's a, but here's the tough thing.
If a person who was more mentally advanced, hypothetically a homo sapien, if
they tried
to, if they tried to, like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little
bit of
love, you know?
Because they're easy to trick.
Right.
Yeah.
But they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to, I bet.
You got to trick them.
But even if you trick them.
With shells and stuff.
Right.
Even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something, get their
attention, I bet
you can't, you're going to have to, how quick can you make love and still enjoy
it and
get away from them?
I, I wouldn't, that's not a risk I'm taking.
No, it's time machine questions.
I'm not, that's not a risk.
I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70,000 years.
I'm going to try to fuck them.
I'm out.
You know what I want to put out a call to, you don't mind me doing a call for a
guest
that I'm trying, I've been trying to find on your show, but I want to find them.
So it's like, I'm like using your, I'm using like your audience to find someone
that I might
not find on my own.
What I've been trying to do for years is I've been trying to find a really,
really good.
A really good Neanderthal, you can say Neanderthal or tall.
You sound a little bit smarter.
I understand.
My understanding is you sound a little better to say Neanderthal.
It's a valley in Germany.
It is?
Yeah.
It's a valley in Germany?
Yeah.
And you sound a little more, like I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying
Neanderthal
because they're like, this dude knows his shit.
I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist.
Hard R in that Neanderthal too.
Yeah.
A Neanderthal researcher.
Okay.
To come on the show and talk about what they know, but it can't be just like a
writer who
spent a month researching.
It's because our audience doesn't like those kinds, right?
It's got to be someone that like, it's got to be someone that lives and breathes.
It can't be like an interloper.
Yeah.
Like I need like a legit, a verbose animated Neanderthal researcher.
I don't want some halfway house.
I want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years
with information
about motherfuckers who would just like, who could digest a stone if they need
to.
Yeah.
Like that, like a really good Neanderthal person to come on the show and you
just reach out
to us and I want to interview you.
Okay.
There you go guys for Steve.
They would like that.
And here's what I would have a lot of Neanderthal researchers on that listen to
the show.
I mean, I bet we have some consumers who would rank high on a Neanderthal scale
or whatever,
but I'll say this.
I want somebody who has a high amount on their 23andMe, an extreme.
I don't want, they don't need to have that.
I know what you want.
That's what I want.
I want somebody who's 80%, 80% Neanderthal.
Yeah.
Find the highest guy.
And when I get them, I'm just going to send them over to you too, Steve,
because I think
you would do well and because you might be able to notice some patterns that
they have
or behaviors that they have.
Yeah.
Who, if whatever I had low, who's the highest?
Who's the highest?
Somebody has to have the highest Neanderthal amount.
I know that there is a, I was reading a book.
I read a lot of anthropology books.
I can't remember if it was the seven daughters of Eve.
I was reading a book about human history and in it, they were pointing to some