This episode was so interesting in general and for me personally. I've had an intimate relationship with another person (non sexual) and the physical contact and expressions of love have been confusing since I'm in a longterm relationship and me and partner have been trying to figure out what all this means. Then ya'll explained the naturalness of connections like the one I found myself in and now I feel like I'm not alone on this journey. I'm also looking for more physical connections in this crazy world since hearing this. Yesterday I high-fived a random guy on the side of the road while riding my bike. Felt like a nice connection of randomness with another human being. Thanks Chris, Anya, and Nadia!
I agree that movement is a way to communicate differently. I think of it as the first language. It is also universal and understood between most species (we read body language before we read words, growls, or barks), and while we may not understand what a specific word or voice tone means, we understand someone's (including animal) intentions by the way they stand or move.
Seeing it this way, one can also think of movement as a subconscious language that communicates our intentions without our consent. Maybe it is a way for nature to ensure that everyone knows what everyone else means, to keep things fair and square. Maybe a way to say what we really mean without the ego coming into play.
I think movement exploration and improv are a great way to reach deeper into the meaning and intentionality of movement. Something beyond the superficiality of muscles and weight. Love it. 🖖🏾
This is great! I am wondering if this can be something to explore as a way out of the epidemic of sexual assault. Teaching people to gain practical tools to help them play but also not cross the boundaries. Kudos to you. I get a lot of dance students in my graduate courses and am going to put the question to them.
It's a pleasure to hear Anya's voice again in my headphones ! I'm actually fascinated by the "Shakti energy" that exists in every living creature. Alas, for the humans, it's also buried under tons of shame, guilt, and a LOT of "hurry-up-and-be-productive" energy in this day and age. We're just been split in half again and again by the so-called modern society. So... Can we just try some totality now and then ? Moving the body just for the sake of moving it, in a non-productive or controlled way, is so powerful. The act of grounding is not easy to define, and it's even more difficult to attain but it's SO rewarding and healing. Thank you for this episode, greetings from France.
Apologies for my forthcoming tangential comment, but if I can't travel down a rabbit hole on a Tangentially Speaking episode then the world is truly lost. It's ironic that in the intro you commented on spandrels and chins as I was literally pondering chins and brow ridges that morning. I was listening to a podcast that had paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer as a guest. He was explicitly using chins as a way to distinguish H. sapiens skeletons from Neanderthal skeletons.
It's interesting that this aspect of our skeleton that Gould argues is not a "thing" is a feature specifically used to distinguish us from basically every other mammal. I'm not against the idea that it wasn't specifically selected for or that it was a discrete phenotype.
As I was listening to Stringer continuously use the chin as a designator of our species I started thinking about the Amud 1 remains in Israel. This guy is unique because he was a Neanderthal with a smaller than normal brow ridge and, surprisingly, he had a weak chin (he also happens to be the tallest and biggest brained Neanderthal ever discovered). I started wondering if these two traits are connected during fetal development. We lost the brow ridges but gained the chin while Neanderthals retained the brow ridges and remained chinless. Amud 1 might be an intermediate example. This was just random speculation on my part but I thought it was funny you brought it up two hours after I'd been contemplating chins and brow ridges.
I do agree with Gould 100% that natural selection is assumed way too much. And if it's not natural selection then sexual selection is the next overused assumption. Researching Neanderthals has given me a new respect for genetic drift.
Their groups were small, fragmented, and often experienced local extinction. The population of their species was small overall. Because of this they experienced several detrimental mutations that not only became dominant but became the only variant for that trait.
Most Neanderthals after 90,000 years ago inherited the 827G 12s rRNA mutation. This mutation greatly increased the chances of developing deafness to varying degrees. Multiple studies have yet to detect a signal for selection for this mutation. It seems that this mutation became fixed by random chance and irregardless of its negative impact. In modern humans a person with this mutation can hear just fine but if they happen to come in contact with a compound known as aminoglycosides, say through antibiotics, they can lose hearing in as fast as 30 days. Imagine that a Neanderthal, with fine hearing, happens to make mushroom soup that contains mushrooms with aminoglycosides (as the authors of the study proposed was a possibility, minus the soup part). How disorientating would this be to a Neanderthal 40,000 years ago? That's just bad non-natural selective luck.
Really interesting. To dig further into the chin rabbit hole, my understanding is that at least in humans, jaw bones grow in response to stress on the bone in childhood. So early humans who chewed a lot more than we do grew longer jawbones as a result. I'm sure you're familiar with Weston Price's research showing that the crowding of teeth, impacting wisdom teeth, apnea, etc. are all traceable to shorter jawbones that result from softer foods. In light of that, hard to understand why the Nearderthals didn't have more prominent chins, as they seemed to subsist on very chewy foods.
I think it definitely holds true for jawbones themselves. My sister thought I was joking when I told her to get my 10 month old niece a nice chunk of leather to chew on. I suppose if the chin is an artifact of childhood diet, that still wouldn't necessarily exclude it from being a spandrel as it is simply a result of diet and isn't being selected for directly.
The more archaic species, such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, who had thicker and more robust bones also never developed chins. It makes me wonder when the first chin appeared in the fossil record and if that point in time tells us anything about why or how it appeared.
I'd love to join the retreat, however finances don't allow this year since I'm based in Cairns, Australia. Maybe if you do one in South East Asia one day...
Wow super interesting , my first time hearing about authentic movement or contact improv … learn something knew everyday
This episode was so interesting in general and for me personally. I've had an intimate relationship with another person (non sexual) and the physical contact and expressions of love have been confusing since I'm in a longterm relationship and me and partner have been trying to figure out what all this means. Then ya'll explained the naturalness of connections like the one I found myself in and now I feel like I'm not alone on this journey. I'm also looking for more physical connections in this crazy world since hearing this. Yesterday I high-fived a random guy on the side of the road while riding my bike. Felt like a nice connection of randomness with another human being. Thanks Chris, Anya, and Nadia!
We need Anya back on the airwaves again!
Noted!
I agree that movement is a way to communicate differently. I think of it as the first language. It is also universal and understood between most species (we read body language before we read words, growls, or barks), and while we may not understand what a specific word or voice tone means, we understand someone's (including animal) intentions by the way they stand or move.
Seeing it this way, one can also think of movement as a subconscious language that communicates our intentions without our consent. Maybe it is a way for nature to ensure that everyone knows what everyone else means, to keep things fair and square. Maybe a way to say what we really mean without the ego coming into play.
I think movement exploration and improv are a great way to reach deeper into the meaning and intentionality of movement. Something beyond the superficiality of muscles and weight. Love it. 🖖🏾
This is great! I am wondering if this can be something to explore as a way out of the epidemic of sexual assault. Teaching people to gain practical tools to help them play but also not cross the boundaries. Kudos to you. I get a lot of dance students in my graduate courses and am going to put the question to them.
It's a pleasure to hear Anya's voice again in my headphones ! I'm actually fascinated by the "Shakti energy" that exists in every living creature. Alas, for the humans, it's also buried under tons of shame, guilt, and a LOT of "hurry-up-and-be-productive" energy in this day and age. We're just been split in half again and again by the so-called modern society. So... Can we just try some totality now and then ? Moving the body just for the sake of moving it, in a non-productive or controlled way, is so powerful. The act of grounding is not easy to define, and it's even more difficult to attain but it's SO rewarding and healing. Thank you for this episode, greetings from France.
Apologies for my forthcoming tangential comment, but if I can't travel down a rabbit hole on a Tangentially Speaking episode then the world is truly lost. It's ironic that in the intro you commented on spandrels and chins as I was literally pondering chins and brow ridges that morning. I was listening to a podcast that had paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer as a guest. He was explicitly using chins as a way to distinguish H. sapiens skeletons from Neanderthal skeletons.
It's interesting that this aspect of our skeleton that Gould argues is not a "thing" is a feature specifically used to distinguish us from basically every other mammal. I'm not against the idea that it wasn't specifically selected for or that it was a discrete phenotype.
As I was listening to Stringer continuously use the chin as a designator of our species I started thinking about the Amud 1 remains in Israel. This guy is unique because he was a Neanderthal with a smaller than normal brow ridge and, surprisingly, he had a weak chin (he also happens to be the tallest and biggest brained Neanderthal ever discovered). I started wondering if these two traits are connected during fetal development. We lost the brow ridges but gained the chin while Neanderthals retained the brow ridges and remained chinless. Amud 1 might be an intermediate example. This was just random speculation on my part but I thought it was funny you brought it up two hours after I'd been contemplating chins and brow ridges.
I do agree with Gould 100% that natural selection is assumed way too much. And if it's not natural selection then sexual selection is the next overused assumption. Researching Neanderthals has given me a new respect for genetic drift.
Their groups were small, fragmented, and often experienced local extinction. The population of their species was small overall. Because of this they experienced several detrimental mutations that not only became dominant but became the only variant for that trait.
Most Neanderthals after 90,000 years ago inherited the 827G 12s rRNA mutation. This mutation greatly increased the chances of developing deafness to varying degrees. Multiple studies have yet to detect a signal for selection for this mutation. It seems that this mutation became fixed by random chance and irregardless of its negative impact. In modern humans a person with this mutation can hear just fine but if they happen to come in contact with a compound known as aminoglycosides, say through antibiotics, they can lose hearing in as fast as 30 days. Imagine that a Neanderthal, with fine hearing, happens to make mushroom soup that contains mushrooms with aminoglycosides (as the authors of the study proposed was a possibility, minus the soup part). How disorientating would this be to a Neanderthal 40,000 years ago? That's just bad non-natural selective luck.
Really interesting. To dig further into the chin rabbit hole, my understanding is that at least in humans, jaw bones grow in response to stress on the bone in childhood. So early humans who chewed a lot more than we do grew longer jawbones as a result. I'm sure you're familiar with Weston Price's research showing that the crowding of teeth, impacting wisdom teeth, apnea, etc. are all traceable to shorter jawbones that result from softer foods. In light of that, hard to understand why the Nearderthals didn't have more prominent chins, as they seemed to subsist on very chewy foods.
I think it definitely holds true for jawbones themselves. My sister thought I was joking when I told her to get my 10 month old niece a nice chunk of leather to chew on. I suppose if the chin is an artifact of childhood diet, that still wouldn't necessarily exclude it from being a spandrel as it is simply a result of diet and isn't being selected for directly.
The more archaic species, such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, who had thicker and more robust bones also never developed chins. It makes me wonder when the first chin appeared in the fossil record and if that point in time tells us anything about why or how it appeared.
I'd love to join the retreat, however finances don't allow this year since I'm based in Cairns, Australia. Maybe if you do one in South East Asia one day...
That's a good idea. Maybe we can get a free trip to Oz out of it!