Did Ancient Humans Leave the Old Behind?

Forty thousand years ago, you are too old to hunt. Your knees are gone. Your eyes are failing. You can't carry your own weight. And this morning, your band is moving — if they stay, everyone starves. You cannot keep up. So what did they do with you? Did they leave you behind? The answer is buried in the ground on four different continents. And it is not the answer you'd expect. In this video we follow the bones: a blind, one-armed Neanderthal in a cave in Iraq who lived for years after injuries that should have killed him. A toothless old man in France whose food someone else had to soften. A skull from Georgia, 1.77 million years old, with a single tooth left. And a young man in Vietnam, paralyzed from his teens, who was carried, fed and cleaned every single day for a decade. We tell ourselves that survival of the fittest is the whole story of where we came from. But that is not what the bones say. CHAPTERS 0:00 The morning you can't keep up 0:56 Shanidar Cave, Iraq — the man who should not have survived 2:41 La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France — the toothless old man 4:19 Dmanisi, Georgia — 1.77 million years old 6:22 Man Bac, Vietnam — ten years of care 7:39 They carried you A note on the science: the Dmanisi skull is genuinely debated — some researchers argue he could have survived on soft plants and scavenged marrow alone. We hold that one loosely in the video, and say so. #ancienthistory #archaeology #neanderthal #humanorigins #anthropology