Reaction: Tyson on the Rogan show

Getting History Spectacularly Wrong

Neil deGrasse Tyson had some things to say about Columbus on the Joe Rogan Experience. This appears to be something Tyson prepared to say. A story to amaze and amuse Joe and his viewers. In comedian language, a "bit".

This bit begins with Tyson saying that he thinks Columbus "coming to America was the most significant thing to ever happen in our species". This is a bold statement, and at this moment in the video, I'm overlooking the potential little quibbles (like, be didn't come to America at first, although he later landed on South America) and I'm impressed. After a bit of banter, Joe says, "kind of amazing when you...think...that at that point in time other than the Native Americans who lived here who were living a nomadic, tribal existence, very few people that had the wheel...firearms...all these things that had already been achieved in the rest of the world made their way to this place". This is a problem, because of Mayan astronomy, Incan and pre-Incan stonework, and the chinampas of Tenochtitlán, which were five times more productive than the best results agriculture could achieve in Europe, Asia, or Africa. Also, the Aztec city was one of the largest in the world when Cortés arrived there. So they weren't all nomads.

Tyson doesn't point out any of those issues, but instead launches into his bit. He says he presumes Joe is skeptical of his claim, like many of the Columbus-haters out there. Joe mentions he doesn't really have an opinion about Columbus and Tyson pushes on. He describes hunter-gatherer's following the herds in prehistory. Okay, so far. "And, then the ice age hits". Yeah, AN ice age hits. There had been many before it, and the ancestors of humans had lived through many. Even Homo sapiens had been around and had survived the previous one (just barely).

Then Tyson explains an ice age to Joe and his viewers like they are three years old. This is a typical Tyson move, and one of the reasons I find him very tedious. But after a minute or so he gets to the valuable part, that the oceans are drained faster than they can be replenished. So sea levels fall. How much, Neil? Answer, about 360 feet at the glacial maximum.

Then the "Bering Strait Landbridge". Here's a picture of the region scientists call Beringia. It wasn't a bridge: wasn't narrow, wasn't "going someplace", and wasn't temporary. It was as wide as Alaska and probably lasted over ten thousand years. Twice as long as recorded history. The people who lived there, as Tyson does later say, thought of it as just more land.

The people go south, check. When they can. For several thousand years, they can't, but by about 15,000 years ago, they get into the Americas. We know this because they left remains at a place in southern Chile called Monte Verde which have been dated to 14,800 years ago. A lower layer seems to date to maybe as far as 18,000 years ago, but that's still controversial.

Tyson is right-ish about the end of the ice age. Beginning about 12,000 years ago, sea levels start to rise and by about 11,000 years ago the Beringians are cut off from Asia. Another migration into the Americas apparently begins about this time, which produced the Clovis stone tools once believed to be the earliest evidence of humans on the continents. So, yes, a branch of the human species is in the Americas, without the ability to contact their cousins in Europe, Asia, or Africa, for about 10,000 years. They don't think of themselves as stranded, of course. In fact, when they develop creation stories for themselves, they take place here in North and South America.

The genetic origin stuff is fairly accurate. Geneticists have said the "parent group" of the "paleo-Indians" was probably several hundred to a few thousand individuals. That could be a few large clans -- it's not a couple of families. "Two separate branches of the human species" is one way to put it, I guess.

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 to the later European conquest. We'll get to why.

"Had this continued, this is how you speciate!" Good grief, Neil! I know you're an astrophysicist and used to dealing in big time-frames. So this is a bit unforgivable. It takes a million years to speciate. Google it. Ten thousand years is one tenth of one percent of the time required. Also, there are marsupials in North and South America, too. Scientists say they actually evolved in North America 90 million years ago and migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the Late Cretaceous period. They didn't evolve in Australia when it was isolated. In fact, they walked there when it was connected to Antarctica.

Yeah, ten thousand years isn't enough to grow three heads. It also isn't enough to be significantly different from the other humans back in the old world. The thing that DID happen, as Tyson begins to ham-handedly describe, is that the people left behind became resistant to diseases that spread to the human population from domesticated animals that did not exist in the Americas.

The genetic crossbreeding was not the significant event! It was the spread of disease! Tyson races by that, saying "much written about that". Then he focuses on the origin of syphilis in the Americas. This was something that Alfred Crosby, author of the book The Columbian Exchange, had a lot to say about. The jury is still out, and research is still being done on this issue. What there IS NO DOUBT of, however, is that Eurasian diseases killed 90 to 95% of the American population. (And actually, the first documented outbreak of venereal syphilis was in 1495) "There may be people who know that, I'm not among them" Tyson says when Joe questions him about syphilis. Then why did you bring it up?

The famous problem with Native Americans metabolizing alcohol is the other topic Tyson picks out? And the Chinese too! You've got to be kidding me.

Then he finally cuts the bottom out of his argument by saying "Europe was coming" anyway. This is probably true. It wasn't long afterward that the Portuguese, swinging wide into the South Atlantic to catch the trade winds so they can sail around the bottom of Africa, discover Rio de Janiero with Amerigo Vespucci on board.

Why am I taking the trouble to complain about this? Am I just being mean or fishing for views? I don't think so. My beef with Tyson is that he is so convinced he's the smartest guy in the room that he has begun allowing himself to just opine about stuff he really doesn't completely understand. And because he's doing this on Joe Rogan's show, he's reaching Joe's 6 million subs. This video has been watched 3 3/4 million times. Over 12k comments, the latest one 26 minutes ago.