Things are about to get personal... In episode 3 of The Origins of Humankind, we zoom into the birth and spread of humanity itself.
Our guide is the iconic Chris Stringer, one of the most influential paleoanthropologists alive. Together, we trace the origins of our genus and the emergence of Homo sapiens as the last surviving human species. While doing this, we meet many oddities, such as rhino hunting along the River Thames, but we also explore some of the biggest questions in human evolution:
- What is a human?
- Why did we evolve big brains?
- Why do we have such long childhoods?
- Is Homo sapiens truly unique — or just one human among many?
As always, we finish with my guest's reflections on humanity.
MORE LINKS
More material: OnHumans.Substack.com/Origins
Support the show: Patreon.com/OnHumans
Free lectures on human origins: CARTA
Stringer's books: Lone Survivors; Our Human Story
WHAT'S NEXT
#4-5: The Story of Sapiens, in Two Parts
The series finishes with two episodes on the story of Homo sapiens, using the magic of ancient DNA to tell a genuinely global history of our species.
Key question: How did migrations shape the human story? Why are we the only humans left? And how did humans spread worldwide, first as hunters and gatherers, then as farmers and shepherds?
Your guide: Johannes Krause was the first scholar to discover a new species of humans by DNA alone. Co-author of Hubris, and A Short History of Humanity, he is now the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology.
When: March 16th & 23rd, 2025
KEYWORDS
Anthropology | Biology | Human evolution | Human origins | Homo Erectus | Australopithecines | Brain evolution | Paleoneurology | Hominins | Cave art | Homo sapiens | Climate changes | Pleistocene | Cognitive evolution | Cognitive archaeology | Stone tools | Palaeolithic | Neanderthals | Alloparenting | Expensive tissue -hypothesis | Radiator theory | Brain growth | Palaeoanthropology |
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