A Message From Our Ancestors
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 1991
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Steve Jones, Reader in Genetics at University College, London gives the first of six Reith Lectures on the new biological insight into humanity.
He explains how the study of genetics has been transformed in recent decades and argues that while fossil records and ancient myths preserve some limited truths about humanity's origins; our genes hold a far more complete picture. Like anatomy, sociology or psychoanalysis, he says, genetics can give us a significant glimpse into aspects of our history and about what it means to be human.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. This lecture in the series |
| 0:05.9 | The Language of the Genes given by Steve Jones was originally broadcast in 1991. |
| 0:12.4 | If you visit Sigmund Freud's house in Hampstead, you see on his desk some unexpected objects, |
| 0:18.4 | a stone axe, an Egyptian scarab, and some ancient figurines. |
| 0:23.3 | These, he suggested, were relics of the childhood of the human race, messages from our ancestors, |
| 0:29.3 | whose experiences in the dawn of humanity still shape our lives. The guilt of those in the dim past, |
| 0:36.2 | who killed their father for raping the women of their tribe lingers on today, |
| 0:41.0 | and, according to Freud, many of our anxieties and our neuroses are a memory of ancient times |
| 0:47.4 | which can only be uncovered on the analyst's couch. |
| 0:52.0 | Our genes, too, are messages from the past and much more reliable than those received by Freud. |
| 0:58.7 | Only in the past 20 years have we begun to read the language of the genes, to decipher our |
| 1:04.5 | own instruction manual, and understand the clues about ourselves left by our ancestors. |
| 1:10.9 | In these lectures, I'll ask what genetics can, and more important, what it cannot, tell us about the history, the present, and the future of humankind. |
| 1:23.7 | The idea that the human condition can be explained by events that took place long ago |
| 1:29.4 | is central to psychoanalysis, to religion, and for that matter, to much of politics. |
| 1:35.8 | Recently, some psychologists and politicians, but not many geneticists, |
| 1:40.3 | have claimed that we're controlled by messages from our ancestors. |
| 1:44.2 | They promote a kind of biological fatalism. |
| 1:47.4 | Humanity is driven by its genes, |
| 1:49.8 | and our biology is a sort of original sin. |
| 1:53.4 | The poor are victims of their genes. |
| 1:55.7 | Their predicament is due to their own weakness, |
... |
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