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slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American

posted on October 23, 2009. I'm Steve Merski. In this episode, we'll talk

human evolution with renowned anthropologist and Neanderthal expert Chris Stringer and with

Scientific American editor Kate Wong, co-author of the new book Lucy's Legacy, The Quest for Human Origins.

First up, Chris Stringer, he's a fellow of the Royal Society,

and holds the title of research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.

His most recent book is Homo Britannicus, The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain,

and that's the first subject of our conversation.

Obviously, there was an old view that when people got into Britain half a million years ago,

they were always here, right through to the present.

And we now know that that's completely wrong,

that actually what happened about every 100,000 years when there was the peak of an ice age,

Britain got cleaned out of people entirely, and it had to be recolonised all over again.

And remarkably, 125,000 years ago, when Britain seemed to have been an island, perhaps strongly for the first time, nobody got back.

So you had a warm period with hippos and elephants and tons of stuff for people to eat, and no one was there.

The Neanderthals didn't have boats, and they couldn't get across the English Channel.

So for 100,000 years, Britain had no people on it, even when the climate would have allowed it.

...