Human Origins
In Our Time: Science
BBC
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2000
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of the human species. Where did we come from - we being Homo Sapiens? Let’s not go back to the Big Bang or in search of Genesis, but sift through the evidence from biology, palaeontology, climatology and anthropology.The story of human evolution is one that stretches back over five million years, and during that time there are reckoned to have been between fifteen and twenty species of hominid to have walked this planet. From the earliest (Genus) Australopithecus (Species) Anamensis through times when there have been several divergent pre-human species existing at once, we have now arrived at a period unique in the history of the earth when a sole human species, Homo Sapiens, is in evidence right across the globe.With Leslie Aiello, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University College, London; Robert Foley, evolutionary ecologist, writer and lecturer in biological anthropology at Cambridge University; Mark Roberts, Field Archaeologist, Project Leader of Boxgrove excavation and the discoverer of ‘Boxgrove Man’.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:09.0 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:11.0 | Hello, the story of human evolution is one that stretches back over about 5 million years, |
| 0:16.7 | and during that time there are a record to have been between 15 and 20 species of hominid |
| 0:21.6 | and they've walked this planet. We've now arrived at a |
| 0:24.3 | period unique in the history of the earth when a sole human species homo sapiens |
| 0:28.6 | is in evidence right across the globe. With me to give an insight into how he arrived at this state of affairs over 5 million |
| 0:35.0 | years and to explain some of the extraordinary detective work necessary to get any idea of the |
| 0:39.0 | story of human origins is the Palia Anthropologist Professor Leslie Eilow from University College London, |
| 0:45.0 | the Palio Ecologist Robert Fowley from Cambridge University, |
| 0:48.0 | and the field archaeologist and discoverer of Boxgrove Man, Mark Roberts. |
| 0:52.0 | Robert Fowley, humans are held, so you say, to have evolved from apes, not monkeys. |
| 0:57.6 | What was it about apes that spurred them to evolve in such a way as we came from them. |
| 1:03.6 | Well, apes are a rather specialized form of monkey or primate |
| 1:08.6 | that we know have been in existence for 20 million years or more. |
| 1:14.3 | And the pattern of primate evolution as a whole is complex, |
| 1:18.5 | but seems to be driven largely by the way |
| 1:21.7 | the continents have moved over time in the very long distance past |
| 1:25.6 | and then more recently by the way in which the environment has changed and the climate has changed. |
| 1:31.6 | And I think the best way of thinking about this sort of move |
| 1:35.0 | from apes to the first humans |
| 1:38.0 | is that the apes came under more and more pressure. |
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