Hello and welcome to mysteries of science. My name's Dan and I'm the editor of Science,

the monthly magazine from the team behind the week junior. And I'm Michael, the features editor.

On this podcast, we explore the strange phenomena, bizarre events and unanswered questions

that are left scientists scratching their heads. Yes, welcome back.

This is our fifth season of mysteries of science.

I can't believe it.

We're definitely back with a bang.

Shall we tell our listeners what's coming up in this series, Michael?

Yes, we're going to be going to the very depths of the ocean,

right up to the Himalayas as well, on the hunt for the Yeti, exploring

some quantum weirdness as well.

And we'll be asking is, or was King Arthur, a real person?

But to kick off, we're going to be tackling one of the biggest mysteries we've ever

attempted, and it's all about the amazing story of a strange

and remarkable animal you probably know quite well. Humans. Modern humans or homo sapiens are just

one of millions of species alive today but we dominate almost every corner of the planet. So there was this recent announcement that I picked up on

that there are now over 8 billion of us alive today,

which is pretty amazing, but what really blows my mind,

what is really remarkable, is that life has been around on this planet

for more than 3 billion years, but modern humans

have only been around for about 200,000 years. So kind of like the blink of an eye by comparison.

And yet, yet in this short space of time, they've spread out, adapted and conquered nearly

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