The First Humans
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where do humans come from? Or, perhaps more interestingly, who did humans evolve from? A question once posed by the likes of Charles Darwin and other early naturalists, the answer has changed throughout history. But now, thanks to advancements in archaeology and developments in genetics, we know more about our early ancestors than ever before. But what exactly makes us human, and who do we have to thank for these early evolutionary traits?
In this fascinating episode, Tristan travelled to London's Natural History Museum to chat with Professor Fred Spoor, a leading expert on the topic. Join them as they journey back millions of years to examine the earliest known hominids - from the Homohabilis, to early Homoerectus, and checking in on paranthropus and australopithecines along the way. Together they aim to ask the question, where exactly did humans come from?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the entrance on History Hit. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's episode, well we've seen how popular episodes |
| 0:17.0 | on Neanderthals, The First Britons, Homer or Ectus have been, and I cannot blame you. |
| 0:22.7 | I cannot blame the love that's been shared for these episodes because like you, I also |
| 0:28.9 | find human prehistory paleoanthropology so so interesting. |
| 0:34.8 | It's really kicked to nerve, weirdly with me. |
| 0:37.8 | I think it's just amazing when we're going so far back in time and we're learning about |
| 0:43.0 | human evolution, these pre-decessor hominins that we've evolved from. |
| 0:48.8 | As mentioned, we've covered Neanderthals, we've covered Homo erectus, we've covered |
| 0:52.9 | the origins of Homo sapiens too. |
| 0:55.2 | But say we're going right back in time. |
| 0:58.1 | We're going back millions of years because we're talking about arguably the first humans. |
| 1:04.2 | Now it's important to highlight here, we mustn't think of a linear line almost, that there |
| 1:09.2 | was one hominin that emerged and then it went to another hominin and another and another |
| 1:13.4 | and finally get Bami, get Homo sapiens. |
| 1:15.7 | It's a lot more complicated and complex than that. |
| 1:18.4 | As you're going to hear in this episode today with our brilliant expert, none other than |
| 1:22.4 | Professor Fred Spore from the Natural History Museum. |
| 1:27.2 | I headed over to the Natural History Museum last week to interview Fred and it was fantastic. |
| 1:32.6 | I'll tell you what, Fred is a leading expert, he knows all about this stuff, he's done lots |
| 1:38.0 | of research out in Africa at the sites themselves and we cover different hominins varying from |
| 1:44.2 | Homo habilis to early Homo erectus to other species such as Peranthropus and Australopithecines. |
... |
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