Tristan Hughes

We're going to explore this fascinating area of human evolution, how the paths of homo sapiens and Neanderthals finally crossed after hundreds of thousands of years.

and why it was ultimately Homo sapiens that won the competition for survival, why Neanderthals went extinct, and we did not.

Welcome to the Ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the ever-developing story of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

Our guest is the paleoanthropologist, presenter, comedian, and author Ella Al-Shemahi.

Ella's new tour, Becoming Human, continues in the UK on the 28th of May.

Ella, it is such a pleasure.

It's an honour to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me.

You've been very busy.

You've been everywhere at the moment with your paleoanthropology stuff.

It's really, really great to have you on.

And to talk about Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and their interactions with one another, their stories.

It is such a fascinating moment in our evolutionary story.

Just thinking about those early meetings and how...

These two types of humans would have interacted with each other.

That's the thing, isn't it?

Or just be polite.

Yeah.

British politeness.

I mean, just imagine like with the technology to say what, I mean, how different our conversation on this same topic could be in like five to 10 years time.