Rise of Humans
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What is the story of human evolution?
It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today we're covering the rise of humans. Yep, that's right, human evolution. It's a story that stretches back some 7 million years, one that begins with ancient apes and ends with us, with many different species of early humans emerging and disappearing in between. The story of human evolution is one still shrouded in mystery. Not only is the fossil record for early humans extremely limited, but so much of it is still debated. Including the all-important question, why did early humans, or hominins, why did they become bipedal? How did they evolve from long-armed tree dwellers to two-legged runners? These radical changes in bodily structure that have occurred over millions of years.
Joining me to talk through this evolution story is a fan favourite of the podcast, Dr Henry G. Henry has been on the podcast before to talk about both the origins of life on Earth and the dinosaurs. Quite a few of you have been clamouring for us to have him back on the show and I'm delighted to announce his return to talk about the fascinating story of the rise of humans. Henry, welcome back to the podcast. It has been too long. Thank you very much, Tristan. We've done Top 5 Dinosaurs. We've done the wonderful story of the origins of life on Earth. And this feels like another story, the rise of humanity. And Henry, this is a story, I mean, to start with, it takes us back more than 5, 6, 7, 8 million years.
There's a lot of history and ancient history and prehistory to cover here.
Yep, that's right. The human history, well, ancient history, has a very, very long run-up. I mean, recorded history is barely 5,000 years, but this one goes into 98% of human history, which has no written record, and we just pick up from fossils and other scraps of information that we can tell from rock.
And to tell the story of human evolution, as we're going to be covering several million years of history... You mentioned fossils. How rich a record do you have for studying human evolution? Do you have many examples of fossils from millions of years ago surviving?
No, that's the thing about human evolution. The fossils are very uncommon generally, except in certain places. You can count the number of fossils on the fingers of one hand, but the amount of fossils that tell you anything about human origins, you can count on the fingers of one thumb. They are very, very, very tiny, very scarce, mostly teeth like mammals generally. But the thing is that humans in the very broadest sense, meaning all our ancestry going back to apes, were always very rare in the landscape. I remember going to East Africa to join an expedition looking for fossil humans living 3.3 million years ago. in kenya and fossils of alligators catfish turtles were just so common that you didn't bother collecting them occasionally you would find you know a little skull of a fossil pig or a bit of a fossil baboon or a bit of an antelope but in the entire field season the number of fossil human remains were little bits of teeth and jaws that you could fit into a a very small biscuit tin
And that was after months of prospecting. And that was a good year. I mean, it's very rare to find a whole skull or even a whole skeleton. I mean, these are red-letter days.
So we are going to be covering several different early human species as this chat goes on. But with that kind of sparsity of surviving evidence, do we think that there were probably many other species on the human line that we just don't know about?
How did bipedality evolve in early humans?
Oh, absolutely, for sure. Not only were there likely to be more, but the thing about fossils is fossils is where you find them. And they tend to be more common in some places than others. So people tend to look in the places where they already know fossils tend to be common. So the caves of South Africa have always had top billing. The Rift Valley of East Africa has been a plentiful source.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the story of human evolution?
0:36–4:33
2
How did bipedality evolve in early humans?
4:33–7:54
3
What evidence do we have of early hominins?
7:54–18:46
4
What role did the genus Australopithecus play in human evolution?
18:46–26:26
5
What are the key features of the genus Homo?
26:26–30:32
6
How did climate change influence human evolution?
30:32–36:49
7
What significant discoveries have been made in human ancestry?
36:49–59:11