Ancestors

In biology, that tendency to overemphasise the role of causal factors over chance can lead to ‘hyperadaptionism’, where every facet of the structure and function of an organism is interpreted as an adaptation with a particular function that has been evolutionarily selected for. We know this is foolish, as we have plenty of examples of whole suites

‘Any diseases in particular that you’re going to focus on? Any burning questions?’ I wonder. ‘I just want all the pathogens! All of the pathogens, all of the time!’ Pooja laughs. ‘But seriously, I’m very interested to see how diseases change when agriculture emerges in the Neolithic – when people begin to live in larger, denser communities. And I t

There are lots of connections in those Arras graves with traditions on the near continent – from the broad style of the graves, to the goods placed in them with the body. The foods are interesting – in northern France, there was a longstanding custom of placing meat in the grave, and it tended to be gendered: beef for women and pork for men. In Yor

Each cremated body results in 400 kilograms of CO2 emissions – about the same as burning two tanks of diesel in an SUV. Toxic mercury vapour from tooth fillings also escapes into the atmosphere from the chimneys of crematoria.

Soil samples from elsewhere in the cave contained little pollen. But Burial 4 was replete with it – in clumps that suggested whole flowers had originally been present. It looked like this Neanderthal man had been laid to rest one summer – some 70,000 years ago, the archaeologists estimated – on a bed of grape hyacinth, yarrow and groundsels. Some s

‘We think that it was to produce a container,’ she said. ‘It was a cup.’ This was deeply strange. I wanted to question it, to doubt it. But there was the evidence in front of me, and I couldn’t think of any other explanation for the way this skull had been carved, sculpted. It certainly didn’t seem to be purely functional – it wasn’t just about ext

The British Neolithic starts around 6,000 years ago. The beginning of this era in prehistory marks a change in subsistence that I believe was the most profound revolution that human societies have ever experienced, when our ancestors started farming.

During interglacials, when the ice had melted away, the sea level rose, cutting off Britain. It was during the transitions – in and out of glaciations – when this landscape was both accessible and attractive to large herbivores and the humans that hunted them. Two hundred and thirty thousand years ago, then, the landscape of Britain was reachable –

This book is also about belonging; about walking in ancient places, in the footsteps of the ancestors. It’s about reaching back in time, to find ourselves, and our place in the world.