Vol 1 Ep 5 - Lower paleolithic stone too...

Reflections on Volume 4 and looking forward to Volume 5, including the big announcement about the name of the volume and our usual review of listener messages. 

1200 - 1449 - Step into the fourteenth century, a world caught between collapse and rebirth. As the Mongol Empire fractures, new powers rise across Europe, Asia and Africa. From the birth of the Ming dynasty to the brilliance of Mali and the devastation of the Black Death, this e ... Show More

1000 - 1299 - From shattered empires to rising ideas, this episode traces a world in motion. Across continents, scholars, warriors and kings reshape faith, power and knowledge, while distant societies unknowingly edge toward collision. This is an age of transformation — where pri ... Show More

<p>What do we know about the earliest hominins to exist? With a story spanning one million years and counting, we're discovering more about how we came to be every day. </p><br><p>In this episode of The Ancients, we're on location in the Natural History Museum in London as Trista ... Show More

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum. In this programme, Neil goes back two million years to the Rift Valley in Tanzania, where a simple ... Show More

<p>Where do humans come from? Or, perhaps more interestingly, <em>who</em> 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 devel ... Show More

<p>Today we’re going back to the beginning – no Romans, Celts, Egyptians or Macedonians in sight. We’re going much further back, covering billions of years of prehistory as we look at the emergence of life on Earth. From the rise of the earliest microscopic membranes to the arriv ... Show More

<p>For millions of years, Australopithecus thrived in Africa's vast landscapes, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the Homo genus. Later, alongside early members of the Homo genus, Australopithecus played a crucial role in shaping human evolution and our present-day exist ... Show More

<p>Roughly 40,000 years ago, Ice Age Britain was undergoing a transformation.&nbsp;</p><br><p>The first modern humans, <em>Homo sapiens, </em>were arriving and beginning to settle in the British Isles. Their evolutionary predecessors, the Neanderthals, were on their way to extinc ... Show More

<p>Stonehenge. The most iconic prehistoric monument in the world. And yet its story is still so enigmatic.</p><br><p>In this episode, host Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Sue Greaney to shine a light on Stonehenge’s prehistoric story. Together they explore this monument's creation ... Show More

<p>Uncovered a decade ago in the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa, Homo Naledi's discovery has impacted paleoanthropology in ways nobody could expect. Upon first discovery, it was assumed this small brained hominid lived millions of years ago - yet when dating of the fossi ... Show More

On 15 August 2008, nine-year-old Matt Berger tripped over a fossil that would lead to one of the most important discoveries in the history of human evolution.The young adventurer had been exploring the Cradle of Humankind, in South Africa, with his father Lee, a paleoanthropologi ... Show More

<p>Cheddar Man is the oldest almost complete skeleton of a Homo sapien ever found in Britain and, for this fantastic episode, Tristan spoke to the scientist who has drilled a (very small) hole in him. Dr Selina Brace is a biologist who works with ancient and degraded DNA. At the ... Show More