History of the World podcast

This podcast is heading for Australia, stopping at Israel, Denisova, Flores and Wallacea. Please remember to pick up all of your belongings.

Social media indicates that we love talking about ourselves, so let's do it. Let's talk about ourselves, the modern human, and how it all started from 300,000 years ago in Africa.

Find out about the geological science behind glaciation studies, the effect that ice ages have had on our ancestors and the story of Napi being chased across Canada by a sixteen thousand tonne quartzite rock.

The highly anticipated neanderthals, our rugged cousin who appeared to be quite brutish but was surprisingly intelligent. Quite possibly someone who would be up for going to a pub quiz with you.

How is it that we can talk? Why are we the only animal that can successfully produce audio podcasts that can be listened to and understood? And who wants to get to know Washoe the chimpanzee?

Let us put some flesh on the bones of our prehistoric hominin story, and discover what our ancestors created to get carve flesh from the bones of animals. We investigate the technological advances from over three million years ago up to the last million years.

Homo erectus, as the name would suggest, is the first fully upright human and it was definitely a migratory species. Find out more about the journeys and advancements of human evolution in this episode.

Homo habilis is thought to be the first species of human to have lived. Find out who he was and who else lived around him.

They were alive from around 5 million to 2 million years ago, slowly evolving in East Africa and trying to become human.

This episode introduces the podcast and begins our journey from 66 million years ago through to the first ancestors of modern humans around 6 million years ago.