Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind on Radio 4 is excellent !!!!!

[Guest]

This is currently the Book Of The Week and is simply the most rivetingly listenable, non-fiction, book reading I have encountered in years.

It is popular science writing at its best. It reminded me of Dawkins in the way the writer takes complex scientific ideas and expresses them in a fresh and easily digestible form - a rare talent.

Give it a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g7lhj

[DracoM]

But oddly, not on R3. I wonder why not? Might upset the impoverished intellects of the poor geriatric dears, maybe?

[Pabmusic]

This is a really good book, second only to Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True as an underpinning guide.

[Richard Tarleton]

Eagerly awaiting its arrival in the post - excellent reviews in Times and S Times. Sounds like some really bracing, counter-intuitive stuff. The triumph of wheat.....

Catherine Nixey says in The Times: "Sometimes he doesn't entirely overturn a theory, simply tilts it slightly". John Carey in ST: "His central argument is that language has not only made us top animal. It has also enmeshed us in fictions. Myths, gods and religions appeared with the advent of language, and though they do not really exist outside the stories that we make up, they are enormously strong".

[Pabmusic]

...His central argument is that language has not only made us top animal. It has also enmeshed us in fictions. Myths, gods and religions appeared with the advent of language...

And music, of course.

[amateur51]

This is currently the Book Of The Week and is simply the most rivetingly listenable, non-fiction, book reading I have encountered in years.

It is popular science writing at its best. It reminded me of Dawkins in the way the writer takes complex scientific ideas and expresses them in a fresh and easily digestible form - a rare talent.

Give it a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g7lhj

I'm enjoying listening to Adrian Scarborough reading it too, but i can't banish from my mind the thought that I saw him last as Fool in King Lear

[Richard Tarleton]

And music, of course.

Yes, indeed. And if wheat hadn't triumphed, we wouldn't have been able to afford symphony orchestras, we'd all have been too busy hunter-gathering. So not all bad.

[mercia]

hmmmm - finding it difficult to understand that a 'belief' in the existence of a car manufacturing company (his example) is the same as a belief in a god or fairies - i.e. that they are all equally imaginary. [Except they are all inventions of the human mind, but for rather different reasons.]

His point about Peugeot Cars seemed to be that, despite the death of its 'inventor' Monsieur Peugeot, it still exists as a company and that even if, overnight, all its employees died and all its plant was destroyed it would still 'exist' as a company. True I suppose, but it seems to me he could equally have chosen the East India Company or the Hanseatic League or the Roman Army, other human 'inventions', which by any usual understanding of the word no longer 'exist' ... except as names in history books.

on episode one - if the reason that species Neanderthal no longer exists is that species Sapiens 'ethnically cleansed' Neanderthal out of existence - why do the apes still exist? - why weren't they destroyed by the earliest species of Hominid ?

[Richard Tarleton]

- if the reason that species Neanderthal no longer exists is that species Sapiens 'ethnically cleansed' Neanderthal out of existence - why do the apes still exist? - why weren't they destroyed by the earliest species of Homo ?

The book hasn't arrived and haven't been listening so you're way ahead of me mercs - but I'd guess the answer to your last might be that Sapiens was not in competition with the apes for food, living space etc.? (man having moved out of the forests and onto the plains). They were in different places.

[Pabmusic]

...if the reason that species Neanderthal no longer exists is that species Sapiens 'ethnically cleansed' Neanderthal out of existence - why do the apes still exist? - why weren't they destroyed by the earliest species of Homo ?

That would be monstrous, of course. I didn't take it as straightforwardly as you have. Firstly, we are apes still. Secondly, although we may have out-competed Neandertals (though ultimately it was probably climate change that was their downfall) we were in fact in competition with them. The earliest hominids were not in competition with other apes once an almost certain geographical separation had occurred (probably by a group of common ancestors becoming separated from the rest by the Great Rift Valley.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Doesn't the most recent research suggest that Sapiens co-existed with Neanderthals for a very much longer period than was previously thought? That inter-breeding (something that doesn't happen with apes, even in Norfolk) has as much to do with the extinction of Neanderthals as "ethnic cleansing"?

[Pabmusic]

Doesn't the most recent research suggest that Sapiens co-existed with Neanderthals for a very much longer period than was previously thought? That inter-breeding (something that doesn't happen with apes, even in Norfolk) has as much to do with the extinction of Neanderthals as "ethnic cleansing"?

Yes to the first part at least. Around 4% of the DNA of people from North Africa, India, the Middle East and Europe is from Neanderthals. There is other DNA, too - denisovans who contributed about 1% to Siberians, Chinese and Native Americans. We know very little about them, and they might just have been a sub-species of H. sapiens rather than a separate species. It's thought that at least six species or sub-species of hominid lived at the same time in Africa; the ancestors of neanderthals left many thousands of years before their cousins, H. sapiens.

There were even earlier migrations. H. erectus certainly made it to SE Asia and into China. It's been a blow to the Chinese to discover that they're H. sapiens, because since the revolution they'd taught in their schools that Chinese are descended from H. erectus, not sapiens. It turns out though that all humans who have ever been tested (which is a lot, believe me) are H. sapiens and share the same proportion of (for instance) H. erectus DNA because it was a very early ancestor of all humans.

On the subject of interbreeding, it depends on how far we have developed apart from each other. Horses and donkeys can interbreed (they don't in the wild - they inhabit different regions) and can produce offspring called mules. But mules are sterile - horses and donkeys have evolved apart for too long for their DNA to be able to 'talk' properly to each other's. However, horses and zebras can't mate successfully at all - they're just too far apart. Presumably chimpanzees and gorillas have drifted too far. So now consider this, horses and donkeys (which can produce sterile mules) are further apart that H. sapiens is from either Pan troglodytes of Pan paniscus (chimpanzee and banobo).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

interbreeding ... depends on how far we have developed apart from each other.

The worst Silver Anniversary card greeting ever.

Many thanks, Pabs.

[Pabmusic]

The worst Silver Anniversary card greeting ever...

[gurnemanz]

Re unintended consequences of adopting wheat cultivation, as mentioned today: disease, vulnerability to enemies, poor diet, feudal system etc. Another illustration of the cock-up theory to which human endeavour is all too often subject: Iraq war, Scottish independence vote (?) ...