The First Britons - Tim Minchin, Prof Chris Stringer and Dr Selina Brace

Monkeys and ancient humans

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1:33Hello, I'm Adam Rutherford. And I'm Jess Fosterkew, and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage. Same cage, different monkeys. If I was a monkey, I'd be a mandrill, I reckon, because they can climb, but they prefer not to, and I've got a lot of time for that attitude. Also, I think facially they look a bit like a clown, and I'm a comedian. Yes, but as a biologist, I have to point out that it's only the males that have blue faces, and the females actually have bright red arses. All right, well, you're a biologist, so what monkey does that make you?

2:05A lab monkey? Or actually, are we both apes? Now, I want to take this opportunity as a biologist to clear this issue up once and for all. Apes are types of monkeys. Please don't write in. Old world monkeys, which are called Sercopythicidae, including the red-arsed mandrill, are more closely related to the great apes, which are called the hominidae, than they are to the new world monkeys, which are called the platterini, and all three belong to the infra-order Simiformes, which is the monkeys.

2:36So we are all monkeys.

2:41Good audience. That was quite long, though. Is it too late to get the physicist back? We're talking about first Britons. We're asking the question, who was actually on Britain first? Like, who got here first? Yeah, that's a great question to ask our scientists. But for God's sake, don't ask it on Facebook or Twitter or at Uncle Ian's birthday lunch. No, best avoided. Definitely not a political question, this one. It's the science of the first hominids to ever live on these islands.

3:14Even though Britain wasn't always an island. So we're not being political, but we are talking about rejoining Europe.

3:25Yes, but a million years ago. And to help us dig up the bones and the history of the first Britons, we are joined by a geneticist, a paleoanthropologist. And a living international treasure. And they are...

Meet the expert guests

3:37I'm Chris Stringer, and I'm a researcher on human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London. And I mainly work on the last one million years of the story, which does include the whole of the British story, and us and Neanderthals and weird creatures like hobbits that lived way over near Australia. I think, you know, one of the most interesting things I've ever dug up, I think would be the most interesting, some human remains in Cheddar Gorge. They're about 15,000 years old, and they were cannibalised.

4:07So, not a very nice story, but they were very thoroughly done over, beheaded and... ..scalped, eyes cut out, tongues cut out. Selina. OK, yeah, different story. So, I'm Selina Brace, I'm at the Natural History Museum in London, and I specialise in getting DNA from very dead people and animals. I feel like dead is a binary category, and it doesn't really need the very.

4:36True. But if you died right now, I probably shouldn't take your DNA. That's not... It's rude, it's rude to do it. They've been dead for long enough that it's OK that you muck around with them. Yeah, I think so. I feel vaguely threatened. Yeah, so I'm not an archaeologist. I work in a lab, so the most interesting thing that I've dug up was actually half a human mannequin from a skip outside a football club. LAUGHTER I did ask permission, by the way.

5:07I'm Tim Minchin. I write songs and act and make things, and the most interesting thing I've ever dug up was a tweet that Adam wrote in 2012 that was really racist. No, it's a joke. LAUGHTER That would be an amazing revelation. Thank you, Tim. And this is our panel. APPLAUSE Chris, let's start with you.

Britain a million years ago

5:35So we're talking about Britain, we're talking about the peopling of these septid isles many moons ago. What did Britain look like a million years ago? Yeah, as you've already said, it was pretty firmly joined onto the rest of Europe. So there was a wide land bridge, and that was there most of the last million years. And it was a different place in terms of the vegetation, in terms of the animals. So at times there were very cold periods, so could ice ages, and other times it was as warm, or even warmer than the present day. So a million years ago,

6:06the climate was pretty good. There were giant carnivores around, saber-toothed cats. In some of the warm periods, we had hippos swimming. So there were hippos swimming in the River Thames 120,000 years ago. At times it would have looked like the Serengeti Plains in Britain. At other times it would have looked like the wastes of Siberia, with some woolly rhinos and some woolly mammoths, some reindeer. Hippos in the Thames? Yeah, hippos in the Thames. It's one of my favourite bands.

6:35Their bones are underneath Trafalgar Square. When they dig in the foundations of buildings in Trafalgar Square, you find hippos, lions, hyenas. Are you sure that just wasn't the remnants of one of the things that's been on the fourth plinth? Yeah, yeah. Can I ask about... So the climate's changing, and I know the timescales are huge, but not enough for these animals to evolve. So they're coming up from Africa when it's warm enough? So the hippos could have swum round from the Mediterranean along the coasts, of course, and then gone across following the south side

7:05of that land bridge before there was an island. I'm not saying I've watched too much AI slop, but could smaller animals have ridden on the hippo's back?

7:17Elephants as well. Yeah, they could have been on the elephants. So you describe it as a land bridge, which makes it sound like a bridge, but it's just land, isn't it? Yeah, it's just land. Think about the shape of the UK today. Where is it connected? Yeah, so you think of the white cliffs of Dover, all that chalk there. So there's similar chalk on the other side of the channel, in Belgium or France. So that was continuous. There was this big ridge of chalk, and at times it was really wide. So there's this thing called Doggerland, of course, so where the Dogger Bank is in the North Sea. 50,000 years ago, that was all dry land.

7:49The sort of area of the British Isles was doubled by this huge area that was open land. Is that why in the shipping forecast they said Dogger? Yeah, Dogger, that's right. So the Dogger Bank is just part of this much wider expanse, and fishermen trawling find artefacts, they find woolly mammoth bones, and bring them up in their nets sometimes. Whoa.

Early footprints and stone tools

8:11What's the earliest evidence, please, of there being people then in Britain, and how did they get there? Not on a hippo's back. Yeah, well, they would have walked across, and the oldest we know of are about 900,000 years old. We don't actually have their fossil remains, but what we have is stone tools they're left behind, and their footprints. So we've actually got some footprints that are 900,000 years old. So the River Thames then was flowing much further north, across East Anglia, into the North Sea, and these people were walking alongside the banks

8:42of the Proto-River Thames. How do you know that someone who was like 880,000 years old didn't have some leftover 20,000-year-old feet and faked the footprints? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. You should have checked that first. I mean, these were discovered right where the tide was washing over the beach, and there were these clays there. He's answering it seriously. You've just upturned the whole of the field with your comedy clown feet. Frank's shoes. Have you considered this, Chris?

9:12I've never heard of these footprints. That was my reaction too, to be honest. So some of my colleagues were up there sampling these clays where we had found the stone tools, and they phoned back to us and said, we think we've found some footprints. We said, you idiots. We thought they were probably made a few days earlier. Yeah. But they were barefoot for a start, and it was not good weather, so it wasn't even likely to be. They were in a clay that we could date to 900,000, because the pollen in that clay was matching the ones we had. And these impressions, the sea was going over them twice a day,

9:43and within two weeks, they'd all been washed away. So we couldn't even preserve them. And that's in North Norfolk? That's, yeah, Haysborough. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's one of the worst places for coastal erosion, and it's constantly exposing things. So more footprints have turned up briefly. Stone tools are found on the beach, and we've got a network of collectors now who go over the beaches when they're walking their dogs. So you've got some evidence of culture, so tools and things like that, and you've got these footprints as well. So who did walk on those muddy fields?

10:15Well, without the fossils, of course, we don't know for sure, but there is a species in Spain at Atapuerca. So there are about 850,000-year-old fossils. About 200 fossils have been found there of people, and they've been put in a species called Homo anticesor, Pioneer Man, thought to be one of the earliest humans in Europe. They're only known from that site, but given the 850,000-year date, they could well be the people that were up in Britain, and they were cannibals as well. I'm sure the ones in Britain weren't,

10:45but the ones in Spain were eating each other, it seems. Wow. What we don't know, of course, in the early cases, is was it what's called crisis cannibalism, where it's a bad winter, people are dying, starving to death, and they're having to eat... That's the type we'd do if this got shut down, like if we couldn't get out. Yeah. I mean... Yeah, that's right. And I was like, it was almost 11 p.m., and I hadn't had my snack. That's right. This whole conversation is focusing much more on cannibalism than I thought it was going to be, but there is a phrase in evolutionary biology

11:16which is sexual cannibalism, possibly the least sexy phrase that's ever existed. Tim looks dubious about my judgment on that. I'm not shaming anyone else's kink. Can we... I think that one's OK. We evolved shame for a reason, and that's probably it. It's spiders I'm talking about. Anyway, I don't know why he went straight to humans, you weirdo. Did these original visitors in Britain settle permanently, or am I right in the thing it's happened

11:46over hundreds of thousands of years? So how did that develop into the British people of today? So these people, we don't know how long they were there for. We discussed the little episode when we got the footprints and we got their stone tools. It was the end of a warm period when it actually was getting colder, and then we lose sight of them for 200,000 years. We pick up the next record, and so we're able to map at least 12 occupations of Britain by early humans, and 11 of them disappeared,

12:17mostly, we assume, because of the climate getting too bad for them to survive here. So people came across, they were here maybe 10,000, 20,000 years, then they disappeared again, and Britain had to be recolonised all over again, and we think there probably were four species of humans in that story. So maybe Homo antecessor at the beginning, then Homo heidelbergensis, and then Neanderthals, and then finally us. I was going to say, because if they're all pioneering, man, that's pretty persistent. I think if I'd been for extinction evented 10 times, I'd get the hint. Yeah, yeah.

12:48I mean, yeah, why were they coming here? You know, it's a... Coming over here. It was the edge of... Yeah.

12:55Exactly. Leaving their foot. Coming out again. Same story.

DNA and Homo heidelbergensis

12:58Selina, you're a geneticist, right? Your expertise is extracting DNA from people who, as you say, have been very dead for a long time. Yes. We can't get DNA from this far back, right? No, not this far back, no. I think the oldest DNA that we've got from any human remains, not modern human, but ancient humans, is about 400,000 years old, so from Neanderthals itself, yeah. So you've got no interest in anything that Chris has ever done or studied? No, it's fascinating, and I love all of it. I just can't work on it. That's still pretty long ago, right?

13:29And that's... They were skeletal remains? Yes, so this would have been skeletal remains. The first skeletal remains in Britain are around 500,000 years ago, and these are from Boxgrove in West Sussex, and this was actually... I think it's a leg bone and a couple of teeth that have been found there in Britain. Just that. And that's enough to get a new species out of it? Yes, so that they think is... Well, there is quite a debate, isn't there, Chris, about what this actual species is.

13:59They thought it was Heidelbergensis, because it's around the right time for Heidelbergensis, right place, all good. But Chris has already mentioned this site in Spain, Atapuerca, where a lot of remains have come up from this site, and they had a huge amount of remains of Heidelbergensis that they thought were from this site. There's 29 individuals. But then when pesky people with their DNA looked at this, they said, actually, they're not Heidelbergensis. They're more likely to be very old Neanderthals. So then when the samples that we have from Boxgrove

14:30were then compared to these Atapuerca samples, they found that the teeth look really similar to them. So actually, they're possibly, probably Neanderthals, but that the leg didn't actually look anything like that. So it's still highly likely that the leg bone is different and is actually Heidelbergensis. Is it possible that the remains was like someone had bitten someone else's leg?

14:56And then, I don't know, a tiger came and tore everything away and was just left with the teeth of one dude from one species in the leg of a dude from another species? Or could they be wearing the teeth of a former victim as a necklet? As an anklet? Yeah. A beautiful anklet. And then they perished and animals feasted... Or friends, in this time, feasted on them, took it away for picnics and left just the leg bone and the remnants of the anklet.

15:28Or could someone have used a leg bone to smash out someone else's teeth?

15:34The leg bone actually was chewed on one end, probably by a wolf. Oh, OK. So, yeah, not a human as far as we know. And the teeth were in pretty bad shape. These people used to hold stuff in their jaws, maybe chewing skins, meat, whatever. And they've actually got cut marks on them where they've been cutting stuff while in their mouths. So these teeth probably may even have just fallen out of the jaw. So you're saying that British people have bad teeth even then? Yeah. It was true then, and it's maybe unfortunately true today.

16:05Yeah. So tell me, what do we know then about Homo heidelbergensis? What were they up to? Yeah, so the first remains were found near Heidelberg in Germany. So they lived in Africa and Europe, pretty certainly in Asia as well. Some of them were really big. The Boxgrove guy was huge. He would have walked into a rugby team here with no trouble. We assume male. Obviously, it's only a leg bone. But this guy was 80 or 90 kilograms and close to six foot tall.

16:35Very powerfully built. An early gym. Looking at Tim there, yeah. He's about six foot tall and very nicely built. Yeah. Yeah, and angry and don't look after my teeth. And weirdly interested in cannibalism. Yeah. Yeah. But they had big brains. How were they living? Big brains? Yeah, big brains. Do we know anything about their lifestyle? Very little about exactly where they lived. We know some of them were in caves, but these ones at Boxgrove, with the evidence we've got, is that they're out on this open landscape near the sea, coastal plain with some nice chalk cliffs behind them.

17:07They're making these beautiful hand axe tools to do butchery, and they're butchering horse and deer, and even a couple of rhinoceroses were being butchered. And that's pretty amazing, because rhinos are pretty bad-tempered beasts, and to actually think of capturing, killing a rhino to butcher it. So we don't actually know, did they scavenge this rhino? Maybe something else killed the rhino, but then they drove it away, because they got primary access. All the butchery marks, they really systematically went over the carcass, they got the brains out,

17:38they broke open the bones to get the marrow, and they probably ate the meat raw on the spot. I think we call it whole carcass butchery. I'm just wondering whether Tim's werewolf theory might have something to say about the rhino. Yeah, totally. Could a werewolf take out a rhino? Definitely. Do we know? Chris, have you ever considered the... No, let's not do that at all. So you're saying they might have eaten this rhino raw. What about fires? Were Neanderthals able to light fires, do we think? There's evidence people were using fire probably much earlier than they were able to make it.

18:08So they probably captured natural fires. So if there was a forest fire, if there was fire from a volcano or something like that, people early on probably learnt to capture it and keep it going, at least for a period of time, and use it then for cooking and warmth and so on. But actually making fire, the really good evidence comes much later. And we've got evidence from Britain at 400,000 years, from a site in Suffolk, where they've got two little pieces of an iron mineral that can be used to make a spark,

18:39and that this actually has been brought into the site. It's not natural to the site. So we think they at least started to have the capability to make fire at will 400,000 years ago. That's like hundreds of years where they were having to just wander around with a candle going, don't go out, don't go out, don't go out, don't go out. Like just a burning leaf. That's a lot of pressure. It is, yeah. They might have been able to make it early, we just don't have the evidence of it. So I want you to do some of the evolutionary tree here, because we've talked about Heidelbergensis and we've talked about Homo anteceso, and these are the first people that we've got physical remains for in Britain.

19:10How do they relate to subsequent species, Neanderthals and us? Yeah, so there's a lot of dispute about how they relate to us. So I used to think that Heidelbergensis was the common ancestor of us and Neanderthals. So the Heidelbergensis is in Africa, went on to evolve into us, Homo sapiens in Africa, and the Heidelbergensis in Europe and Asia went on to evolve into Neanderthals. Now that doesn't look so likely, because we've got evidence, and Selina's mentioned earlier, the Neanderthal lineage is going back deep in time.

19:42We can tell that from DNA and from fossils. And the Sapiens lineage is going back. And Heidelbergensis, some of the fossils are actually younger. So there's a fossil from Africa of Heidelbergensis, from Zambia, and we've dated it to about 300,000 years. So Heidelbergensis was actually living alongside the evolving Neanderthal and Sapiens lineages. So it looks like it's a related form, but deeper in time, not our ancestor, and not the ancestor of Neanderthals. So it could be a side branch, and that's what we see in human evil.

20:13So a lot of diversity, and a lot of these other lineages die out along the way. And of course, we're the last ones left of all these experiments in how to be human. For now.

Neanderthals and modern humans

20:23Selina, what does the DNA say to us about how they related to each other? And can we tell if they were getting off with each other ever? There's a lot of what we call introgression. Right. Yeah. Which is getting off with each other.

20:39So there's been some new studies recently that are looking at modern DNA and trying to find things like ghost lineages. So trying to understand where different people came from. And so some of these ideas, as then with Hodderbergensis as well, is that this might be one of these ghost lineages that has input their DNA in the past and been an ancestor, and then introgressed again, possibly around 50,000 years ago as well. Well, ghost lineages sounds really cool. It's all a bit detective mystery stuff.

21:09Can we just dispel some of the ideas that we have about these sort of grunting cavemen that, Chris, you've already alluded to, would just walk into a rugby team? But I think we can make them more sophisticated than that. Neanderthals have got an image problem and it goes right back to their first discoveries. People who believed in evolution thought there should be the so-called missing link, something halfway between an ape and a human. And because there weren't any really early fossils from Africa, Neanderthals got pushed into that place of being a sort of missing link.

21:40So they were often portrayed as ape men, shambling, long arms and bent forward, very hairy. And most of what we know about them now is that they were very human. Their brains were as large as ours. They had a lot of complex behaviour. We mentioned the fire-making for a start. And I remember a few years ago there was some suggestion that Neanderthals might have had ginger hair.

22:04Yep. I think I've seen a reproduction of a Neanderthal that was a bit ginge. Very good-looking. So that's ancient DNA analysis. Where do we stand on that? It's not true, is it? I think there were some ginger genes there. Yeah. But the most important ones were the FOXP2 genes to do with language genes, so that they have very similar voice boxes. And the anatomy is the same. So, yeah, they would likely have had communication. And there's an ear bone as well. They would have had a similar hearing,

22:35is my understanding, Neanderthals. And now, you know, this is 15 years old now, but it's still quite shocking, Selina, that now that we've got DNA out of Neanderthal bones, we've got a much clearer evidence base for the relationship, the introgression, what we were up to with them. I'm going to start calling it introgression.

22:56Yes. Although we don't think that in Britain, Neanderthals and modern humans probably overlapped or introgressed. We're talking about shagging, aren't we? Yeah, we are. Jess is going to go home and put down to introgress on her Tinder profile.

23:11It's also called gene flow events as well. Oh, yeah. And they say romance. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying. All seafood is wild-caught, like their vibrant sockeye salmon or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup.

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26:05So, the gene flow events between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Yeah, limited to none in Britain, but in the continent, oh yes, there is, there's a lot going on there. Don't tell me they were already having more sex in France.

26:22More DTI. For about, yeah, for about 6,000 to 7,000 years, there is an awful lot of integration going on between them. It's a particular bugbear of mine that when we refer to Neanderthals as our evolutionary cousins, they're not. They're our evolutionary ancestors because your great-great-great-great-great times 40 grandmother jagged a Neanderthal. What is actually quite interesting is that there's been some recent studies that it was actually sex-biased, though. Oh. So, this interactions was actually a lot more

26:53with Neanderthal males and anatomically modern females. It was definitely shifted in that direction. They liked the strong silent pipes, maybe. When you said about the ear bones, maybe they were good listeners. I did a DNA test and found I had no Neanderthal DNA and felt quite bereft. I'm sorry. You know, I've got a bit of a prehensile jaw and I'm ginger. I thought, surely I'm a bit Neanderthal, but nothing. You need a second opinion. Yeah.

27:27Well, look, let's skip forward a few tens of thousands of years into the era when DNA is really informative for Britain's inhabitants.

Ice age caves and ancient dogs

27:35And so, we can move a bit west now. So, Cheddar Gorge is where some of the action happens, Selina. Absolutely. Cheddar Gorge is a wonderful, amazing place, particularly for DNA. It's incredibly well preserved there. So, some of the oldest DNA that we've recovered from Britain, from people, is from 15,000 years ago from Goss Cave, but also from a second cave, so from Kendrick's Caves in Wales, and they died about 13,500 years ago. But what's quite weird is you've got the two oldest people through the DNA

28:06at this time point, but they come from two very different cultures. So, you have a Magdalenian culture who are very arty. They're good at their cave art. They're good with figurines and needles and shawks. Yes, good. And harpoons. Yeah, really detailed harpoons. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And so, you get these people coming in to Goss Cave, and then you also have these Western hunter-gatherers, who are not quite as creative, but still very culturally adept, coming in and going into Wales. So, two different groups coming into Britain

28:37at the same time, around 15,000 years ago. They're coming from the continent, from Europe, so the Magdalenians, probably from France, Spain, they would have moved up into Britain as the glaciers were retreating. And these are all sapiens? Yes, modern humans. Yeah. And there's another bit to the story recently, the dogs. Oh, yeah, no. Goss Cave is just a treasure trove of goodies. Yeah. So, we also found from this same period, canard remains from the same cave. And people looked at this canard and were like,

29:07ooh, morphologically, this is actually quite small. Maybe this is a dog rather than a wolf. So, up until this point, all the canard remains that had been found. Is this right? Even if they'd been small and there'd been excitement about it being a dog, it had all turned out to be a wolf. A wolf. Yeah, a wolf. Yeah, they were all wolves. This one? No, not this one. When we did the genetic analysis on it, it actually turned out to be a domesticated dog. In fact, the world's oldest, or right now, genetically proven, oldest known, currently oldest known

29:37dog to have been discovered from Goss Cave. And that is really cool. What type of dog is it? Brutal. Man's breast friend. So, this is a canine domesticus. This is genetically more like my grudal than a wolf. A what? What's a grudal? A golden retriever poodle. Oh. They're ubiquitous in Australia. Are they? Yeah, interaggression. It means I get my golden retriever but don't get the sneezes. Oh, it turns out, yeah, wolves and dogs

30:07didn't interaggress. So, canine domesticus, it was human selection of timid wolves over generations. Yeah, we don't know the exact process. You can imagine maybe wolves more chill. Timid ones, chilled ones might come by the fire, people might start feeding them, you can see the benefits for humans to having someone to guard for them, someone to look out when they're sleeping. There's a lot of advantages. At what point does the genetic drift caused by us selecting

30:37for more and more timid, smaller, less bitey wolves mean one day, oh, this one's not a wolf anymore. Where's that day? We reckon it happened at least 20,000 years ago because at 15,000 years ago this dog is looking like Fido. And the diet's different, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So, in one of the sites where we found these dogs, you look at the food that the dog's been given, you look at the isotopes. Came out of a can. Yeah, not then.

31:05We checked the label on the can, yeah. And when you say it's a small dog, what type of dog is it? What did you say? A groodle? Yeah. What does it look like? It just looked more like a wolf. They thought it was a wolf bone to start with. I mean, maybe Alsatian size. Yeah, or our size. Yeah, so I think as the investigation process goes, yeah, the snouts change. They get smaller. Paws change as well and they just become a bit more bog-like. You know, it's... Any sapien canine introgression? I just needed to say

31:35something. I just want to make sure something I say gets cut out of the board. Just as a matter of pride. So if they are, these are hunters and this is 10,000 years ago. 15,000. Hunters and artists mingling together. Oh. Yeah. But agriculture is beginning at this point so the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is on the way out in Western Europe. So the hunter-gatherers hang around for a bit longer. They hang around until about 6,000 years ago.

Cheddar Man and ancient skin tones

32:04And we've got Cheddar Man, haven't we? Yes. Last name Cheddar, last name Man. So did we learn loads then from this guy compared to what we knew before? Yeah, so Cheddar Man is an interesting character. He is actually the oldest, most complete skeleton ever found in Britain. All the ones we've been talking about before, I mean, a bit of jawbone, a tooth, a leg bone. Whereas Cheddar Man is almost complete skeleton. He was found in 1903 by workmen digging a drainage ditch. But he actually, yeah, dated to 10,000 years old.

32:36So he is one of these classic hunter-gatherer individuals, again, found in Gough's Cave. And he's called Cheddar Man because they were dairy farmers? Not at that point, no. We still haven't got to the agriculture. Cheddar Man, because he was found in Cheddar Gorge. Yeah, that makes much more sense. He'd have digested cheese very well. No. He'd have been lactose intolerant. He would, yes. What else do we know about him if he's lactose intolerant? Do we know what he'd have been eating? So he, as a hunter-gatherer at that time, he would have been eating things like reindeer and deer,

33:08bison. Any cereals, though, and stuff? No, not a lot of cereals at that point. Plant materials, obviously. Hazelnuts? Yeah. That kind of woodland. Quite a varied diet. Yeah, quite varied. Yeah, the Mesolithic, think of sites like Starchar, you've got all the evidence of the seeds and fruits that they were eating. So a varied diet. Yeah, which changes when you get agriculture coming in. Why is he so complete? You know, these are thousands of years, tens of thousands of years old, and mostly we find teeth and bits of fragments. But Mr Man,

33:38sorry, Mr Cheddar Man, they're all called Man, aren't they? Boxgrove is also called Man. Yeah. Anyway, why is he so complete? First ones with proper names. Steve. Steve. Steve Man. Why is he so complete? He might be a burial. We don't know. It could have been a burial, and that will obviously preserve the bones better. Or he could have just pulled in there and died. He might have even washed in there because they have these floods. So we don't really know for sure how he got there. He went for a wash in a flood? Washed in there in a flood.

34:09Oh, he got washed in there. Yeah, because you get the rivers when there's a flooding event. Yeah. When there's a flooding event in Cheddar Gorge, the water surges into the cave. Yeah, no, I do know what flood is. My bad. He might have drowned. All right, so you get DNA out of Mr Cheddar Man. Indeed. Where from in his bones? Oh, from his inner ear bone, actually. The petrous bone. It's actually the densest bone in the body, and so it preserves the DNA inside skeletal remains, including animals, a lot better than any other bone.

34:40If you reach behind your ear, you can feel that really hard bit. Yeah. It's just really good for protecting DNA over tens of thousands of years. Yeah, so I literally did put a drill into Cheddar Man's ear to get his DNA out. All right, so you drill into this poor guy's long dead ear. Yes. And what do you get out? A lot of bone powder at that point, but then we do go through chemical processes and then retrieve his DNA. So from his DNA, we were actually really interested in looking at this change from hunter-gatherer to Neolithic farmer

35:12and trying to understand why people started farming in Britain. Because like you were just saying, hunter-gatherer, very varied diet. Actually doing very well. And then people start farming. And if you look at the skeletal remains from people at that time, they're not looking that good. The diet's changed. It's minimised. I think humans, modern humans, have always been happy to suffer as long as they get to be lazy. Like AI is basically, it's going to destroy us, but at least we get to not do as much work. And then we can just like

35:42happily, lazily go to our demise. And that started with the dude after Cheddar Man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they could just surround. Just like, yeah, conveniencing ourselves into meaninglessness is how I phrase it. Sorry, is that a bit dire? But he's had a really, really interesting afterlife because once you get his DNA out, what everyone wants to know is what does he look like? Indeed they did, yes. That wasn't actually the purpose of what we were doing, but he had really well-preserved DNA. So one of the classic things that you do then

36:12is to look at the different genes, to look at things like are they lactose tolerance? But then people were interested in what he looked like. So we looked at genes associated with pigmentation. So we looked at things like eye colour, skin pigmentation, hair colour. And so we were able to actually do a reconstruction of what Cheddar Man looked like, this iconic individual. And was he or wasn't he fit? We've got the reconstruction in the NHM, so you can come and have a look

36:43and see what you think. Okey-dokey. This was not an unproblematic thing to have happened. Yeah, it did ruffle some feathers. Yes, some racist feathers. Yes, it did. Because the DNA says he was quite dark-skinned. Yes, that's correct. But had blue eyes. Yes, that's correct. Now, how confident are we about that? Fairly confident, yeah. I'm going to stick by that, absolutely. Right. And then the next thing that happens is a bust is made. And that's really when the trouble began, isn't it? Because the bust of Cheddar Man,

37:14Steve, is very dark-skinned. Now, how confident are we about that? It depends on the lighting, how dark he looks. Under the lighting in the museum, you'll see that he's kind of medium dark, not really dark. But of course, yes, some of my social media feed, you could imagine that you saw some of the stuff. You probably got it yourself on social media, your comments about it and how we were trying to show that, you know, the first Britons were Africans and all the rest of it, which, you know, it was really what the data suggested. It's a weird thing to worry about,

37:44like, of all the things, to look at this unbelievable thing that science has helped us create to go, well, he doesn't look white like me. Sorry, I shouldn't do that accent. It's like, he doesn't look white like me. Like, it's the weirdest reaction. Like, what have you got at stake in someone 10,000 years old? It could be pink or green. It just doesn't... Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, it's a weird reaction. But it wasn't the first person who'd been shown to have that skin pigmentation.

38:14But there just wasn't the publicity about it. Wait till these guys see Jesus. And here he is. It even feels intriguing to me that we so specifically looked for lactose intolerance. That's such a, such a specific intolerance. Oh, is it because it's a gene that easy to... Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to work that out than whether they were sort of... Did he like olives? Yeah.

38:45We probably could have chatted if he liked Brussels sprouts or not. Yeah. I don't know your response to that. We should go back and check now. So, I think what's interesting is just leaving aside all that cultural nonsense, it is not the first, but it's really clear evidence that people with significantly dark skin, so the same skin tones as people of the recent African diaspora, sub-Saharan Africa, were present in Western Europe 10,000 years ago. Mm-hmm. Right? Yep. So, that's just not even controversial now because of your work.

39:15Yep.

Unresolved questions of human survival

39:16Yeah.

Unresolved questions of human survival

39:17So, we know so much. How much have we got left to find, potentially, in terms of artefacts and evidence of ancient peoples in Britain? Loads. That's kind of exciting, right? In the beginning of the story, it's still really... We've got those few footprints and a few stone tools, but what do they look like? Until we find the fossils, we won't know. And is 900,000 really the earliest time? Because we've got people in Southern Europe well over a million years. So, they could have got here even earlier. So, there's a lot of the story we don't know.

39:47And as Selina said, us and Neanderthals, we know they may have overlapped in Britain. We can't prove it at the moment. 40,000 years ago, the Neanderthals were physically dying out across the whole world. They were still in Britain 44,000 years ago and Homo sapiens was here 40,000 years ago. So, there's that tantalising gap that we'd love to know what happened here. I want to know more about that tantalising gap. And will that help to explain why modern humans won out? Do we know that why? Yeah, that is one of the big questions.

40:19And I'm writing a book about that at the moment, actually. That should be ready next year. And, yeah, why are we the last ones left out of all of these different kinds of humans? And we don't have the right answer. One idea was we're the ones who had complex language, but that doesn't seem to be a good enough answer to me because it's not just Neanderthals disappearing. There were these people called the Denissimans living over in the Far East, another group of humans who were very successful for hundreds of thousands of years. They disappeared as well, but also did see interbreeding. So, we didn't evolve from them,

40:50but we've got their DNA as well. So, these people didn't completely die out, but they physically disappeared. And it more or less coincided with Homo sapiens spreading into their regions. So, you think we must be to blame, but they didn't die out straight away. It's nowhere near farming, though, right? Because if it intersected with farming, you can imagine the sapiens invented this thing and then protected their land and it became, like, sort of colonisation, wiping them out or whatever. But it's way before that, isn't it? Neanderthals were gone 30,000 years before farming.

41:20Yeah, I think there could have been competition for resources, but we're talking about really small numbers of people. At best, tens of thousands of people spread over very wide areas. So, they're at low density, and yet we did end up taking over. But did we... Obviously, they're going to want to hunt the same animals, collect the same plant resources, wanting to live in the best places. So, there could have been a sort of competition, but even if there was, why did we win, if you want to put it that way? Can it not just be xenophobia? I mean, is it not just that we are competitive with... Is it tribalism? Maybe they just hated each other.

41:51Could sapiens have just killed... I mean, mention the cannibalism, and there's even a few claims of violence on Neanderthals, which might have been done by Homo sapiens, and obviously, it could have even gone the other way. But there's no good evidence of that. There's obviously evidence of them coming together from the interbreeding, and that happened quite a bit, it seems, in that short time zone. But they were small in number, and they were low in diversity. They could have been an endangered species near the end of their time. So maybe we just absorbed

42:22the last remnants of them, and that's how they disappeared. But the Denisovans were much more widespread, and that's more of a problem explaining why they disappeared. It's a Doctor Who episode waiting to be made, isn't it? A long way away from Britain now, though, with Denisovans. Well, all right, let's bring it back to Britain, because, you know, the premise was who were the first Britons, and I don't feel like we've got to the bottom of that. So I want to ask all of our guests, come on, we need an answer. Who were the first Britons? Chris Stringer. If we mean the first human inhabitants, then it's Homo antecesa, at my best guess. But in terms of Homo sapiens,

42:53the oldest fossils are in Devon and Wales. Selina, you're going with that? I am going with that, but if we're going to say continuous occupation, then I've got to stick with my cheddar man, man. OK, well, I'm not a scientist, so I'm just going to go with the naming pattern and say Swindon woman. Very good. Um, yeah, and she actually rode in on the back of a hippo all the way from Greece. I have no idea. I'm an interloper.

43:23It's a scientifically intriguing, beautiful puzzle, but the sort of idea that one conclusion or the other will say something about me is so far outside my comprehension. And just one thing to add is because Cheddar Man isn't even much of an ancestor of the Britons of today, is he? Most of his DNA didn't come through to us today. No, those Neolithic farmers came in. So how much of a Briton is he in modern terms? He's hardly a Briton at all, is he? No, not at all, actually. Genetically, he didn't really make much of an impact. That politics question

43:53that Tim's talking about is really interesting because a few thousand years later, we, and we know this from the DNA, we get a complete population replacement where the entire population of these islands is replaced in the period of about, well, it's about 200 years or something crazy short. By whom? Spanish people. Ugh, Spanish people. As an Australian, of course, this is all intriguing. In Australia, it's unbelievably clear who the first Australians were and their extent. And it's this one little group who spread out

44:25and became numerous, but not particularly, who lived as hunter-gatherers forever. And only yesterday got trampled on. So it's really clear in Britain it's been a schmuzzle for so long that it seems sort of obtuse. If you can get the word schmuzzle into your book and your next scientific book, full credit. Don't mind if you quote me. We'll try it. To Tim Minchin. Schmuzzle man.

Objects left for future archaeologists

44:48OK, we asked our audience a question. If you were going to leave an object behind for archaeologists to find in 100,000 years into the future to inform or confuse them, what would it be and why? Jeremy says, a Tesco meal deal.

45:07And an Argos catalogue circa 1998.

45:12Horace says, my Tamagotchi, it will be hungry. Colin says, a Nokia 3310 mobile phone. It's the only thing from the 21st century that would survive for 100,000 years. And the battery would still be at 80%. Thank you to all of our guests, Chris Stringer, Selina Brace and Tim Minchin. Join us next week and we'll be talking about absolutely nothing. As in, nothing. The theme is nothing. The science of nothing. The science of what?

45:42The science of... Goodbye. Bye. APPLAUSE Till now, nice again.

46:03Boo, how are you? It is Danny here, just dropping into your feed to let you know that something very exciting is coming your way. There is a chill in the air, the evenings are drawing in, it can only mean one thing. It is time to get ready for the spookiest night of the year, Paranormal Christmas, with our annual Halloween countdown. Every day in October, we are going to be releasing a brand new tiny tale of terror, a mini uncanny case

46:34sent in by you, the uncanny community. I'm going to be reading your emails out and sharing some truly spooky stuff that will scare the living shizzle out of you. Trust me. There will be hauntings, time slips, apparitions, and some truly weird and wonderful real-life witness accounts of poltergeists, ghost dogs, and even some phantom false teeth. So, that is the uncanny Halloween countdown dropping every day right through to Halloween itself. Will you be there?

47:05I hope so. Until then, stay spooky. Is World War II back up for debate? I'm Tristan Redmond, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. If you live in Europe or the US, the chances are you thought the rights and wrongs of World War II were mostly settled, which is why some of us were surprised to find out that the podcaster Tucker Carlson not only disagreed,

47:36but he's been podcasting about it with a British politician. Today on the show, we explore why. Listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you listen.