Heads, shoulders, knees and toes

7:30PM Thursday 22 June 2017 The King's Arms
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes: a nursery rhyme seven million years in the making

Every child grows up singing that classic song about the human body. But whilst they might learn all about what the different human bits are, they're less likely to learn why they are that way. To answer that question we have to take a journey seven million years into the past; back to when our ancestors split off from the other apes and began their own evolutionary track. So join me as we break down our species' history bit by bit, following the classic song through millions of years of human (pre)history. The resulting discussion might not rhyme as well as that song, but it should leave you with a new found respect for how evolution continues to influence our lives.

BONUS CONTENT: Woo and You: Pseudoscience in Human Evolution, covering some of the wackier claims about our ancestors, ranging from cannibalism, lost continents and creationism.

Adam Benton is a PhD student at the University of Liverpool studying human evolution.