9. THE SEVENTH SON: THE HISTORY OF HUMANS

After millennia of Homo sapiens imagining itself to be entirely unique, in 1856 we discovered another sort of human: the Neanderthals. And in the 21st Century another, and then another. The scientific impact of these discoveries was immense, and today thanks to new molecular techniques in archaeology and genetics these ancient relations still beguile us, representing something at once so alike but also different; extinct, yet with a legacy of surviving DNA in all living people. This 'philosophy of Neanderthals', a point of cultural and existential fascination, has always existed at the intersections of science and literature, and this conversation will explore the history of such ideas. Sebastian Faulks, Adam Rutherford, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes discuss what Neanderthals tell us about our origins and nature, about evolution and fate, and what it means to be the last surviving form of humanity.