Professor Alice Roberts - Origins of Us: Human Anatomy and Evolution
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Published 2012-07-13
Alice Roberts, Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham presents a lecture in association with the Great Read At Birmingham (GRAB) project.
Clinical anatomist, author and broadcaster Alice Roberts gave her lecture as part of the Darwin Day celebrations, with a focus on the anatomy and evolution of humans as a species.
'We are all members of a very special species. Whilst our anatomy and physiology is undoubtedly that of an ape, we have done things that no other ape can do, and become the most successful ape on the planet. Today, our global population numbers almost seven billion; we survive and thrive everywhere from the tropics to the Arctic.
So just what is it that makes us so special? In some ways we are so similar to our closest cousins, chimpanzees, but it's also clear that we are a world apart. But we can understand ourselves, how we got to where we are today, by going back into our deep past, to the time when we were just another African ape. And then tracing the small changes that over time, and unpredictably, led to us becoming human.
The answers to the question of 'what makes us human?' lie buried in the ground in the form of fossils and traces of our ancestors, but also lie deep within the form and function of our bodies.'
Transcript available on request. Contact: [email protected]
All Comments (21)
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Alice Roberts is a national treasure
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She's brilliant in her presentations, so academically knowledgeable, so fluid and didactic but so naturally fresh at the same time.
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Great lecture. Alice is fabulous. It boggles the mind how our smarter brains have enabled us to build and create so much on earth.
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Absolutely wonderful! You bring common sense and the understanding of direct experience to the science of anthropology. Thank you.
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Alice Roberts is fantastic! So clear, informed, humorous, even self-effacing. University of Birmingham is lucky to have her. I look forward to more from Dr. Roberts in the future.
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I wish the audio wouldn’t cut out. I find lectures like this to be so interesting that I don’t want to miss anything
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Could listen to Alice for hours so interesting
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She exudes an aura of playful confidence. If modern society needed to send a time traveler to long gone epochs, Alice would garner my vote. I think she could make the most what she would observe and parallel that info to what is popularly thought in today's science. And probably do a smashing job of separating the wheat from the chafe ! Bravo Alice, big fan talkin'.
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Whatever she said, that was the best lecture I ever watched. 😏😏
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People in the future will study us and find out our brains shrank just around the time social media was invented
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What a great lecture, she really manages to keep you interested, and she made some pretty good jokes which had me laughing, though apparently not her audience.
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How can you not love Dr. Roberts?
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Looking forward to seeing Alice later this month in London. A clear and concise communicator of science.
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A lovely Bristol Girl--I used to see her on her bike around the city. She's not referring to notes or constantly checking a prompter. She simply knows her subject--BRILLIANTLY.
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Too bad this lecture wasn't 3 hours long. Professor Roberts is a dream to listen to
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still a truly charming and informative lecture over a decade later
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Dr Alice is a fine example of what evolution has been progressing towards, a beautiful intelligent mind. Hopefully the younger generation will still evolve towards that.
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Love this woman............could listen to her for hours. Hope she makes more TV series in the future.
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Astonishing postulation of a link between brain size and social complexity. Dr. Roberts is amazing in how she stitches all these concepts together. Not a tree, not even a bush, but a soup.
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Everything she does is interesting and well presented, and like all good teachers she is continuously learning more herself.
