Brains

How a rapidly changing climate in the Rift Valley forced our ancestors to change their behaviour in the crucible of human evolution.

The way our ancestors might have behaved isn’t preserved in the fossil record, but clues can be found in the behaviour of our closest cousins.

Grandparents caring for their grandchildren allows for larger families and increases reproduction. A vital role for the elderly.

Grandmothers and grandfathers would not only pass on important information to the younger generation, but by supporting their children and grandchildren, they would help the human population to expand, and eventually spread across the globe.

Neanderthal Man shared Europe with Homo sapiens for centuries, but Homo sapiens prevailed. What became of the Homo neanderthalensis?

So, if they had brains as big as ours, and were just as clever as us, why did Neanderthals die out, while we went on to flourish? In the centuries before the Neanderthals’ demise, there was dramatic climate change across Europe.

Language allows us to teach and learn. To share ideas and build on the knowledge of those who have gone before.

Using language to share ideas, we could build on the knowledge and culture on those who had gone before us. Over time, our brains evolved to be much larger than those of all our ancestors.

Homo erectus is possible the first of our ancestors to be recognisable as a human with the toolmaking ingenuity to succeed.

For over a million years, the hand-axe was the cutting edge of stone tool technology. A hand-axe together with the flakes that come off it, constitute an incredibly versatile tool kit.

Humans have come a long way in the last 5 million years as our family tree shows.

Today, our brains are almost four times the volume of our earliest ancestors, shaping the way we think and behave.

Understanding visual signals from the eyes allows us to read th minds of others.

Reading visual signals allows us to guess what the other is thinking.

Chimpanzee, our closest cousin, behaviour sheds a light on our own, human behaviour and may help explain our common encestry.

But we differ from chimpanzee, our closest cousins, in a very important way. Our ancestors developed a mental ability so useful that it’s written into our faces today.

Our Brain, our superior human brain, sets us aside from other apes but it has a cost. Humans can not give birth unaided.

Humans are the only species that need help to give birth. Our babies’ heads are so big that it’s astounding they can get out at all.