Professor Alice Roberts - Origins of Us: Human Anatomy and Evolution
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- čas přidán 12. 07. 2012
- Friday 10 February 2012, 4-5pm
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: l.j.radbourne@bham.ac.uk
Alice Roberts is a national treasure
Great lecture. Alice is fabulous. It boggles the mind how our smarter brains have enabled us to build and create so much on earth.
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.
Could listen to Alice for hours so interesting
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'.
People in the future will study us and find out our brains shrank just around the time social media was invented
Your comment reads like a joke, but I fear it might be true.
How true 😆😆😆 not a joke . Funny to me just the same . But they better hurry I don't think there's that much future left . Extinction is upon the human race. Quite possibly self destruction the cause . The planet will get along better without humans .
@@michaelasbury1521
No chance. We're more resilient than cockroaches.
We've survived near extinction before.
The planet never has had a clue we ever existed. It's a planet.
Stone and bone and wood technology survived and thrived through the last 2.5 million year long ice age. And warmer weather before and interglacial periods during.
We are infinitely better prepared now for any worst case scenario.
Another Chicxulub event couldn't take us all out.
Humans hack it.
You know, even the ancient Greek philosophers where worried about the youth generation. I think it will turn out ok... We have never had som easy access to so much splendid information ever in the history of the humans.
@@ferengiprofiteer9145 we will probably wipe ourselves out with a 3rd World War. I support Musk's push toward Mars colonization as insurance against ourselves
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
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.
I'm a big fan of Alice. Glad to see she is working in the home of my ancestors.
Most teachers/professors are like that. They are all amazing people. This talk was excellent. I couldn’t get enough of it.i am going to go find her documentary.
TheGrimReaper please enlighten us, why is she leading us in the wrong direction?
She also worked at Pizza Hut in Bristol when she was a student (late 90s) with a friend of mine. Coincidentally that friend was studying illustration at UWE and drew parts of anatomy from life (more accurately from death) in the city mortuary. Though I don't think they ever worked together in that setting!
@@nixodian why do you believe it is the wrong direction?
Absolutely wonderful! You bring common sense and the understanding of direct experience to the science of anthropology. Thank you.
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.
she has every single human plus, that could be appreciated.
Whatever she said, that was the best lecture I ever watched. 😏😏
How can you not love Dr. Roberts?
She is a wonderful,informed speaker,an academic,a surgeon and other things ,and also if the truth were told for us males,she is eye candy as well !!!
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.
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.
Don’t count on it
evolution is not necessarily in the direction of increased intelligence.
Looking forward to seeing Alice later this month in London. A clear and concise communicator of science.
Too bad this lecture wasn't 3 hours long. Professor Roberts is a dream to listen to
A beautiful woman holding an ugly animal... I am not sure if enjoying seeing that.
Dreamy full stop my man.. just dreamy full stop.. especially that knowledge.. wow..
She is not telling anything though. Empty lecture.
You don't find all the "um" ticks in her speech annoying? I find it very detracting from what she's saying.
She loves the subject, it is quite obvious in her nonverbal body language. I can listen to anyone who is passionate and knowledgeable about the subject on which they are speaking, however I thoroughly enjoy listening a knowledgeable female with a pleasant voice - probably goes back to my childhood.
I could look and listen to Professor Roberts all day long...Amazingly intelligent and beautiful.
Love this woman............could listen to her for hours. Hope she makes more TV series in the future.
By now ,you will know your wish came true
I kind of wish they would’ve shown a screen shot of the projection mixed with closeups of the professor, but it’s a very deep subject and she presents it beautifully
What an evolutionary story. Excellent Prof.
Thanks for the great journey you took us through!
I first saw Alice Roberts on Time Team and she impressed me then and in all the programs I've watched since where she is in the program or is the host/presenter she has always been very positive in her material and approach.
I like the idea she presents the value of elderly for society - that's infact a really important thing, to help progression by giving back knowledge and insights and wisdom to the people around you.
GreenichViper the only other other that goes into menopause are the orca whales. One thing about orca whales is that the males stay with their mother for life. They will go off have sex but come right back to their mothers. So a pod of them are the mom the sons (no matter the age) and the young one (male and female). Their must be a value to the males to stay with her. Which is consistent about what she says about menopausal human women and possible value. My point is that the orcas kind of back up what she is saying. As far as we know no other mammal except orcas and humans do menopause. Strange that it is so rare in the mammal kingdom and by two species so far apart.
///to help progression by giving back knowledge and insights and wisdom to the people around you.///
Yeah, but we've got facebook and instagram now, so old people are no longer needed ...apparently.
That was the norm for most of humanity's past. There are holdovers in societies with some remnant of their pre-consumerist traditions, like Japan for example, with its cultural memory of a tifme in which the elderly had an integral social role. In their case, it's preserved as a general respect for older generations, relatively speaking, and a duty to personally take care of them (often in the same home as one's spouse and kids) instead of warehousing them out of sight and mind until they die. Even that, however, is an echo of the way it once was. Up until relatively recently, the elderly who fwere still of sound mind were viewed as a repository of practical, cultural, and spiritual knowledge as a simple consequence of their age. "Progress" was imperceptible and things seemed static for most of humanity (e.g. look at the technology used in AD 0 versus AD 1000) If you were born into a way of life, you would likely learn the same occupation as your parents using the same tools, which you would then pass on to your children. Change was so gradual that it was measured in centuries, if not millennia, depending on how far back we're considering. Things accelerated with the industrial revolution so that obvious change occurred every couple generations and their grandparents' practical knowledge, while still relevant in many ways, was becoming proportionately less-so. By the time the 20th Century rolled around, that upward curve of technological advancement was already steep enough that a single individual could see it growing higher and higher within their own lifetime. Regimes that had stretched back to the Middle Ages were collapsing as "tradition" failed to act as a bulwark against the tides of modernity, led by increasingly-educated younger generations with access to education their (grand)parents couldn't have dreamed.
Ever since we entered this exponential curve of technological development, paired with social revolution after social revolution, one generation's technology and norms are the next generation's relics. In the post-WWII world, with the US at the forefront, consumption became a virtue and high-value products in concert with ad agencies honed-in on the bourgeoning youth demographic, eventually leading to the youth-dominated culture with live in today. Of course a culture in which technological change occurs at blinding speed would be obsessed with the most cutting edge stuff (especially when it's intertwined with social status), and it only makes sense that the youngest generations would become the centre of that culture, having grown up in a world with a similar level of tech that they take it for granted, and would, therefore, find intuitive in a way older generations might not. That's not to mention the fact that the young of any generation are naturally programmed to take-in new information in order to learn and adapt to their surroundings, and are hyper-vigilant of trends because they spend so much time in the cultural petri-dish that is high-school and college. My point: a society obsessed with _"the new"_ is going to build a culture and economy focused on youth culture. It wasn't always this way, but especially from the '50s onward, Western-inspired consumer societies have progressively shifted the central demographic around which the entire culture revolves from younger to younger age groups. I'm not trying to come off as some grumpy old dude decrying the changing world; I'm a millennial and I love technology, but I also grew up in a really close extended family and hate the thought that some elderly are treated as if they've been sapped of their usefullness and are waiting to die. It cheers me up to hear that they likely do serve an important evolutionary role, as we are a highly-social species that's simply living in highly-irregular circumstances.
Old people are the Windows 95 of today... no longer used or compatible with any current hardware and of no interest to current users...
It's very nice to hear a bit of Bristol accent. I studied biology there but at the Polytechnic now the university of the West I think.
Now my neighbours are wondering. I watched this late at night, and started applauding with the video audience at the end. Anyhow, a great video, well presented and full of very interesting information. Thanks to all who worked on this, and brought it forward to CZcams.
Everything she does is interesting and well presented, and like all good teachers she is continuously learning more herself.
She is great. Need more educational talks like this!
then she shares it with us.
I have such a crush on Dr. Roberts. She's brilliant.
omg same
I'm seeing her in person at hertford theater this month.
I I’m in front of you mate, thanks you 😊😊😊
Only 52 creationists have watched this. What they are missing. Brilliant Alice 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer no that's not what Eldridge said at all. The fossil record simply shows a punctuated equilibrium, which is to say, long periods of stasis and then short periods of rapid evolution. That's just a modification of Darwin's original idea which was continual small changes.
_natural selection simply keeps a species strong and mutations cause cancer or death. They don't perpetuate life_
Mutations are either beneficial, malign or neutral. Most are neutral.
_They don't perpetuate life_
They sure do.
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer Either way life had to come from somewhere.
Though it is difficult to quantify this claim, I do need to assert it. If you only have time to explore two researchers and the topic of evolution, I highly recommend this Alice Roberts talk as well as anything by Robert Sapolsky. Both enlightening researchers are the rare gems of the CZcams-a-verse. 🌻
Where in the world is the stress to drive mutation coupled with productivity?
I really enjoyed this presentation. And I learned a lot. Thanks, Prof. Roberts!
She’s got the most beautiful smile. It’s so pleasant to listen to her.
Alice Roberts in a mega star.
Love these kind of lectures, ive followed Alice Roberts in many a program, so informative and interesting weather your into anatomy, archeology etc, its all about learning, we still have lots of answers to find, and this is the science of it all, and once again, this proves that God did not create man!
A great lecture. A pity the slides weren't shown full on screen but at a distance.
I am so chuffed for you, I have always watched your programmes and have seen you mature into a fantastic orator. Your parents must be very proud of you.
Could listen to alice roberts all day every day very interesting lady and highly intelligent
I just saw her at Hereford, she is absolutely brilliant at what she does. Such an engaging person, thank god (!) We have some people like her in our lives.
Great presentation. Thought almost 10 years ago, it's still uptodate!
fantastic lecture surmising everything in short time.
What an amazing Lecture. 50min of gaining Knowledge a time well spent! Thank you Dr. Roberts!
Alice Robert's book on Human evolution (Evolution, the Human Story) is absolutely wonderful. I can recommend it to everybody interested in this stuff.
Fantastic lecture on Human Evaluation .
I've watched her in many documentaries, I like and I enjoy learning from her.
I watched her in a documentary too, she was trying get us to believe that woolly mammoths lived on a diet of snow and ice in Siberia.
Very thought provoking! I loved watching you on Time Team
A wonderful presentation, and congratulations on your appointment at the University of Birmingham. Which we here in the US would pronounce Birming-Ham.
I love Dr Alice , she is amazing ! I have been following her on everything that she has been done.Congratulations from Brazil.
What a great speaker she is, really enjoyed that
Thank you Uni Birmingham. Informational videos like this about these topics i have been looking for. Really interesting!
Excellent. Very good information and ideas in a first class presentation.
I'm a Christian but that doesn't stop me from loving science or applauding the efforts of those that seek to understand our material development over millions of years. The big/tiny distance between us and chimps with regard to genetics, if correct, makes me wonder what an additional difference of 1.2 percent in the future would mean for the human species. What would we look like? What would our intelligence be like?
What a marvellous and informative lecture Alice is a delight to listen to. Just wish this was longer in length and a series of lectures! You can't help but be a fan, and delve in to these subjects. inspiration
Thank you so very much for sharing your genius to idiots like me
Please please continue spreading your knowledge
Why don’t you have a dedicated TV channel for us who thirst your knowledge
You are mesmerising
I knew it was a mistake watching this lecture, now I’ve had to buy the book. What a superb presentation by a top class communicator.
Brings the past alive, it becomes wonderous
Thank you for this lecture. Wonderful.
The perfect example of evolution is the Madagascar evolution chain, many of the species on the island share the same DNA coding. So sharing a base DNA code with chimps is perfectly acceptable. Love listening to her talk and her way of explaining things, really gets you thinking about the way everything can be connected.
if we look at todays society the elderly are need not just for knowledge, but to help look after the young, while the parents are out working / gathering.
a very well presented alice roberts, well done i thoroughly enjoyed it.:))
Congratulations on your position at the university. Those who have been watching you in other history videos, are very happy that you have finally been recognized. Excellent presentation. Cheers!
Fantastic lecture madam Sister
Well done . Digging Briton was one of my favorites .
Remarkable performance speaking for 40 minutes without notes!
not really she does it for a living.
Alice You
It's easy when you have slides to talk about... I've done it many times.
Then you must be in the audience when I do it for 8hours.
What a treasury of knowledge.
I've only just found Alice Robert's videos presentations, thank you so much for posting, she has yet another fan.
Jack bassman Check out her BBC documentary on the human migration, its amazing.
The best talk I've listened to in a long time
Which came first? The legs, pelvis and spine for bipedal movement or the foot structure to support it?
The ego
Chimpanzees already walk an two legs because they have stiffened lumbar vertebrae like all other great apes.
Also, implying that evolution can only work on one structure at a time is an oversimplification of its process.
Probably very gradual changes to each in response to selection pressures.
Absolutely brill. Love her intellectual honesty, temperance and caution. Great synthesis of available data and theory. On curiosity stream they say definitively that the Praelis monkey ( maybe related to little tree monkeys like lemurs) were the genesis of the 12 million year story from them to us.
This was a fantastic lecture. Really appreciated the way the professor questioned assumptions and then addressed those questions.
It is a rare and admirable skill. Wish more people taught this way.
I love her work. She's great thinker of the modern era
Walking on two legs has several evolutionary advantages. For one thing it helps the individual spot predators. It also makes the individual look bigger and therefore discourages predators. Finally and allows the individual to grasp tools and weapons.
She is wonderful.
Eleventy.
She is indeed!
Absolutely delightful! Some tutors have an enigmatic presence to their lectures and Dr. Roberts is one of them!
Being an archaeology student, it's a shame that I came to know so late about her. I just ordered her book even though I have like half a dozen archaeology books already to read and finish off 😄 #sheffieldarchaeology
Professor Roberts !
the sound keeps dropping out. is there any way you can fix that? It really is VERY annoying.
I reckon they're deliberate edits for whatever reason. Or just technical faults. My first thought was edits so as not to offend. Some people still find evolution offensive. The word 'relative' was edited out. Hopefully I'm wrong.
I expect the sound man is a creationist lol
Good stuff. Obvious enthusiasm, well planned structure and terrific content. Even inspirational. Congratulations.
New information and more videos by Dr. Roberts! Please, you have a talent and the accreditation to back it up.
Superb presentation.
Amazing lecture, thank you very much
Glad you liked it!
I was mesmerised by Dr Alice's explanations.
I love learning this kind of stuff.
Thanks x
were are the missing links
Well duh, they wouldn't be missing if we'd found 'em would they?
Think on this: There have been animals with bones and/or shells for the last 500 millions years & virtually every species that ever existed is extinct. Less than 1% exists today - That might sound implausible in itself, until you put both facts together and realise 1% of 500 million is still 5 million years.
A typical skeleton is 1 to 2% Calcium. About 4% of the Earth's crust is Calcium.
There are creatures alive today we have yet to discover and that's a fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of what's only ever been able to exist by recycling a rare mineral from its most accessible source.
Generous estimates suggest the Neanderthals were around for 400,000 thousand years and never topped 100,000 in population. It's something of a miracle we have any evidence of them; let alone a transient older species.
Are there other lectures given by Alice on youtube? There don't seem to be many from what i can see
Wonderful lecture
is the "evolution of biblical manuscripts" lecture mentioned in the introduction on this channel?
did you find anything? just put it into the search box, so far nothing that specific..
See "Epic of Gilgamesh", the Code of Hammurabi, Buddhism, & Zoroastrianism...
Thankyou for a wonderful lecture. Has the development of social complexity included the necessity to be able to navigate their environment and gain advantage from finding the food source.
please continue
I loved watching and listening to her presentation. I have done many presentations, not of this history, but I found as apparently she has that never relying on notes, adding some humor during the presentation and always being in front of the audience and not behind a podium greatly enhances her effectiveness to hold the attention of the group and adds to the interest. And, speaking about something that you have great knowledge and are passionate about doesn't hurt either!
humor can be missunderstood... so its a scientific lecture... so spare it... spoils everything
she is my dream teacher
Most beloved professor. Russian eternal student.
We are rather special. That's undeniable.
(11:40) The strength inherent in curves adds robustness to a skeleton which needs to flex and bend and move in spacetime at the surface of a gravitational body while supporting the weight of the body and exterior accoutrements.
Wonderful lecture from a very engaging evolutionary biologist.
Very good lecture.
An amazing presentation. This is the difference between 'information' and 'education'. Wonderful.
a wonderful presenter. I cannot quite figure those who go to an effort to dislike. Interesting. I don't know if having "a crush" is quite it, appreciating her persona. It is worthy respect, worthy of engagement with.
Alice, love your science shows! just watched first part of 'can science make us perfect'. 'brilliant entertainment and most important, educating! wow, love you! ☺️
Back in the '70's and early ',80's when running was becoming a recreational sports I had a few triathlon friends and we used to discuss this.
A sub-2 hour marathon seemed impossible even though the best times gradually crept towards it.
We joked about "homosapiens accellarius"
being able to maintain a 4:34 mile pace blazing down his own lane on the highway in a video with Aerosmith blasting "Dream on, Dream On...".
Yet in 2019, with the aid of rotating rabbits and a press truck with a big draft zone and an even bigger digital elapsed time clock, it was accomplished with far less celebration than Roger Bannister got for his 3:59 mile.
In triathlons we also compared personality traits of athletes who came from one sport specialty into the masses of cross-traIning fiends.
Swimmers tended to appear introspective and isolated.
Bikers were all about their gear and who wasn't doing their share of pulling in the draft line.
And runners were the nicest of all, social, groupy. conversational. You run distances best at a
pace where conversation is possible.
Dr.Alice, though, is a whole new species of smarter, cuter evolutionary biologist.
Darwin would approve!
Saw here one woman show about a year ago, she was brilliant.
Always find this research fascinating. So the female are mostly successful because they are risk averse and the male successful due to being protectionist because they are expendable. Still applies today.
SAdly her eurocentric feminist spin on the Hadza women took me out of her talk a bit. She was projecting her European views and culture onto a foreign people and making judgements based on that.
I used my large brain to, finally, figure out what she meant by "greeps". Very good content and presentation.
Very interesting :)
@ 14 mins or so, it would have been good to see an artist’s drawing that compares a chimp skull, and its spine, to those of the subject skull with an imagined backbone.
Exuberant presentation...
Prof Roberts is so charming. The audience however was as dull as dishwater.
Or ditchwater…