Quotes from Adam Rutherford

Nowadays, only the willfully ignorant dismiss the truth that we evolved from earlier ancestors.

how much of what seemed known and well established is, in fact, unknown and steeped in ambiguity.

Life is transition: The only things that are truly static are already dead.

Genetics can certainly tell us who our closest relatives really are, and can reveal so many mysteries of our deep past. But you have far less in common with your ancestors than you may realize, and there are people in your family from whom you have inherited no genes at all, and who therefore have no meaningful genetic link to you, even though in a genealogical sense you are most definitely descended from them.

The oldest genome of a European comes from a 37,000-year-old square-jawed man who washed up on the banks of the mighty River Don in southern Russia. He's called Kostenki today, and his DNA showed similarities with more recent European hunter-gatherers, as far afield as in Spain 30,000 years later

The pressures of natural selection have undoubtedly changed as a result of the evolution of our behavior and culture, but milk shows that, just as in every organism that has ever lived, over time our genes continue to change.

There are maybe 9,000 bird species living today, which is not quite double the number of mammal species.

The second point is that the world in which we live is shaped by us, by our practices and culture, by our very existence, and our DNA responds to that in turn. Genes change culture, culture changes genes.

But you have far less in common with your ancestors than you may realize, and there are people in your family from whom you have inherited no genes at all, and who therefore have no meaningful genetic link to you, even though in a genealogical sense you are most definitely descended from them.

Estimates are that the hunter-gatherers who were all but wiped out by the agricultural revolution numbered around 2 million 12,000 years ago. Agriculture spread like a virus over the continents from its birth somewhere in the Middle East (and dotted in other spots in Africa and China), and would be the dominant business of humans for most of the rest of history.

All it took was the officer's own silence and weight.

In the genomes of the dead we can see natural selection at work.

It is the oldest depiction of the human body.

Diet is not easy to validate in the deep past, but the clues from genetics suggest that the basis for the Paleo Diet is nuts, even if you're not allowed to eat peanuts.

you can't start a fire without a spark.

Our brains are large for our body size, but that ratio is much greater in ants and shrews.

The use of technology to extend the physical abilities of an animal includes weapons, which are a violent subset of tools.

When it comes to expressions of violence, humans excel.

there is virtually no trace of the Danes in the British genome. Compared to the Angles' and Saxons' and even the Norwegians' genetic legacy in the north of Scotland, there's an absence of Danish DNA despite a long adventure

though the data should be pure and straightforward, science is done by people, who are never either.

By 40,000 years ago, there are clear, unequivocal depictions of figurative art in multiple forms, and clear evidence for imagination, abstract thought, music and profound fine motor skills. Something had changed.

such as Huns and Bulgars and the unexcitingly named Alans.

They may have shaped the lands and defined and defended borders, and given us the days of the week (and hundreds of other words: "a berserk freckly husband is a blundering guest in hell"), but they don't appear to have left any distinctive DNA.

on a long enough timeline we're all inbred.