On Hobbits and Hominins

Our understanding of human evolution has changed drastically over the last 20 years. We now know that Homo sapiens have, for the majority of our existence, shared the planet with many other species of humans: living alongside them, interacting with them, even interbreeding with them. Increasingly, archaeologists and palaeontologists have found themselves looking to fiction to understand what life must have been like for prehistoric humans — from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth to Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children.

Authors and archaeologists Tom Higham (The World Before Us) and Rebecca Wragg Sykes (Kindred) join literature and science expert John Holmes to discuss the role of the imagination in the science of prehistory, and how we tell this radical new story of human evolution.