Big Ideas | World Science Festival

Recent breakthroughs in dating ancient samples of DNA and human remains have led to a radical reassessment of human origins. At least ten other early human groups--some with the cognitive capacity to make art, jewelry and herbal medicines--occupied the planet at the same time as our ancestors, Homo Sapiens, and some of their genomes live within us today. Leading archeologists and paleoanthropologists join Brian Greene to discuss how these surprising new insights are transforming our understanding of early Humans. This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.Learn More

View Additional Video Information

TOPICS: Art & Science, Biology & Origins of Life, Earth & Environment, Mind & Brain, Physics & Math, Science in Society, Science Unplugged, Space & The Cosmos, Technology & Engineering, Your Daily Equation, Youth & Education

TAGS:

PLAYLISTS: Big Ideas

Original Program Date: Thursday, May 4, 2023

Moderator: Brian Greene

Participants: Thomas Higham, Viviane Slon, Rebecca Ackermann, Sheela Athreya

Up Next

Rewiring the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Neuroplasticity

175,954 views |

Visual Illusions: Catching the Brain Creating Reality

236,870 views |

The Deep: Exploring Earth’s Last Frontier

157,025 views |

To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: The Next Step in Space Exploration

The Dreaming Mind: Waking the Mysteries of Sleep

704,867 views |

Karen Armstrong: Sacred Nature – A Conversation with Brian Greene

55,844 views |

Psychedelics: Chemicals, Consciousness & Creativity

1,135,632 views |

First Images: James Webb Space Telescope’s New View of the Cosmos

264,313 views |

Black Holes: Seeing the Unseeable

596,723 views |

Riddles of Reality: From Quarks to The Cosmos

470,766 views |

Lifespan Expanded: The Scientific Quest for a Fountain of Youth

142,888 views |

Einstein and the Quantum: Entanglement and Emergence

2,010,566 views |

Science, Life, and Purpose: A Conversation with Francis Collins and Brian Greene

54,384 views |

The Future of Cosmology: A Live Conversation

151,091 views |

Things We’ve Never Seen: The James Webb Space Telescope Explores the Cosmos

2,809,256 views |

2021 Nobel Laureates in Conversation with Brian Greene

74,474 views |

Mind Your Language: Metaphor, Thought and Imagination

833,215 views |

Does Math Reveal Reality?

1,585,045 views | 01:36:02

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the World

125,188 views | 00:57:27

Beyond Higgs: The Wild Frontier of Particle Physics

1,235,379 views | 01:30:08

Making Room for Machines: Getting Ready for AGI

50,662 views | 01:27:46

We Will Be Martians

54,575 views | 01:25:38

Outsourcing Humanity: Do Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than People?

Rethinking Thinking: How Intelligent Are Other Animals?

1,479,283 views |

The Richness of Time

2,513,336 views | 01:29:37

Eyes In the Skies: Bringing the Universe Down to Earth

65,573 views | 01:24:01

The Technology That Transforms Us: From the Stone Age to the Computer Age

01:12:02

Intelligence Without Brains

1,236,499 views | 01:29:11

Physics in the Dark: Searching for the Universe’s Missing Matter

1,183,912 views | 0122:24

On the Shoulders of Giants: Shep Doeleman

68,885 views | 00:32:32

The Reality of Reality: A Tale of Five Senses

1,427,191 views | 1:11:33

On the Shoulders of Giants: Andrew Strominger

00:35:03

The Science of Extreme Behavior: The Line Between Courageous and Crazy

01:11:03

Can We ‘Cure’ Deafness and Blindness? Should We?

01:11:53

Revealing the Mind: The Promise of Psychedelics

5,067,049 views | 01:24:38

Loose Ends: String Theory and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

2,347,553 views | 01:27:24

The Right Stuff: What It Takes to Boldly Go

01:20:43

The Believing Brain: Evolution, Neuroscience, and the Spiritual Instinct

3,816,227 views | 1:17:46

Alien Contact: What Happens Next?

1,456,662 views | 1:00:10

Rethinking the Internet: How We Lost Control and How to Take it Back

00:58:06

How Music Affects Your Brain: Notes on the Folds

00:52:42

Rewriting Life: The Promise and Peril of Editing Your DNA

00:48:20

Neutrinos, Matter, and Antimatter: The Yin Yang of the Big Bang

103,859 views | 00:57:28

Sylvia Earle: On the Shoulders of Giants

00:57:18

Harnessing the Power of Neuroplasticity: The Nuts and Bolts of Better Brains

1,514,126 views | 01:00:35

RESISTANCE IS (NOT) FUTILE: THE END OF ANTIBIOTICS AND THE FUTURE OF FIGHTING INFECTIONS

00:51:17

Teach Your Robots Well: Will Self-taught Robots Be the End of Us?

1,046,021 views | 01:02:39

Black Holes and Neutron Stars: A Merger in Space

82,958 views | 00:41:54

Is Alien ‘life’ Weirder Than We Imagine: Who Is Out There?

1,383,336 views | 00:59:56

Growing Up Digital: Coming of Age in a Virtual World

01:02:05

The Roots of Extremism in Your Brain

01:17:53

The Microbiome: Vital Cells of Existence

61,539 views | 01:06:47

The Matter Of Antimatter: Answering The Cosmic Riddle Of Existence

4,455,562 views | 01:39:21

Pondering the Imponderables: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology

721,455 views | 01:06:44

The Social Synapse: Neuroscience and the Roots of Human Connections

98,552 views | 01:07:13

Cartographers of the Brain: Mapping the Connectome

109,622 views | 01:33:49

Quantum Reality: Space, Time, and Entanglement

7,612,465 views | 1:32:48

Computational Creativity: AI and the Art of Ingenuity

00:58:53

Forever Young: The Promise of Human Regeneration

945,733 views | 01:02:40

The Future of Augmented Intelligence: If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em

01:02:01

Engineering Immortality: the End of Aging?

55,388 views | 00:59:50

Quantum Computing – The Qubit Technology Revolution

102,219 views | 01:03:48

Science In A Polarized World: A Global Town Hall Meeting

01:00:35

Evolution Beyond Earth

58,129 views | 00:59:31

Shaking Up the Dark Universe: The Dark Horses of Dark Matter

543,749 views | 01:17:01

Testing the Limits of Cosmology

140,119 views | 00:57:13

Moral Math of Robots: Can Life and Death Decisions Be Coded?

58,747 views | 01:34:35

Beyond Beauty: The Predictive Power of Symmetry

463,775 views | 01:33:30

Splicing and Dicing DNA: Genome Engineering and the CRISPR Revolution

520,451 views | 01:24:26

To Unweave a Rainbow: Science and the Essence of Being Human

208,289 views | 01:38:53

It’s Alive, But Is It Life: Synthetic Biology and the Future of Creation

1,219,194 views | 01:27:13

Mind Melds and Brain Beams: The Dawn of Brain-to-Brain Communication

1,389,946 views | 01:25:32

My Neurons, My Self

471,338 views | 01:39:51

Wizards of Odds: The Power of Probability

512,483 views | 01:23:44

The Next Quantum Leap: Here, There, and Everywhere

160,676 views | 01:02:32

Planet of the Humans: The Leap to the Top

191,079 views | 01:19:33

Spark of Genius? Awakening a Better Brain

139,958 views | 01:21:33

To Infinity and Beyond: The Accelerating Universe

805,459 views | 01:22:23

Time Is of the Essence… or Is It?

1,177,472 views | 01:22:11

Mind Over Masters: The Question of Free Will

457,110 views | 01:23:39

Designer Genes: Fashioning our Biological Future

01:13:31

Alien Life: Will We Know It When We See It?

7,383,113 views | 01:33:30

The Deceptive Watchman: How Our Brains Twist Time

301,022 views | 01:23:57

Measure for Measure: Quantum Physics and Reality

3,749,533 views | 01:38:44

Infinity: The Science of Endless

1,620,327 views | 01:23:57

A Matter of Time

961,779 views | 01:27:52

Architects of the Mind: A Blueprint for the Human Brain

758,503 views | 01:28:48

Destiny and DNA: Our Pliable Genome

50,751 views | 01:24:33

The Whispering Mind: The Enduring Conundrum of Consciousness

777,527 views | 01:26:02

Engineering the Brain: Deploying a New Neural Toolkit

01:03:39

Multiverse: One Universe or Many?

3,428,876 views | 01:22:35

James Watson: On the Shoulders of Giants

01:08:08

The Elusive Neutrino and The Nature Of The Cosmos

443,555 views | 01:30:42

Why We Prevailed: Evolution and the Battle for Dominance

148,747 views | 01:31:59

Exoplanets: The Search for New Worlds

107,998 views | 01:24:28

Madness Redefined: Creativity, Intelligence and the Dark Side of the Mind

369,602 views | 01:35:31

Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius

524,089 views | 01:30:32

The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance

686,497 views | 01:28:02

The Dark Side Of The Universe

1,142,984 views | 01:44:14

Mysteries of the Mathematical Universe

812,573 views | 01:16:48

A Thin Sheet of Reality: The Universe as a Hologram

2,961,105 views | 01:30:10

The Limits of Understanding

1,649,631 views | 01:33:00

Faith and Science

94,094 views | 01:41:19

Back to the Big Bang: Inside the Large Hadron Collider

365,717 views | 01:35:29

Food 2.0: Feeding a Hungry World

01:32:13

Mind and Machine: The Future of Thinking

272,163 views | 01:25:28

What It Means to Be Human: The Enigma of Altruism

01:18:33

NOTHING: The Subtle Science of Emptiness

1,019,844 views | 01:25:19

Infinite Worlds: A Journey through Parallel Universes

2,384,948 views | 01:43:58

Time Since Einstein

851,353 views | 01:36:21

What It Means to be Human

01:25:35

Science Faith and Religion

329,305 views | 01:46:12

Beyond Einstein: In Search of the Ultimate Explanation

237,007 views | 01:02:50

Echoes From The Beginning: A Journey Through Space And Time

162,901 views | 01:17:21

The Invisible Reality: The Wonderful Weirdness of the Quantum World

4,802,388 views | 01:30:56

Faith and Science