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Anthropology asks one big question: what does it mean to be human?

For the moment we are keeping to virtual meetings. Click on an upcoming talk and you'll find out how to join us.

Next talk

Brian Hare

The Survival of the Friendliest

Location: We are based at University College London but for the moment, all our talks are ZOOM webinars.
Please register for each talk via EventBrite to receive the ZOOM ID.

A powerful new theory of human nature suggests that our secret to success as a species is our unique friendliness.

For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened?

Since Charles Darwin wrote about “evolutionary fitness,” the idea of fitness has been confused with physical strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. In fact, what made us evolutionarily fit was a remarkable kind of friendliness, a virtuosic ability to coordinate and communicate with others that allowed us to achieve all the cultural and technical marvels in human history.

Human Origins: Where are we now? Chris Stringer
Touched: Hunter-Gatherers and the Anthropology of Power Morna Finnegan
Peer-To-Peer Connected Cosmos: Beyond Egalitarian/hierarchical Hunter-Gatherer Societies Nurit Bird-David
How Hunter-Gatherers Ensure Sharing - A Woman’s Biggest Husband is the Moon. Jerome Lewis
Living Cosmology - Disarming The Sacred. Jerome Lewis
Revolution in the age of Coronavirus Mark Kosman
A Christmas fairy tale: The shoes that were danced to pieces Chris Knight
See videos of previous talks here
Autumn 2020: Introducing Human Origins

Language, art, music and culture emerged in Africa over 100,000 years ago, culminating in a symbolic explosion or ‘human revolution’ whose echoes can still be heard in myths and cultural traditions from around the world. These talks are a general introduction to social and biological anthropology, ranging over fields as diverse as hunter-gatherer studies, mythology, primatology, archaeology and archaeoastronomy. Radical Anthropology brings indigenous rights activists, environmentalists, feminists and others striving for a better world together with people of all ages who just want to learn about anthropology. There is always time for questions and discussion after each talk.