A Short History of Humanity with Johannes Krause

Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, our guest charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival, culminating in the triumph of Homo Sapiens as we swept through Europe and beyond in successive waves of migration - developing everything from language, the patriarchy, disease, art and a love of pets as we did so. As well as being a radical new telling of our shared story, today’s book is a reminder that the global problems that keep us awake at night - climate catastrophe; the sudden emergence of deadly epidemics; refugee crises; ethnic conflict; over-population - are all things we've faced in the past and overcome.

Our guest is one of the most established international experts in the field of archaeogenetics, he is director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Germany and he is the author of "A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are", Johannes Krause welcome to the show.