RSA - The Unforeseen Cost of Human Civilisation

The Unforeseen Cost of Human Civilisation

24th May 2010; 18:00

(full recording including audience Q&A)
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RSA Keynote

Dr Spencer Wells is a scientist, author, and documentary filmmaker, who has dedicated much of his career to studying humankind’s family tree and closing the gaps in our knowledge of human migration.

Now a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Spencer Wells is spearheading the Genographic Project, which aims to capture an invaluable genetic snapshot of humanity before modern-day influences erase it forever.

Dr Wells visits the RSA to trace man's cultural inheritance from the moment ten thousand years ago, when our species made a radical shift in its way of life: when we became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers, setting in motion a momentous chain of events that could not have been foreseen at the time.

Speaker: Spencer Wells, geneticist, anthropologist, Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and Visiting Professor at Cornell University.

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsagenetics