Reweirding:
Being Human – How Our Biology Shaped Our History

How did haemophilia bring down the Russian royal family? And scurvy give rise to the Mafia? We are a wonder of evolution, but we’re also deeply flawed. This extraordinary contradiction between our faculties and frailties is the essence of what it means to be human. And history has played out in the balance between them.

Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this uniquely fragile nature for the first time. From cognitive biases to endemic diseases, he explores how human biology has shaped relationships, societies, economies, and wars across the globe – and considers how, importantly, it continues to challenge and define our progress.

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster, and an Honorary Research Associate at University College London (UCL). He is the author of the bestselling books The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch and Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History, which has been translated into 26 languages. Copies of The Knowledge exist on the surface of the Moon, and in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. His book Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History will be available to purchase on the night.