How evolution made us human

Evolution usually favours having as many offspring as possible, but the menopause involves females losing the ability to reproduce midway through their lives. So, why does the menopause exist? Why has evolution favoured its existence? This is a puzzle for evolutionary biologists, especially since the menopause is only known to exist in humans and four marine mammal species. In this talk I'll explore some of the surrent human and marine mammal research that is starting to explain why the menopause exists in humans and marine mammals but not in other species.

Agriculture is a recent and dramatic change to what humans evolved to eat. Many argue that quite a few modern diseases have been caused by this radical shift in the human diet. But what did humans evolve to eat? How do we know what the ancestral diet was? In this talk I will discuss evidence for the ancestral human diet and how close or far it is from some evolution-themed diets such as the 'Paleodiet’.