Human presenter Ella Al-Shamahi: 'I used to be a creationist missionary – now I trust the science'

Human is the latest landmark documentary series from the BBC that turns attention on us. Who are we? How did we get here?

Guiding us on the epic, mind-expanding journey is paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, who has undergone her own radical evolution. As a teenager, she became a creationist missionary and applied to study evolutionary biology at Imperial College London, specifically aiming to disprove the theory – now she’s one of the leading lights in the field that’s constantly making new discoveries that reshape our thinking about who we are.

The series tells us the story of humans so far. She tells Big Issue where we might be heading next.

Big Issue: You travelled all around the world to tell the story of our evolution. How did it feel to retrace the journey of our ancient ancestors?

Ella Al-Shamahi: You end up filming these things out of order. So we started in France and Canada, which didn’t make sense chronologically. I don’t know the final count, but it was probably about 16 countries. We’re looking for the science that backs up whatever we’re trying to say in that episode. You can’t tell the human story without making it a global story.

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Sometimes you’re literally walking in the footsteps of the past.

We’ve all seen footprints in concrete but they usually don’t tell a story. The particular footprints we saw in New Mexico are considered to be those of some of the very earliest Americans. You see two sets of footprints, a smallish adult and a child. Every so often, the child’s footprints disappear. Based on analysis and the most likely scenario, the theory is that it’s a mother and child walking together and every so often the kid gets tired, and she picks them up. Sometimes she puts them on her right hip, sometimes on her left hip. So it’s not just a footprint, it’s telling its own story. And it’s such a humanising story.

What set us apart from other species?

We are the only global human species that has ever lived. All other species were regional species. There were at least seven and now only one of us is left. And to start off with, we weren’t that exceptional, if you were to pick the species that would get through, you wouldn’t put much money on us.

Are we driven by the same instincts that originally set us apart?

We are very cooperative with our own tribe in a way that no other species is. That can lead to really accelerated learning and development. Another thing, for whatever reason, we will look at a boundary and still go for it. That’s curiosity and, I would argue, imagination. We were on an island in Indonesia, not unlike the spots where the original Australians would have set out from. These Homo sapiens didn’t know that Australia was on the other side. They had no idea. They didn’t have boats, they had rafts, and they just went for it. And not one or two of them, hundreds of them did it. That’s amazing. And a bit bonkers.

What do you hope the impact of Human will be?

Our origins are fantastic and fantastical. First of all, that is just a great story, but it’s a story that tells us who we are. You and I might have been born in the 20th or 21st century but we were forged in the Palaeolithic. Our bodies are not of this time. We haven’t had long enough to evolve and respond fully to things like farming, let alone the iPhone. Once you understand that we’re, in some ways, cave people with Instagram, I think you start understanding yourself a lot better.

Not just our own selves but how society behaves?

There is a massively positive side to tribalism, which is that you feel truly bonded to the people that are in your tribe. But traditionally our tribe was 150 people, like 70% of them were your dad’s relatives. As soon as you start inventing cities, you don’t know the name of every single person in your community. What’s happened today is it’s not just that the cities have got really big, the flip side is social media and the way that you now have right-wing news and left-wing news. I just don’t think it’s good for society that modern technology encourages those silos. That’s a toxic combination. The idea is the people living closest to you can cooperate with each other and are relying on each other for survival, whereas we’re tribal across the internet and we’ve created something quite strange.

As a paleoanthropologist are you able to see a bigger picture and not just be caught up in the chaotic moment that we’re living in?

We’re each just protecting our tribe, and in this day and age we’ve become incredibly tribal – but not necessarily with the people that are living closest to us in proximity. In the olden days, that could lead to war, but at least there was harmony by and large within the tribe. Whereas now, where’s the tribe? The tribe is disseminated everywhere. Our neighbour is a stranger and that is a problem. I’d rather we have distrust of the other in a different geographical location than in our own community. The other is everywhere. That is a bigger concern. 

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And when it comes to science, there’s a lot of distrust that feels almost tribal.

I can speak to this quite a bit. I basically was a creationist missionary and genuinely went to university – I say it now a little embarrassed – thinking I was going to be able to destroy Charles Darwin’s theory. I thought we were being lied to. You share the opinions of your tribe and if your tribe thinks a bit of science is incorrect, you fall in line with that opinion. A lot of people describe today as the post-truth era. There’s a lot of climate change denial, a lot of vaccine science denial. What’s the OG theory? Evolution. The people that don’t believe in climate science or vaccine science, there are some dishonest players, but most of those people – I know them – genuinely believe that the science is incorrect. And that’s how I felt.

How can the trust issue be fixed?

We are a tribal species. The best way to get those communities on board is to make sure that those people feel welcome within the sciences, because they’re going to be the best ambassadors to their communities. We need to be wary of the fact that some perceive science to be the playground for left-wing atheists. There’s a lot of culpability to go around but if I’m going to sit there pointing at the right I also need to be able to point at my tribe. We haven’t been particularly welcoming to people whose ideas we don’t like. The truth is, they need to be in the room even if we don’t like their ideas, for the good of science.

For any evolution doubters out there, what was the thing that changed your mind?

The one that I just couldn’t explain in any other way was quite a technical one. Retrotransposons are basically ancient organisms that have entered into us, and the way that they mutate in us compared to our relatives, you just can’t explain those mutations other than descent modification. You just can’t. Trust me, I really tried.

Human continues on BBC Two on Mondays and is available on iPlayer.

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