Main content

Would our ancestors have benefited from early neanderthals making fire?

There鈥檚 new evidence that humans made fire 350 thousand years before we thought, and could we protect wild salmon by genetically engineering the farmed fish we eat?

400 thousand years ago our early human cousins dropped a lighter in a field in the East of England; evidence that was uncovered this week and suggests that early neanderthals might have made fire 350 thousand years earlier than we previously thought. Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes is honorary researcher at the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool and author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. She explains what this new discovery could mean for our own ancestors.

Should we genetically modify our farmed salmon to prevent it breeding with their wild relatives? Dr William Perry from Cardiff University thinks this could help the endangered wild Atlantic salmon recover it鈥檚 numbers.

And Lizzie Gibney, Senior Physics Reporter at Nature joins Tom Whipple to dig into the new science released this week.

Think you know space? Head to bbc.co.uk, search for 麻豆社 Inside Science, and follow the links to the Open University to try The Open University Space Quiz.

Available now

27 minutes

Featured

  • .

Broadcasts

  • Thu 11 Dec 2025 16:30
  • Thu 11 Dec 2025 20:32
  • Thu 11 Dec 2025 21:32
  • Fri 12 Dec 2025 05:32
  • Fri 12 Dec 2025 09:32
  • Fri 12 Dec 2025 13:32
  • Sun 14 Dec 2025 04:32
  • Mon 15 Dec 2025 00:32
  • Mon 15 Dec 2025 20:30

Explore further with The Open University

Discover more fascinating science content with The Open University

Podcast