Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

Right at the end of tonight’s programme, there’s an excellent sequence where Alice Roberts explains why young men are so driven to show off and take risks. We see a group of skateboarders take chancier decisions when there are attractive women watching —
a behaviour with its roots in our evolutionary past. When men hunted and women gathered, we’re told, women chose their partners for their potential as good hunters, and fearlessness was vital.

For the Hadza people of Tanzania, whom Roberts visits, this is still the case today. Also covered in the programme: the importance of full-colour vision, what tape-worms tell us about our primeval diet and the shortcomings of chimp spit.

About this programme

2/3. Anatomist Alice Roberts charts how the hunt for food down the ages has affected the way people look and behave today. A lion kill reveals how similar today's diet is to that of 1.7 million years ago and the origin of marriage is traced back to the Hadza tribe of Tanzania, hunter-gatherers who have been forming long-term couples for 10,000 years. Plus, a skateboarding experiment proves men cannot help showing off to attract the opposite sex.