stephen cave, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a great pleasure. you believe that our human awareness of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they wouldn t be around us any more if they didn t. the mouse that didn t care about surviving wouldn t pass on its genes. so we come from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep going. but we have these big brains, that s part of our survival mechanism, if you like, that allow us to see the future, to generalise. and we re conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we re conscious of our own deaths. and of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that, one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing. and so, if we look back through human history, what we see is humanity struggling to make sense of this. some of the earliest archaeological evidence we f
of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they wouldn t be around us any more if they didn t. the mouse that didn t care about surviving wouldn t pass on its genes. so we come from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep going. but we have these big brains, that s part of our survival mechanism, if you like, that allow us to see the future, to generalise. and we re conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we re conscious of our own deaths. and of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that, one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing. and so, if we look back through human history, what we see is humanity struggling to make sense of this. some of the earliest archaeological evidence we find of human development is grave goods, for example, suggesting people very early believed in an afterlife. the oldest
stephen cave, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a great pleasure. you believe that our human awareness of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they wouldn t be around us any more if they didn t. the mouse that didn t care about surviving wouldn t pass on its genes. so we come from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep going. but we have these big brains, that s part of our survival mechanism, if you like, that allow us to see the future, to generalise. and we re conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we re conscious of our own deaths. and of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that, one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing. and so, if we look back through human history, what we see is humanity struggling to make sense of this. some of the earliest archaeological evidence we f
stephen cave, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a great pleasure. you believe that our human awareness of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they wouldn t be around us any more if they didn t. the mouse that didn t care about surviving wouldn t pass on its genes. so we come from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep going. but we have these big brains, that s part of our survival mechanism, if you like, that allow us to see the future, to generalise. and we re conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we re conscious of our own deaths. and of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that, one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing.
of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they wouldn t be around us any more if they didn t. the mouse that didn t care about surviving wouldn t pass on its genes. so we come from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep going. but we have these big brains, that s part of our survival mechanism, if you like, that allow us to see the future, to generalise. and we re conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we re conscious of our own deaths. and of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that, one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing. and so, if we look back through human history, what we see is humanity struggling to make sense of this. some of the earliest archaeological evidence we find of human development is grave goods, for example, suggesting people very early believed in an afterlife.