Are we...related?

Chris Stringer tells how his remarkable quest as a young researcher transformed understanding of our species

- Chris Stringer

AS WITH SO MANY OTHER CAREERS, chance played a major role in my pursuit of science. After a childhood in which I displayed a disquieting interest in skulls and stories about Neanderthals, I was – after a challenging stint as a supply teacher in east Lon-don in 1966 – about to train as a doctor at London hospital medical college when I discovered there was actually a university subject called “anthropology”.

The course included archaeology as well as studies of fossils. My parents were unsure but in the end backed my switch away from medicine. I started a course – at University College London – that included behind-the-scenes visits to London’s Natural History Museum.

There I was shown genuine human fossils, including a Neanderthal skull from Gibraltar. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

I graduated in 1969, when there was a lack of research opportunities in my field. Indeed, I was lucky again when Don Brothwell secured me a temporary job at the Natural History Museum. I learned a lot but was about to quit academia to become a science teacher when fortune intervened once more. Palaeoanthropologist Jonathan Musgrave, from Bristol University, offered me a Ph.D. grant, and a month later I embarked on a scientific trip that would define my career, change my life – and help reassess our understanding of humanity’s distant past.

My task was straightforward but unusual. I drove my old Morris 1000 from London to Bristol and later across Europe on an 8,000-km journey around the continent, visiting museums to compare fossils of ancient Homo sapiens – such as the Cro-Magnons – with those of Neanderthals.