The Incredible Human Journey (64 page)
Read The Incredible Human Journey Online
Authors: Alice Roberts
ALICE ROBERTS is a qualified medical doctor and has been a lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Bristol since 1999, teaching medical and dental undergraduates, and also surgeons and other doctors later in their careers. She is interested in evolutionary anatomy and how the human body has come to be the way it is. She has a PhD in paleopathology – the study of disease in ancient bones – but is still puzzled why humans suffer so much more from shoulder arthritis than other apes (she thinks it might be because we’ve given up hanging around in trees).
She is committed to public engagement with science and enjoys talking about science with people outside the university: she takes part in outreach to schools and local communities, and contributes to Cheltenham Festival of Science. On television, Alice appeared as a bone expert for Channel 4’s
Time Team,
and went on to co-present BBC2’s immensely popular
Coast
series. She has also written and presented two BBC2 series on anatomy and health, rather shockingly titled
Don’t Die Young.
She lives in Bristol with her husband Dave and their two naughty terriers, but also enjoys getting back to a more ancestral, nomadic state, albeit in a camper van.
First published in Great Britain 2009
Text © 2009 by Alice Roberts
Illustrations © 2009 by Alice Roberts
Maps © 2009 by Dave Stevens
This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Alice Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The quotation on page vii by D. J. Cohen taken from
The Origins of Pottery and Agriculture
by Yoshinori Yashuda is reprinted by permission of Roli Books. The quotations on pages 144, 149 and 334 from
The Songlines
by Bruce Chatwin, published by Jonathan Cape, are reprinted by permission of The Random House Group and Aitken Alexander Associates.
By arrangement with the BBC
The BBC logo is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence. BBC logo © BBC 1996.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978-1-40881-091-0
www.bloomsbury.com/aliceroberts
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