Stage show by Prof Alice Roberts that traces human origins from the first spark of life to the rise of early civilisations.
Prof Alice Roberts brings her stage show From Cell to Civilisation to Hull City Hall on Thursday 5 November, starting at 7:30 PM. It's a Lateral Events production that pulls together archaeology, evolutionary biology and genetics to trace human origins back to the very beginning of life on Earth — about four billion years of evolution in one evening.
Roberts starts with the first spark of life some 3.8 billion years ago and follows the connectivity of all living things from there. The show tracks our ancestors' migration out of Africa, through Asia and along the Indian coastline to Australia, north into Europe and Siberia, and finally to the last continents to be peopled, the Americas. Along the way, it meets other human species and takes in the sophistication of some of the earliest civilisations. It's a long stretch of time to cover in a single night, and the whole thing is framed by the science that helps answer some of the biggest questions about where we come from.
This isn't the show's first run. Roberts has already staged it in Australia and Canada before bringing it to the UK, so it's had a fair bit of roading before it reaches us. The focus stays on the broad sweep of human history, from those first single cells up to the rise of the first civilisations, with the different scientific fields — archaeology, biology and genetics — working together to fill in the gaps.
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Tickets start from £35, and the show runs at Hull City Hall on Carr Lane, HU1 3RQ, on Thursday 5 November at 7:30 PM.
