Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn’t like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.

I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position it’s their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.

The world’s five thousand extant languages are products of our shared ability, but the five thousand cultures they create are separate from each other.

It’s the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause.

To investigate the history of man’s development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

The whole story is about change. We are very lucky that the earth’s history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.

Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet.

In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.

The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing.