Family ties and reshaping history

Published: Sept. 17, 2020, 11:38 a.m.

From the influential part played by Sikh queens, through the ties of marriage and religion which helped shape the Western world, back to the links between Neanderthals and early man: Rana Mitter talks to Priya Atwal, Joseph Henrich, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes about family ties, power networks, and history. Priya Atwal has published Royal and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire. Dr Atwal is a Teaching Fellow in Modern South Asian History at King's College London. Joseph Henrich is a Professor in the department of Human and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the author of The Weirdest People in the World: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Rebecca Wragg Sykes is an Honorary Fellow at University of Liverpool and Université de Bordeaux. She is the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art and is one of the founders of https://trowelblazers.com/ You might be interested in other Free Thinking conversations with Rutger Bregman author of Human Kind https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08d77hx Penny Spikins speaking about Neanderthal history at the 2019 Free Thinking Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003zp2 Tom Holland on his history of the impact of Christianity on Western thinking in a programme called East Meets West https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00093d1 Producer: Robyn Read