As a teenager, Ella Al-Shamahi set out to debunk the very field she would become an expert in. “At the age of 17, as a creationist, I decided to go to university to study evolution so that I could destroy it,” the now 35-year-old Yemeni scientist admits. “I failed. I failed so spectacularly that I’m now an evolutionary biologist.”
In fact, her work has earned Al-Shamahi recognition as one of the world’s most prominent academic pioneers. She has even collaborated with the BBC on a TV show exploring the history of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
Al-Shamahi is equally comfortable in front of a TV camera, an academic audience, or a system of caves. She also does stand-up comedy in her spare time. Furthermore, she recently announced (via her Twitter feed LittleMsFossil) on-site from Tanzania that she is filming a new series for BBC Natural History.
Ella Al-Shamahi Sees that Neanderthals Hold the Key to Human History
A paleoanthropologist and archaeologist, Al-Shamahi specializes in fossil hunting inside caves in unstable, disputed, and even hostile territories. In 2015, she won the National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award for her work.
She chose to specialize in the study of Neanderthals because “they’re the closest species to us – at least that we know of currently.” Al-Shamahi’s research tries to illuminate what happened when homo sapiens met Neanderthals and why homo sapiens are the only branch that survived.
These questions initially inspired her to make a TV show about Neanderthals. Another reason, she adds laughingly, is that “neanderthals have truly terrible PR.”
Her TV work attempts to show Neanderthals in a new light. She wants to demonstrate that they were not so different from humans. In fact, they were likely considered attractive enough for sapiens to mate with.
Ella Al-Shamahi Explores Where Many Scientists Fear to Tread
According to Al-Shamahi, science has a “geography problem.” Specifically, “frontline exploratory science does not happen as much in politically unstable territories,” despite the great scientific potential these regions may offer.
Al-Shamahi uses her own ancestral homeland as a prime example. She emphasizes that strife-torn places like Yemen are so under-studied that they are “something akin to near-virgin territory.” This, along with Yemen’s location between the Middle East and Africa, makes “the sheer potential for discovery so exciting.”
Other regions she has explored are the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh and various locations in Iraq. The ongoing civil war in Yemen has hampered her local fieldwork. Al-Shamahi wants to test a theory about human evolution. She believes that early humans may have migrated out of Africa via land bridges between East Africa and Yemen.
Comedy as a Lifeline
In 2018, Al-Shamahi created and hosted a BBC Earth miniseries titled “Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors.” It featured actor Andy Serkis, best known to audiences from films like Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, and Black Panther.
When she is not advancing scientific understanding of human species or popularizing paleoarcheology with TV audiences, Al-Shamahi is a stand-up comic. “I think when you work in unsafe places it’s important to have the right attitude, and comedy became a lifeline” she explains. “Plus, comedy is a great way to communicate science. A lot of people find science boring, but science is full of the weird, the wonderful and the completely ridiculous.”
Al-Shamahi certainly has a unique ability to translate her complex scientific work into more easily absorbed information. Her latest offering, the BBC Natural History series is currently filming in Tanzania. It will air in 2020.
