The Future’s Neanderthals: Implications of the Lack of Transitional Hominins in the UK National Curriculum

The UK National Curriculum (NC) for primary and secondary education purports to provide comprehensive understanding of biology. Despite this stated goal and the UK’s Darwinian intellectual heritage, there long has been controversy regarding the inclusion of evolution by natural selection within the NC, which was ultimately only included in 2014. There is a palpable avoidance of primate evolution even within current requirements, with a concentration instead on nonhuman organisms. Most jarringly, there is a lack of required discussion regarding human transitional stages after the split from a last common ancestor with the chimpanzee/bonobo. As studies of hominins are not obligatory, this lack likely has multiple knock-on effects on student learning regarding general macro-evolutionary concepts, including gradualism, human animality, and applied behavioral ecology in terms of organisms and their environments. Moreover, the study of transitional hominins is vital in terms of connecting evolutionary theory to adjacent NC requirements, such as the foci on environmental studies, metabolism in organisms, and even disease.