Seven Ages of the Body

This new video from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing archae­ol­o­gist John Robb, gives you a quick and visu­al­ly appeal­ing intro­duc­tion to how humans have under­stood some­thing we take for grant­ed – our own bod­ies. Cov­er­ing 10,000 years in six min­utes, Robb takes us from the “Ani­mal Body” and “Sex­u­al­ized Body” of the Mesolith­ic and Neolith­ic Ages, to the “Politi­cized Body” of the Clas­si­cal Age, “God’s Body” of the Mid­dle Ages, and final­ly “The Body as Machine,” the metaphor we have been liv­ing with since 1500. And we wrap up with the “Body Dig­i­tal,” the body of the future, and “Mul­ti­ple Bod­ies.” This video comes from the Cam­bridge Ideas series avail­able on Cam­bridge’s YouTube chan­nel.