The Ancestor's Trail

The Ancestor's Trail is an annual 'biological pilgrimage' across the Quantock Hills in Somerset, supported by the BHA. The winding footpaths representing branches on Darwin's tree of life, and walking the Trail is a metaphorical journey back to the dawn of life on Earth.

Its official website is here.

The 2011 Trail included representatives from the BHA, the AHS, and The Pod Delusion, while on-walk entertainment was provided by the BHA Choir. Here's our writeup of the event:

The Trail started with walkers representing modern humans, but every step took them 10,000 years into the past. Spirits were high as all of recorded history passed in the first half-metre, and before long the main body was joined by walkers from the Chimp trail. The devolution continued for 13.5 miles, with the most prominent intersections marked by trail organiser Chris Jenord describing the evolutionary highlights of the period. There was music, too: the BHA Choir performed two specially-written pieces, one of which increased in length as the trail progressed.

En route there was much debate as to appropriate humanist marching songs - with many suggestions helpfully provided by @BHAnews Twitter followers - and various were exuberantly attempted. AHS groups cooked up inter-society events and challenges, and there was an informal competition for the most interesting evolutionary fact (eventually won by the general concept of a platypus).

Radio 4's Ramblings show came along for the morning, with presenter Clare Balding interviewing choristers and walkers to get a sense of why evolution held a special place in their hearts, and whether they were optimistic for the future of humanity. The show should be broadcast in the next few weeks.

By the end of the walk each step represented a million years (and felt like it), while the merging ramblers began to represent sponges, fungi, and, eventually, bacteria. Finally the Trail ended at fossil-lined Kilve beach, where the BHA Choir performed their full composition, and 100 walkers eagerly awaited their bowls of 'primordial soup'.

Our photos of the event are up at our Facebook page.

BHA member Steve Clapman also wrote up the event. There's an excerpt below, and his full diary is here.

The Ancestor’s Trail drapes Darwin’s Tree of life over the Quantock Hills, lining it up roughly with its many footpaths. Groups of people then populate the starting points of the best known branches such as humans, chimpanzees, rodents, birds, jellyfish, Amoeba and, with a little pre-planned choreography (organised via a Google map on the Ancestorstrail.net website), start walking their trails so that they rendezvous with the main body of walkers representing the human line of evolution. In this way, our ever increasing band of pilgrims arrive together at the Dawn of Life ~ a beautiful fossil strewn beach called Kilve.

Chris read out a small paragraph a marvelously produced booklet (based on Richard’s book) at selected rendezvous and asked me to do the same , in the hope that this would encourage others to come forward and speak in future Trails. Apparently Chris has a few copies of the booklet left over - contact him via ancestorstrail.net.

The start of the walk is uphill (maybe the Quantock Hills should have given me a clue), and I had a chat with a wide range of people along the way. One of the aims of the event is to create a collective experience for non religious people who, as a result of their rejection of organised religion, can tend to find themselves rather isolated. Folks converged from all over the country including Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton, Brighton, London, Norwich, Stoke, Yorkshire and even Ohio, USA - perhaps evidence that there is indeed an appetite for collective expression amongst non believers. However, the organiser is clear that in no way should the event be exclusive to non believers. Many believers in this country are very comfortable with our roots in evolution and, the fact that our origins are shared (and therefore belong to us all) is central to the whole concept.  Indeed there was a Baptist minister on the walk this year.