Why archaeology needs to transcend borders

National Geographic Explorer and stand­up comic Ella Al-Shamahi is a hilarious paleoanthropologist who specializes in Neanderthals. Much of her work involves fossil hunting in caves in dangerous locations such as Yemen. Ella uses comedy as both a coping strategy for the darker side of her work as well as to communicate science to people in engaging, unexpected ways. She holds degrees from Imperial College London/the Natural History Museum in London and University College London where she is undertaking her PhD. She is currently waiting for the worst of the war in Yemen to end so she can resume the search for Paleolithic caves there, to test a theory that early humans may have migrated out of Africa via land bridges between East Africa and Yemen and to test whether Neanderthals went that far south.