Science for the people, of the people and by the people: The potential of citizen science

Ever since language and script evolved, humans have documented their own lives, their business transactions, the lives of animals and of plants, and the movements of the stars. The earliest recorded diary was kept by Merer, who lived at the time of the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza; Merer writes about the Tura limestone that he loaded on his boat to take down the Nile to the site of pyramid construction. This was nearly 4500 years ago. Before this, and since then, besides written documentation, oral traditions in the form of stories have served to provide a sense of the times, and have given us, our ancestors' descendants, the history of their experimentation with food, medicine, clothing and shelter.