Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors

Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors shows how we evolved from our early ancestors and explores the intricacies of human evolution.

Outlined in three different episodes, the series seeks to convey the larger scientific perspective on where humanity comes from, how we evolved and how evolution continues to mold us.

Episode 1: First Steps

In the first episode, the series encounters Selam, the amazingly complete remains of a 3 million year-old child.

As palaeontologists examine the skeleton we’ll get a glimpse into the evolutionary clues as to why we split from the apes, came down from the trees, and started walking upright.

Episode 2: Birth of Humanity

From what we know of our evolutionary past, humanity originates from Africa. Investigations of fossil records, however, show mass migrations to other parts of our world occurred multiple times throughout the ages.

Becoming Human’s second episode asks what led to these first great African exoduses and investigates the Turkana boy – a tantalizing fossil of Homo erectus, the first ancestor to leave Africa and colonize the globe.

Episode 3: Last Human Standing

In the final episode, Becoming Human explores the origins of us.

Where are modern humans headed, and where does our capacities for art, invention, and survival came from.

Furthermore, the third episode asks what happened when we encountered the mysterious Neanderthals.

Crucial new evidence comes from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals? Or did we exterminate them?