Origins of Us
Origins of Us is a BBC documentary series presented by Dr. Alice Roberts, showing how we evolved away from our ape cousins to become the adaptable, successful species we are today. The series reveals how our body tells the story of human evolution featuring three parts of our body: bones, guts, and brains. It consists of three episodes, each of which traces the development of modern humans centered on one of the three parts. The first episode looks at how our skeleton reveals our incredible evolutionary journey. The second episode charts how our ancestors' hunt for food has driven the way we look and behave today. And the third episode explores how our species, homo sapiens, developed our large brain.
| Episode 1 - Bones |
Episode 1 - Bones
Charting the major advances from Australopithecus to Homo erectus and beyond, Dr. Alice Roberts looks at how our skeleton reveals our incredible evolutionary journey.
Episode 2 - Guts
Dr. Alice Roberts charts how our ancestors' hunt for food has driven the way we look and behave today - from the shape of our face, to the way we see and even the way we attract the opposite sex.
Episode 3 - Brains
Dr. Alice Roberts explores how our species, homo sapiens, developed our large brain; and asks why we are the only one of our kind left on the planet today?
| Related Links |
| Your Inner Fish This is a three-part documentary series hosted by Neil Shubin, revealing that the human body is a throwback to our prehistoric ancestors. |
| Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors This is a three-part NOVA's documentary series investigating the recent discoveries transforming our understanding of our human origins. |
| The Ape That Took Over the World In 2001, scientists announced an amazing discovery: the oldest skull of a human ancestor ever found. The 3½ million year old fossil was remarkably complete, and unlike any previous fossil find. |
| Origins of Us: Human Anatomy and Evolution We are all members of a very special species. Whilst our anatomy and physiology is undoubtedly that of an ape, we have done things that no other ape can do, and become the most successful ape on the planet. |
| Behaviorally Modern Humans: The Origin of Us Current evidence indicates that multiple upright-walking, tool-dependent species in the genus Homo co-existed in the Old World (Africa, Asia and Europe) for most of the last 2 million years. |
| The Upright Ape: Bipedalism and Human Origins Why are we the only two-legged creature to develop an exclusively upright gait? And what did it mean to the development of the human species? |
| Walking with Cavemen This is a four-part BBC documentary series narrated by Robert Winston, about the story of human evolution from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo sapiens. |
| Prehistoric Autopsy This is a BBC documentary series taking us on an evolutionary journey to meet three of our ancient ancestors - Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, and Lucy. |
| The Great Human Odyssey This is a three-part CBC documentary series hosted by anthropologist Niobe Thompson, exploring the unlikely survival and the miraculous emergence of Homo sapiens as the world's only global species. |
| The Evolution of Human Nutrition Tracing the evolution of the human diet from our earliest ancestors can lead to a better understanding of human adaptation in the past. It may also offer clues to the origin of many health problems that we currently face, such as obesity and chronic disease. |