Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors
Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors is a three-part NOVA's documentary series investigating the recent discoveries transforming our understanding of our human origins. In the first episode, it explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child" and examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. In the second episode, it investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us - "Turkana Boy" - a complete specimen of Homo erectus, examines the key innovations that helped early humans thrive, and tells these early humans' migration out of Africa. And in the third episode, it examines why modern humans (Homo sapiens) survived while our other ancestral cousins like the Neanderthals died out. The final episode also examines whether modern humans interbred with Neanderthals by decoding of the Neanderthals genome.
| Episode 1 - First Steps |
Episode 1 - First Steps
This episode explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child" and examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes.
Episode 2 - Birth of Humanity
This episode investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us - "Turkana Boy" - a complete specimen of Homo erectus, examines the key innovations that helped early humans thrive, and tells these early humans' migration out of Africa.
Episode 3 - Last Human Standing
This episode examines why modern humans (Homo sapiens) survived while our other ancestral cousins like the Neanderthals died out.
| Related Links |
| Becoming Human Becoming Human brings together interactive multimedia, research and scholarship to promote greater understanding of the course of human evolution. |
| 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. |
| Walking with Cavemen This talks about the story of human evolution from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo sapiens. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Origins of Us This 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 Ape That Took Over The World In 2001, scientists announced an amazing discovery: the oldest skull of a human ancestor ever found. |
| The Day We Learned to Think At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of ochre pigment, 70,000 years old, has raised some very interesting questions. |