Original subtitles

Where do we come from?

When did our story really begin?

Who were the first Homo sapiens?

Not just humans who looked like us,

but people who thought and behaved as we do.

People we would recognise as truly one of us.

We, Homo sapiens, first appeared over 300,000 years ago.

We were not the first species of human.

We're not the biggest, we're not the strongest,

we're just the latest in a long line of other humans.

Yet, a few hundred thousand years later, we are the only ones

left, and the most dominant form of life on this planet.

How on earth did this happen?

I'm Ella Al-Shamahi, a paleoanthropologist.

People spend their whole lives trying to find

a fossil as significant as this.

You might think you know the story of human evolution, but now

we are discovering it's stranger and more dramatic than we ever imagined.

This was something that wiped out 13 people in the same family.

Thanks to ground-breaking new science, we are

rewriting the story of our origins.

From our tentative first steps...

..to the migrations that carried us across continents.

And our encounters with other human species we met along the way.

It's small, it's really tiny.

I can see why you would call it the Hobbit.

From the first marks we made on cave walls...

..to the rise of cities...

..these are the unlikely events that forged us.

Moments of chance, but also ingenuity,

of beauty and destruction.

This is us, this is our story, and it's what happened

in the 99% of our history before the invention of writing, when our

story wasn't written in books, but was written in our bones and DNA.

This is the story of how we became...

..human.

This story begins in Africa, in a time long ago...

..in a world before we existed at all.

In many ways, this world would feel familiar...

..teeming with animals we'd recognise.

But there was one crucial difference.

This world was inhabited by not one,

but by many other types of human.

We're used to living in a world filled with other species.

Over eight million share our planet with us.

But there is only one of us, only one human species, Homo sapiens.

And so, it's really easy to forget that it wasn't always like this.

The world before us was alive with other human activity.

Around six million years before Homo sapiens appeared...

..some primates left the trees.

They started walking upright and over time, began using stone tools.

These toolmakers became the earliest form of human.

Over millions of years, these humans continued to evolve...

..forming a diverse family tree of different human species.

Who were these other humans and how are we connected to them?

Well, they're all part of our extended family,

so our parents, grandparents, great-aunts, cousins.

Some were our ancestors, others just relatives.

But all of them were part of our lineage, our family tree,

that spanned millennia.

Around the time Homo sapiens emerged...

..there were at least six different human species.

And using the latest scientific data,

we can reconstruct what they might have looked like.

There were so many species of human.

You had Homo erectus, an ancestor of ours, and an incredibly

successful species, because they lived for about two million years.

Now, Homo erectus was actually the first in our genus to leave Africa.

And we also think that they were the first to use fire.

There's also Homo neanderthalensis,

who you probably know as the Neanderthals.

Neanderthals lived in Europe, all the way into Central Asia.

They were cold-adapted.

And they were expert hunters.

There was also Homo floresiensis,

who some people affectionately call the Hobbit...

..because they were only about a metre tall,

so that's about three and a half feet.

Tiny, and yet adapted for living on an island.

It seems like a fantastical world, and I can't help it,

it reminds me of Lord Of The Rings.

Only, instead of a world with elves and dwarves,

you had a magical place with other humans.

The human family tree had many branches.

But which branch did Homo sapiens first emerge from?

We don't know for sure,

but we're getting closer than ever to finding out.

For the longest time, we thought we knew the origins of our species.

We thought we began 200,000 years ago in East Africa.

But new revelations from out here in Morocco,

from a part of Africa that people weren't really considering,

are forcing us to rethink our very first steps on this planet.

In a remote cave in North West Africa,

a chance discovery uncovered some mysterious human remains.

Someone unexpected was living here...

..thousands of years earlier than we imagined.

This is Jebel Irhoud 1, and it was a complete mystery,

because some of its features are very much like us,

very Homo sapiens, and others are much older, much more primitive.

So, if you look at this individual's face,

its face looks a lot like ours.

The Homo sapiens face is incredibly gracile.

We have incredibly delicate features.

They, kind of, tuck in under our brain case.

If you imagine a prehistoric human,

you kind of always imagine a much, kind of more prognathic,

we say, much more kind of jutting forwards face.

This individual's face is much more tucked under, it's much shorter.

But there are some features that aren't us.

Notice this brow ridge up here, this supraorbital structure.

Now, look at me.

You don't get modern humans walking around today with these

massive things on top of their eyes.

I mean, it would actually be quite terrifying today if we saw that.

Now, the brain case is not us.

You see how round my brain case is?

It's globular, whereas this is almost stretched out.

It's almost like somebody's got my brain case but kind of

stretched the back of it out.

It's almost like straight-on, the face is Homo sapiens,

but from the other angles, it's not us.

These finds posed a mystery.

They were anomalies that didn't fit neatly into the human family tree.

They looked partly like Homo sapiens...

..and partly like an earlier human.

So, the question was, was this a different species,

or could it be an early version of us?

Several decades after the initial discoveries came a breakthrough.

Archaeologists uncovered another 16 fossils...

..all with the same blend of features.

With each new find, the evidence grew.

These were not some other species, but Homo sapiens,

with hints of an earlier ancestor.

But it wasn't until archaeologists were able to more accurately

date the remains that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.

The archaeologists, using new and improved dating techniques,

were able to give us dates for these fossils, and they tell us

that these individuals lived about 300,000 years ago.

And that is mind-boggling,

because we thought our species was only about 200,000 years old.

What these fossils tell us is that our species, Homo sapiens,

is 100,000 years older than we thought.

We are a third older than we realised.

This fossil went from being enigmatic

and basically a mystery,

to being one of the most important fossils in our whole field.

Thousands of miles from East Africa where we thought we began,

and far older than expected...

..these are the earliest Homo sapiens ever found.

And they have forced us to rethink other finds across Africa...

..which are painting an entirely new picture of our origins,

suggesting that Jebel Irhoud...

..was just one of many emerging populations,

all in the process of taking shape.

It's...

It's a bit like having a peek behind the curtain of evolution.

This is a stage in the journey to becoming us.

I wonder what it would feel like to come face-to-face with

one of the people from Jebel Irhoud?

If we were to look into their eyes...

..into those quite delicate features,

would we see ourselves within them?

The answer is, they were not modern humans like us.

Not yet.

They were an earlier stage in our evolutionary journey,

bridging the gap between us and our ancient human ancestors.

Our emergence was actually slow, and honestly, at the beginning,

we were just not that special.

Now, early iterations of Homo sapiens, like Jebel Irhoud,

were popping up all over Africa.

We once believed in a single origin, a sole cradle of humanity

in East Africa, but our story is far richer and more interesting.

The latest evidence suggests we emerged gradually,

across thousands of miles, and over hundreds of thousands of years...

..appearing bit by bit...

..like a series of sparks...

..igniting across the African continent.

THUNDERCLAP

And yet, Homo sapiens could have easily vanished without trace.

Because just as we were finding our place in the world...

..something threatened to wipe us out altogether.

It's in East Africa's Great Rift Valley that we can trace

the next chapter of our story.

This dynamic landscape holds some of the clearest

evidence of the forces that set our species on a radically new path.

When they say the Great Rift Valley of East Africa is a dramatic

place, they're not kidding.

I mean, look at it.

I can literally hear it bubbling behind me, and it's

the result of a geological process that sees three tectonic plates

tearing away from each other, which results in a dynamic landscape.

And even though this part doesn't look that hospitable,

it has been a home to people for a very long time.

This is one of the most fossil-rich regions in Africa.

Its unusual geology has not only preserved human remains,

but also offers a glimpse into the forces that drove our evolution.

So, within the lakebeds here, if you dig deep, you can

actually extract sediment cores.

Now, one here in Ethiopia was about 280 metres deep,

so that represents over 600,000 years.

And within that sediment, it's a bit like a time machine,

because bits of ancient environment are trapped.

By analysing these sediment layers,

scientists have uncovered a window

into the world some of the earliest

Homo sapiens were living in.

The information from those sediment cores has been

collated into this graph, and when you zoom out, it actually

paints a really interesting picture, because for the first 300,000

years, you see a period of relative climate stability.

But then, at around 275,000 years ago, something shifts,

and we see a period of fluctuations, volatility, between humid

and arid periods, in a way that just wasn't happening before.

Now, East and West Africa are linked in a kind of climate seesaw.

So, when one is humid, the other is arid, and vice versa.

Over thousands of years, wild climate swings engulfed Africa...

..plunging fledgling populations of Homo sapiens...

..into a world of extremes.

Ecosystems were destroyed.

Rivers and lakes swelled...

..cutting people off from one another.

Elsewhere, grasslands turned to desert.

Survival was a battle against relentless change.

I do think that when we look at these zoomed-out graphs,

we sometimes make a vital error.

We forget to zoom back in.

After all, human evolution is about humans.

There are people like you and me experiencing the peaks

and troughs of those graphs.

People who were suddenly facing droughts, or flash floods,

or perhaps the disappearance of a food source.

Entire communities...

..found themselves isolated.

Some populations dwindled.

The ones who couldn't adapt died out.

This struggle for survival could have wiped

Home sapiens out altogether.

But it didn't.

It had the opposite effect.

It drove us forward.

Under pressure, isolated populations learnt new skills.

Those who could adapt and innovate had a better chance of survival.

Then, as the climate changed, groups came back together.

They shared skills and crucially, they interbred...

..passing beneficial traits on to their children.

It was a process that began to change us permanently.

The people who survived emerged stronger than ever.

Today, most of us live in towns and cities...

..and so, the reality of being affected by the climate

as a result of being a nomadic person kind of escapes us.

But you've actually got a really good example here,

with the Afar people.

They are nomadic, and so they get pushed

and pulled around the landscape.

And it would've been very similar with our ancestors,

but actually in a more extreme fashion.

These different groups, as they were moving around,

would've at times met, and when they did,

they would've, of course, shared skills and knowledge and DNA.

It was this mixing of groups that ultimately brought us

closer to becoming the Homo sapiens we are today.

Our origins as a species are so much more complicated and dynamic,

involving not just East Africa, but the whole of the African continent.

Africa was a continent rich in diversity, and climate acted

as a sort of catalyst, blending these various groups together.

And so, we were formed as a result of a mosaic of these

different populations across Africa.

It was our diversity, our resilience in the face of climate change...

..it shaped us, our minds and our bodies,

and transformed us into a new and evolved human.

We all carry an echo of what happened in Africa

at this pivotal moment...

..because what happened then changed us forever.

What began as diverse, scattered populations...

..in the face of adversity came together...

..propelling us to become one stronger, smarter species.

This is a museum that houses some of the most important

fossils in the human story.

And one of those fossils is Herto 1, easily one of the most

significant Homo sapiens fossils that has ever been found.

And that's because this individual is one of the very first

in our lineage that we can describe as an anatomically modern human.

Its physical characteristics

and traits are overwhelmingly similar to those of yours and mine.

And if you look at this individual compared to Jebel Irhoud,

look how rounded it is.

Some people have put forward this intriguing idea that perhaps

the shape of the skull reflects a change in brain organisation.

This process of globularisation has been linked to language skills

and coordination.

And it is really exciting to consider that this

change in shape reflects a really significant shift in the way

that Homo sapiens were starting to think.

These larger, reorganised brains had slowly

but surely opened a gap between Homo sapiens and our ancestors.

But it wasn't only the size

and shape of our brains that set us apart.

One of the lines of evidence for this are actually the teeth.

Now, scientists have discovered that if you look very

closely at the teeth, what you find are very fine lines called

perikymata, that represent about a week in the life of an individual.

So, that means you can count how long an individual has been

alive, a bit like tree rings.

And so, if you look at a Homo erectus individual

and compare it to, say, a Homo sapiens living today,

our species takes an incredibly long time to get to sexual maturity.

From the lines in their teeth, we know that Homo sapiens

children were growing up much more slowly than earlier humans.

The thinking behind it is that we needed a really long time to

learn how to use these brains of ours.

And the longer that you exist in childhood,

the longer you have to learn.

And so, this thing that is a real headache to so many parents

out there today, that our children take so long to become fully

formed, that might actually be a huge key to our success.

Reorganised minds and longer childhoods,

our brains and bodies had evolved.

At last, we were Homo sapiens who physically looked like us.

What you might call, Sapiens 2.0.

It was some of these anatomically modern Homo sapiens that

began to step out into the wider world.

But beyond Africa was already home to other humans.

Neanderthals had spread across Central Asia and Europe.

Other parts of Asia were populated by multiple species,

including Homo erectus.

And there is evidence in the Middle East

of an early group of Homo sapiens...

..who followed in the footsteps of these other human species.

I do love thinking about those huge moments in our history,

like when Homo sapiens first left Africa.

It was a massive achievement, even though

they would've had no idea of the significance of it.

And it's amazing to think that it happened so early on in our story.

But it's in the Levant that I think things get really interesting.

Evidence has been uncovered of a community of Homo sapiens

living in caves, in what is now Israel.

And it's in this place they would

have encountered something unexpected.

There is one mountain called Mount Carmel where one cave,

called Skhul, has been found with Homo sapiens.

And another cave on the same mountain, called Tabun Cave,

has been found with Neanderthal individuals.

And these two peoples were living at the same time.

It is kind of wonderful to think about.

And of course, the Neanderthals were not an African species,

they were used to living outside of Africa,

whereas for us, this was still very, very new.

Two species sharing the same mountain.

We don't know if they interacted.

But we do know that while Neanderthals remained

in the region, all traces of this group of Homo sapiens vanished.

Their bloodline died out completely.

What is most fascinating about these Homo sapiens isn't who

they met, it isn't even what they achieved.

It's that all of these early dispersals failed.

We know from genetic evidence that those Homo sapiens are not

the ones who would go on to ultimately populate the planet.

This failed migration was a stark reminder of our fragility.

These people looked like us, but there was something missing.

Because what really defines our species isn't how we look.

It's not even the size of our brains.

It's something else altogether.

While these early migrants vanished...

..populations in Africa thrived...

..displaying that special essence that makes us who we are.

A way of thinking and behaving that would set Homo sapiens apart.

And some of the earliest traces of it can be found in this

remote cave in Botswana.

This is a very large natural outcrop.

And as you can see, it goes on and on.

It's seven metres long.

The front has a natural slit for a mouth,

and a natural depression for an eye.

And even if you want to go that far, a nostril up at the front.

Right. With the head rearing up, it does,

in modern eyes, look like a snake.

The overall form has been altered

to make it look even more snake-like.

There are over 300 indentations that have been ground into the

surface over what is obviously an extended period of time.

When the initial excavations were conducted,

they absolutely revealed a number of questions.

One of the things found was an extremely large

number of tools that appeared to be manufactured

and then just left there in pristine condition.

These look gorgeous. I mean, they absolutely look stunning.

Once they were manufactured, then you did one of three things with it.

You either manufactured it perfectly and just left it.

Mh-hm. Or more interestingly, you burnt it.

But not burnt to just, like, throwing it in a bonfire.

It's controlled burning.

And the third and most bizarre thing that they did with them

is they made it, manufactured it perfectly,

and when they were finished, turned it over, smashed it in the middle.

These are offerings, aren't they? Yeah.

The only thing that makes sense, the on... The best fit

is that they're sacrifices, they're offerings.

They're not doing it for fun.

They feel that coming up and doing this act would satisfy some

kind of a need, some kind of, um, a wish, some kind of a desire.

Although it's absolutely magnificent during the daytime...

..it comes to life at night.

We can't speak to these people, but this...

..this whole place, it gets us

so much closer to what they were thinking, what was going on inside.

Yeah. We had always had the impression that this type of

abstract thinking would've been beyond the ancestors at that time,

and now we definitely have evidence that that was absolutely wrong,

that they obviously had the ability to hold abstract thought.

You make an offering and hope for something back.

Asking for probably some of the things that we would ask for -

food, health, children, etc, etc - and you just think,

"Oh, my gosh, that's some of the... That's some of the earliest

"behaviour that we know so well."

Some believe the people who performed these rituals must

have been holding abstract ideas in their heads...

..imagining things they couldn't see.

A clue their minds were sparking and forming connections in a new way.

When I see this, this is what moves me,

because this is who we are, in a way

that feels more us than bones.

See, it is so familiar to us.

We know this behaviour. This is ritual.

Whether it is religion and spirituality, or things

like the handshake, or birthdays, graduation ceremonies, Burning Man,

Glastonbury, New Year's Eve, we are, as a species, obsessed with ritual.

It is profoundly and fundamentally Homo sapiens behaviour.

It's us. We know it.

It was as if they were able to see beyond the tangible.

They were thinking beyond what was just in front of them.

They were venturing into the unknown and into the unseen.

Behaviour like this marked a new chapter in our species' story.

Our minds were awakening, opening up to a world of possibility.

This wasn't confined to ritual.

It touched every part of our lives.

Around 70,000 years ago,

new weapons began appearing across Southern Africa.

Homo sapiens were using abstract thought to innovate.

Inventing complex projectile weapons, like the bow and arrow.

We were seeing the world not just as it was, but as it could be.

It takes a lot to see the potential in a piece of wood.

Projectile weapons were revolutionary technology for us

humans, because up until now, we'd been using close-range

hunting strategies, which were less effective, less lethal,

and yet more dangerous for the person holding the weapon.

For over two million years, early humans mostly relied on axes

and spears.

But Homo sapiens imagined unseen forces like the power

held in wood and string.

Creating something entirely new.

If you look at this bow and arrow, you can

see how much knowledge is required.

You need to know where to get the wood for the bow, you need to

know about the glue, you need to know how taut the string should be.

So many elements that require, not just knowledge,

but the ability to pass that knowledge on.

Something like this is not the result of one person's genius.

It's the result of many, many people, over many generations,

inventing, reinventing, perfecting, tinkering.

We weren't just inventing.

We were adapting and expanding our knowledge.

Human culture was becoming more complex,

that technology was exploding.

Now, many of us think that this is a result of something called

cumulative culture, the idea that you accumulate culture, so every

generation builds upon the previous generation's science and technology.

With cumulative culture, Homo sapiens were becoming

collectively smarter with every generation.

And as our numbers increased, this was more powerful than any weapon.

A giant leap towards becoming the species we are today.

When was our species truly born?

Was it when we first appeared?

Or when we started to look like modern humans?

Or was it when our minds lit up?

Creating, inventing, and building on our knowledge.

Each was a crucial step in our evolution.

But none would be possible without one special ingredient.

The glue that binds all of our achievements together.

It leaves no direct fossil evidence,

but we can find traces of it in some unexpected places.

In archaeology, sometimes the smallest finds actually tell

the grandest of stories.

These are tiny marine shells,

and shells like this have been found in caves in South Africa,

and they are just too small to have been collected for meat.

If you look really closely, what you see is that they have holes in them.

Now, some of these were collected because they already had holes,

but others were perforated by Homo sapiens.

And really close examination of the shells in these caves show that they

had wear marks on them consistent with having been worn on the body.

So, that, along with these holes in them, well, it's really easy to

paint a picture of them having been strung...

..and turned into jewellery.

These weren't just beads, they were emblems.

Symbols of value and meaning...

..shared and understood by everyone.

They've been found with pigment on them,

and it's always the same-coloured pigment, it's red ochre.

Even though ochre comes in yellow, black and red, it's always red.

Perhaps you were trading them for food, for goods,

perhaps you'd give them as some kind of a gift at a wedding,

perhaps they were just a sign of friendliness.

And you can also imagine that people would be wearing them

to make themselves look good, it would perhaps be a sign of prestige.

The making and sharing of these beads was one more

sign our species had made another revolutionary leap.

The ability to pass on knowledge and technology,

sharing rituals and traditions.

All these things suggest Homo sapiens were passing

sophisticated ideas from one mind to another.

Our species had unlocked the power of complex language.

The most remarkable thing about these shells is that they

have been found not just in South Africa, but all over Africa,

from the south, all the way to the north, in Morocco and Algeria.

Not just along the coasts, but all the way inland.

And that, for me, is so exciting,

because when you look at this,

you might think, "Oh, my God, isn't that amazing?

"Humans have a kind of cultural expression

"that they never had before."

While earlier humans probably had basic language...

..it's thought Homo sapiens were speaking to each other

in a more complex way.

Weaving a shared culture.

And forging an invisible bond that united our species

across the entire continent.

All over Africa, we understood the cultural symbolism

of these beads.

Somebody was telling you, "This shell is important, not that shell.

"Red is important, not the other colours."

We had an understanding that wasn't just you, me,

and our three families, you, me, and the village next-door.

We had a kind of symbolism and understanding

and interconnectedness that was continent-wide.

This has never happened before.

For me, this is the birth of our species.

Our species' birth wasn't a single moment.

It unfolded over millennia.

Complex language and our powerful shared culture finally set us

apart from humans before us.

We had become one connected, cooperative species.

We had become Homo sapiens...

..the ancestors of us all.

Sometimes in life, things come together,

and this was a coming together for our species.

It was a perfect storm.

You had a change in brain, you had language, increased numbers,

increased connectivity, cumulative culture, better technology

and weaponry, and the right climate.

But through all of this, there is a hidden thread.

Our secret weapon is that we are a social, cooperative species.

Friendliness, it turns out, is our superpower.

We are more than the sum of our parts.

Whether it's ritual, technology, language,

all of it comes down to cooperation, in my opinion.

And that's how you go from a species that started off feebly,

unremarkably, to one that would

become so extraordinary,

one ready to explore this planet.

..we follow our ancestors as they spread beyond Africa,

taking on extreme environments no others could master...

..travelling beyond the realm of another extraordinary

species of human - the Hobbit.

And eventually, even reaching the distant land of Australia.