Human - Season 1

The extraordinary story of how the human species, Homo sapiens, first emerged, where the discoveries of recent years are revolutionising the understanding of humanity's origin story.

In Morocco, it's revealed that Homo sapiens are 100,000 years older than previously thought. The species was nearly wiped out by violent climate change but clung on against the odds. And in a cave in Botswana, evidence of complex rituals reveal how Homo sapiens culture was flourishing in ways that still shape humanity today.

Following early Homo sapiens's ancestors as they step out of Africa and venture into the wider world, heading into areas inhabited by other human species.

Around 60,000 years ago, a small group of Homo sapiens migrated into the Middle East. Recent DNA discoveries reveal that every human alive today whose origins are from outside Africa are descendants of this group. In just a few thousand years, they spread across the globe.

Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, visits the rainforests of Sri Lanka and discovers how Homo sapiens became the only human species to make the unforgiving jungle its home, using innovative techniques like hunting monkeys with arrowheads made from monkey bones. On the Indonesian island of Flores, she finds out about another human species, the tiny Homo floresiensis, and asks how our ancestors became the first human species to make the 60,000 mile journey across open ocean to Australia.

Shocking new insights into the demise of modern humans' sister species, the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens's possible role in their downfall and how it become the last human species on Earth.

Around 55,000 years ago, Homo sapiens ventured into Europe — only to find it was already occupied by Neanderthals who had lived there for almost 400,000 years. Ella Al-Shamahi, finds out just how close the two species became when she sees evidence of interbreeding. She reveals how during the Ice Age in Europe, Neanderthals held the evolutionary upper hand with a physiology better built for the cold. Yet against the odds, by around 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were the only species left.

As she explores the demise of Neanderthals, Ella visits the ‘tunnel of bones' in El Sidrón cave, Spain where archaeologists have found the remains of 13 Neanderthal family members who were murdered and cannibalised.

During the height of the Ice Age, one of the coldest times humanity has ever known, Homo sapiens steps into the last habitable continent on the planet: the Americas.

Ella Al-Shamahi discovers how humans were confronted by ferocious 10-foot tall prehistoric bears in this new land and explores the daredevil hunting techniques used to take them down. Deeper into the interior of the North American continent, Ella traces fossilised footprints, possibly of a mother and her child, who were among the first to set foot in North America.

She learns how the humans who lived here hunted vast herds of Ice Age mammoths and giant sloths, until a changing climate and innovative hunting techniques combined to push them to extinction. Forced to adapt, humanity's ancestors pioneered new ways to control nature as farming emerged to shape the world.

Around 12,000 years ago, as the Ice Age finally thaws, humanity makes a dramatic shift - abandoning nomadic life for permanent settlements.

In Turkey, Ella Al-Shamahi visits the world's oldest temple, Gobekli Tepe, and one of the largest early towns, Catalhoyuk - a prototype in urban living, with no streets and honeycombs of dwellings accessed through the roofs. But living in densely populated towns, with livestock alongside them and dead ancestors buried beneath their houses, brought new challenges: disease and evidence of unrest and brutal violence.

In Egypt, Ella finds out how cities began to thrive rather than collapse. And in a turquoise mine in the Sinai desert, she discovers how migrant workers were responsible for creating the first alphabet.