The Incredible Human Journey
Another BBC documentary from 2009 charts the overall history of humankind from roughly 125,000 years ago up to today. As related by Dr. Alice Richards, aided in her research by a generous use of DNA, uncovered stone and bone tools, as well as sophisticated cave-wall drawings, the series does a damn-good job of laying out the new ideas of how homo-sapiens managed to leave Africa some 70,000 years ago, just a few hundred folk strong, and populate the entire world, slowly evolving into the various races.
Utterly fascinating, Dr. Roberts, an anthropologist and physician, explores the various theories in the five-hour series, of just who were homo sapiens and what brains and techniques – along with a huge load of luck – did they use to get us to where we are today?
Re-tracing the routes she figures early humans were able to use, including the baffling treks out of northern Africa to the Middle East and thence into Europe and Asia; the stupendous route from upper Asia across the Bering Straits to North America, thousands of miles down to South America; and factoring in the lowered sea-levels during the two or three ice ages between their evolution into reasonably human beings and the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, is reasonably explained. Her spelling out how these early people got to Australia at all is justification enough to own this DVD.
Obviously, one must bring to this mini-series a generalized interest in human history, along with a no-nonsense understanding of the “theory” of evolution, to be able to follow her well-laid-out understanding of existing tribes in Africa who are (she asserts) direct descendents of these original pioneers, as well as how we have changed and evolved since then – it is engrossing, entertaining, fascinating, etc. This is a must-have for one’s personal or school library.