The Incredible Human Journey (2009) Part 4-5

Nov 042014

IMDb: 8.3 This series explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory.
Stars: Alice Roberts, Robert Bednarik, Sandford Bigplume

The Incredible Human Journey Part 4

Alice looks at our ancestors’ seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe?
The evidence trail is faint and difficult to pick up, but Alice takes on the challenge. In India, new discoveries among the debris of a super volcano hint that our species started the journey much earlier than previously thought, while in Malaysia, genetics points to an ancient trail still detectable in the DNA of tribes today.

Australia with English subtitles

The Incredible Human Journey Part 5

How did Stone Age people reach North and South America? Dr Alice Roberts discovers evidence for an ancient corridor through the Canadian ice sheet that may have allowed those first people through. But some very ancient finds in southern Chile seem to suggest a very different way into the Americas; an ancient human skull discovered in Brazil even points to an Australasian origin of the Americans. Could a route from Australia across the Pacific have been possible?