00:00When I first came here, this was new ground, untrammeled by any other Western scientist before me.
00:08For nearly a century, it was closed off behind the Iron Curtain.
00:16Even today, it's one of the most remote parts of the world.
00:30In this isolated land, I collected the blood of over 2,000 people.
00:45That was when we discovered that their blood held a remarkable secret, an ancient marker.
00:50I recognized it immediately.
00:52Nearly every man in Western Europe was carrying it, from Norway to Spain, Ireland to Austria.
00:58So my European ancestors hadn't taken the obvious route from Africa via the Middle East.
01:03Instead, they had passed through Central Asia 40,000 years ago.
01:08That was why they had taken so long to reach my homeland.
01:11But why would they do that?
01:14How did my ancient family from the Middle East wind up here, in this wilderness?
01:21William Calvin thinks that, yet again, the weather played a critical role.
01:26Worldwide, you're getting droughts, you're getting forest fires.
01:31But the next year, you're getting a lot of grass and a lot of grazing animals.
01:35And that's opportunity for the humans that survived the crash.
01:42And for opportunity, read food.
01:45Honing their hunting skills and adapting to the colder temperatures,
01:48these African hunters followed the grasslands into modern-day Kazakhstan.
01:55The discovery of the Central Asian marker had changed our understanding of the journey made by the first Europeans.
02:01But was Europe the only destination for these formidable Central Asian hunters?
02:07Did their journey take them anywhere else?
02:09We widened our search and ran for an even bigger surprise.
02:14The markers seemed to be everywhere we looked.
02:17From Europe, through Asia, Russia, North and South America, the list seemed to be endless.
02:22We'd uncovered an astounding secret.
02:29If Africa was the cradle of mankind, then Central Asia was its nursery.
02:34A bizarre sea of faces.
02:52And you can tell so much from a face.
02:54Or can you?
02:55Where are we now?
02:58We could be anywhere across the continent of Eurasia.
03:01But in fact, we're right at the very heart of it, in Central Asia.
03:05China is a few miles in that direction.
03:08Afghanistan a few hundred miles to the south.
03:11This is really the crossing point, the central part of the continent of Eurasia.
03:17And I've come back for a very special reason.
03:20Hidden in the samples of those 2,000 Central Asians was one extraordinary individual.
03:29His name is Niazov, and he's directly descended from the man whose DNA, 40,000 years ago,
03:35had a tiny spelling mistake, the Central Asian marker.
03:39This genetic marker has spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere
03:43and been inherited by over a billion people.
03:45Branches of Niazov's ancestors went on to people Europe, parts of India, Russia, and America.
03:55But Niazov's family has always stayed here.
03:58Analyzing his DNA for the first time was an extraordinary moment.
04:04In an instant, I knew we'd discovered something very important.
04:09Now we're going to meet him.
04:12After nearly 2,000 generations, Niazov still lives in Central Asia.
04:17I'm excited about meeting him again,
04:19now that I fully understand the history he holds in his blood.
04:25But with a war raging less than 200 miles away in Afghanistan,
04:29making it across the border could be a little dicey.
04:31About half a mile from the border coast now.
04:32I'm hoping that we'll be able to get through all right. It's a bit touch and go.
04:49We've heard that Kazakhstan has locked down its borders because of the situation in Afghanistan.
04:58Possible refugees, possible Islamic militants.
05:02Everything's a bit touchy right now.
05:06About 500 meters from the post now.
05:09We also know that you're not supposed to film or take pictures at these border posts.
05:17So hopefully they won't notice us doing that.
05:35Well done, thank you.
05:36I'm logging down all the passport numbers.
05:50I'm very interested in mind.
05:51They might not even let me through.
06:07And I may not get to see the man whose blood has unlocked the secrets of the greatest journey ever.
06:15Yeah, he's eyeballed me.
06:18How am I going to get out of this one?
06:19I'm on the track of one man whose blood tells the story of the most extraordinary journey in history.
06:32The children of this man's great ancestor became Native Americans, Europeans, Asians and Russians.
06:39Some even made it down into India.
06:42But I'm being held at a border near a war zone.
06:44After four hours of bargaining, we were allowed into Kazakhstan. We're on our way.
06:56We left eastern Kyrgyzstan at about 9 o'clock this morning. It's 9 o'clock at night now.
07:06But very, very excited. We're about to go in and meet somebody who plays a critical role in our understanding of the genetic history of Eurasia.
07:13He gives us a direct line back to the ancestors of most Europeans, Native Americans and a lot of Indians. So let's go see him.
07:22Come on, come on.
07:30Hello.
07:31Hello.
07:32Hello.
07:33Hello.
07:34Hello.
07:35You should take the shoes off.
07:37This is an extraordinary moment.
07:43You can make discoveries in a lab, but to put a face to a genetic marker as ancient
07:48as this, well for me, it's truly amazing.
07:52He may be shorter than I am, but he's a genetic giant in our history.
07:59I'm going to have to give him my blood speech though, hope it doesn't put him off.
08:04What if I told you that your blood takes us back in history 40,000 years?
08:08Your lineage takes us back to the very first Central Asians, before Uyghurs, before Pamiris,
08:14before Tajiks, the very first people who lived here.
08:19Do you know what DNA is?
08:20So it's the blueprint, that it's your instruction book, it's how to make another version of you.
08:32Now, the thing that we've been studying is known as the Y-chromosome.
08:37And this is a small piece of DNA that doesn't really do very much, except to make you male.
08:43So your Y-chromosome you got from your father.
08:45That's a picture of his father.
08:51D-d-d.
08:53And the grandfather.
08:55That's great.
08:56That's fantastic.
08:57So, that is a lineage, okay?
09:00Your Y-chromosome came from him, to him, to you.
09:04Now, if we trace back even further, so we go from you to your father, to your grandfather, to his father and so on and so on and so on.
09:13on and so on back through nearly two thousand generations if we do that we
09:18reach a single man single man one man who was living in southern
09:28central Asia around 40,000 years ago now this was a very important man because
09:42because he is the he is the ancestor of Europeans Native Americans and many
09:50many Indians so I can I can tell you with absolute certainty that your white
10:00chromosome and his white chromosome and his white chromosome they've been here
10:04for 40,000 years
10:08so congratulations very interesting blood it's it's absolutely fantastic to be
10:20able to do the work I do I'm very lucky every every day is like solving a puzzle I
10:33go into the laboratory and I get a result and it solves a mystery about history
10:37but the most amazing part is to be able to come back here and tell you the results that I found
10:52from your blood so I'd like to thank you for giving me both intellectual pleasure and
11:04and real friendship and enjoyment I it's great to meet you so to your very important blood which has brought us together
11:10So to your very important blood which has brought us together
11:22I'm very thankful that you came from the far
11:29I'm very thankful that you came from afar.
11:38Thank you very much.
11:40Thank you for meeting us.
11:41I'm so scared.
11:42What do they do with me?
11:44Turned out the poor guy thought a doctor was coming to tell him he had cancer.
11:47No wonder he looks relieved.
11:59Genetically, we're so close.
12:02Yet from here in Central Asia, the descendants of Niazov's ancestral grandfather ventured
12:07out to give us an incredible diversity of looks.
12:16One group traveled west along the plains of Asia to become the first Europeans.
12:22But one branch of Niazov's family reached the Americas.
12:26Their children are the Native Americans, from the Inuit to the Incas.
12:32To get there, they had to embark on a journey into climatic extremes beyond anything endured before.
12:40Remember the Ice Age?
12:41Well, 20,000 years ago, it was at its most extreme.
12:45And yet, our research shows that that's when they headed straight into its bitter heart.
12:50Some of them are still there.
12:52Niazov's ancient marker shows up in a nomadic tribe deep in the Russian Arctic.
12:58They're called the Chukchi, and they're survivors from the Great Migration to the Americas 15,000 years ago.
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