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Documentary, 2 Walking with Cavemen (Prehistoric Earth Version) Episode 2 # WalkingwithCavemen #Prehistoric #Documentary
#AncientEarth ##Evolutionary
#AncientEarth ##Evolutionary
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00First, our ancestors walked upright.
00:11They survived by becoming scavengers and opportunists.
00:18But this creature is something new.
00:30He has taken the next step on the journey to becoming human.
00:41This is the story of what makes him like you.
01:00Southern Africa, one and a half million years ago.
01:23These people are Homo agaster.
01:36For two days, they've been tracking a sick wildebeest.
01:40They've walked it into the ground.
01:42Yet the hunt is far from over.
01:57The wildebeest is exhausted, but not dead.
02:05Only experience will tell the agaster when to strike.
02:09What?
02:10Ruti!
02:12Bershut!
02:14Bershut!
02:16Bershut!
02:21Bershut!
02:25Aaaaah!
02:30Bershut!
02:32Bersha!
02:34Bershut!
02:35A waste of effort.
02:58The young male's impatience has cost the ergaster their kill.
03:08Their hunger will have to wait.
03:23By looking at the bones and relics that these people will one day leave behind,
03:27modern-day scientists can get a good idea of the part they play in the evolution of you and me.
03:38And by watching their everyday lives closely,
03:41we can see the seeds of humanity developing in these ape-men.
03:45We can also see how much of the ape-man remains alive in us.
03:52It's 12 noon and 35 degrees in the shade.
03:58But a ergaster can cover vast distances at quite a speed, even in these conditions,
04:05because they have the most sophisticated cooling system of any animal on Earth.
04:09Long, modern-looking noses cool and moisten air as they breathe in.
04:17Hairless bodies let heat escape.
04:21And millions of tiny glands in their skin mean that they control their temperature by sweating.
04:29So while other animals take cover in the shade, a ergaster can stride out in the sun.
04:44And they have another adaptation.
04:46Bonjour.
04:48An enormous brain.
04:49Around two-thirds the size of yours and mine.
04:52In fact, it's from a ergaster that we inherit our big brains.
04:57With their new brain power, a ergaster can understand the world around them like no other creature.
05:06Their insight into their surroundings is nothing short of revolutionary.
05:11All animals have some understanding of their environment.
05:20A five-month-old swallow can instinctively negotiate the 10,000-kilometer journey from Britain to Southern Africa without having done it before.
05:34An old matriarch elephant can remember a place to find water in the driest of seasons,
05:39even if she's only been there once half a century earlier.
05:46But until now, no creatures have pieced together knowledge of their world from apparently unrelated clues found around them.
05:59Like these, for instance.
06:01Of all the animals on Earth, only you and I can look at these marks and see them for what they are.
06:08Hoofprints, made by an animal that went that-a-way.
06:15A ergaster is the creature we get that skill from.
06:21For them, it's the key to unlock nature's secrets.
06:24They can understand that a particular kind of cloud signals rain.
06:41That the arrival of a new type of bird, like the swallows, means a change in season and new opportunities.
06:47Even if they've never seen a particular kind of animal before, they can still place it within the jigsaw of their world.
07:00Agaster's new way of seeing the world is a milestone on the journey that will lead to us.
07:13And bigger brains allow a ergaster to do something else.
07:17Make an extraordinary technological breakthrough.
07:20They've created the Rolls-Royce of stone axes.
07:33Heavy and powerful, yet precise enough for delicate cuts.
07:36It shows both planning and vision.
07:40And because these axes are found all over Africa, we know these people could share with each other the secret of how to make them.
07:49A million and a half years before your time, this axe is the most sophisticated object on the planet.
07:56So, Agaster's big brains have completely changed the way they live.
08:04But, surprisingly, it's not in order to make tools or understand their environment that Agaster's brain has evolved.
08:16A big brain is surprisingly expensive to run in terms of the amount of energy it uses.
08:21Agaster's brain is so energy hungry, it consumes about a sixth of all the calories they eat and drink in a day.
08:32For such a gas guzzler to be worthwhile, it must be absolutely vital for these people's survival.
08:38And, indeed, it is.
08:39They can deal with the most complicated thing in their world.
08:51And that's the same as the most complicated thing in our world.
09:08It's not tools or tracking or judging when a wildebeest is ready to die.
09:19What Agaster and we need a big brain for is understanding other people.
09:26The End
09:47Agastas work together to find, stalk and kill their prey.
10:17They will even take food back to share with other individuals in their group.
10:29Meat is not simply food, but a potential bargaining tool for later.
10:44For the young male, the stolen crocodile tooth may also come in handy.
11:04Almost everything about Agasta has brought them surprising benefits in their complex new
11:09world of relationships.
11:11Like the fact that they sweat instead of pant to lose heat, even when they're working
11:26hard.
11:31This has given them much more control of their breathing, freeing up their body for something
11:36increasingly useful, making sounds.
11:46Agasta are the first of our ancestors to have what we would recognize as a human voice.
11:52And communicating with each other using sounds is central to their way of life.
12:04Agasta don't have permanent home bases.
12:08Instead, they move from place to place, depending on where they can find food.
12:19They can feed themselves from what they gather about them.
12:36But the return of the hunters, with the potential of meat to share, is a special event.
12:43This is a scene unlike any scene on earth before.
12:58A group of animals held together, not by safety in numbers, nor by an individual male, but by
13:06something potentially much more powerful, the ties of family and friends.
13:17Helping others and relying on others to help you has become the glue holding these people
13:23together.
13:29From a mother offering food and support to her pregnant daughter, to the beginnings of a
13:35new kind of relationship.
13:37Males and females pairing up and living together, at least for a time, monogamously.
13:52To help them in this new world of depending on each other, Agasta have developed a unique
13:58mutation.
14:02We believe they are the first of our ancestors to have very noticeable whites to their eyes.
14:09Like us, they can learn to fathom each other's minds and communicate, at a glance, hidden depths
14:19of meaning.
14:32For the young hunter, his portion of the kill is more than just food.
14:36It's a currency.
14:37He's going to use it to buy a mate.
14:46The stolen tooth adds to the overall good impression.
14:50He's a man who's not only useful, but brave.
14:54Quite a catch.
14:55But the young female appears to have more than one suitor.
15:11For any Agasta, there are few more unsettling sights than a solitary unattached nail.
15:24There are two scouts about guns.
15:39Let's go!
15:41The primitive eruption of violence is both sudden and shocking.
16:10Yet it's part of these people's complicated lives together.
16:19Living together in the beginnings of a complex society, with big brains to help them understand each other, is the next step on the journey to you and me.
16:29It's enabled Agasta to do something that's never happened before in the history of human life on Earth.
16:36It has given them the ability to leave their ancestral home, Africa, and begin to populate the rest of the world.
16:45They began by following the course of the River Nile, across Africa and into the Middle East.
16:54Their numbers growing, they spread further in their search for food, reaching Asia, the first of our ancestors to tread on this side of the Earth, as far as the southern reaches of China.
17:09Their epic journey took thousands of years.
17:12So far did they travel, that when we find their remains, we even call them a different name.
17:16Homo erectus.
17:17It is Homo erectus, whose eyes are the first to see the wonders of the Eastern world.
17:22Homo erectus.
17:23It is Homo erectus, whose eyes are the first to see the wonders of the Eastern world.
17:29Homo erectus.
17:30It is Homo erectus, whose eyes are the first to see the wonders of the Eastern world.
17:44It is a curious fact, that when we find evidence of these first Asians, we never find the elaborate stone axes their cousins in Africa made use of.
18:05It could be they found a different kind of tool, easier to work.
18:12And in this vast kingdom, all around them.
18:21Bamboo.
18:35The inspiration.
18:36Erectus live in a land where tools grow like trees.
18:44Dick.
18:45Dick.
18:56Small deer and pigs are everywhere in the dense bamboo forests.
18:57forests. But erectus are not fussy. They can easily rethink their menu.
19:27In time, our ancestors will change the world as no animal has done before. Many creatures
19:42that get in their way will be swept aside. But not today. For all the confidence of erectus,
19:50there are still things in this new world with the capacity to scare. Like the massive Gigantopithecus,
20:02an ancient ape over three meters tall. The original King Kong.
20:09In time, the balance of power will shift.
20:32Erectus are tough and adaptable. And in this ancient Asian landscape, they'll do well.
20:48So our big brained ancestors are flourishing all over the planet. It might seem as if
20:55a modern world isn't far off at all. But think again.
21:03It might seem as if it's a modern world.
21:11Travel with me in time, forward a million years, and we'll see something incredible.
21:17A mystery which shows how hugely different these ancestors really are from you and me.
21:23We're in Africa again. We've moved forward a million years. But our ancestors haven't moved forward at all.
21:42This is a recently abandoned kill, butchered by our ancestors a million years after we saw them using their original stone axes.
21:57And what are they using now?
22:01It's another stone hand axe, exactly the same as the axes which Augusta made a million years before.
22:10Their technology hasn't advanced in all that time.
22:15It's almost impossible for us to imagine such a limited way of thinking.
22:23But the truth is, our ancestors make an axe like a bird builds a nest.
22:28They don't think about it. They just do it.
22:31It's no more possible for these ancestors to invent better technology than for that bird to decide to cover its nest with a roof.
22:39It's not that our ancestors are stupid. Their brains just don't work like ours do.
22:46It takes something extraordinary to change this way of thinking. A trigger to set our ancestors' minds racing. And it may be that we know what it is. We don't know precisely where it happened or when, but at some point our ancestors gained an understanding of fire.
23:13They would have undoubtedly seen it from lightning or bushfires, but there would have been a moment when they learned to harness it for warmth, for safety, and as a tool.
23:28And then their lives change. Suddenly, like no animal before them, they control their world. And nightfall doesn't bring danger, but something new. Time outside the struggle for survival. Time for the mind to wander.
23:46And perhaps fire had the power to change more than just how our ancestors lived, but how they could think. That it broke the shackles in their minds, and that their ideas fly free.
24:04It could be that taming such an elemental force equipped these men and women to move on. Because move on they did.
24:22In just a few thousand generations, their kind will dominate the world. These people will give birth to a new kind of human altogether. And that's who we're going to meet now, for the final step in our journey.
24:29It's southern England in southern England.
24:55It's southern England 400,000 years ago and Augusta's descendants are the most advanced
25:05humans to have set foot on the planet.
25:12Three brothers, hunters on the brink of a kill.
25:25And the defining moment in the story of you and me.
25:37These people are Heidelbergensis. Their foe, the giant elk Megaloceros.
25:45It's wounded and can't escape. The brothers split up to surround it.
25:51The beast's three-metre span of antlers are deadly weapons.
25:58The youngest is similar to deal the fatal blood.
26:01It's a cruel twist.
26:15Though the men's hunt is over, the young brother is desperately injured.
26:20By evening, he's delirious and his family distraught.
26:36They use wild herbs to stop his bleeding and fight infection.
26:41The eldest attempts to comfort him. But he's having a fit.
26:52These men and women have brains almost as big as ours.
26:58And they'll use all their skill and love to try and keep their brother alive.
27:01Though this is nearly half a million years ago, these people appear to behave just like us.
27:10But twelve hours later, we can see the one thing that makes them and us so very different.
27:28So very different.
27:43It's the young brother.
27:45He died in the night and his family have left him.
27:48For us, to simply let him sit where he died seems unthinkable.
27:53And yet for these people, it's unthinkable not to.
27:59For all their success in overcoming their physical environment, there's another type of environment in which they're still trapped.
28:07That of their own minds.
28:08Unlike you and me, these people can only see the world around them as it is.
28:17They can't do what we take for granted and picture worlds of a different kind.
28:24In this case, a world beyond death.
28:26We none of us can know if such a world exists.
28:37But we can, or at least, imagine one.
28:40It's one reason why we commemorate our loved ones with some sort of ceremony.
28:44But these people can't.
28:51They're just too literal minded.
28:54Which is why he lies here.
28:56It's not that his companions didn't like him.
28:59They loved him.
29:01It's just that he's gone, and that's the end of it.
29:03What Heidelbergensis lack is imagination.
29:10It's the final ingredient that makes you and me.
29:14This is the story of how they found that imagination and became us.
29:21It begins with one of the most incredible natural experiments of all time.
29:28It's 500,000 years ago.
29:30Heidelbergensis are spread throughout Europe and Africa.
29:36And nature will split the population in two.
29:40Exposing the Europeans and the Africans to two very different extremes.
29:46To the north, an ice edge.
29:56To the south, a devastating drought.
29:58These people will struggle to survive for hundreds of thousands of years.
30:05And we'll join them again when evolution has turned them into two separate species.
30:11But in their struggle to adapt and survive, only one will emerge with the gift of a modern human mind.
30:18It's now 140,000 years ago, and the Europe of Heidelbergensis is long gone.
30:39It's a frozen wasteland from Scandinavia to Spain.
30:44The ice age has turned Heidelbergensis into a new people.
30:49Neanderthals.
30:50The ice age has turned Heidelbergensis into a new people.
30:56Neanderthals.
30:57Neanderthals.
31:12These are hunters returning home.
31:15They're empty handed after three days of trekking.
31:17It's only the beginning of September, but winter has come early.
31:24Whilst they've been away, the bad weather has closed in.
31:29Their home valley is under thick snow.
31:33It's bad news, especially for the leader.
31:36By mid-morning they've reached home, and tensions are running high.
31:38Meaddaa, buh shvi, bufad.
31:43Ufibi shisibbosh.
31:47Any day now, the leader's partner is due to giving fours.
31:48That's what we've used for.
31:51But we've lost almost no doubt.
31:54The rest are now in the day at the end.
31:57You're going to eat it.
31:59You're going to eat it!
32:01You're going to eat it.
32:03The rest is now in the day.
32:05Any day now, the leader's partner is due to give birth.
32:09It will be her first child.
32:18With snow on the ground, it's vital that the clan move on.
32:22But the journey would be suicide for a new mother and baby.
32:26The leader must decide whether to move and risk his unborn child
32:30or stay and risk the future of them all.
32:35Damn, rat-cham-bong.
32:39Rock-donk, say-si-sha!
32:41He's decided to lead the men on one final hunt,
33:09a last chance to avoid the treacherous journey south for his partner.
33:34The temperature here is above freezing for only a few months a year.
33:38It regularly falls as low as minus 30.
33:41You and I would be lucky to survive a night.
33:49So how are these people adapted to cope in such a hostile world?
33:56One answer lies with their bodies.
33:58They're quite a bit smaller than we are, not much over one and a half meters.
34:07And they've evolved a trait characteristic of all animals living in cold places.
34:12Short limbs and extremities that help keep valuable heat in.
34:15And they have another adaptation that helps them survive.
34:20It comes into its own when they're hard at work.
34:26Their noses, broad and bigger than ours.
34:30We believe they're designed not to help keep them warm, but to cool them down.
34:43In these surroundings that might seem odd.
34:45But the last thing a Neanderthal wants to do is overheat and sweat.
34:51Sweat would simply freeze.
34:53And it's not just their bodies which make these people so tough.
34:59The weather has also changed their minds.
35:03Meanderthals seem capable of shrugging off extraordinary hardships.
35:04and it's not just their bodies which make these people so tough the weather has also changed their
35:18minds meanderthals seem capable of shrugging off extraordinary hardships
35:34things that you and I might find unbearable
35:46I got John
35:55Neanderthals ice age way of life has made them unimaginably tough an x-ray of their bones would
36:01reveal a catalogue of fractures from head to toe like the body of a rodeo rider
36:06but the hunters need more than toughness they need luck
36:31the men have reached the edge of their hunting grounds
36:50they've walked for three days and found nothing
36:57the leader has failed
37:05the leader has failed
37:10my
37:12my
37:14my
37:16my
37:18my
37:20my
37:22my
37:24my
37:26my
37:28my
37:31my
37:33my
37:34my
37:36my
37:39my
37:40A herd of mammoth, and an opportunity too good to be missed.
38:10At over five tons, a mammoth is a fearsome adversary, but the hunters have a plan.
38:40The head of the valley narrows to a steep ravine, the perfect place for an ambush.
38:49The leader's cough has blown their cover.
38:54The leader's cough has blown their cover.
39:06The men now have the added problem of a fast-moving target.
39:19But their luck has changed.
39:28It's more than they could have hoped for.
39:37When the rest of the herd has left her, the hunters will move in for the kill.
39:43The hunt has been a triumph.
40:05Now the group has food enough to last until long after the birth of the new arrival.
40:17So, where do we stand in the journey towards you and me?
40:22Have the Neanderthals begun to see the world as we do?
40:30Well, watching their lives, there's a lot about the way they are that's just like us.
40:37Their pleasure at being reunited.
40:40Their contentment with being warm and well fed.
40:47Boy!
40:48Boy!
40:49Boy!
40:50Boy!
40:51Boy!
40:52Boy!
40:53Boy!
40:54Boy!
40:55Perhaps even their amusement at someone else's misfortune.
41:00But in one crucial way, they and we are still completely different.
41:10Like how they begin this before them, Neanderthals lack an imagination.
41:15The truth is, in their Ice Age world, they simply don't need it.
41:21To cope here and do well, it's physical and mental strength that's required.
41:26So, the innovation of imagination simply hasn't taken hold.
41:33For Neanderthals, being strong and tough is enough.
41:45So, how have the other contenders in our human story fared?
41:49What has happened to Heidelbergensis in the south?
41:56In Africa, thousands of arid years have turned great tracts of the continent to near desert.
42:04And the tall, strong Heidelbergensis into this.
42:08These are people physically like us.
42:20They are taller and slimmer than the Neanderthals.
42:23A good shape to cope with the heat.
42:25And they have a dark skin to help keep safe in the sun.
42:28But whereas the Neanderthals are getting by in their tough world, these people are not.
42:46Unlike in an Ice Age, no amount of being tough or single-minded can help in a devastating drought.
43:00In these conditions, there is only one thing to do.
43:04Die.
43:09And that's what this family is doing.
43:12They have been driven to the very edge of their world, and they can run no further.
43:19They are amongst the last of their kind.
43:24It's 140,000 years ago, and these people are on the brink of extinction.
43:34But something extraordinary is happening to them.
43:37When a species is dying out, only the most inventive and resourceful remain alive.
43:44As the numbers fall, the fitness of the remaining population rises.
43:50If evolution is a process of natural selection, then this is natural selection at its most potent.
43:59But in Africa, this extreme process has nurtured a unique development.
44:05This beautiful-looking ostrich egg is evidence of a change in the way these surviving people think.
44:12Because it's no longer filled with yolk, but with water.
44:16And they are burying it so they can drink another day.
44:20This simple act is hugely significant, as it shows an ability so far missing in our human story, imagination.
44:30These people are thinking ahead, going beyond the here and now.
44:35They can see how an egg can be used to hold water, and how, one day, they might come back this way and need to drink.
44:43Imagination is an insurance policy against the problems of the future.
44:54With it, a tiny population of humans in Africa can hold on, until one day, as it always does, the weather once again changes.
45:04Around 110,000 years ago, the Great Ice Age begins to pass, and water returns to Africa.
45:23By this time, there are as few humans left alive as there are orangutans in your era.
45:34Yet we know from studying our genes that we are all descended from this tiny band of survivors.
45:41That it's these people that lived on.
45:44And in Europe around the same time, the Neanderthals are on the brink of a different fate.
45:52They have been one of the most successful species in human history.
45:56Yet all their skill and toughness are not enough.
46:01As modern humans begin to spread, they will inevitably come into contact.
46:06The Neanderthals will be under pressure.
46:09And the imaginative newcomers will squeeze them out.
46:13In evolution, you don't have to fail to become extinct.
46:17Just succeed less often.
46:29It's now 30,000 years ago, and the final chapter of our human story unfolds.
46:36To be honest, there are no questions that make some sense of a great feeling of history.
46:42Save from the brink of extinction, the imaginations of our ancestors have taken flight.
46:48They have created sophisticated language to share their new ideas with each other.
46:57and they're spreading across the globe wherever they go they're leaving signs
47:03of the complex world they're creating as this man is doing now
47:16who knows what these images mean to him we can only guess they are the world
47:22inside his head made real
47:32in a way what they mean doesn't matter but the fact they're here at all that
47:38someone crept into these caves and painted something that only existed in
47:42their mind's eye is proof these people are different from every other creature
47:47in the whole history of life they are not simply living in caves but in an
47:52imagined world of their own making
48:11since our story began our ancestors like all animals have lived within the
48:17confines of the world around but now after seven million years of evolution
48:24these people us have at last stepped outside the rules of life
48:32and
48:41soon there'll be only one species of two-legged ape left on the planet
48:47and all that modern humans have achieved is now possible
48:51even though we've yet to invent the wheel discover writing
48:55or travel to the moon
48:57from this baby girl on it's now just a question of time
49:02of time
49:05the
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