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00:12Over 300,000 years ago, Africa was the cradle of humanity.
00:19The place where humans evolved, including the first of a new species, Homo sapiens.
00:30Our species.
00:32From humble beginnings, our growing culture and connections helped us spread across that great continent.
00:42And then, we ventured outwards, away from our home and into the wider world.
01:15Our ancestors did something which is actually remarkable.
01:19From a beach not unlike this one, possibly quite close by.
01:26They ventured out into an open ocean with only an empty horizon in front of them.
01:35And after many days and nights on the water, they eventually came upon this new landmass that they would settle.
01:42We call that landmass Australia.
01:45It was a pivotal moment in the history of our species.
01:51But in so many ways, it's not actually the destination that's important.
01:56It is everything it took, all the challenges they had to overcome, to make it so far away from where
02:05they began in Africa.
02:10We were not the first humans to leave Africa.
02:15Long before we evolved, the ancestors of our cousins, the Neanderthals, set out.
02:22And Homo erectus, one of the most ancient humans, had made it deep into Asia.
02:34But none had ever made the voyage to Australia.
02:41Every other species of human reached a point, and then they just stopped.
02:46They faced a barrier that they either could not or would not pass.
02:50But not us.
02:52This is the story of how time and again we took on perilous journeys.
02:58How the last species of human to evolve took on environments like no others had.
03:05To become the only global species of human.
03:10That title is Ours and Ours Alone.
03:27This story begins over 120,000 years ago.
03:33As our species spreads beyond the borders of Africa,
03:38they're blocked by expanses of oceans on most sides.
03:43One of the few places they can go is east.
03:48To the vast landmass that today is made up of Arabia and the Levant.
03:59At this time, one of the few gateways out of Africa to the rest of the world.
04:21To the vast and protcture.
04:23To the vast and large blessings you lose.
04:24Before ignites.
04:26The vast and large wilouf.
04:29The vast and large wil pode be.
04:55of all the species of human
04:57that have ever existed.
04:59I think we, Homo sapiens, are the explorer species.
05:04We can't help it.
05:06We have to wander.
05:12It is in our want to travel.
05:16And this place was the landmass next door.
05:20You could see it from Africa.
05:22And look at it.
05:23It is absolutely breathtaking, but it's not exactly welcoming.
05:32Nothing about this place says home.
05:37And so the question is, why did Homo sapiens come here?
05:47We know they did, thanks to fines from Israel and Saudi Arabia, to the Gulf states, and even
05:59beyond to the fringes of Europe and Asia.
06:07Which is hard to explain when today these lands look just as much of a barrier as any ocean.
06:19I always say archaeology is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.
06:24And you're just constantly looking for pieces of that puzzle to help you get the full picture.
06:30And this is one of those pieces.
06:33This particular piece is a copy of a tooth.
06:37Now, it's a single tooth, which gives you an idea of how large this animal must have been.
06:42Because it's bigger than a brick.
06:44It's practically the size of my head.
06:46It is the tooth of an extinct elephant, and it was found in Jordan.
06:51And we also have hippo fossils from the Saudi desert.
06:56Now, hippos and elephants do not belong in this landscape.
07:02Look around.
07:04Where's the water?
07:06Hippos actually need standing bodies of water.
07:09And they need greenery.
07:12And that's the thing about some fossils.
07:16They tell us about what a landscape used to look like.
07:20Because bees do not belong here.
07:34These finds point to a very different Arabia.
07:41One that if you know where to look, you can see hints of to this day.
07:51If you look over there, it almost looks like a mirage.
07:55That white and silver on the landscape.
07:58So that used to be a lake.
08:01And the white and silver is actually salt and gypsum that was left behind when the water evaporated.
08:09And scientists are really interested in not just aging them, but also working out these ancient water systems, these extinct
08:17water systems.
08:19And so one of the ways they do this is by just getting on the ground and walking these beautiful
08:25but incredibly intense landscapes.
08:27Looking at maps, looking at satellite images.
08:31And this is the result of some of that work.
08:35Now, if you look here, this is a map of the region just slightly north of here.
08:42So this is Saudi, which is to our east.
08:44And that there is the Sinai of Egypt.
08:46You can see it's basically shades of beige and grey.
08:51Now, look.
08:53So this is about 125,000 years ago.
08:59Water litters this landscape.
09:02I mean, you can see the veins just running through.
09:06There is no way that this land would not have been green.
09:10There are paleo lakes and paleo rivers absolutely everywhere.
09:18And this is this region as we have never known it.
09:25Now, remember, this was a world without borders.
09:29And this was a land of plenty within easy reach.
09:35And so why wouldn't Homo sapiens have come here?
09:48But what they didn't know, what they couldn't have known, is that this region would be a trap.
10:03The green days of Arabia were numbered.
10:07The desert was on the march.
10:18Subtle variations in the orbit of the Earth caused the climate to change.
10:27Within as little as a few hundred years, the rains vanished, starving this entire region of water.
10:38Leaving humans at the mercy of the desert.
10:46If you set out to create an environment that was completely and utterly hostile to our biology,
10:51you'd come up with this.
10:53The heat is such a presence that I can feel it on my back.
10:57The sun, even at this time of the morning, feels like it's borderline torture.
11:04And there is no water.
11:07As far as the eye can see, there's nothing.
11:11And back then, it would have been so much worse.
11:14It wasn't arid, it's what we call hyper-arid.
11:17It's thought that there was no rainfall for years on end.
11:22And so we go from seeing multiple sites where humans lived in this region to nothing.
11:35We seem to vanish for thousands of years.
11:39And this could so easily have been the end of our journey.
11:47Defeated by the harsh desert.
11:59We think that some Homo sapiens clung on in pockets that we call refugia.
12:05Those are refuges where the climate is milder.
12:08But from all we can tell, there would have been few and far between.
12:13And they effectively faded away.
12:17And so for all intents and purposes, Homo sapiens outside of Africa had failed.
12:25And what's interesting is, other species of human had cracked the code of living outside of Africa, but not us.
12:34And so how did this happen?
12:36People like me, so many of you, how did we become the only species of human who exists across the
12:45globe?
12:53These brutal conditions persisted for years on end.
13:06Until finally, there was another subtle change in climate.
13:14Allowing conditions to become less extreme.
13:24And giving Homo sapiens another chance.
13:35Occasional seasonal rains returned.
13:42Just enough to bring precious water back to the desert.
14:01Now, the conditions here did get better.
14:03So, yes, you had desert and sand dunes.
14:07But you also had lakes and rivers.
14:12And that resulted in us being able to exist in this place.
14:18But not just exist here.
14:20From an oasis here to a river and spring system there.
14:24We were able to actually leave the Arabian Peninsula and face the rest of the world.
14:39As they did, these new waves likely absorbed any small pockets of Homo sapiens that had held on.
14:49And now scientists studying the genetic code of people alive today believe this moment was a pivotal point in our
15:00history.
15:06Our DNA has the power to tell stories about us.
15:11But some of them aren't just stories.
15:13They're sagas.
15:14And they're extraordinary.
15:16And one of them is that every single one of us whose origins are from outside of Africa
15:22comes from a tiny population of Homo sapiens.
15:29We started in Africa from multiple populations across the continent.
15:35But then, only a small group of us left.
15:39Perhaps as few as 10,000 individuals.
15:45And so, all of us from outside of Africa come from this minuscule population who went on to populate not
15:56one, not two continents, but five.
16:08But our journey through the desert was only one of a multitude of challenges Homo sapiens would face as we
16:20spread across the globe.
16:25And because we were so few in number, our very survival outside of Africa was far from certain.
16:48As this tiny population grew and spread, they would crash into another extreme environment.
17:03One that had defeated all other species of human.
17:09A vast green wall.
17:17Once beyond the desert, our species found themselves in the giant landmass of Europe and Asia.
17:25To their north lay high, cold mountains.
17:29So many spread eastwards and south.
17:32Down through what is now the Indian subcontinent.
17:36Reaching modern-day Sri Lanka.
17:39At that time, joined to the mainland by lower sea levels.
17:49And dominated by expansive, dense rainforests.
18:04And while this may look so much more welcoming than the desert, nothing could be further from the truth.
18:20These leeches are absolutely everywhere, and when I say everywhere, I mean one has just got me.
18:27And there are creepy crawlies absolutely everywhere, including in our trousers.
18:32And they are actually quite irritating.
18:37This place is also full of mosquitoes.
18:39We saw a viper and a cobra.
18:43And that's the thing about this place.
18:45It is difficult to exist in.
18:48It's hot, it's humid, it's oppressive.
18:50And you have to constantly have no wits about you.
19:01This is one of the most extreme environments on the planet.
19:08So much of what grows here is poisonous to eat.
19:13And there are few large animals to provide meat.
19:19Conditions so difficult that as far as we can tell, no other species of human ever made it past the
19:28fringes of these rainforests.
19:42So much of what's happening here is a bit like stepping back in time.
20:05Because about 50,000 years ago, this place would have basically looked the same.
20:08This huge cave mouth would have been here.
20:12Only back then, the rainforest would have been unbroken.
20:17And it would have gone on for kilometers in every single direction.
20:22And yet, somehow, in this cave and two other caves not far away,
20:28we have found evidence of our ancestors living here all the way back then,
20:34in the heart of what would have been a massive rainforest.
20:43So how were Homo sapiens able to plunge into a place no others had?
20:51How did they find food particularly meat?
20:56They did have the advantage of bow and arrow technology, which had arisen thousands of years earlier.
21:05But heavy, stone-tipped arrows were less suited to firing into the high canopy of the rainforest.
21:17Their solution was uncovered thanks to over 30 years of excavations deep into the floor of this and the other
21:26two caves.
21:28digs that reached all the way back to 48,000 years ago,
21:34when the pioneers of our species first attempted to overcome the challenges of this rainforest.
21:45Starting with one of the most difficult.
21:49How to find enough meat to sustain them.
21:54So here you can see a monkey bone.
21:58We can clearly see that the V-shape.
22:02This V-shape cut marks only came produced by the stone tools.
22:06Yeah, so this here, that's where somebody is cutting.
22:10Yeah, they are cutting or skinning also can be possible.
22:14Whatever is stuck with the bone, they try to remove.
22:18It's funny because I think butchery marks often need to look at it through a magnifying glass, but not always.
22:24And actually this one is quite clear.
22:25And this is not the kind of thing that you would see if an animal killed it.
22:30This is an indication that this was killed very clearly.
22:33This is definitely, this is definitely a homo sapiens.
22:35And so the question is how they killed them.
22:44It is remarkable Ella because there are lots of trees very tall.
22:50In seconds they can climb up to the top.
22:53So therefore it is very difficult to catch them.
22:59The prehistoric people or our ancestors should need to develop their own technology to get them down.
23:09So I would like to show you some earliest, which goes back to 48,000 years old.
23:15They developed this bone point technology and they made bone tipped arrows.
23:22They identified the monkey bones are really special to make arrowheads because those are light in weight to hunt this
23:32fast moving animal.
23:39If you use this stone point, the arrow is heavier.
23:46So here you can see it is a little bit chipped because it's hit with contact with something.
23:51So that is why at the end it's less small.
23:55So that chip mark there shows us that it was actually used.
23:59Yes.
24:00I mean it's amazing because this is obviously, I've got in my hands right now something that was used 48
24:05,000 years ago.
24:07Of course, of course.
24:07And it was absolutely revolutionary.
24:11These bone points are only the tips of the full arrowheads.
24:18Many are chipped from actually hitting prey.
24:21And each one would have been attached to the end of a long wooden arrow.
24:32These hunters didn't invent a brand new technology.
24:39They adapted an old one.
24:43These are some of the earliest examples of bow and arrows found outside of Africa.
24:53Enabling homo sapiens to hunt with exceptional skill and efficiency within the forest.
25:20But we know that the humans living here were doing more than just surviving.
25:38Oshan and the team also found beads fashioned from shells.
25:48Perhaps brought in through trade from groups living on the coast.
25:53A constant struggle to survive.
25:56Doesn't leave much time for making works of art.
26:05Suggesting a long established and successful community existed here.
26:19And for that, to turn this place into a true home would take something fundamental to our species.
26:36This is a replica of a tool that was found in the caves in this area dated from about 40
26:47,000 years ago.
26:48It is a monkey tooth, specifically a canine.
26:52But that's been modified.
26:54If you look here, it's been cut into to create a much sharper point.
27:00And the reason for that is that it's a tool used for puncturing.
27:10It's not easy.
27:14All right, I finally managed to make a hole.
27:20And once you make a hole, you can then use plant fiber, animal sinew as a string.
27:28Start stringing animal skins, animal hide together and create clothes.
27:33But actually, in so many ways, that's not the most interesting thing about this tool.
27:40Because for me, the most interesting thing is what this tells us about the minds of the people who have
27:46made it.
27:47Because you have to be taught how to use it.
27:50You have to be taught how to make it.
27:54So it actually tells us something much deeper.
28:03Throughout the years, humans made this cave their home.
28:07Countless elder generations would have taught children these techniques.
28:14Something we still do to this day.
28:17A communal passing on of knowledge that is key to our ability to master so many different environments.
28:35That engagement, constant engagement, turns every generation of children into a set in the evolution of knowledge.
28:43And for us homo sapiens, that's probably what adaptation is.
28:49The evolution of knowledge.
28:51Because it's what turns a simple projectile like a bow and arrow into a weapon fine-tuned, honed and specialized
28:59for the rainforest.
29:01And that constant innovation unlocks resources that were completely out of reach to other species of humans.
29:11Resources like the rainforest.
29:26And it's this ongoing evolution of tools and techniques that has allowed our species, time and again, to live and
29:37thrive.
29:39Even in extreme environments.
29:47That is the strength of our species.
29:49That we were opening up so many new environments.
29:53Places that previously other species saw as impenetrable, as too difficult.
29:59We saw it as having long-term potential.
30:02And we were able to expand in number.
30:05We were able to then adapt to it.
30:07And as we grew, some people would decide to move on to yet another environment.
30:14We were becoming a species with truly global potential.
30:26It was that ability to take on so many different challenging environments that carried us through so much of the
30:35world.
30:37By now, to the fringes of Europe, into the cold expanses of northern Asia, and within only a few thousand
30:50years of leaving Africa, deep into Southeast Asia.
30:56Lower sea levels had created a single region known as Sunda.
31:03Where today there are sweeping stretches of tropical waters.
31:09Our wandering feet brought us to its outer edge.
31:17Beyond lay an ocean.
31:21Dotted with isolated islands.
31:35There are these places that you turn up to and you think, I'm on the edge of the world.
31:41They are incredibly remote and isolated.
31:44And this is one of those places.
31:46And it's been like this since the very beginning, since its formation.
31:49Because it's been surrounded by this very deep sea.
31:53Which makes what was found here even more intriguing.
31:57Because a mind-boggling, completely unexpected human history plays out here over hundreds of thousands of years.
32:10Even all those years ago, the ocean could not stop the spread of our species.
32:20We reached these remote islands, thanks to a technology that as far as we can tell, we are the only
32:27humans to master.
32:32This is a tuna fishbone.
32:34This is a tuna fishbone.
32:35This particular one happens to be quite fresh.
32:36It's a few days old.
32:38But we have actually found tuna fish bones on an archeological site on these islands that dates back to over
32:4640,000 years.
32:47But tuna swim in open waters.
32:53And that means that our ancestors, over 40,000 years ago, they were fashioning some kind of vessel and going
33:00out into the open waters and coming back again and again and again.
33:07We can't be sure what form these vessels took, since no evidence survives.
33:13But they were probably simple rafts made from available wood.
33:20And they did more than just help us fish.
33:27There is a very interesting archeological site on one of the neighboring islands that has this one layer that is
33:33just filled with artifacts belonging to Homo sapiens.
33:37But the layer just before it, immediately preceding it, is empty and barren of those same artifacts.
33:44So it almost suggests that our ancestors just kind of turned up overnight and spread rapidly through these islands in
33:51large numbers just because of the sheer volume of artifacts within that layer.
33:57And none of that would really be possible unless you were skilled enough to build robust craft.
34:03You were skilled enough to navigate treacherous waters.
34:11But in a truly surprising twist, we were not the first to reach Flores.
34:19Somehow, someone made it here before us.
34:27Sometimes in this job, you get to fulfill a lifelong dream.
34:31And one of them is about to happen.
34:33See, there's this cave in paleoanthropology that isn't just fascinating.
34:37It's basically explosive.
34:40It started in 1950 with this one priest called Father Theodore Verhoeven.
34:45Now, back in the day, it was actually quite common for priests and missionaries to also dabble in archeology.
34:51So he was out here on Flores looking for archeological sites.
34:54And in talking to locals, he got told about this one cave that had potential.
34:59He turned up.
35:00It was actually being used as an amateur school.
35:03But just below the surface, he did actually find archeology.
35:09Actually, it was stone tools belonging to ancient humans.
35:14Now, that in and of itself is huge.
35:16It's really significant.
35:18But it would take another half a century before we understood just how important this cave was.
35:39For over 20 years, a joint Indonesian and international team of archeologists has been excavating these caves.
35:48They had been searching for evidence of the spread of Homo sapiens through the islands.
35:55Instead, they found something completely unexpected.
35:59A strange skeleton from at least 70,000 years ago.
36:04So long before our species reached this far from Africa.
36:11I think the first thing, obviously, that strikes you when you see her is that she's very short.
36:17Yeah, yeah, very short.
36:18What are we talking, one meter?
36:20Yeah, the skeleton is about a meter and six centimeters tall.
36:25So about three and a half feet.
36:28All of our team, when saw this for the first time, we thought this belonged to a child.
36:37But then, after we were able to clean up all the dirt, you can see all the molars already erupted.
36:46It's got wisdom teeth.
36:48Yes.
36:49Yes, there is already permanent teeth.
36:51Yeah, I mean the molars, the adult molars are there.
36:53Yes, it's already there.
36:54Three of them, yeah.
36:55As soon as you look closely, this is 100% an adult.
36:59Yeah.
37:00Yeah.
37:03An adult, but the size of a child.
37:06And that was only the first surprise.
37:12The legs, they're quite short.
37:14Yeah.
37:15The leg is only slightly longer than the arms, yeah.
37:21Whereas with us?
37:22Yeah, with us it's different.
37:23Our legs are really long.
37:24Really long, yeah.
37:25Compared to our arms.
37:26Compared to upper limb, I think.
37:28Yeah.
37:28And also, if you have a look on the feet.
37:30Yeah.
37:31Yeah, the feet is about 70% of the length of the femur.
37:36Which is huge, because on me that would be...
37:39Yeah.
37:39About that length.
37:40Yeah, it's true.
37:42Because so many unique features not seen in other species,
37:47we placed this skeleton as a new species,
37:52and we named the skeleton Homo phrasiensis.
37:57I mean, this is one of those moments in the history of the field
38:00where I just wish I had been there.
38:03I know she's a replica, but she's a replica of the real thing.
38:07Yeah.
38:07And, yeah, it's giving me goosebumps.
38:18This new species of human was a revelation.
38:23Named Homo phrasiensis after the island,
38:25they quickly became known to many as the hobbits.
38:30After the heroes from Lord of the Rings,
38:33who were also small as adults.
38:40It's likely they arrived entirely by chance.
38:44Perhaps a few individuals swept here on driftwood
38:48from the islands to the north.
38:51More than 700,000 years ago.
38:59Eventually becoming a unique species,
39:02seemingly with a mix of modern and more ancient characteristics.
39:09Now, we can see, obviously, the brain is small,
39:13but how small are we talking?
39:15Only one-third of the modern human's brain size, I think.
39:19Almost similar to a dark chin.
39:23That. That's right.
39:24How incredible.
39:25We discover the skeleton with stone artifacts here.
39:29Such a small brain, and yet, they had stone tools.
39:33Yes, it did.
39:36Before this, scientists assumed that a human with such a small brain
39:42could never have developed such tools.
39:45One theory is that they were initially a much larger species,
39:50before the long isolation on floras caused them to shrink.
39:54A process known as island dwarfism,
39:57where large animals get smaller due to fewer resources.
40:02At the same time, some small animals actually get bigger
40:08due to a lack of predators.
40:11We found a giant rat up to about 3 kilos.
40:20We also found elephant-like creatures called stegodon,
40:24as big as a water buffalo.
40:26This is a smaller one.
40:28So stegodons generally are not the size of water buffaloes.
40:32But on this island, they're the size of a water buffalo.
40:36Yeah.
40:36And then on this island, you've got humans that are a meter tall.
40:39Yeah, this one.
40:40What you're describing there is a species
40:43that has been shaped by this island,
40:46has been shaped by the environment on this island.
40:49And the result is this.
40:55Long isolation allowed evolution
40:58to tailor the hobbit to this environment.
41:05Their long arms compared to short legs,
41:07a response to perhaps the steep terrain,
41:10or the lack of predators on the island to run away from.
41:16Physical adaptations that, along with those simple stone tools,
41:21help them survive here for hundreds of thousands of years.
41:35of course.
41:35You can see it's like layers of cake.
41:37Yes.
41:37So every period has left a layer.
41:41So this is like a snapshot in time,
41:44telling us a lot about different periods.
41:47Yeah, there is a series of volcano eruptions,
41:53eight volcanic tephras.
41:55That's basically flow from volcanic eruption.
41:58Yeah.
42:01This tephra is very important in the young blue,
42:03because this tephra,
42:05we call it tephra tree.
42:07This dated to about 50,000 years ago.
42:11And all homophilous skeletal remains
42:15derived from below this tephra.
42:17Right.
42:17And then tephra 5, the gray and pink is taller.
42:23Yeah.
42:23And when we dated this flow stone,
42:25including charcoal,
42:27dated back about 46,000 years ago.
42:30Right.
42:30And just above these layers,
42:33we found several elements of modern humans.
42:38So homo sapiens.
42:39Homo sapiens.
42:39So that there is the boundaries between fluorescence
42:43and modern humans.
42:45The massive pyroclastic flow here.
42:49That's really significant.
42:50So the pyroclastic flow is when you have the gas and material
42:53that comes from a volcanic eruption.
42:55And really, I mean, that would just be quite destructive.
42:57Yeah.
42:58But we still don't have the fixed evidence
43:02that this volcanic eruption
43:05causes the extinction of the homo fluorescence.
43:12We don't think that that final eruption alone
43:15caused the extinction of the hobbits.
43:17It would have been a catastrophic event here at the cave,
43:21but we don't know how it affected the rest of the island.
43:26What we do know is that this shows
43:29the time of the hobbits here was coming to an end.
43:35So you're looking at actually quite a different world down there.
43:38Exactly.
43:39To up there.
43:40Exactly.
43:56This tiny island has been home to two species of human.
44:06One remains to this day.
44:09One vanished long ago.
44:25It is wonderful to imagine what this place was like before all of this.
44:32thousands of years before our ancestors.
44:35You had these miniature elephant-like creatures who wandered open grasslands.
44:41You had actual dragons, the Komodo dragons who still exist.
44:47And then giant marabou storks.
44:51Storks that were carnivorous, that were my height or taller and could fly.
44:55It was like a fantasy island.
44:58And amongst all of it, there were these humans who were tiny,
45:03who came up to about my hip.
45:07And those hobbits lived here on this island for a staggering length of time.
45:12Potentially for more than 700,000 years.
45:16Longer than we've existed as a species.
45:22And yet, there is this twist.
45:25Because so far we have found no evidence of them past these shores.
45:30Their whole story plays out only on this island of Flores.
45:38Our own species, in just a fraction of that time, was able to spread across a huge portion of the
45:47globe.
45:56Around 50,000 years ago, the climate here became warmer and drier, changing the environment.
46:06At the same time, those violent volcanic eruptions also struck.
46:20Whatever the reason, it meant that Homo floresiensis faced not just change, but rapid change.
46:28That meant that their physiology, their physical adaptations,
46:32that for so long had been a benefit.
46:35But now a trial.
46:37They were being left behind because it's actually incredibly difficult to rapidly evolve your way out of a sudden crisis.
46:45And they couldn't behaviorally adapt to this change either.
46:50Nor could they, say, escape and move to another island.
46:53And so these wonderful, fantastic relatives of ours vanished forever.
46:59And in their place, Homo sapiens appeared.
47:02Making this island, like so many places, their home.
47:15So far, we've found no evidence that our two species overlapped.
47:26But for many, the final factor in the Hobbit's extinction is likely our sudden arrival.
47:38The Hobbit simply couldn't compete with this highly adaptable newcomer.
47:45A species able to change its behavior to suit almost any environment and condition.
47:55The very characteristics driving our continuing spread across the globe.
48:10As we spread further and further away from Africa,
48:13entering into brand new environments that we had never experienced before.
48:19We're not just surviving in these places.
48:22We're actually setting down routes.
48:25And routes that would last us till this very day.
48:36There was one last part of this journey to go.
48:46We set out on a path no other human species had traveled.
48:53Perhaps following tantalizing hints that there was more land to explore.
49:01Clouds on the horizon.
49:04Returning flights of birds.
49:08Or maybe something much more instinctive
49:12that inspired, we think, dozens of families.
49:18To strike out on a voyage that would carry them to a new continent.
49:26Australia.
49:33Now, these were people who were comfortable on the water.
49:36They were going from island to island.
49:38But Australia was something different.
49:41We're talking about a journey that was up to a hundred kilometers.
49:46Sixty miles.
49:48That's days and nights on the open ocean.
49:52Probably in something as basic as a raft.
49:55That was perhaps being propelled and steered with just paddles.
50:02Launching out into that hostile and expansive ocean.
50:08That would be an expedition today.
50:11Let alone back then.
50:15When I think about the risk involved.
50:18When I think about the emptiness.
50:20It is just absolutely astonishing.
50:25It is just absolutely astonishing.
50:41The islands of Indonesia were another waypoint in our ongoing journey.
50:51Our unique adaptability that helped us cross the harsh deserts.
50:57And break through the barrier of the rainforest.
51:04Now carried us practically to the ends of the earth.
51:10To Australia around 9,000 miles from where we began.
51:18Which does beg the question.
51:20What kept driving us on?
51:24Ultimately inspiring us to take on the dangers of the open ocean.
51:32It's true that there will often have been a push.
51:36The simple need to find new resources.
51:40For our expanding population.
51:44I would argue that that is not the full explanation.
51:49But this is the most intangible part of the story.
51:52See these people in my opinion were just like us.
51:56So they had the same fears and hopes for their families.
52:01We are clearly the explorer species.
52:03I think that is beyond a doubt.
52:07And as a result.
52:08We have been able to take on things that seem absolutely impossible.
52:15In that desire to understand what was out there.
52:19In the thrill and excitement of understanding the unknown.
52:22And the willingness to take risk to know it.
52:26See, wanderlust.
52:28Creativity.
52:29And the imagination required to put yourself in a different place.
52:34Into a different future and world.
52:37I think that is fundamentally us.
52:40And how do we let analogy that quicker?
52:57To earth.
52:58To earth.
52:59To earth.
53:02To earth.
53:03To earth.
53:05To earth.
53:07To earth.
53:08To earth.
53:18In this episode, we filmed at a place I've long dreamt of visiting, one of the most important
53:25human archaeological sites of all, the Angboa Cave, where scientists are still trying to
53:32solve the many mysteries surrounding the hobbits, the ancient humans that lived here.
53:38In 2004, their discovery sent shockwaves through the scientific community.
53:45So the moment the papers dropped, it was massive.
53:51It was all over the news, it was all over the internet.
53:55Everyone was talking about this tiny, unexpected hobbit from Indonesia.
54:00Paige has known Thomas and the team since 2017, documenting their research.
54:07Like many scientific breakthroughs, the initial discovery created intense controversy.
54:15The conferences got extremely heated.
54:18Sometimes there would be hobbit sessions where, within the same session, you would have a few talks would be sort
54:24of pro-hobbit.
54:25So this is a new species, this is really exciting, this is changing a lot of what we thought we
54:29knew about human evolution.
54:30And then in the same session, you would have people that are saying, this is the biggest mistake that human
54:36evolution scientists have ever made.
54:40Many argued that this was not a new species, but a Homo sapiens suffering from an illness that caused its
54:48small physical features and brain size.
54:52Eventually, that was discounted, and Homo floresiensis was recognized as a new species of human, raising, if anything, even more
55:03questions.
55:05We still don't know, for example, where they came from or who they're closely related to.
55:11So that question of the origins of Homo floresiensis is still, I would say, almost completely an open one.
55:21It's possible they evolved from another ancient species of human, such as Homo erectus, which we know was in the
55:29area just over a million years ago.
55:32Perhaps carried to the island by chance, and then shrunk down over many years of isolation.
55:41But there is an even more controversial idea.
55:46If you look really hard at a lot of the characteristics, particularly below the cranium,
55:53you see that this is a creature that looks a lot more like some of our really ancient ancestors, more
55:59than two million years old, in Africa.
56:03And so maybe there was an exodus out of Africa a million years before we thought there was.
56:11This current dig might reveal the answer.
56:14With help from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, researchers are trying to collect fragments of hobbit DNA.
56:23Ancient DNA is really helpful at really laying out relationships for us between different species across time.
56:31And so because of the way that mutations accumulate over time, it allows us to kind of work backwards and
56:38trace back when some of those lineages would have split.
56:41Homo floresiensis and whoever their closest ancestor is, which is not a question we can answer until we kind of
56:48have some of that information.
56:51The problem is, successfully finding hobbit DNA will not be easy.
56:59Normally, it would be impossible to recover DNA from a situation where it's this hot. It's just too difficult.
57:07DNA degrades really rapidly, and other things move in and muddy up the signal, like bacteria and other things.
57:15But in this cave in particular, it is at a slightly higher altitude than a lot of Indonesia is. It's
57:21right up in the mountains.
57:22And so it is a little bit cooler than most equatorial areas.
57:26And so there is a little bit of hope that we might be able to get a little bit of
57:31a signal from the species.
57:34If successful, we might finally solve the mystery of the Hobbit.
57:40Whatever happens, Homo floresiensis will remain one of the most important and unexpected discoveries of recent history.
57:53Next time, we chart the spread of Homo sapiens into the expanses of Europe.
58:00As our species struggles to survive in the grip of a cruel ice age.
58:06And comes face to face with another sophisticated species of human.
58:13The Neanderthals, who had long mastered life in these cold lands.
58:19The Neanderthals, who were buddies is a species of person like Homo sapiens at the great times.
58:20Homo sapiensis.
58:20The Neanderthals, who was a woman in this but also brought in the same conditions as a species of grey.
58:23The Neanderthals is a young joe, the objection of the world.
58:24The Neanderthals.
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