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00:05First, our ancestors walked upright.
00:10They survived by becoming scavengers and opportunists.
00:16But this creature is something new.
00:32He has taken the next step on the journey to becoming human.
00:40This is the story of what makes him like you.
00:50I'm traveling back in time.
00:57With science, we can build a picture of our past
01:02and bring our dead ancestors to life.
01:08Join me on a journey through our human story.
01:29Southern Africa, one and a half million years ago.
01:39These people are Homo agaster.
01:46For two days, they've been tracking an aging wildebeest.
01:51They've literally walked it into the ground.
02:04Yet the hunt is far from over.
02:07The wildebeest is exhausted, but not dead.
02:10Only experience will tell the agaster when to strike.
02:20What do you think about it?
02:28What kind of 68 And a half million years ago?
02:34How are you?
02:35Game on!
02:59Ah, Rat-Dork!
03:00Ah, Rat-Dork!
03:02Ah, Rat-Dork!
03:06A waste of effort.
03:11The young male's impatience has cost the Agasta their kill.
03:18Their hunger will have to wait.
03:33By looking at the bones and relics that these people will one day leave behind, modern-day
03:39scientists will get a good idea of the part they play in the evolution of you and me.
03:49And by being here, in Africa, one and a half million years ago, you and I can do something
03:55else.
03:56By watching their everyday lives closely, we can see the seeds of humanity developing
04:01in these ape-men.
04:03And also, we can see how much of the ape-man remains alive in us.
04:10First of all, though, we're going to have to keep up.
04:20It's 12 noon and 35 degrees in the shade.
04:26But a Gaster can cover vast distances at quite a speed, even in these conditions.
04:31Because they have the most sophisticated cooling system of any animal on earth.
04:39Long modern-looking noses cool and moisten the air as they breathe.
04:45Airless bodies let heat escape.
04:50And millions of tiny glands in their skin mean that they don't pant to control their temperature,
04:55but sweat.
05:00So while other animals sit it out in the shade, a Gaster can stride out in the sun.
05:11And they have another adaptation.
05:13Something you can't see.
05:15An enormous brain.
05:18In fact, it's from a Gaster that we inherit our big brain.
05:26Perhaps we can find out why we both share such a unique adaptation.
05:31By seeing what a Gaster used their big brains for.
05:37To start with, by using their big brains, a Gaster can understand the world around them
05:43like no creature has ever done before.
05:47In fact, their insight into their surroundings is nothing short of revolutionary.
06:00For you and I, experience of the natural world can be little more than passing.
06:06But for all other animals, our ancestors included, life itself depends on it.
06:17All animals have some understanding of their environment.
06:22A five-month-old swallow can instinctively negotiate the 10,000-kilometer journey from Britain to South Africa
06:29without ever having done it before.
06:35An old matriarch elephant can remember a place to find water in the driest of seasons,
06:41even if she's only been there once, half a century earlier.
06:48But until now, no creatures have pieced together knowledge of their world
06:52from apparently unrelated clues found around them.
07:05No creature has ever been able to look at marks like these in the mud, for instance,
07:10and never having seen them before, know anything about them at all.
07:16It sounds like the simplest thing imaginable, and to you and I it is.
07:21Yet, though it may surprise you, to a dog or a cat, or even to a baboon,
07:27these marks are no more than the pattern on the world's carpet.
07:32Of all the creatures on Earth, only you and I can look at these marks
07:37and tell them for what they are.
07:40Hoofprints.
07:41Made by an animal that went that-a-way.
07:46A gaster is the creature we get that skill from.
07:56For them, it's the key to unlock nature's secrets.
08:06They can understand that a particular kind of cloud signals rain.
08:13The arrival of a new type of bird, like our swallows,
08:17mean a change in season and new opportunities.
08:25Even if they've never seen a particular kind of animal before,
08:28they can still place it within the jigsaw of their world.
08:50Though there will always be mysteries,
08:53though there will always be mysteries,
08:54the Gaster's new way of seeing the world is a milestone on the journey that will lead to us,
09:00to understand the world and the world.
09:01is a vital step towards controlling it.
09:10And bigger brains have allowed a Gaster to do something else.
09:16They've made an extraordinary technological breakthrough.
09:24They've created the Rolls Royce of Stone Axis.
09:30Heavy and powerful, yet precise enough for delicate cuts.
09:34It shows both planning and vision.
09:37And because they're found all over Africa,
09:39it shows that these people could learn from each other the secret of how to make them.
09:46A million and a half years before your time,
09:49this axe is the most sophisticated object on the planet.
09:56So, Agaster's big brains have completely changed the way they live.
10:01But surprisingly, we still haven't seen the real task they, and we, use our big brains for.
10:13A big brain is an incredibly expensive thing to run in terms of the amount of energy it uses.
10:21The Gaster's brain is so energy hungry,
10:23it consumes about a sixth of all the calories they eat and drink in a day.
10:30For such a gas guzzler to be worthwhile,
10:33it must be absolutely vital for these people's survival.
10:43And indeed it is.
10:45They need it to deal with the most complicated thing in their world.
11:02And the really complicated thing about Agaster's world
11:05is the same as the really complicated thing about ours.
11:11It's not tools or tracking,
11:14nor judging when a wildebeest is ready to die.
11:18What you need a big brain for
11:22is understanding other people.
11:25details are the existing animals.
11:40you and me.
11:49follow us once again hit.
11:49I made a close eye for us.
11:51null
11:51and ROY
12:09Agaster work together to find their prey, stalk their prey, and kill.
12:21They will even take some food back to share with other individuals in their group.
12:26Meat is not simply food, it's a potential bargaining tool for later.
12:41For the young male, the stolen crocodile tooth may also come in handy.
13:01Almost everything about Agaster has brought them surprising benefits in their complex new world of relationships.
13:18Like the fact they sweat instead of pant to lose heat, even when they're working hard.
13:27This has given them much more control of their breathing, freeing up their body for something incredibly useful.
13:34It frees up their body to make sounds.
13:43Agaster are the first of our ancestors to have what we would recognise as a human voice.
13:50And using it to communicate with each other has become crucial to their way of life.
13:55So much so, that if you were in Africa one and a half million years ago,
14:00looking for a group of homo Agaster returning home after a successful hunt,
14:06the chances are that long before you'd see them, you'd hear them.
14:30Agaster don't have permanent home bases.
14:33Instead, they drift from place to place, depending on where they can find food.
14:45Each can feed themselves from what they gather about them.
15:01But the return of the hunters, with the potential of meat to share, is a special event.
15:21This is a scene unlike any on earth before, a group of animals held together not by safety in numbers,
15:28nor by an individual male, but by something potentially much more powerful.
15:36The ties of family and friends.
15:43Helping others, and relying on others to help you, has become the glue holding people together.
15:54From a mother offering food and support to her pregnant daughter.
16:01To the beginnings of a new kind of relationship.
16:05Males and females, pairing up and living for at least a time, monogamously.
16:18To help them in this new world of depending on each other, Agaster have developed a unique mutation.
16:28We think that they are the first of our ancestors to have very noticeable whites to their eyes, like ours.
16:38Like us, they can see into each other's minds.
16:46And communicate at a glance, hidden depths of meaning.
16:56For the young hunter, his portion of the kill is more than just food, it's a currency.
17:03He's going to use it to buy a mate.
17:12The stolen tooth only adds to the good impression.
17:19He's a man who's not only useful, but also brave.
17:25Quite a catch.
17:34But the young female appears to have more than one potential suitor.
17:43For Ineogasta, there are few more unsettling sites than a solitary, unattached male.
17:50Come on!
17:55Come on!
17:56Come on!
17:57Come on!
17:59Come on!
18:00Come on!
18:01Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go!
18:31The primitive eruption of violence is both sudden and shocking.
18:37Yet it's part of these people's complex lives together.
18:50To have a society where there are not only enemies,
18:54but more importantly, friends,
18:57has given Augusta tremendous potential.
18:59Together with their new command of their environment,
19:03it has enabled them to do something
19:05which has never happened before
19:07in the history of human life on the Earth.
19:11It has given them the competence
19:13to leave their ancestral home, Africa,
19:16and to begin to populate the rest of the world.
19:34They began by following the course of the River Nile,
19:39across Africa and into the Middle East.
19:44Their numbers growing, they travelled further as they searched for food.
19:50Reaching Asia, the first of our ancestors to tread on this side of the Earth,
19:55as far as the southern reaches of China.
20:01Their epic journey took thousands of years.
20:04And so far did they travel,
20:06that when we find them, we even call them a different name.
20:10Homo erectus.
20:15It is these people whose eyes are the first to see the wonders of the Eastern world.
20:30It is a curious fact that when we find evidence of these first Asians,
20:34we never find the elaborate stone axes their cousins in Africa made use of.
20:42It could be they found a different tool, easier to work,
20:46and in this vast kingdom all around.
20:54Bamboo.
21:12Rectus live in a land where tools grow like trees.
21:18Dick. Dick.
21:27Small deer and pigs are everywhere in the dense bamboo forests.
21:35But erectus are not fussy.
21:45They can easily rethink the menu.
22:10They can easily think of the
22:11In time, our ancestors will change the world as no animal before.
22:15many creatures that get in their way will be swept aside.
22:20But not today.
22:22For all the confidence of Erectus,
22:24there are still things in this new world with the capacity to scare.
22:33Like the massive Gigantopithecus,
22:36an ancient ape three meters tall.
22:40The original King Kong.
22:52The original King Kong.
23:03But in time, the balance of power will shift.
23:13Erectus are tough and adaptive.
23:15And in this ancient ancient landscape, they'll do well.
23:23So our big brained ancestors are flourishing all over the planet.
23:28It might seem as if the modern world isn't far off at all.
23:34But think again.
23:44Travel with me in time, forward a million years, and I'll show you something remarkable.
23:53A mystery, which shows how hugely different these ancestors really are from you and me.
24:08We're in Africa again.
24:10We've moved forward a million years, but our ancestors haven't moved forward at all.
24:21This is a recently abandoned kill.
24:24Butchered by our ancestors a million years after we saw them using their original stone axes.
24:32and what are they using now it's another stone hand axe astonishingly exactly the same as the
24:42axes which agasta made a million years before in all that time their technology hasn't advanced
24:51by one degree it hasn't even occurred to them to do something as simple as to stick this axe
24:59onto the top of a pole to make a spear in modern times we've gone from the right brothers first
25:06powered flight to space exploration in less than a hundred years from telegrams to text messages in
25:13less than 10 agasta has achieved nothing new in a million can you imagine such limited ingenuity
25:24our ancestors make an axe like a bird builds a nest they don't think about it they just do it
25:32it's no
25:33more possible for our ancestors to invent better technology and for that bird to decide to cover
25:40its nest with a roof it's not that our ancestors are stupid their brains just don't work like ours do
25:58it takes something extraordinary to change this way of thinking a trigger to set our ancestors minds
26:06racing and it may be we know what it is we don't know precisely where it happened or when
26:14but sometime around now our ancestors encountered this
26:27they would have certainly seen fire before from lightning or bushfires but there would have been a
26:35moment when they learned to harness it for warmth for safety as a tool and then their lives change
26:47suddenly like no animal before them they control their world
26:54and nightfall doesn't bring danger but something new time outside the struggle for survival time for our mind to wander
27:06perhaps they felt something like we do if we stare into flames in our own time
27:14indeed perhaps it's the shadow of their prehistoric thoughts which comes to us when we do
27:36and could it be that fire changed not only the way our ancestors lived but how they could think
27:45that it broke the shackles in their minds and let their ideas fly free
27:53that fire in future generations help them become us
28:02we'll never know but certainly here in a safe glow of such an elemental force anything does indeed seem possible
28:23next on walking with cavemen a battle for survival in a desperate world
28:28and the mysterious gift that completes you and me
28:33is
28:39you
28:41it