This woman is the mother of mankind,
the genetic Eve from whom we all descend.
She lived 150,000 years ago in East Africa,
and every one on earth is related to her.
Her daughters and granddaughters would take modern humans out of Africa
to populate the rest of the world,
the most incredible and important journey that mankind would ever make.
Genetic tracking, for the first time gives us a route map of our journey.
With it we can follow our families of Eve
as they travel through an empty world, overcome hardships,
separate and go their different ways to discover new lands.
It tells, for the first time, who we are and where we come from.
The most profound questions that have troubled mankind
since we first raised our heads and looked at the stars.
This new science is a breakthrough.
Every one of us can now trace our part of this incredible story.
We took samples from these people in Chicago.
Our genetic testing will show them how their ancestors traveled the world
to reach this destination.
150,000 years ago, the world was in the grip of an ice age.
The ice caps have advanced.
Sea levels drop 400 feet.
North Africa is a vast desert with small islands of green.
On these islands are tiny groups of people
These are the first modern humans,
recognizably like us today in physique, intellect and abilities.
We are the same people they were.
The brain that first started chipping stone tools also took us into space.
They are hunter-gatherers,
living in widely scattered groups.
Roaming each year over great distances sheltering where they can,
gathering seeds and fruit.
150,000 years ago, hunting was the key to survival.
It explains much about the way the human race developed.
Hunting needs careful thought and planning.
It needed cooperation that demanded enhanced intelligence
and communication skills.
Genetic tracking's beginning to unlock more secrets
than we ever believed possible.
In just 7,000 generations,
modern humans have left Africa and penetrated every corner of the globe
and through the unbroken genetic thread binding us to our past
we can begin to understand why it happened.
Archaeologists can tell us in astonishing detail
how modern humans lived.
But, to understand who we are and where we come from
we must look at our genetic heritage.
Genetic Eve,
the woman from whom we all descend was not the only woman living
at the time or even the most fertile.
But her mitochondrial genes were the most successful,
and the only ones to survive.
Everyone alive today
can trace a common ancestral line back to this one woman
through a unique part of our DNA, mitochondrial DNA.
DNA, the blueprint of life,
is our own molecular pin code, and uniquely identifies each of us.
Mitochondria are tiny structures found inside nearly all human cells.
It is separate from the normal chromosomal DNA
that dictates our height or the color of our eyes.
Men inherit it from their mother,
but they can't pass it on.
In women, it carries on from mother to daughter,
down the endless generation, almost unchanged.
And this is how we can trace our way back to our genetic Eve
and her daughters.
So, written within it, is the history of the world's women
and therefore, the human race.
Professor Rebecca Cann was the pioneering scientist
who uncovered the first all-important clue.
I started working on human mitochondrial DNA
so that I would have some kind of view that was objective,
that would help me understand and help other people
understand how humans around the world are related.
With this new science, she could.
Harmless mutation happens all the time in some part of the mitochondrial DNA
leaving minute markers at every change
These markers are like bar codes and can be read in the same way.
Cann and her team discovered the changes happen
at a fairly constant rate.
They found the groups with the earliest markers were
the Africans living inside Africa,
and wondered if they might be the oldest people in the world.
I was very excited when I first started to get evidence,
and it was so counter-intuitive.
I put 20 Europeans and 20 African-Americans
on a sheet of X-ray film
and every African-American showed differences
and all the Europeans were the same.
And I thought I'd mislabeled something and I thought I made
some drastic mistake.
And we kept repeating and repeating things as we got more samples
from different areas
I realized that it was a difference in the pattern.
And that this whole new type of evidence, based on mitochondria,
was going to change the way we thought about modern humans.
In 1987, Cann and her colleagues published a paper,
showing for the first time, that the markers stretched
back to Africa.
Showing quite clearly that this was the birthplace of the human race.
New Guinean tribesman, Parisian bartender,
American teacher, Polynesian farmer,
all were improbable relatives, linked through one black woman
150,000 years ago.
Their findings caused a sensation.
The responses of people were sort of amazing.
The public was genuinely interested in certain aspects of it.
There was a tendency to misinterpret the data because of the terminology
was to describe this woman African Eve
and people-and people of a single woman in the Judeo-Christian bible,
the wife of Adam.
I have to say even my own uncle
sent me a X'mas card the year that our study was published,
saying: How dare you, you know grandma wasn't black!
Her work is rewriting human history.
Through it, we now know the first mutations took place
in Africa, maybe 150,000 years ago
and belong to our genetic Eve.
Professor Christopher Stringer, Britain's leading paleoanthropologist,
was involved in the dating of the earliest modern human skulls.
This skull is as close as we can get to what the face of mitochondrial Eve
would have looked like. It's a very complete skull
found in sediments in a cave
dating for about 120,000 years ago.
What we can see here that it's a more human.
We've got a high-rounded vault to the skull,
a face that's tucked in under the cranial vault.
And this is what she looked like.
Using forensic reconstruction techniques,
muscle and flesh have been added to the skull
and provide us with the very first glimpse
of how our genetic mother might have looked 150,000 years ago.
This is the closest we can get.
Africa is the birthplace of all the various human species
that walk this planet.
This vast, isolated natural laboratory
molded humans over endless cycles of alternating desert and green.
And, it is the climate records that give us the next clue.
Modern humans made many attempts to make the long trek out of Africa,
settling in different parts of the old world,
but they did not survive.
Climatic records indicate
a brief but devastating global freeze up at the time
that turned the whole Middle East into extreme desert.
Trapped in the northern quarter about the Sahara, there was no return,
and few places to take refuge.
Neither they nor any of their line survived.
They would die in severe drought about 110,000 years ago.
Their bones were discovered in Qafzeh caves near Nazareth in Galilee in 1933.
Thirteen fragile skeletons;
one a woman,
a tiny baby at her feet.
When these bones were first uncovered
they were the oldest complete modern human skeletons ever found.
The numerous skeletons that have been found in caves
in Israel at the sites of Qafzeh and Skhul
shows that there were modern humans outside of Africa
over 100,000 years ago.
Those modern humans may well have gone out to the Nile corridor,
through Sinai and into the Middle East
But, it doesn't look like that they went any further.
In a sense, that they were a dead end.
It would be 40,000 years before they would try again.
80,000 years ago the world was cooling down again.
Once again, the ice caps were advancing; drying out the lands.
Life became much harder.
As Africa dried so did the drinking water.
Ocean records show sea levels dropping dramatically
as the world's water became locked in ice.
As the game spread north,
our hunter-gatherers were forced to become fishermen and beachcombers.
This is our new Eve, our new family,
direct descendants of the daughters of the original genetic Eve
Now living on the coast, surviving on the harvest of the sea.
Our entire survival has always been at the mercy of the climate.
When times were good we could spread out.
A bigger range meant more food.
But the ice age froze the world and the deserts closed in,
forcing our groups into smaller territories, huddled against the coast.
Their beachcomber diet consisted of fish, scallops, oysters and clams.
But the Red Sea became much saltier, making fishing and beachcombing
more difficult.
Until recently, there was little evidence our ancestors actually
occupied the coastal areas of east Africa
or exploited near shore marine resources.
This is Sifi Bearhay, a geologist.
In 1999, he was part of an international expedition
looking for evidence of modern human occupation in Eritrea.
In the Gulf of Suez in the Red Sea they stumbled on
a remarkable discovery
of stone tools imbedded in an ancient fossilized coral reef.
The reef was dated 125,000 years old.
This is the world's first recorded oyster bar.
Six and a half kilometers long and 15 meters above the current sea levels.
It's the oldest evidence of beachcombing anywhere in the world.
Buried in it are human tools, along with fossilized oyster,
clam and scallop shells.
It provides absolutely clear evidence that our ancestors
were exploiting the sea.
This is the unit
where we have an inter-stratified layer of big oyster and
mollusk shells at the base,
and they're pretty quite horizontal
and this was a platform where modern man used to be walking
and dumping their stone tools and some of the shells they were eating.
This is a hand ax, with a sharp end,
and some of the shells that have been shed from this inter-stratified layer,
and they've been using this for breaking the shells and eating them.
And then, when they were finished with it, they would sort of dump
the hand ax and also the shells
and walk to the next site.
But the most important thing is not this
because you cannot date it.
It's what you find insi tu which makes it very, very important.
If you see this one is an obsidian tool.
There have been used to smash some of these oyster bedded that you see there.
You don't see both completely enclosed that have been smashed and the goodies
have been eaten.
And these are some of those very important stone tools
that have been discovered.
This is the place, the first place where beachcombing for marine resources
have been documented worldwide.
And very well.
These shell remains are also a vital clue to the reasons
why our ancestors made the long walk out of Africa.
On a constant diet of seafood, maybe more children
would have survived.
But the increasing numbers would make the demand for food even more desperate.
Cases like this one would have numbered just a few hundred.
At one time, there were only about 10,000 modern humans alive
in the whole world.
We were as endangered a species as the great apes are today.
When the beachcombing and spearfishing failed to support them
they no longer had a choice.
If they would survive, they had to move across the Red Sea
freak monsoon conditions were watering the green inviting hills of the Yemen
Scientists always thought our ancestors migrated from Africa
many times, group after group. And it is believed they always
went north via Egypt and modern Israel
But the DNA trail tells a different story.
Professor Steven Oppenheimer is one of the world's foremost authorities
on current genetic research into DNA tracking.
By putting together the genetic tree with prehistoric weather patterns
he's the first to come up with the extraordinary idea that our ancestors
came out of Africa by a single southern route.
This beach is on the west coast of the Red Sea, the African side.
Over on the other side we can see the mountains of the Yemen
I believe this is where our ancestors crossed
on the first stage of their journey to the rest of the world.
These traits are known locally to fishermen as the Gates of Grieth
because of the terrible fierce currents crossing.
But 80,000 years ago the sea level was 150 foot further down.
As a result a number of islands and reefs appeared
which allowed our ancestors to cross as if it were on stepping-stones
over to the Yemen.
Man had to come out of Africa in the end
or his primate relatives had
but the timing and the route were determined by climate swings.
Driven by hunger, sweeping habitat,
and maybe the first stirrings of the restless human curiosity
about the land ahead,
our precious group of modern humans prepared to move.
There are two routes out of Africa
the north of the Red Sea, across the Suez, and into the Middle East.
And here in the south, across the Gates of Grieth, into Yemen,
and on through the south Arabian coast to India.
Both routes are possible.
Perhaps, to get through to the north
our ancestors would have to cross the Sahara desert.
And at the time, it was even drier than it is today.
Here in the south, all they had to do was to cross this short stretch of water,
only 10 miles across to the Yemen.
So, this was a region they could go to with confidence.
I think this beach is very important in human history
because I think this is the place that our ancestors crossed
from Africa to the Yemen
on the first step of their journey to the rest of the world.
And this is the only place that they had a successful exit from Africa.
I believe the most important journey the human race ever took
started here on this beach 80,000 years ago.
One small group of people, one exodus.
The single most important event in the population of the world.
This is no single trudge across the sandbanks.
This was an epic struggle to stay alive,
not just for themselves, but the rest of mankind.
Those who survived the crossing, who didn't succumb to the dangers
of the Gates of Grieth, came to a virgin land.
This is the new frontier in the beginning of the rest of the world.
Yemen beaches were on the edge of world.
An old group were the first modern humans,
the first of their kind outside Africa
surviving in this place.
This group was on their own at the edge of the new world.
Would have been better for our migrants across into the Yemen.
For start, the beach combing in the Gulf of Aden would have been
a lot better than on the Red Sea
Unlike the parched, salty beaches they had left,
the Yemen was green and fertile, full of fresh water, game and
shady oasis, safe haven for a family to settle.
They were probably a small group.
Maybe, maximum about 250 persons.
They would have been scattered around in family units of five to 20,
but networking with the other groups in the population.
Anything less than about 200 would not have been viable.
They would not have been able to cope with epidemics of
disease or famine.
We know though Eve and her daughters were among the survivors,
because from them are descended everyone in the world outside Africa.
The new science of tracking is a breakthrough.
Using the single unbroken mitochondrial genetic line
scientists constructed a vast family tree pinpointing the markers,
fixing them by time and place,
it shows that once outside of Africa, our ancestors split up.
Some going north and west,
some going east and south.
Once they had left Africa and the Yemen,
they went their separate ways, never to meet again.
When our ancestors first arrived here
they would have a selection of African lines.
A group of 250 people
at least five or six of different lines.
Over a thousand years if this population stayed isolated
that those lines would have reduced and reduced.
The total number of the population would have stayed the same.
It's rather like a Welsh village, hill village, or, or a village in Italy
where after a number of generations everybody gets to have the same surname
This process of reduction of lines is called drift
and it happens in all small, isolated communities.
The smaller and isolated a group is,
the faster the mitochondrial DNA line comes down to one.
Not to one person, or even to one group,
but one mitochondrial DNA line.
Some women have no daughters.
Some daughters don't survive.
So, in the end only one line is left.
Totally isolated, they could breed only amongst themselves.
The genetic map shows it would take about a thousand years
for the mitochondrial line to be reduced to one.
One genetic minute shared by all non-African people
everywhere throughout history.
It's a single line that convinces Steven Oppenheimer
he is right about our African ancestry
The implications of the single exodus from Africa are enormous.
For start, there's a simple observation
that Australians, New Guineans, Southeast Asians,
Chinese, Native Americans, Europeans and Indians
all come from the same small group.
That means that this small group in the last 80,000 years
has diversified enormously into complete physically different
populations in different parts of the world
that have adapted physically and culturally to the new environments
they've found and explored.
Through the Gulf of Aden out of Africa
families waiting until the climate change allowed them to move.
Their descendents would be the people of the Middle East,
spreading north into Europe 40,000 years later
and founding the vibrant, cosmopolitan cities we know today.
Others would continue past the gulf, moving east, beachcombing their way
along the coast to the Indian Ocean,
looking for warm and gentle places to stop.
Within 6,000 years of reaching the Yemen beaches,
our ancestors would eat their way to Malaysia.
6,000 miles from Africa,
our family are deep in the tropical rain forests of Southeast Asia.
These are the descendants of Eve,
hunting in the jungles of Malaysia roaming in small bands,
staying in one place long enough to beat the harness the wildlife
and then moving on.
Their bodies are beginning to adapt to the rainforest conditions.
Away from the harsh African sun their skins become lighter,
their stature reduced by lack of meat.
Gathers in the jungle today
they live on fish, rats, squirrels and lizards,
on canopy game, fruits and roots.
They disguise and camouflage themselves to conform to the foliage
and imitate animal calls to deceive their quarry.
Life in the forest is shared with venomous snakes,
cobras, pythons and predatory animals.
Between leaving Africa and arriving in Australia
there's no clear archeological evidence
of the presence of modern humans or their amazing migration.
No skulls, no skeletons or graves.
Sea levels were 160 feet lower so,
whatever our family left behind on their coastal journeys
have been reclaimed by the sea.
The genetic trail is all we have.
It's not until we reach Malaysia that new evidence begins to fill
in the gaps.
The great Toba eruption in Sumatra 74,000 years ago
was the single biggest explosion in the last two million years.
The plume was 25 miles high
and plunged much of the world into six dark years of volcanic winter.
Northern Malaysia, India and the Middle East
were covered in a deadly shroud of thick volcanic ash.
The great Toba explosion, most destructive in the last
two million years
provides positive clues about our family's journey.
These are the Semang people; shy hunter-
gatherers of the interior jungles in the lake peninsula.
Much darker than the other Malaysian peoples around them,
they are part of the Orang Asli group.
Stephen Oppenheimer thinks they could be the surviving remnant
of our out of Africa family
that came through here 74,000 years ago.
If our ancestors had passed this way on their route from Africa
to Australia and New Guinea,
it's likely they would have left a genetic trace.
And we know, from previous surveys,
that the Orang Asli as a group of tribes in the Malay peninsula
or Malaysia are among the oldest people in this region.
And the Semang are probably the oldest of all.
Stephen Oppenheimer has come to this remote Semang village
to collect swab samples of DNA.
These, he hopes, will confirm his idea
If my theory is correct,
that they left Africa 80,000 years ago
they would have had to have traveled 6,000 miles to get here, in 6,000 years
In order to be here at the time of the Great Toba explosion.
That means about a mile a year
which is entirely feasible
for that sort of nomadic lifestyle of moving down the coast.
But to determine whether or not they belonged to
that first out of Africa group,
we need to look at their genetic lines and in particular the mitochondrial DNA
probably tell us
whether or not they come straight out of the two daughters of Eve
that's originated just outside Africa.
If they have their own unique lines
that suggests they've been isolated since that time 70 or 80,000 years ago
and that they have developed completely on their own.
If on the other hand, we might even find that their lines are ancestral
to people further down the line, like the Australians or the New Guineans.
Again, our genetic tracing will help us to see whether or not
that's the case.
The genetic survey may prove the Semang are an ancient race,
but it can't tell us exactly when they were here.
We have to look for other evidence to validate the theory.
These crude tools were found in a wooded valley
called Kota Tampan near Penang.
There are other sites nearby with the same sort of tools.
What makes these so particularly interesting is that
they are embedded in a fall of Toba ash
dated 74,000 years ago.
Professor Zorinana Najeek was looking for an ancient riveters
when she stumbled upon the Kota Tampan site.
Professor Najeek had actually found was a stone tool workshop,
which could be pinpointed to 74,000 years ago.
The ash covered the working floor.
That ash has been dated to 74,000 year ago.
This is a hammer stone that they used
and you can see that it's very comfortable to hold it in the hand.
And this is the edge that was used.
This is a chopper.
A type that is seen in a lot of Asia and Southeast Asia.
They, what they were after was the edge angle.
The edge angle had to be right and the edge had to be sharp.
This is used for heavy-duty work.
It's heavy, it's got a sharp edge, probably for felling trees.
Najee is convinced that they were left by modern man.
Kota Tampan also revealed man who had a complex mind.
His total technology revealed a rational, systematic
and organized mind;
the mind of homo sapiens.
These Kota Tampan tools, a crucial for the dating of
modern man's presence in Southeast Asia. They're
The first tangible evidence we have of the whole journey from Africa
to Australia. Combined with Stephen Oppenheimer's genetic tests,
they could be real proof of our ancient migration.
As he found the evidence he needs.
For the first time,
archeology and genetics gives us the same answer at this crucial point
in our journey.
Now we can be sure that our ancestors came this way 74,000 years ago.
The results are very exciting.
The Orang Asli, the Semang group here, have their own unique genetic lines
which suggest that they may have been in that first beachcombing trip
75,000 years ago.
They have their own unique lines
coming out of the first two daughters of Eve outside Africa.
And they traced right back then not shared with anyone else
in Southeast Asia or Asia.
At that time, the sea levels were 160 feet lower.
Most of the islands of Southeast Asia were joined together into
the single landmass of the Sunda continent.
The survivors of the Toba's volcanic winter
would take our genetic journey onto its next great move,
the unknown continent of Australia.
100 miles of shark-infested sea separated them from the new land.
This is the second great exodus in the migration of mankind
across the world.
But this time there are no green hills in the Yemen to give them
the comfort of a safe arrival.
Why did they risk all on such a dangerous venture
not even knowing if they would make landfall at the end
Some scientists believe they were blown off course
and arrived on the unknown shore accidentally.
But new clues from the genetic evidence says no.
It shows that Australian aborigines have a number of genetic lines unique
only to them
dating straight back to the first daughters of our new Out of Africa Eve.
So many lines, carried by so many women arriving in such a short time
suggest deliberate intention not accidental raft raid.
The first group arrived 70,000 years ago;
more followed over the next 5,000 years.
All descendants of our Out of Africa Eve.
These were the first people to walk on this fast continent.
They would stay undisturbed for thousands of years.
The Australia they entered was home to giant creatures; megafauna,
three meter high kangaroos and tortoises as big as cars.
The cave paintings of this vanished world have been dated to
61,000 years ago.
But suddenly, 10,000 years later this fantastical creature and
all the other megafauna
were extinct.
The climate didn't alter.
There are no huge kill sites indicating over-hunting.
But, humans change the world wherever they are.
This sudden extinction is evidence of their presence.
It seems likely our ancestors destroyed the leafy habitat with fire
and the larger, plant-eating animals simply died away.
This dry lakebed is one of the places where the theory might fall apart,
in spite of the matching of archeology and genes
back up on the trail in Malaysia.
Mungo Man 3
When he was found, the earth around him was dated
62,000 years old.
When the bones were tested for DNA,
sensationally the DNA did not match anyone, anywhere in the world.
To those who don't believe in the Out of Africa theory,
this seems to be proof that
modern humans had evolved at different times and at different places
in the world into the people we are today.
But other scientists, like Professor Chris Stringer, are doubtful.
Now, there are many problems in extracting DNA,
particularly from a skeleton 60,000 years old.
So, firstly it might be that the DNA that's been picked up is contamination;
we're not sure of that.
But even if it's genuine DNA, other analyses have shown,
that in fact, it can quite reasonably be derived from an Out of
Africa ancestor just as the rest of us can.
So, in my view,
the Mungo evidence both from the bones and from the DNA, if it's genuine,
still supports a recent African origin for our species.
Australian aborigines are an ancient people.
But they no longer look like their ancestors who arrived all those
thousands of years ago.
Their bodies have adapted, retaining all those characteristics
needed to survive as hunter-gatherers in the harsh desert environment.
Under the skin, we are all very much alike.
Our DNA shows that we come from one very small gene pool.
If you look at the DNA of all of us
Australians, Africans, Europeans
we find that comparing the mitochondrial DNA of
all of us, we show less variation,
even though there are beings who have spread over the whole world
we show less variation in the mitochondrial DNA
than we would find inside a small group of chimpanzees
or rangutans or gorillas.
Those apes show more variation,
even in the same groups than the entire human race.
But if all the people from around the world descend from
such a small gene pool,
why do we all look so completely different?
Natural selection, adaptation to the environment are
the most important factors.
Sexual selection is crucial.
Climate dictates body shape.
The colder the environment,
the shorter and more stocky you become to maintain heat.
Height relates to diet.
The most obvious and striking difference is color.
And that's also part of our genetic inheritance.
Mila Jablonski, a leading scientist looking at the evolution of skin color
is working on the importance of folic acid in fetal development,
when she stumbled, by chance, on the answer.
I started doing the search on the evolution of skin color
after preparing a lecture for a class over 10 years ago.
It was interesting preparing for the class
I realized there was very little that was known about the evolution
of skin color,
and what was known wasn't very cogent.
I discovered an interesting paper
when I was preparing that lecture that showed that there was
an interesting and important relationship
between ultra-violet radiation and a very important biomolecule
called folate.
Folic acid is crucial for embryonic development
and too much ultra-violet radiation from the sun destroys it.
So, our ancestors in tropical Africa
needed to be dark to protect their survival.
But, too little ultraviolet prevents the formation of Vitamin D,
causing rickets,
which can kill. So as they migrated to the sunless North
they had to grow paler to survive.
She has uncovered a very simple evolutionary equation.
When we looked at the pattern of skin pigmentation
among indigenous peoples today,
we see very dark people in equatorial regions with
high and significantly lighter people as we get toward the poles.
And it turns out that melanin, the natural sunscreen,
is phenomenally good at screening out ultraviolet radiation.
To some extent, it's too good.
And, in order for us to be able to make enough Vitamin D in our skins,
we'll have to reduce the amount of melanin that exists in the skin.
And so, what we see in the course of our species' history,
as we move from an area of high UV to areas of lower UV,
our skin has become more and more depigmented.
She calculates that it takes about 20,000 years to turn
from black to white.
All that distinguishes the color in people are tiny genetic differences
laid down long ago.
During the epic beachcombing migration, from Africa to Australia,
our family left behind colonies who made new journeys of their own.
One group made their way up through Asia into China and beyond.
Another went from north India, past the Himalayas
onto the vast Asian steppes.
And another stayed here in the Arabian Gulf.
Large fresh water lakes allowed our Out of Africa families
to colonize these patches of vegetation surrounded by desert.
Continues occupation occurred here for more than 30,000 years.
Their bones and artifacts becoming submerged as sea levels rose.
About 50,000 years ago
genetic lines began for the first time to spread north into Europe.
But the timing has always been a puzzle.
If modern humans are able to reach Australia as early as
70,000 years ago,
why did they not arrive in Europe until 50,000 years ago?
It is a much shorter journey.
Stephen Oppenheimer thinks he has the answer.
I think the answer to this question is that they were stuck.
They were not able to get out to the near East to Israel and the Lebanon
because there was a great desert in the way.
That desert was the Saudi Arabian desert and the Libyan desert.
And between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago,
this was completely impenetrable.
The climate was so dry that the fertile crescent;
the route from the gulf into Lebanon and Israel and Europe was closed.
Then, 50,000 years ago there was a sudden improvement of the climate.
After centuries of domination by the desert, rains came.
Monsoon rainfall increased in Arabia and India
and the fertile crescent opened up,
rivers swirled and game spread north
our families and genetic lines followed them.
They walked north from the Persian Gulf,
deep into the fertile crescent,
following the rivers between the Zagros Mountains
and the Syrian desert.
The idea that Europeans came in from North Africa is very firmly fixed.
But Stephen Oppenheimer's genetic evidence does not support this.
Genetic evidence completely does not support this.
There's no evidence of the early branches and,
in fact, only one of the main branches that people is found
in the European region. Of course, that does upset a lot of
fixed views about the origins of the Europeans
and forces us to consider the fact
that Europeans were part of the same single family
that came out of Africa through the southern route.
This new genetic evidence will rewrite European prehistory.
These families founded the first successful modern human colonies
in the Middle East, Syria and Iran.
A land that lay between the rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, two great rivers
formed from the high lands of Turkey, in the north, down to the gulf
We have taken the first steps to the great civilizations
that would develop writing, warfare and found the great empires.
All from one direct genetic group back to our Out of Africa migration.
During this time there was also an explosion of new technology.
The stone tools and spears modern humans manufactured
became even lighter and more effective
The Zagros mountains were full of game and good hunting makes stability.
Likewise, they begin to establish the fixed geography of burial ground
in sacred places.
In the Lebanon,
the burial of the 12-year old modern child has been found,
dated 44,000 years ago.
His skull is broken.
His body tucked gently in the shelter in the overhanging rock.
From these the families spread quickly to the Mediterranean,
south along the coast of Syria into North Africa,
up through Turkey, across the Balkans and into Europe.
This is our new family,
direct descendants of our marshland Arabs in the gulf,
entering the unknown territories of Germany.
But the land they are entering is not empty.
Others were there before them.
Neanderthals had been the masters of Europe for over 250,000 years.
In 1856, in the Neander Valley in Germany,
quarrymen were digging out mud from a newly blasted site,
when they discovered some ribs,
part of a pelvis, some arm and shoulder bones of
a large, humanlike animal
they thought it was a bear's skeleton.
Scientists later believed it was some ancient northern savage
who terrified the Roman armies. Professor Chris Stringer is an expert
on Neanderthals and their world.
These people became known as the Neanderthals.
They became the center of the debate about human evolution,
about whether these people were possibly our ancestors
or whether they represented a strange sidebar of human evolution.
I've got here a more complete skull than the one that was found
in the Neander Valley in Germany.
This was found at the beginning of the last century in France,
and it shows us very well what the Neanderthals looked like
in the head and face.
There's a strong browage over the eye sockets.
The whole face is pulled forward and there's an enormous nose,
there's no chin on the lower jaw.
And we now think of the Neanderthals were, perhaps, cold adapted.
They evolved hundreds of thousands of years in Europe
under conditions colder than the present day.
And the shape, their physique; they were short and stocky,
very powerfully built.
And this nose may have been even part of the mechanism for breathing
in cold and dry air.
The Neanderthals were often thought of being dimwitted brutes.
But they certainly weren't; they were fully human.
Their brains were as large as ours.
I think the Neanderthals were a different species from us.
That they were closely related species a sibling species.
One that had common ancestors with us, maybe only half a million years ago.
So, on that basis, the Neanderthal are fully human.
They're ten times closer to us than chimpanzees are.
If they interbred with modern humans their genes have died out.
There's no trace of their presence in our world.
Within 10,000 years, the Neanderthals were extinct.
Modern humans would wipe out all trace of their rivals and
fill the space left behind.
The reason for their disappearance is not clear.
They lived alongside modern man for thousands of years.
But in the end, Neanderthals probably couldn't adapt fast enough
to the new world
and their new resourceful rivals.
Neanderthals used their bodies to mediate with nature;
modern humans used their brains.
Into the void grew waves of modern humans
from the Middle East and Russia,
spreading throughout Europe.
Scientists think that with these waves came four mitochondrial DNA lineages;
four granddaughters of our Out of Africa Eve.
They arrived between 45,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The most modern Europeans can trace their lineage back to them.
Neanderthal technology had hardly changed over 200,000 years.
As soon as modern humans arrive
a whole range of different tools suddenly appear,
as well as ornamentations.
Archaeologists regard these ornaments as a defining mark of modern humans
and the first interest in ornament in the 5,000,000 years of evolution.
And in here, our most famous of these statuettes from the Czech Republic,
made in baked clay and about 27,000 years old
from a site called Dolni Vestonice.
A beautiful little piece of work.
Some of them are certainly covered with ocher
and some of them are certainly polished for handling
perhaps over many generations.
So, these were treasured valuable objects.
And obviously they have ritual and symbolic significance for this people,
perhaps religious significance.
And here, one of the most delicate pieces of art.
This is carved from a mammoth which is a really difficult material to work.
This is from the French Sergeant Black St-pluie.
It's a beautiful representation of the head of, seems to be a woman
with again either a labor's hairstyle or perhaps a woven hat.
This is a really delicate beautiful piece of work.
It's difficult to tell from these representations whether they are
representations of real people
or whether they're in some way idealized to represent
some sort of ideal beauty.
In some cases, I think our data is enough to suggest that
these are based on real people.
Another thing that we find with these modern people in Europe
is the arrival of evidences of sewed clothing.
Here's one of the most direct evidence the fact that we have
a bone needle here.
So, these people were sewing cloths, sewing skins.
With evidence they were even weaving fabrics.
And so, this is another level of complexity
that would have given them much quite a range of adaptation to climate,
for example, and of course, a much greater opportunities
for personal expression
for things like fashion to develop through time.
And we see this inside some of the burials,
the people have been buried with garments,
which in some cases are covered with thousands of beads
made from mammoth ivory.
And each of those beads represented hours and hours of work.
So, we had evidence here of a real richness and complexity of life
that we don't find with the Neanderthals.
I've got here an engraving of a mammoth on a piece of mammoth tusk
from a French site
that's about 15,000 years old.
But these people, these early modern people,
the Cro Magnon didn't just carve on pieces of bone and tusk,
they also sculpted and engraved;
they made models with clay.
And, of course, they painted on the walls of their caves.
And this art goes back at least to 35,000 years ago.
They depicted a great variety of things,
often the animals they were hunting.
In some cases, dangerous animals such as lions or woolly rhinoceroses.
In some cases we can't even recognize what creatures are represented.
The creatures seem to be magical symbols,
imaginary creatures.
And it's possible that some of this art was being used in ceremonies
and initiation rites.
And possibly even some of it was created in a trance-like state
linked with shamans or magic.
Modern humans have come as far as we could come on the of the years.
Behind us, we have left clear genetic footprints
leading back to the one Out of Africa movement 80,000 years ago.
10,000 miles away in the other side of the globe
and 6,000 years later,
the invasion of the new world would begin.
The world was cooling down again.
As the new ice age began,
modern humans have found one place to settle,
Our genetic line's
now spread in all directions, from the once out of Africa
and the last remaining frontier of America now has us trekking north
from India and Southeast Asia and China
and east from the Mongol steppes in Siberia,
converging at the Bering Straits, the fragile strip of land
joining Asia with America.
For a long time, archeologists insisted
no one had reached America before 15,000 years ago.
But new information from the DNA genetic trail
has our American ancestors crossing the Beringia land bridge from Asia,
25 to 20,000 years ago.
This is the last great journey to populate the world.
And the genetic lines all lead to one goal.
These are the first Americans.
25,000 years ago the world was moving into one of
the worst ice ages we'd ever have to endure.
In places the ice was three miles thick.
But as the ice closes in,
this is the last possible move
before it shuts off the land from the Bering Straits into Alaska
and the rest of North America.
It would be another 8,000 years before it'd open up again.
The reason why we know that these first native Americans got in
about 20,000 years ago
is the fact that we know which founding types
they brought with them;
which mitochondrial founding types they brought with them from Asia.
We have types in Asia, which are similar to American types,
and therefore we know the ones that actually came into America
as opposed to those which derived since the arrival in America.
Now, on average, the founders in America
have accumulated one mutation
and since we know the mutation rate for our genetic system,
the mitochondria,
is one mutation every 20,000 years,
we know that these founding types have been evolving in America
for 20,000 years
and that is when they must have arrived.
In North America, the great Laurentian ice sheet smothered the central plains,
destroying everything in its path,
forcing our migrants down the west coast to South America.
If the ice retreated we could spread back into the liberated land.
There's evidence of a settlement at a rockshelter
on the Ohio River in Pennsylvania called Meadowcroft.
Meadowcroft is very important here to the American story
because it is dated about 60,000 years before to take
and it's therefore one of the earliest native American sites to be credited
by authorities. Wonderfully that there are genetic estimates
because it must have come in several thousand years before that
in order to get down to Meadowcroft.
Dr. James Adavagio led the team of scientists who excavated the shelter.
When we originally encountered it we assumed it would not contain
any cultural material whatsoever.
But, as it turned out, there were an assortment of artifacts and
other indications of the human presence
several thousand of years previous to what the estimate for the maximum age
for the people into the new world was.
Scattered across this surface and deeper occupation surfaces,
in and around these fireplaces,
are a series of artifacts,
among the more notable of which are blade core fragments like this,
and the blades that have been struck from these cores.
What's unique about these items is that
not only are they not manufactured, for the most part,
by later Paleo Indian groups in the Americas.
But they bear a striking resemblance
to blade cores from Northern China that are 28 or 29,000 years old.
In fact,
casts of these materials could be lost in collections from North China
and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
What the evidence from Meadowcroft suggests to us is,
along with data from an emerging series of sites
elsewhere in North America,
is that there was no single migration of human beings to the new world,
as was recently postulated in the last two decades.
But, instead a series of pulses or emanations.
So, multiple entries are now established as the pattern
for American migration.
These early settlers carried many different genetic lines.
They came from Siberia, China, Central Asia,
as far south as Malaysia and Japan.
In 1996, the skeleton known as Kennewick man
was discovered along the Columbia River in Washington State.
When it was brought to Jim Chatters, the forensic anthropologist,
he first believed the remains were those of a 19th Century pioneer.
He was astonished when radio carbon dating revealed it
to be 9,500 years old.
It was the oldest skeleton ever found in North America.
But what really intrigued Chatters was that despite his age,
Kennewick man did not resemble modern Native Americans.
His skull was Caucasoid, not Mongoloid
and reconstruction of his face
showed distinct similarities with the Ainu who lived in Northern Japan.
Kennewick man was an extremely beaten up individual.
He had multiple broken ribs.
He had an injured left arm, left arm. He had some injury to his skull.
He had some arthritis in his neck, his knees, his elbows.
Just, he'd certainly been around the block a few times.
But, what was most distinctive about him;
the most interesting injury, I guess,
from a forensic standpoint,
is that he had a spear point imbedded in his pelvis.
In fact, that's what caused us to radio carbon date the bones.
All that can be seen is a little ovoid window in each side of the bone.
But, when we cat scan it
we can see that there's a two inch long, one-inch wide,
quarter inch thick serrated edge blade in there.
Now, what's interesting about this spear point is that
it's of a style that we only see after this man's death,
in Eastern Washington.
We can see that style moving down the coast of British Columbia,
end up Washington
around 10,000 years ago and on to 9,000 years ago;
that's radiocarbon years.
The people who bring this spear point,
who are the ones that we find with this style of spear point
a short distance later in time,
are very similar to modern American Indians.
You can lose it in the crowd easily, American Indians.
So, what it looks like is,
we have a new population arriving with northeast Siberian characteristics
and it is beginning to replace the early arrival immigrants.
Now what this suggests in a broader way, is that there was
some sort of conflict going on.
In effect, it occurs that the time of the new arriving populations,
the fact that Kennewick man looks different from
the new arriving populations,
both suggest that it's a competition over territory that's at issue.
Now, from the angle of entry from the velocity of entry,
it's fairly clear that this spear was coming directly at him
and that he could see it coming.
Professor Chatters believed that Kennewick man died
by hypothermia and drowning.
Since the death of Kennewick man,
modern human populations have swelled from thousands to millions.
We have advanced from primitive hunter-gatherers to farmers and traders
town's people and city folk.
And from tribal domains to empires.
In 5,000 generation we have arrived in the modern world we know today.
Since the 1980's,
DNA samples have been taken from thousands of people
all over the world.
From Alaska to New Zealand.
From the Inuit to Icelanders.
By analyzing it,
scientists can trace similarities between personal pin codes
and see which people are most closely related.
All individuals can check their mitochondrial DNA
and trace the routes their ancestors took in their journey around the world,
from Africa to every corner of the globe.
In Chicago, we sampled five people
who are tracing their mitochondrial tree.
After analyzing their DNA swabs, scientists discovered
a remarkable connection between a Greek and a native American.
Angela Trakis is a Greek who came to the United States from Europe.
Leonard Maliterri is a native American full- blooded Creek.
They are both from the same small and rare branch of our family tree
and share a common ancestor 30,000 years ago,
maybe in southern Siberia.
As modern humans populated the empty world after leaving Africa,
some went north to central Russia.
There, a daughter was born, carrying a new marker, X.
Her children separated,
some going west into Europe,
and some east from Siberia and on into America.
Trakis and Melitarri arrived in America from opposite ends of the earth
and now meet for the first time in Chicago.
Their first family reunion in 30,000 years of
our evolutionary history.
It kind of blows, it, it just blows me away.
Well, I think it's really exciting that we all come from the same line.
Because maybe then people will forget about putting
so much emphasis on differences,
and talking about the common person
and then maybe that will help people be a little bit more
tolerant and loving,
and maybe that will progress
and maybe more relevant not only just science maybe humanity in general today
80,000 years ago
a tiny group of modern humans braved the terrors of the Red Sea
and left Africa forever.
They carried with them the future of the world.
By 10,000 years ago they have penetrated every corner of the globe.
The most incredible and important journey we have ever made.
For the first time, we now know who we are.
We know where we come from.
We know we are the same people as our restless and inquisitive ancestors.
But we have reached the end of our migration.
There are no more empty lands to move to.
Science tells us an unbroken chain links us to our past,
and to each other.
All share the same genetic inheritance from our ancestral Eve.
Perhaps, that is the most important message we should carry into the future
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