An engineering revolution is underway. Driven by dedicated individuals who are building extraordinary machines that will change our lives. The first episode follows the race to generate vast power from thin air - the wind. One of the world’s biggest wind farms is being built off the English coast where the harsh conditions pose great challenges for the team. Meanwhile, a Norwegian team is striving to build the first-ever floating wind farm.
Written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in which he seeks to expose "those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell", including mediumship, acupuncture and psychokinesis.
Rome was once a largely democratic society, with regular elections. This Republic lasted for 500 years, but then came Tiberius Gracchus. He believed in the ideals of the Republic - fairness, decency and justice for everyone -but was appalled by Rome's aristocrats' treatment of the poor. So he unleashed the power of the mob upon the streets of Rome, with devastating consequences.
The journey continues into Asia, the world's greatest land mass, in a quest to discover how early hunter-gatherers managed to survive in one of the most inhospitable places on earth - the Arctic region of Northern Siberia. Alice also explores what may have occurred during human migration to produce Chinese physical characteristics, and considers a controversial claim about Chinese evolution: that the Chinese do not share the same African ancestry as other peoples.
Dr Alice Roberts looks at our ancestors' seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe? The evidence trail is faint and difficult to pick up, but Alice takes on the challenge. In India, new discoveries among the debris of a super volcano hint that our species started the journey much earlier than previously thought, while in Malaysia, genetics points to an ancient trail still detectable in the DNA of tribes today.
Alice travels deep into the Asian rainforests in search of the first cavemen of Borneo and tests out a Stone Age raft to see whether sea travel would have been possible thousands of years ago, before coming to a powerful conclusion.
Alice Roberts tries to find out how Stone Age people reached North and South America for the first time. She finds out about an ancient corridor through the Canadian ice sheet that might have allowed the first humans through. Old finds in Chile though point to a whole different route for the first humans making it there.
The first episode follows the race to generate vast power from thin air - the wind. One of the world’s biggest wind farms is being built off the English coast where the harsh conditions pose great challenges for the team. Meanwhile, a Norwegian team is striving to build the first-ever floating wind farm.