In the heart of southern France, the Mandrin Cave has drawn archaeologists for over three decades, its soils preserving an extraordinary archive of human life stretching back tens of thousands of years. Within its layers lie traces of fire, tools, and bones that tell the story of survival in a harsh prehistoric world. In 2015, the remarkable discovery of a Neanderthal individual—nicknamed Thorin—revealed that these ancient humans once lived side by side with the first Homo sapiens to arrive in the region. Following an international team of scientists, the investigation uncovers fragile relics of the Palaeolithic era that are rewriting our understanding of how two human species encountered one another. With every excavation, new details emerge about resilience, adaptation, and coexistence, offering a powerful re-examination of what it meant to be human 50,000 years ago. This is not only the story of the Neanderthals’ fate, but also of the deep roots of our own identity.
Spanning five gripping episodes presented together in one seamless video, this sweeping journey explores 300,000 years of human evolution, revealing groundbreaking discoveries that are reshaping everything we thought we knew about our origins. From the first appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa—at a time when at least six other human species walked the Earth—to the dramatic encounters with Neanderthals and the mysteries of their disappearance, each chapter uncovers the epic struggle for survival and dominance. As the Ice Age grips the planet, humanity pushes into the Americas, braving the harshest conditions in history. Finally, as the ice recedes, a transformation begins: the shift from wandering hunters to the builders of the first permanent settlements. This story brings to life the triumphs, dangers, and defining moments that made us who we are today.
How did humanity's earliest ancestors evolve into one of the most successful species on Earth? An extraordinary journey tracing the footsteps of early hominids. Using the latest palaeoanthropological findings mixed with the latest CGI from Square Enix, this story is finally told.
Dr Alice Roberts re-traces the greatest ever journey taken by our ancestors. Thousands of years ago one small group of our species, Homo sapiens, crossed out of Africa and into the unknown. Their descendants faced baking deserts, sweat-soaked jungles and frozen wildernesses and risked everything on the vast empty ocean. Within 60,000 years they colonised the whole world... How did they do it? Why do we, their descendants all look so different?
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.
Following an international team of scientists, the investigation uncovers fragile relics of the Palaeolithic era that are rewriting our understanding of how two human species encountered one another. With every excavation, new details emerge about resilience, adaptation, and coexistence, offering a powerful re-examination of what it meant to be human 50,000 years ago. This is not only the story of the Neanderthals’ fate, but also of the deep roots of our own identity.