TV • 2009

Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors

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Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors is a three-part NOVA's documentary series investigating the recent discoveries transforming our understanding of our human origins. In the first episode, it explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child" and examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. In the second episode, it investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us - "Turkana Boy" - a complete specimen of Homo erectus, examines the key innovations that helped early humans thrive, and tells these early humans' migration out of Africa. And in the third episode, it examines why modern humans (Homo sapiens) survived while our other ancestral cousins like the Neanderthals died out. The final episode also examines whether modern humans interbred with Neanderthals by decoding of the Neanderthals genome.