The Incredible Human Journey

The Incredible Human Journey
Title card
Genre	Documentary
Presented by	Alice Roberts
Theme music composer	Ty Unwin
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	5 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Kim Shillinglaw
Producer	Paul Bradshaw
Production company	BBC
Original release
Network	BBC Two
Release	May 10 (2009-05-10) – June 14, 2009 (2009-06-14)

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts, and first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the United Kingdom. It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, attempting to argue in support of the Out of Africa Theory which allegedly states that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo Sapiens rather than from the more archaic European/Middle Eastern Homo Neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo Pekinensis. And that the modern African Homo Sapiens did not interbreed with the other separate species of archaic humans. Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured. The first episode aired on BBC Two on Sunday 10 May 2009.

Synopsis

1. Out of Africa

In the first episode, Roberts introduces the notion that genetic analysis suggests that all modern humans are descended from Africans. She visits the site of the Omo remains in Ethiopia, which are the earliest known anatomically modern humans, and visits the San people of Namibia to demonstrate the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In South Africa, she visits Pinnacle Point, to see the cave in which very early humans lived. She then explains that genetics suggests that all non-Africans may descend from a single, small group of Africans who left the continent tens of thousands of years ago. She explores various theories as to the route they took. She describes the Jebel Qafzeh remains in Israel as a likely dead end of a traverse across Suez, and sees a route across the Red Sea and the around the Arabian coast as the likelier route for modern human ancestors, especially given the lower sea levels in the past.

2. Asia

In the second episode, Roberts travels to Siberia and visits an isolated community of indigenous people who still practice reindeer hunting. She uses them to ask how ancient Africans could have adapted to the hostile climate of northern Asia, and asks why Asian people look so different from Africans. She explores an alternative to the Out of Africa theory, the multiregional origin of modern humans theory that has gained enormous scientific support in China. According to this theory, the Chinese are not descended from anatomically modern African Homo Sapiens, but evolved from a separate species of humans, called Homo Pekinensis, rather than the Homo Sapien which produced the rest of humanity. Roberts visits the Zhoukoudian caves, in which Peking Man, the Homo Pekinensis ancestor of the Chinese, was discovered. She notes that some Chinese anthropologists and palaeontologists have shown modern Chinese physical characteristics that are also present in the Homo Pekinensis fossils, such as flattened faces, broad cheek bones, cranial skull shape, small frontal sinuses, reduced posterior teeth, shovel-shaped incisors, and high frequencies of metopic sutures, which are virtually absent in modern day European, Middle Eastern, and African populations but widely present in the modern population of the Han Chinese, suggesting an evolutionary lineage from Homo Pekinensis to modern Chinese. Additionally she notes that the stone tools found in China are those invented and manufactured by Homo Pekinensis and other species of Homo Erectus, and not the tools made by anatomically modern African Homo Sapiens than those elsewhere, showing that only the tools made by Homo Pekinensis was present. However, she attempts to argue her opinion by stating that the Homo Pekinensis and Homo Erectus fossil morphological evidence is subtle, and interviews an American palaeontologist who believes and presents his unproven hypothesis that the prehistoric Chinese humans used bamboo tools instead of stone, explaining the absence of sophisticated stone tools, despite no archaeological evidence in support of this hypothesis. Finally, she interviews Chinese geneticist Jin Li, whose studies on about 10,000 individuals, out of a remaining 1.5 billion untested Chinese, suggests that some Chinese are descended from Africans like everyone else, but does not show whether those 10,000 Chinese individuals tested had ancestors who interbreed with male African Homo Sapiens or if they are directly descended from African Homo Sapiens who had migrated to China. Throughout the history of China numerous ethnic groups, ranging from European Tocharians have migrated to what now China to live, so it is possible they may have carried the African genes through their ethnic group into China. But the show deliberately avoided presenting evidence in support of the independent evolution of the modern Chinese from the separate Homo Erectus species. Numerous genetic studies conducted on the DNA of Chinese people show genes that are not of the African Homo Sapien origin but rather of a more archaic Homo Erectus. These genetic studies, in conjunction with the morphological, linguistic and archaelogical evidence lend scientific support to a separate evolution of the modern Chinese people from their ancestral Homo Erectus two million years ago. This genetic DNA evidence has been published in numerous peer reviewed scientific publications such as Oxford University's Oxford Journals, Evidence for Archaic Asian Ancestry on the Human X Chromosome by Daniel Garrigan, Zahra Mobasher, Tesa Severson, Jason A. Wilder and Michael F. Hammer and the Genetics Society of America's Genetics Journal, "Testing for Archaic Hominin Admixture on the X Chromosome: Model Likelihoods for the Modern Human RRM2P4 Region From Summaries of Genealogical Topology Under the Structured Coalescent" by Murray P. Cox, Fernando L. Mendez, Tatiana M. Karafet, Maya Metni Pilkington, Sarah B. Kingan, Giovanni Destro-Bisol, Beverly I. Strassmann and Michael F. Hammer as well as BMC Biology Journal of Biology "Y chromosome evidence of earliest modern human settlement in East Asia and multiple origins of Tibetan and Japanese populations" by Shi H, Zhong H, Peng Y, Dong YL, Qi XB, Zhang F, Liu LF, Tan SJ, Ma RZ, Xiao CJ, Wells RS, Jin L, Su B.

3. Europe

In the third episode, Roberts describes the various waves of anatomically modern humans that settled the continent of Europe. She crosses the Bosphorus and travels up the Danube River, following their likely route. She then describes the already resident population of Neanderthals, and visits Gibraltar, the last known site occupied by Neanderthals. She suggests that the principle difference between them and homo sapiens was the latter's ability to create art, and visits the cave paintings at Lascaux. She discusses the theories about why Europeans have white skin and describes the birth of agriculture and the societal changes that took place as a result, visiting a spectacular Neolithic temple in Turkey.

4. Australia

In the fourth episode, Roberts discusses the surprising evidence of the Mungo Lake remains, which suggest, surprisingly, that humans reached Australia long before they reached Europe, even though Australia is further away from Africa. Roberts attempts to trace the journey. She visits a site in India that appears to indicate that humans were present there 70,000 years ago, before the Toba supervolcano deposited ash on the site. She then points to the Negrito people of Southeast Asia, who look different from other Asian peoples, and who may be descendants of the peoples who first left Africa. She describes the discovery of the tiny homo floresiensis on Flores and suggests that they may have been exterminated by modern humans. She describes the crossing of the Torres Strait by experimenting with a bamboo raft. She concludes by visiting a tribe in Northern Australia whose mythology describes their mother goddess arriving from across the sea.

5. The Americas

In the final episode, Roberts describes theories about how humans traversed from Asia to the Americas, asking how they achieved it during the Ice Age, when the route to North America was blocked by ice walls. She describes the traditional theory that the first Americans were the Clovis culture, who arrived through an ice-free corridor during the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago. However, she then visits archaeological sites in Texas, Brazil, the Californian Channel Islands and Monte Verde in southern Chile which show 14,000-year old human remains, proving that humans must have arrived earlier, via a different route. She shows the skull of the Luzia Woman, found in Brazil, which displays Australasian features rather than the East Asian features of modern day Native Americans; an archaeologist explains that these first Americans may have been Asians who migrated before Asians developed their distinctive facial features. Roberts shows that the earliest Americans may have migrated down the relatively ice-free western coastlines of North and South America. She concludes by noting that when Europeans arrived in 1492, they did not recognize Native Americans as fully human, but modern genetics and archaeology proves that we all ultimately descend from Africans.

Episodes

Episode	Episode title	Airdate	Viewers
1	"Out of Africa"	10 May 2009	2.22m (9.7%)
2	"Asia"	17 May 2009	2.34m (10.2%)
3	"Europe"	24 May 2009	1.66m (7.2%)
4	"Australia"	31 May 2009	2.11m (9.9%)
5	"The Americas"	14 June 2009	1.86m (8.7%)

Much of the evening broadcasting on 7 June 2009 was dedicated to the European Parliament election results.

Book

Book accompanying the television series:

• Roberts, Alice (2009). The Incredible Human Journey. Bloomsbury Publishing plc. ISBN 0747598398.

External links

• The Incredible Human Journey at BBC Online
• The Incredible Human Journey at IMDb
• Alice Roberts' official website