Becoming Human

Movie / Show Details

Nothing is more fascinating to US than well us. Where did we come from? What makes US human? Nova’s groundbreaking investigation explores how new discoveries are transforming views of our earliest ancestors. Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists footage shot “in the trenches” as fossils were unearthed and stunning computer-generated animation Becoming Human brings early hominids to life examining how they lived and how we became the creative and adaptable modern humans of today. In the first episode Nova encounters “Selam” the amazingly complete remains of a 3 million year-old child packed with clues to why we split from the apes came down from the trees and started walking upright. In gripping forensic detail the second episode investigates the riddle of “Turkana Boy”-a tantalizing fossil of Homo erectus the first ancestor to leave Africa and colonize the globe. What led to this first great African exodus? in the final episode Becoming Human explores the origins of “us”-where modern humans and our capacities for art invention and survival came from and what happened when we encountered the mysterious Neanderthals. Crucial new evidence comes from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals? Exterminate them? Becoming Human examines why “we” survived while our other ancestral cousins-including Indonesia’s bizarre 3 foot-high “Hobbit”-died out. And Nova poses the intriguing question: are we still evolving today?