1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Tonight, the conclusion of our expedition unknown evolutionary event.

2
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,000
This is the Rosetta Stone of human evolution.

3
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:17,000
I journey far from civilization and deep into our prehistoric past.

4
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:19,000
If you fall in, you're pretty much done.

5
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Classic death trap.

6
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:26,000
To find out what our ancient ancestors can tell us about ourselves.

7
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:29,000
That's the step that pushes us towards humans.

8
00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:36,000
And unlock secrets hidden in our DNA to learn how much of them lives on in us.

9
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:41,000
When we look at your DNA, these are ancestors who many folks might not even call human.

10
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:44,000
Can lessons from the first humans.

11
00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:46,000
Unbelievable.

12
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,000
Prevent us from becoming the last humans?

13
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:51,000
Yeah!

14
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:52,000
Stone! Evan!

15
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:53,000
F***!

16
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:56,000
Almost there!

17
00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:59,000
Oh, oh, oh!

18
00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:05,000
My name is Josh Gates.

19
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:07,000
I got it!

20
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:08,000
Explorer.

21
00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:09,000
Adventure.

22
00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:10,000
Woo!

23
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:14,000
And a guy who ends up in some very strange situations.

24
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:15,000
Woo!

25
00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:17,000
That was exciting.

26
00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000
With a degree in archaeology and a passion for the unexplained.

27
00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:23,000
I travel to the ends of the earth,

28
00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:26,000
investigating the greatest legends in history.

29
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:28,000
Kaelic Pudget.

30
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:31,000
This is Expedition Unknown.

31
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:36,000
It's the greatest mystery of all.

32
00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:38,000
What makes us human?

33
00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:43,000
To find out what our earliest ancestors can teach us about ourselves and our future.

34
00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:46,000
I met with Professor John Hawks.

35
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:51,000
And it turns out everything I thought I knew about human evolution was wrong.

36
00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,000
People think of it like that diagram that we've all seen.

37
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:56,000
It doesn't work that way at all.

38
00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:58,000
We're not a chain of progress.

39
00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,000
We are this crazy diverse tree.

40
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:04,000
Paleontologists keep digging up new human ancestors.

41
00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:08,000
And our family tree is beginning to look more like a tangle of vines.

42
00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:13,000
But by about 35,000 years ago, just one species was left.

43
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:14,000
Homo sapiens.

44
00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:17,000
Understanding why our relatives are all gone,

45
00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:23,000
we're the only ones left, is going to be essential to understanding how we can survive in the future.

46
00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:30,000
So Dr. Hawks sent me on a journey into our collective past in Tanzania,

47
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:34,000
where I met Dr. Charles Musiba at a site called Leitoli.

48
00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:37,000
It was here that four million-year-old footprints,

49
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:41,000
the first evidence of our ancestors walking upright, were discovered.

50
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:46,000
To determine if these early relatives were organized and intelligent hunters,

51
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:50,000
or ape-like scavengers, we tracked a pride of lions.

52
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:53,000
They're going to kill. It's a wildebeest.

53
00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:59,000
By comparing bite marks on the carcasses to knife cuts on a three-million-year-old wildebeest fossil,

54
00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:05,000
we learned that our ancestors were hunters who possessed an intelligence far beyond other primates.

55
00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:09,000
Their ability to secure protein led to bigger brains,

56
00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:13,000
and over the next two million years, our gray matter tripled in size.

57
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:20,000
The addition of consuming high amounts of protein fundamentally alters our evolution.

58
00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:24,000
It does. This episode brought to you by the Meat Council.

59
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:32,000
To see the secrets of a prehistoric hunt firsthand, I joined one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on Earth,

60
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:33,000
the Hadza.

61
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,000
Each hunt is a game of risk and reward.

62
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:38,000
To win, you have to sweat.

63
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:42,000
But if you miss your target, you don't earn any food to replenish your strength.

64
00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:44,000
No kill, no dinner.

65
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:50,000
But in the modern world, heart disease is the leading cause of death,

66
00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:56,000
in part because we're responding to instincts encoded in our ancestors millions of years ago.

67
00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:02,000
To understand how traits passed down from ancient relatives influence our health and behavior today,

68
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:11,000
I had a swab of my own DNA analyzed and flew to a lab in San Diego to see how much of them still lives on in me.

69
00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:13,000
Nathan?

70
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:14,000
Oh, hey.

71
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:15,000
Hey, how are you, man? Nice to meet you.

72
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:16,000
Pleasure.

73
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:18,000
Actually, it's not nice to meet you. I'm very nervous to meet you.

74
00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:19,000
Why?

75
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:23,000
Because, you know, when we talk about early human ancestors, it's all been very hypothetical up to this point,

76
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,000
but now you have my DNA. It's getting real. It's getting real. It's personal now.

77
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:34,000
That's right. When we look at your DNA, there are traces, little snippets, that hint at early, quite mysterious,

78
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:39,000
forebears who probably date back 40 to 50,000 years ago.

79
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:41,000
Who am I related to?

80
00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:46,000
I'm not sure if you're ready. These are ancestors who many folks might not even call human.

81
00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:48,000
Okay.

82
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:50,000
So they looked a lot like this.

83
00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:53,000
These are Neanderthals.

84
00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:58,000
I'm sorry. I have Neanderthal DNA.

85
00:04:58,000 --> 00:04:59,000
You have Neanderthal DNA.

86
00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:01,000
What percentage Neanderthal am I?

87
00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:02,000
Roughly two.

88
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:03,000
Wow.

89
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,000
I'm a Neanderthal. It's official.

90
00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:11,000
In 2010, geneticists extracted and sequenced DNA from Neanderthal fossils.

91
00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:18,000
The results shocked the world. Humans and Neanderthals were getting together and getting it on.

92
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:26,000
If your family traces largely to East Asia or to Europe, you likely have some Neanderthal ancestry.

93
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:30,000
Does having some Neanderthal in my DNA, could that mean some?

94
00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:37,000
Yeah, it could for you. You've got spellings of a gene called Adam TSL3, which helps make muscles and helps them run.

95
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:39,000
We don't know exactly how yet that spelling...

96
00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:41,000
I was hoping you were going to say it was going to make me strong.

97
00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:43,000
Well, we don't know yet.

98
00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:53,000
The science is still young, but Neanderthal DNA has been linked to everything, from muscle physiology to tobacco addiction to immune system responses.

99
00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:58,000
But not all of the relatives that Nathan found are ancient history.

100
00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:00,000
You can identify relative of mine.

101
00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:04,000
We can identify relative of yours and in fact, this is another TV gate.

102
00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,000
Another TV gate?

103
00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:09,000
Skip.

104
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:13,000
Hand in the loose gate, skip gate from PBS, so faces of America and finding your roots.

105
00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:15,000
It's like looking in a mirror. Almost.

106
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:20,000
It turns out that Skip and I share genetic material from an Irish medieval king.

107
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:23,000
So do about 3 million other people.

108
00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:28,000
It sounds impressive, but finding royal ancestry is surprisingly, well, common.

109
00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:34,000
Charlemagne can be linked to most folks from Europe and if you're Asian, chances are there's a little Genghis Khan in you.

110
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:36,000
It's all a numbers game.

111
00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:43,000
You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and on and on in an ever-increasing pool.

112
00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:49,000
Go back just 3,000 years and every person on earth has a shared common ancestor.

113
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,000
In other words, we're all related.

114
00:06:53,000 --> 00:07:01,000
The one other part of this that jumps out at me is that you start to really see pretty quickly that all of these notions of race,

115
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:09,000
all these sort of tribal notions that we have about who we are, it's just laid so bare that we are all just such a mix of everybody.

116
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:12,000
Everybody's inherently mixed. That's the point.

117
00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:22,000
It just seems to me that this is in some ways really the most important part of all of this because it continues to be such a major issue in the world today.

118
00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:26,000
This idea of, you know, we are these people, you are those people.

119
00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:29,000
Our family trees are now all entangled.

120
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:33,000
Right. This is awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time, man.

121
00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,000
Likewise. All the best. I'll see you at the family reunion.

122
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:37,000
Absolutely. Next year.

123
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:45,000
Ancient DNA not only shapes our bodies, we're learning that it affects our health and could even drive our actions.

124
00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:51,000
To learn firsthand about what makes us tick today, I need to go back in time and meet my makers.

125
00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:55,000
The only way to do that is to meet our closest living genetic relatives.

126
00:07:56,000 --> 00:08:03,000
I catch a flight to the remote western frontier of Kigoma, Tanzania and make my way to a waiting boat.

127
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:08,000
The only way to access a remote wilderness preserve at the edge of the country.

128
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:20,000
I'm cruising north on Lake Tanganyika to the south Zambia and on the opposite shore, the Congo.

129
00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:27,000
This is the longest lake in the world and holds about 16% of the planet's fresh water.

130
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:32,000
My destination is a remote Gombe National Park near the border of Burundi.

131
00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:37,000
It's a place made famous by Dr. Jane Goodall and her pioneering work with primates.

132
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,000
And I'm hoping for a close encounter with her subjects.

133
00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:50,000
We steam on and civilization swirls away to reveal a landscape from the distant past.

134
00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:01,000
Several hours later, we approach a remote dock, the gateway to the Jane Goodall Institute and Gombe National Park.

135
00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:07,000
Baboons patrol the beach and under the canopy, there are research labs and a camp.

136
00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:11,000
Nearby, I find my guides, Dr. Deis Majungu.

137
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:14,000
How are you? I'm good. Welcome to Gombe National Park. Great to meet you.

138
00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:18,000
And visiting scholars, Dr. Ian Gilby and Dr. Anthony Collins.

139
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:22,000
You guys are off the grid up here. That's how we like it.

140
00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:24,000
So this is where Dr. Goodall did her work.

141
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:29,000
When Jane Goodall came here in 1960, she had a nice big tent. It was just here.

142
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:35,000
She discovered chimpanzees using tools, not only using tools but making tools.

143
00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:42,000
Goodall discovered chimpanzees fashioning wands and dipping them into termite mounds to pull out a quick snack.

144
00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:48,000
This was a stunning revelation. Toolmaking was thought to be humanity's singular achievement.

145
00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:53,000
But it turns out our closest living relatives may be more like us than we imagined.

146
00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:58,000
So I want to understand chimps a little bit. Let's start by dispelling a common mistake that many people make,

147
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:02,000
that I'm sure you hear all the time. Chimps are not monkeys.

148
00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:05,000
That is correct. Correct. They are apes.

149
00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:08,000
So monkeys have tails. That's right.

150
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:12,000
And so in terms of the great apes, if you don't count us, there are four species left.

151
00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:16,000
Arangatans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

152
00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:19,000
And out of the great apes, which one are we most closely related to?

153
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:22,000
Chimpanzee. How closely related are we genetically?

154
00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:27,000
98% DNA. We share 98% of our genetic material with chimps.

155
00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:32,000
And in fact, we're more closely related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas.

156
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:33,000
Really? Yeah.

157
00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:36,000
Wow. Can we study chimps and learn about humans?

158
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:38,000
That's why we're here. Let's go.

159
00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:39,000
Let's go.

160
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:46,000
But to observe our chimpanzee cousins, we've got to find them.

161
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:52,000
And that means leaving the relative safety of the research camp and trekking deep into the apes' domain.

162
00:10:52,000 --> 00:11:00,000
So what's the process? Do you know where they are on any given day or it's a guess?

163
00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:03,000
Chimpanzees, they make nests in a different place each night.

164
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:09,000
If we don't know where they are, we'll go and listen for calls or we'll visit recently visited fruit trees.

165
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:18,000
This is stunning.

166
00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:25,000
As we hike into the interior, it becomes clear that this is no zoo.

167
00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:30,000
There are no fences here and the animals are not domesticated.

168
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:34,000
Pound for pound, chimps are five times stronger than humans.

169
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:39,000
They're highly territorial and out here, we are vastly outnumbered.

170
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:41,000
How many chimps total are in the park?

171
00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:44,000
Right now it's around 90 chimpanzees in the whole park.

172
00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:45,000
Wow.

173
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:53,000
We press on seeking higher ground to try and spot our elusive quarry.

174
00:11:55,000 --> 00:12:02,000
But on these steep slopes, my director of photography learns bipedalism isn't all it's cracked up to be.

175
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:03,000
Oh!

176
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:04,000
Oh!

177
00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:05,000
Stone!

178
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:06,000
Heaven!

179
00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:12,000
To learn more about the fundamental characteristics that make us human,

180
00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:19,000
I'm in Tanzania's Gombe National Forest investigating our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.

181
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:24,000
The quest to track wild chimps has taken us far off the beaten path,

182
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:30,000
where my director of photography has discovered that this particular mission is a slippery slope.

183
00:12:30,000 --> 00:12:31,000
Oh!

184
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:32,000
Oh!

185
00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:33,000
Ah!

186
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:34,000
Stone!

187
00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:35,000
Heaven!

188
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,000
You okay?

189
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,000
Yeah, I'm okay.

190
00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:40,000
I took a misstep.

191
00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:42,000
Yeah, you took a job on this show.

192
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:44,000
I broke another eyepiece.

193
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:46,000
It's okay, I'll send you a bill.

194
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:47,000
Uh-huh.

195
00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:48,000
You okay?

196
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:49,000
Yeah, I'm okay.

197
00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:50,000
Let's keep going.

198
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,000
Okay, here we go everybody.

199
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:56,000
We spend the next four hours trekking deeper into the jungle.

200
00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:58,000
We're going to go to the forest.

201
00:12:59,000 --> 00:13:03,000
We spend the next four hours trekking deeper into the jungle.

202
00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:10,000
Turns out they're finding chimps in a chimp preserve.

203
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:11,000
Not that easy.

204
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,000
Until finally, they find us.

205
00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:20,000
Shhh!

206
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,000
Two chimps.

207
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:24,000
We freeze in our tracks.

208
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:27,000
Two chimps are heading straight for us.

209
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:29,000
And as we give them the right of way,

210
00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:33,000
they pass so closely we could reach out and touch them.

211
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:35,000
So the one in front is named Faustino.

212
00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:37,000
And the one behind, what's his name?

213
00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:38,000
Gimli.

214
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:39,000
Like Lord of the Rings Gimli?

215
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:42,000
Yeah, there are several Tolkien inspired chimps here.

216
00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:44,000
Okay, are they related?

217
00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:46,000
They are not, they're from different lineages.

218
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:47,000
How old is Gimli?

219
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,000
Around 14 years old.

220
00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:52,000
So we've got the teenager hanging out with the older cool dude.

221
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:53,000
Is that what's happening here?

222
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:54,000
That's exactly what's happening.

223
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:55,000
And is that common?

224
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,000
Sometimes you have one of these younger guys who sort of

225
00:13:57,000 --> 00:13:59,000
hero worships one of the older males.

226
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:02,000
We'll follow him around and learn how to behave,

227
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:04,000
how to be a male, how to...

228
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:05,000
Pick up girls.

229
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,000
Potentially, yeah, that's always part of it, right?

230
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,000
Chimps and humans learn how to behave in their community

231
00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:13,000
by aping their older counterparts.

232
00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:18,000
The alpha male Faustino is grooming the beta Gimli as an ally.

233
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:22,000
His right hand man in dominance struggles with other male chimps.

234
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,000
So should we follow them?

235
00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:25,000
I think we should follow them.

236
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:26,000
Okay, let's follow them.

237
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:27,000
Okay.

238
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:36,000
We pause briefly to put on surgical masks.

239
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,000
Because we share 98% of our DNA with chimps,

240
00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,000
they're susceptible to many of our diseases.

241
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:50,000
Faustino and Gimli lead us into the most remote reaches of the preserve.

242
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,000
Literally swinging from vines.

243
00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:01,000
Sweating, slipping and sliding, we track them to a clearing.

244
00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:03,000
Hey, Josh, we got a group here.

245
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:04,000
Okay.

246
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,000
Unbelievable.

247
00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,000
Faustino and Gimli have disappeared into the forest,

248
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:19,000
but they've led us to a group of females and babies.

249
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:23,000
Undisturbed by our presence, we are safe to observe them.

250
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,000
Give me a snapshot of chimp life.

251
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:32,000
It's all about food, dominance, mating and raising offspring.

252
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:34,000
Males will help each other in fights,

253
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,000
and that will really help them increase in dominance,

254
00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:41,000
and that usually leads to better reproductive success.

255
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,000
Dr. Goodall's work showed that chimps are intelligent

256
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:47,000
and can be exceedingly gentle,

257
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:51,000
but male chimps are also in constant competition with each other.

258
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:56,000
This leads to acts of violence, tribalism and sexual assault.

259
00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:58,000
Traits that are sadly familiar.

260
00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:03,000
Male-dominated violence is prevalent in both ape and human society.

261
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:07,000
Men commit homicide at about 20 times the rate that women do.

262
00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:11,000
And at Gombe, while chimp violence is relatively rare,

263
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,000
it can also be brutal.

264
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:17,000
Each alpha male seems to have a different kind of dominance strategy.

265
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:20,000
So some of them are big bullies that don't really have any friends.

266
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:22,000
And they just sort of beat everybody else up.

267
00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:24,000
And then others are more political,

268
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:27,000
so they'll have allies that help them stay in power.

269
00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:31,000
In fact, chimps are capable of another activity

270
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,000
we once thought was uniquely human, warfare.

271
00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:38,000
In 1974, a competition for dominance

272
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:44,000
led two rival clans at Gombe to spend four years brutally attacking each other.

273
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,000
And their motivations appeared to be all too human,

274
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:50,000
two communities competing for power.

275
00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:54,000
So what makes us different?

276
00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,000
To be honest, not much.

277
00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:58,000
While our superior communication skills

278
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:01,000
give us the ability to form societies with rules

279
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:03,000
that govern our violent impulses,

280
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:06,000
human history is rife with destructive behavior.

281
00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:12,000
Some anthropologists have suggested

282
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:15,000
that early humans practiced self-domestication.

283
00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:19,000
It's a nice way of saying that excessively violent males were eliminated,

284
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:22,000
so that reproductive success went to the less violent.

285
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:26,000
Over time, it produced a species more inclined toward cooperation,

286
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,000
at least in theory.

287
00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:32,000
One of the things that's really interesting about chimp culture

288
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,000
is that it seems really complex,

289
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000
but it doesn't seem to change that much over time.

290
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:40,000
So that is one of the huge differences between chimpanzees and humans.

291
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:44,000
They don't build on the innovations that they have.

292
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:45,000
Do they teach?

293
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:46,000
No, they do not teach.

294
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:48,000
It's all observational learning,

295
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:52,000
so the offspring intently watch, usually their mothers.

296
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,000
They're kind of technologically plateaued.

297
00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:55,000
Yeah, I would say that.

298
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:56,000
Yeah.

299
00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,000
And this is the critical difference,

300
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:03,000
one that caused the first humans to become more than what they were.

301
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:07,000
However, while millions of years later, chimps remain virtually unchanged.

302
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,000
As I leave my friends at the Goodall Institute,

303
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:12,000
I think about this fact.

304
00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:14,000
We have a cumulative culture.

305
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:17,000
We innovate and add to our knowledge,

306
00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:20,000
instead of starting over with each new generation.

307
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:23,000
But how did this distinction happen?

308
00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:26,000
And how does it impact who we are today?

309
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:30,000
An anthropologist in South Africa thinks he might know,

310
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:33,000
and he's digging up proof 2,000 miles south,

311
00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:36,000
just outside of Johannesburg.

312
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:50,000
You know, if you'd asked me 10 years ago what I thought of Johannesburg,

313
00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:54,000
I rather ignorantly would have said, not much.

314
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:57,000
And that's because Joberg, or Josie, as the locals call it,

315
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,000
was a place with a reputation.

316
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:03,000
It's a city forever scarred by apartheid,

317
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:08,000
decades of segregation that heroes like Nelson Mandela fought to end.

318
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:11,000
Joberg is still coming to terms with this grave injustice,

319
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,000
but a great change is in the air.

320
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,000
Vibrant art lines the city streets,

321
00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:20,000
and abandoned factories like this one are being reborn.

322
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:22,000
DJs and dancing on the roof,

323
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:25,000
and inside a bustling community market

324
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:28,000
with just about every food from the continent.

325
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:31,000
Honey-infused bacon with chili.

326
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:36,000
And a few that have just been invented.

327
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:37,000
Boosie ice cream?

328
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:38,000
Yep.

329
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:40,000
My God, I've been waiting my whole life for this.

330
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,000
This vodka-infused vanilla.

331
00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:46,000
That's so good.

332
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:47,000
Oh, it's crazy.

333
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:48,000
Can I hug you?

334
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:49,000
Yes, you may.

335
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:50,000
Can I hug you? Oh, my God.

336
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:51,000
You can hug me.

337
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:52,000
God bless you.

338
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:54,000
That's so good.

339
00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:56,000
Can I get drunk off this?

340
00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:57,000
If you have six.

341
00:19:57,000 --> 00:19:58,000
Well, that's easy.

342
00:19:58,000 --> 00:19:59,000
What if I have 12?

343
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:04,000
I sober up for my ice cream

344
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,000
on the way to Witwatersrand University,

345
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:09,000
famous for its collection of fossils.

346
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:12,000
I've arranged to meet with Dr. Dominic Stratford.

347
00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:13,000
Dominic.

348
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:14,000
Josh.

349
00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:15,000
How are you, man?

350
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:16,000
Very good. Pleased to meet you.

351
00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:17,000
Nice to meet you as well.

352
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:18,000
Yeah, thank you for coming through.

353
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:20,000
I can't wait to see what you guys have hidden away in here.

354
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:22,000
Well, we've got some beautiful fossils in the vault.

355
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:23,000
Let's go and have a look.

356
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:24,000
To the vault.

357
00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:28,000
Dominic grants me exclusive access to the vault.

358
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:31,000
The secure laboratory where some of the rarest

359
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:34,000
and most valuable fossils on Earth are housed.

360
00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:38,000
Bones, whose discovery shocked the scientific world

361
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:42,000
and rewrote the book on where the human story began.

362
00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:46,000
This is the single largest collection of fossils

363
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:49,000
documenting our evolution anywhere in the world.

364
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:52,000
And then, the pride and glory,

365
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:54,000
I'd like to introduce you to Littlefoot.

366
00:20:57,000 --> 00:20:58,000
Wow.

367
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:03,000
Littlefoot is about 3.67 million years old.

368
00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:06,000
This is the Rosetta Stone of human evolution.

369
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,000
The structure of Littlefoot's ankle bone

370
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:12,000
proves that his species, called Australopithecus,

371
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:16,000
had mastered a crucial new skill, bipedalism.

372
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:18,000
What are the advantages of standing upright?

373
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:20,000
You can see a lot further.

374
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:23,000
It's also more efficient in walking long distances.

375
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:25,000
It's all about ranging and getting these horses.

376
00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:29,000
In fact, studies suggest that species like Australopithecus

377
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:33,000
could travel twice as far in a day as their tree-bound cousins.

378
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:37,000
So bipedalism really is the first step, literally,

379
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:38,000
in our evolution.

380
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:39,000
Yep.

381
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:40,000
What comes next?

382
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:41,000
So I can actually show you.

383
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:44,000
Some colleagues and I are working out at the Stagham Tain Cave,

384
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:46,000
close to where Littlefoot was found.

385
00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:48,000
So let's go and have a look.

386
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:49,000
Great. Let's see.

387
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:50,000
Great. Perfect.

388
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:54,000
To learn about our next step

389
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:56,000
and see how it led to a cycle of innovation

390
00:21:56,000 --> 00:21:59,000
that spurs our development to this day,

391
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:02,000
I arranged to meet Dominic at Sturkfontein Caves.

392
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,000
You know, when we think of ancient fossils,

393
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:07,000
we don't tend to think of modern cities.

394
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:11,000
And yet a whopping 40% of all fossilized remains

395
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:13,000
of our ancient ancestors have been found

396
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:16,000
within about 30 miles of Johannesburg.

397
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:19,000
This treasure trove of ancient relatives

398
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:22,000
has earned this region another name,

399
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:24,000
the Cradle of Humankind.

400
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:27,000
And here, amidst the red dirt and gentle hills,

401
00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:29,000
is Sturkfontein.

402
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:34,000
And the caves that offer a window into our destiny.

403
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:37,000
This is the top upper chamber of the Sturkfontein Cave.

404
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:40,000
So if we were here two million years ago,

405
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,000
we would be quite a long way underground.

406
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,000
This whole place looks blasted out.

407
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,000
That's exactly what happened.

408
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:51,000
Over a century ago, Johannesburg was a gold mining boom town.

409
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:53,000
A blast uncovered little foot.

410
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:56,000
Embedded in concrete-like rock,

411
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,000
the skeleton remained untouched for decades.

412
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,000
Excavations to extract the fossils

413
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:03,000
took almost 20 years

414
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,000
and were only completed in 2017.

415
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:10,000
So this is where we're going in.

416
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,000
In the crack.

417
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:14,000
I was expecting a big cave entrance.

418
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:16,000
Maybe some stairs, a nice ramp.

419
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:18,000
So all over the cradle of humankind,

420
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:20,000
what you find are these tiny little holes on the surface

421
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:24,000
that lead straight down to these huge chambers underground.

422
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:27,000
And that's why, if you fall in, they're pretty much done.

423
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:29,000
A classic death trap.

424
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,000
Boy, you're really selling it, Dominic.

425
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:33,000
Well, you'll be all right, I'm sure.

426
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:37,000
Dominic theorizes that this is exactly what happened to Littlefoot,

427
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:40,000
and the countless other bodies buried in these chambers.

428
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:44,000
They either fell down or washed in and became trapped,

429
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:48,000
leaving the remains for us to find millions of years later.

430
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:49,000
So Helmut's on.

431
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,000
If you're going to fall, remember to fall on your head.

432
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,000
They don't let you write the tourist brochures, right?

433
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:58,000
There's only one way to reach Dominic's dig site,

434
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:01,000
and learn the secrets that made us who we are today.

435
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,000
And it's down the same hole that swallowed Littlefoot.

436
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,000
Okay, now.

437
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:08,000
Okay, right behind you.

438
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,000
Got any pointers on this descent?

439
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,000
Yeah, don't fall.

440
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,000
Yeah, knew that was coming.

441
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:16,000
You got it.

442
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,000
Okay, here we go.

443
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:24,000
The claustrophobic entrance shaft is just wide enough to shimmy through.

444
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:28,000
This is how people die.

445
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:31,000
Okay, left foot there, that's good.

446
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,000
Okay, left foot down.

447
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:35,000
Left foot a little bit further.

448
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,000
I'm here.

449
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,000
Oh, f***!

450
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:48,000
My quest to understand how human evolution led to us

451
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:51,000
brings me to the so-called Cradle of Humankind,

452
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,000
South Africa's Sturkfontane Caves.

453
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:59,000
Where archaeologist Dr. Dominic Stratford is searching for the secret

454
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:02,000
that jump-started our intellectual development.

455
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:07,000
But finding it involves a dangerous descent down a narrow entrance shaft.

456
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,000
This is how people die.

457
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,000
Okay, left foot down.

458
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,000
Left foot a little bit further.

459
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:16,000
Right?

460
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,000
I'm here.

461
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,000
Oh, f***!

462
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,000
Here we go.

463
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,000
I got it. I'm okay.

464
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,000
There we go, I got a foothold there now.

465
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:28,000
That's the one.

466
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,000
Coming down, right foot.

467
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,000
And we're all alive.

468
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:34,000
Congratulations.

469
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,000
All right, after you, come on.

470
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:37,000
Okay.

471
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,000
Dominic and I climbed through a seemingly endless labyrinth of ancient rock

472
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,000
toward his team's excavation site.

473
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,000
Look at the ceiling in here.

474
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:54,000
It's just covered in these beautiful tiny crystals.

475
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:58,000
So these beautiful calcium carbonate crystals are actually growing on top of

476
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,000
the fossil-bearing deposits.

477
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,000
So there could be fossils anywhere in here?

478
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:05,000
There could be fossils everywhere, most likely just underneath us.

479
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,000
This place really is like a time machine.

480
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,000
It is. Almost none of it's really been explored.

481
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:12,000
That's crazy. All right, push on.

482
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:17,000
Despite being deep underground in a maze of nearly pitch black caves,

483
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:20,000
it turns out Dominic and I aren't alone down here.

484
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:26,000
Look at that. All sorts of things hanging around down here.

485
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:27,000
What?

486
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,000
That's a bad joke.

487
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:36,000
At last, in the depths of the cave, we reach the dig site.

488
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,000
It's here that Dominic introduces me to Dr. George Leder.

489
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:44,000
Welcome to our excavation.

490
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:45,000
Thank you.

491
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,000
So at the bottom of your pit here, how far back are we?

492
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:53,000
So you're looking at about four million years of time in this sequence.

493
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,000
So as we saw in the vault on this march of evolution,

494
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:59,000
bipedalism is this first key that we see.

495
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:02,000
As we get into the younger deposits, what's the next link in that chain?

496
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:06,000
That's what I'm really interested in, and that's stone tool technology.

497
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:07,000
And you're finding those in here?

498
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:09,000
We are finding lots of them in here.

499
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:10,000
You want to come on in?

500
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:11,000
Yeah, for sure.

501
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:12,000
Let's do it.

502
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:18,000
Let's start working in this section and let's just see what we find.

503
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,000
Okay, so loose stuff here first?

504
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:21,000
Loose stuff there first.

505
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,000
But figuring out what's natural stone and what's been shaped by our ancient ancestors

506
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:30,000
takes hours of patience and an expert eye,

507
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,000
or at least being next to someone with an expert eye.

508
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:37,000
Different?

509
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:41,000
Absolutely different.

510
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:43,000
This is not just a stone?

511
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:44,000
No.

512
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,000
That is a beautiful, beautiful find.

513
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:48,000
What is it?

514
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:49,000
What is it?

515
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:51,000
That is an old-a-wan core.

516
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:57,000
One of your and my hominid ancestors picked up this 2.1 million years ago,

517
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:01,000
took another rock and knocked flakes off of it.

518
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,000
And they took those sharp little flakes and they were able to use those as tools.

519
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,000
That really is something.

520
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,000
It's a really exciting find.

521
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:11,000
That's crazy.

522
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:16,000
We continue to search, literally leaving no stone unturned.

523
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,000
And eventually, we hit paydirt.

524
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:22,000
Josh, look at this.

525
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:23,000
Is that a tool?

526
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:25,000
That is absolutely a tool.

527
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,000
That is a 2.1 million-year-old stone flake.

528
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:32,000
It really does have a sharp edge.

529
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,000
And what about someone who's watching this who says it's not a tool?

530
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:36,000
It's a rock.

531
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,000
Well, I agree to the untrained eye.

532
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,000
It might just look like a rock, but I can prove it to you that that's a stone tool.

533
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:43,000
Okay, let's see it.

534
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,000
Let's do it.

535
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:51,000
To prove that what we found was actually a 2 million-year-old tool

536
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,000
and illustrate how this ancient technology changed us forever,

537
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:59,000
George, Dominic and I take our finds back to their lab at the surface,

538
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,000
where they invite me to replicate the work of our ancestors.

539
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:07,000
Stand by.

540
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:12,000
Okay, first of all, how's this for pathetic?

541
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,000
I can't even break the rock.

542
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:19,000
Experiments have shown that your best bet is to find an angle that's less than 90 degrees.

543
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:24,000
You're going to strike it on one side and hopefully be able to remove a flake on the other.

544
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:37,000
Here's some blood on that one.

545
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:38,000
Nice.

546
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:39,000
These are sharp.

547
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:40,000
Medic.

548
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,000
Yeah, also you'll be hearing from my attorneys.

549
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:49,000
So little super sharp pieces here and then this with again a really fine edge.

550
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:55,000
The experiment proves that stones don't naturally break into razor sharp blades.

551
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:59,000
It takes the helping hand of a human to shape them.

552
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:02,000
If you hadn't helped me, I wouldn't have done this.

553
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:06,000
Anyone who looks at these and thinks this is just people smashing rocks together,

554
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:10,000
there's actually skill and knowledge that has to go into this.

555
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:16,000
I cut down that time that you're going to struggle just by giving you a couple tips.

556
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,000
This is as basic as it gets.

557
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:19,000
Right.

558
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:20,000
So then what happens?

559
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:21,000
Well, let me show you.

560
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:28,000
George brings me to a row of stone tools illustrating 2 million years of evolving designs.

561
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:30,000
Some of them elegant pieces of work.

562
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:36,000
20 minutes ago, you might have shown me this and I wouldn't have been that impressed by it.

563
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:40,000
Now that I see what it takes to make even that, this is like the Mona Lisa.

564
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:45,000
As we learn from the chimps in Gombe, other primates make simple tools.

565
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,000
But there's something more on display here.

566
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:55,000
A revolution in human thought that accounts for an exponentially increasing complexity of craftsmanship.

567
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:59,000
Most of chimp's learning comes from observation and trial and error.

568
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:06,000
It can take a young chimp eight or nine years to learn to successfully crack a nut.

569
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:12,000
By teaching, humans have lessened that period of learning.

570
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:16,000
That's the step that pushes us towards human.

571
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:23,000
So when we talk about this march of evolution, for you tools really are at the center of it.

572
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:24,000
Right.

573
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:27,000
It's a formula that drives us to this day.

574
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:32,000
Modern tools allow us to improve our health and expand our lifespan.

575
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:36,000
But could they also paint us into a technological corner?

576
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:38,000
Today we are primarily consumers.

577
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:41,000
Most of us don't hunt or farm.

578
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:45,000
And our tools are now so complex, few of us know how to make them.

579
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:51,000
For the first time in history, our children are being taught to live in a digital world.

580
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:58,000
But if our society faced a disaster, will they be able to fend for themselves as our ancient ancestors did?

581
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,000
This also raises another question.

582
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:08,000
If making tools gave our ancestors such an advantage, why did homo sapiens end up as the sole survivors,

583
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:13,000
while so many other tool-using species like the Neanderthals went extinct?

584
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:15,000
There must be something else.

585
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:19,000
Another secret that explains our success.

586
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,000
I'm meeting a scientist who thinks he's got the answer.

587
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:29,000
And he found it in one of the most remote regions on the continent, a place called Pondoland.

588
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:35,000
About 500 miles south of Johannesburg on Africa's so-called Wild Coast.

589
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:41,000
To say that Pondoland is off the beaten path implies there was a path to begin with.

590
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:45,000
I off-road to my rendezvous point with Dr. Eric Fisher,

591
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:50,000
whose archaeological team has been working out here for months.

592
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,000
Somewhere.

593
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:01,000
Hey, Josh!

594
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,000
Eric!

595
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,000
Do I come to you?

596
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,000
Yeah, come on over!

597
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,000
Is there a bridge?

598
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:10,000
Nope!

599
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,000
Super!

600
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:16,000
On the other side of this title inlet, the answer to why our ancestors

601
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,000
outlasted every other early human species.

602
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:21,000
Where's the best place?

603
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,000
Why don't you cut straight across here?

604
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,000
Got it!

605
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:32,000
But as I make my way across the slippery rocks, I find out why the Wild Coast got its name.

606
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:47,000
I'm in the region of Pondoland on South Africa's Wild Coast.

607
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:52,000
In search of the secret to why Homo sapiens came to dominate the world

608
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:55,000
while other early human species died out.

609
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,000
Paleoanthropologist Eric Fisher may have the answer,

610
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:01,000
but first I have to reach him.

611
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,000
And the tide is not on my side.

612
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:15,000
Wet socks aside, I cross the river unscathed.

613
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,000
Hey! How are you, man?

614
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,000
Nice to meet you. I'm a little wet, but I'm good.

615
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:20,000
You ready to go?

616
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,000
Yeah. Oh, hold on.

617
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,000
Okay, let's go.

618
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,000
Eric and I strike out toward his excavation site,

619
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:36,000
where he's found evidence of how ancient Homo sapiens survived a planetary challenge

620
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:40,000
that affected all species living at the time, the last Ice Age.

621
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,000
As glaciers advanced across the African continent,

622
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,000
our ancestors faced increasingly brutal conditions.

623
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:52,000
Eric has found evidence that many of them came here,

624
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,000
to the coast of Pondoland.

625
00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,000
This is unbelievable.

626
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,000
It's one of those places where we could be today,

627
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,000
we could be 100,000 years ago.

628
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:05,000
It feels like primordial.

629
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,000
Yeah, no one is around.

630
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:10,000
These environments are absolutely pristine.

631
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,000
Just be careful out here.

632
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,000
They don't call it the wild coast for nothing.

633
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:19,000
Yeah! Unbelievable!

634
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,000
We are in the splash zone, Eric.

635
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:24,000
Now I see why you're on my right-hand side.

636
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:27,000
That's a survival mechanism, is what that is.

637
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:33,000
After another hour of hiking through some of the most pristine and scenic coastline on Earth,

638
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:35,000
we reach the dig site.

639
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:42,000
Josh, that is waterfall bluff.

640
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,000
Waterfall bluff is, in a word, epic.

641
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:53,000
Stacked layers of ocean sediment laid down over 300 million years,

642
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:56,000
rising 400 feet over our heads.

643
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,000
Now I see what you're working here, man.

644
00:35:58,000 --> 00:35:59,000
You found paradise.

645
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:01,000
It's absolutely amazing, isn't it?

646
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:02,000
Yeah!

647
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:07,000
We hike up the waterfall, where Eric's team is waiting.

648
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:17,000
They call this groundbreaking work the Pondoland Paleo Climate Paleo Environment Paleo Ecology Paleo Anthropology Project,

649
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,000
or to save room on their business cards, P5.

650
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:22,000
Josh, this is our dig team.

651
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:23,000
Hi, everybody!

652
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:24,000
Hello.

653
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:25,000
Hi!

654
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:27,000
I'd like to introduce you to one of our project co-directors.

655
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:29,000
This is Dr. Justin Parchner.

656
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:30,000
Good to meet you.

657
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:31,000
Good to meet you too.

658
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:32,000
What an amazing place you guys have here.

659
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:33,000
We're really happy to have you.

660
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,000
So, can you show me what's going on here?

661
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:36,000
Absolutely.

662
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:37,000
Alright, let's drop the packs.

663
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:38,000
Let's do it.

664
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:42,000
First things first, I assume it goes without saying people were living here.

665
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:43,000
Absolutely.

666
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:44,000
Right?

667
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:45,000
In high density.

668
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:46,000
Okay, so let's get into it.

669
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:47,000
What do we got?

670
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:50,000
So, I mean, the first thing that we're looking at here is essentially a midden, which is

671
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:53,000
basically a big fancy word for a trash heap.

672
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:54,000
Right, got it.

673
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:55,000
A garbage pile.

674
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:58,000
But what this actually tells us is a whole bunch about the diet of the people that were

675
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,000
living here, the kinds of environments that they were existing in, and most importantly

676
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,000
the technologies that they were using.

677
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,000
This is one of our coolest bone tools.

678
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:11,000
This would have been a tool that's like what you use today to shuck shellfish.

679
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:13,000
Yeah, you could shuck an oyster easy with that.

680
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:19,000
Tools like this allowed the homo sapien community that was here 30 to 40,000 years ago to tap

681
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:22,000
a nearly inexhaustible food supply.

682
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:23,000
The ocean.

683
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:28,000
The thousands of discarded shells here reveal they were eating well, while their Neanderthal

684
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:33,000
peers faced rapidly depleting resources inland as the climate cooled.

685
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,000
So they're clearly eating shellfish.

686
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:36,000
What else are they eating?

687
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:39,000
Well, we also have evidence of them eating fish out of the ocean.

688
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:41,000
Here's an actual fish bone.

689
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:42,000
Look at that.

690
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,000
And we find thousands of fish bones.

691
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,000
Big fish too.

692
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:51,000
The early humans here developed a survival toolkit customized for this environment.

693
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:57,000
To understand how they used waterfall bluff to weather the ice age, the P5 team is attempting

694
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:03,000
to put these and the thousands of other objects they've found in a digital 3D model.

695
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:08,000
A sort of archaeological time machine turning back the clock and placing their finds by

696
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,000
in the surrounding landscape.

697
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:16,000
To build this model, Eric brings me to the cliff while Justin sets up gear below.

698
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:19,000
And now we're at this big, huge cliff face.

699
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:24,000
One of the things that we're trying to do here is to not only understand the archaeology

700
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,000
within the site, but we have to understand the evolution of the entire landscape.

701
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:28,000
The context.

702
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:29,000
The context, exactly.

703
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,000
So we have a really cool process that we're going to do.

704
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:35,000
It's called photogrammetry, where you fly over and take a lot of photographs and then

705
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,000
create a 3D model of the landscape.

706
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:38,000
Which is aerial mapping.

707
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:39,000
That's correct.

708
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,000
It's aerial mapping.

709
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:41,000
That's super cool.

710
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:42,000
I love it.

711
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:43,000
Let's do it.

712
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:44,000
Yes, I'm ready.

713
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:45,000
Come on.

714
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:46,000
Here we go.

715
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:49,000
Eric and I start by placing markers on the cliff face.

716
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,000
That's a good spot right there.

717
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:56,000
These targets will act as reference points, allowing Eric to digitally stitch together

718
00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:01,000
aerial photographs with measurements from a laser distance meter to build a photo

719
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:02,000
of the site.

720
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:03,000
Okay.

721
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:08,000
This 21st century technology allows us to penetrate deep into the past and see how our

722
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,000
ancestors interacted with this environment.

723
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,000
All right, this is fun.

724
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:15,000
I like this.

725
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:16,000
Yeah, it's not too bad, eh?

726
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:17,000
Yeah.

727
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:18,000
This is just the easy wall.

728
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:24,000
We need someone to go up on that cliff face and put in all of those other targets.

729
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,000
Well, good luck finding that guy.

730
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:27,000
I wish he'd the best of...

731
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:28,000
Give me the targets.

732
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:32,000
While Eric retreats to the safety of the dig site to launch the drone, I continue to the

733
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:33,000
upper ridge.

734
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:34,000
How you doing?

735
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:36,000
Hey, you yet, Jag, the targets?

736
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,000
Unfortunately for me, I think I am, yeah.

737
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:44,000
There I meet Gustav, a team member on hand to help me with a rappel to cover the face

738
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:45,000
of the target.

739
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,000
I'm going to go ahead and get him.

740
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,000
I'm going to go ahead and get him.

741
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:54,000
There I meet Gustav, a team member on hand to help me with a rappel to cover the face

742
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,000
of the cliff with markers.

743
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:01,000
Okay, I got targets.

744
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,000
I got duct tape.

745
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:04,000
I got major regrets.

746
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Here we go.

747
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:07,000
All right, good luck.

748
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,000
We're watching from below.

749
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:14,000
Okay, Eric, you ready for the first target?

750
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:18,000
How about you come down just another foot or two and then there on your left hand side

751
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:19,000
good spot for a target.

752
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:28,000
Okay, I'm dropping down.

753
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:30,000
Okay, okay, first target is on.

754
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:31,000
How's that look?

755
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:32,000
That looks fantastic.

756
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,000
We're shooting it in now.

757
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,000
How far do you want me to drop down for the second target?

758
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:42,000
Why don't you come down about another 20 feet or so?

759
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:47,000
Copy that.

760
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,000
How about right here?

761
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:50,000
Yeah, right there.

762
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:55,000
Looks really good.

763
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:58,000
Okay, second target's on.

764
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:02,000
Headed down.

765
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:04,000
I'll tell you one thing about ancient humans.

766
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:14,000
They would have been smart enough to not do this for sure.

767
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:15,000
Perfect, Josh.

768
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,000
That's awesome.

769
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:20,000
So, Eric, we've got an overhang here.

770
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:24,000
Once I pass this, it might be a little more problematic.

771
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:27,000
To complete the scan, I need to place one more target.

772
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:32,000
But the way the cliff face slopes in, I can't use the rocky wall to propel myself there.

773
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,000
But I might need a little help to swing onto it.

774
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:41,000
Gustav swings the line, building momentum to try to propel me onto the ledge.

775
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,000
Good again.

776
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:47,000
You got it!

777
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:51,000
Almost there!

778
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:55,000
Almost!

779
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:59,000
Whoa, whoa, whoa!

780
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:10,000
On a side street in Johannesburg, South Africa, I find a one-stop shop for whatever ails you.

781
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:12,000
You have an amazing store.

782
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:13,000
I love your shop.

783
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,000
And I've got about close to about 5,000, 6,000 different labs.

784
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:23,000
The shelves are loaded with everything from fennel seed for the flu, to umla bello, a snake bite balm.

785
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:27,000
To treatments my HMO definitely doesn't cover.

786
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:31,000
This is the bungalow. It's an African Viagra.

787
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:36,000
Oh, the African Viagra. Wow. This is hard to get your hands on.

788
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:38,000
That's a cheap shot. And does it work?

789
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:39,000
Yes.

790
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:41,000
Really? It smells good.

791
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,000
Oh, does work. Fast acting. Wow.

792
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:47,000
Uh, what's embarrassing?

793
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:58,000
Searching for the key to why Homo sapiens outlasted all other prehistoric hominids,

794
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:04,000
I find myself dangling hundreds of feet over the remote South Africa coast of Pondoland.

795
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:09,000
I'm positioning targets on a cliff to build a digital scan of the landscape

796
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:14,000
to try and understand how the early humans who lived here interacted with this environment.

797
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:18,000
But the last spot is just out of reach.

798
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,000
Almost there.

799
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:32,000
Whoa, whoa, whoa.

800
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,000
Okay. Okay. All right. I'm on the ledge.

801
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,000
That is absolutely fantastic.

802
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:42,000
Where do you want to target?

803
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:46,000
How about you put a target there just to your left?

804
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,000
Yeah, perfect.

805
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,000
Okay, coming down.

806
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:57,000
The last of the targets is in place, and I'm slowly lowered back down to Terra firma.

807
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:04,000
Safely on the ground, I reconvene with Justin and Eric and head to base camp to review the data we just captured.

808
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:09,000
What you're looking at here is these are all of the positions where we took our photographs.

809
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:10,000
Right.

810
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,000
And we're able to use that to create this 3D model.

811
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:17,000
Wow, look at that. And this is the site here.

812
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:18,000
That's our site, right there.

813
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,000
So what are all these small dots that we're seeing here, the different colors?

814
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,000
So each one of these dots represents an artifact from the excavation.

815
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:28,000
So we're looking at stone, shell, burn.

816
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,000
That is so unbelievable.

817
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,000
So this really is a kind of time machine in a sense.

818
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:37,000
You can spin it forwards and backwards, look at the artifacts from the site, and see change over time.

819
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,000
Absolutely, yeah.

820
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:46,000
The model reveals more than just the location of the thousands of man-made objects and discarded shells found here.

821
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:50,000
It illustrates how our ancestors survived and thrived.

822
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:55,000
The cliffs provided shelter, and the sea a fertile hunting ground.

823
00:44:55,000 --> 00:45:01,000
This was a safe haven for humanity when the rest of the world was freezing over.

824
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,000
So this brings us to the big question.

825
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:10,000
You know, science has identified 27 different species of human ancestors.

826
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,000
But in the end, we're the ones left standing.

827
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:15,000
Yeah, just us.

828
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:16,000
The big question is why.

829
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,000
Does this site in some way prod at those answers?

830
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:20,000
Yes, absolutely.

831
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,000
The site tells us everything we need to know about why we're here.

832
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:26,000
So animals tend to fall into two different groups.

833
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:31,000
They're either generalists, they exploit a wide range of habitats and food types.

834
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:32,000
Or they're specialists.

835
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:37,000
They hunker down, they target a single kind of niche and food type, and that's what they do.

836
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:40,000
Humans exploit both of those adaptations.

837
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:43,000
We've invented technology.

838
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:49,000
Culture is a strategy for learning, for surviving and adapting to climate change in unique kinds of habitats.

839
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:54,000
Right, clearly the people that were living here knew how to do everything to exploit this place.

840
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,000
And what about our competitors?

841
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:57,000
What about Neanderthals?

842
00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Why aren't we finding Neanderthal remains here?

843
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,000
So Neanderthals were hyperspecialists.

844
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:05,000
They got locked into single adaptations, like for example, big game hunting.

845
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:10,000
And those kinds of adaptations became less and less viable towards the end of their evolution,

846
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,000
especially when climate started to change very rapidly.

847
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:20,000
As big game dwindled in the Ice Age and other species failed, Homo sapiens changed up their playbook.

848
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:24,000
We headed to the coast and exploited the seas.

849
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:30,000
So the reason for our success, and in some ways, I guess a very cautionary tale,

850
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:35,000
is you have to remain flexible and adaptive.

851
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:37,000
Absolutely.

852
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:45,000
New relatives from our ever-expanding family tree continue to be discovered,

853
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:52,000
and geneticists are finding traces of those relatives still alive in our DNA.

854
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:57,000
Walking upright and hunting added protein to our diet, which made us smarter.

855
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:03,000
But it also hardwired our brains, with cravings better suited to an ancient world.

856
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:11,000
Tools and teaching also made us who we are, but have left us dangerously dependent on technology for our survival.

857
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,000
Still, the more we learn about the traits that define humaneness,

858
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:23,000
the more it seems that one fundamental characteristic led to the rise of modern Homo sapiens.

859
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,000
Adaptability.

860
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:32,000
Change is, after all, the one constant, and our planet is changing before us once again.

861
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:34,000
This time by our own hand.

862
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:38,000
We need only to look at the vanished relatives on our family tree,

863
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:46,000
to realize that we too could end up as just another fossil, preserved for whoever comes after us.

864
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:53,000
To endure, we must effectively respond to environmental, social, and technological upheaval,

865
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:59,000
to collaborate, and to pass on the best of who we are to the next generation.

866
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:05,000
you