Nova

First Steps: 6 million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?    The first part of NOVA's comprehensive, three-part special "Becoming Human" examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. The television program premiers on PBS on Tuesday, November 3rd.

Premiers on air and online Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

Becoming Human Part 1 Preview

Part 1, "First Steps," examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. The program explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child." Paleoanthropologist Zeray Alemseged spent five years carefully excavating the sandstone-embedded fossil. NOVA's cameras are there to capture the unveiling of the face, spine, and shoulder blades of this 3.3 million-year-old fossil.

First Steps: 6 million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?

Becoming Human Part 1

Koch Foundation

NOVA Science Trust Logo

Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA's comprehensive, three-part special, "Becoming Human," examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives.(This program is no longer available for online streaming.) Part 1, "First Steps," examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. The program explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child." Paleoanthropologist Zeray Alemseged spent five years carefully excavating the sandstone-embedded fossil. NOVA's cameras are there to capture the unveiling of the face, spine, and shoulder blades of this 3.3 million-year-old fossil child. And NOVA takes viewers "inside the skull" to show how our ancestors' brains had begun to change from those of the apes.

First Steps: Six million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?

California Academy of Sciences

College de France

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

University of Potsdam

Columbia University

Paleoanthropologist

Emory University

University College London

American Museum of Natural History

Max Planck Institute

First Steps: Six million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?

Evolution

NOVA investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us–"Turkana Boy"–an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya. These early humans are thought to have developed key innovations that helped them thrive, including hunting large prey, the use of fire, and extensive social bonds.

Birth of Humanity: New discoveries reveal how early humans hunted and formed families.

Becoming Human Part 2

Premiers on air and online Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009.

Becoming Human Part 2 Preview

(This program is no longer available for online streaming.) In "Birth of Humanity," the second part of the three-part series "Becoming Human," NOVA investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us–"Turkana Boy"–an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya. These early humans are thought to have developed key innovations that helped them thrive, including hunting large prey, the use of fire, and extensive social bonds.The program examines an intriguing theory that long-distance running–our ability to jog–was crucial for the survival of these early hominids. Not only did running help them escape from vicious predators roaming the grasslands, but it also gave them a unique hunting strategy: chasing down prey animals such as deer and antelope to the point of exhaustion. "Birth of Humanity" also probes how, why, and when humans' uniquely long period of childhood and parenting began.

Catalan Institute of Paleoecology

New York University

Paleo-Artist

University of California, Davis

Stony Brook University

Nat Geo Explorer-in-Residence

National Geographic Grantee

Georgian National Museum

Birth of Humanity: New discoveries reveal how early humans hunted and formed families.

NOVA examines the fate of the Neanderthals, our European cousins who died out as modern humans spread from Africa into Europe during the Ice Age. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals or exterminate them? The program explores crucial evidence from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome.

Last Human Standing: Many human species once shared the globe. Why do we alone remain?

Becoming Human Part 3

Premiers on air and online Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009

Becoming Human Part 3 Preview

(This program is no longer available for online streaming.) In "Last Human Standing," the final program of the three-part series "Becoming Human," NOVA examines the fate of the Neanderthals, our European cousins who died out as modern humans spread from Africa into Europe during the Ice Age. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals or exterminate them? The program explores crucial evidence from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome.How did modern humans take over the world? New evidence suggests that they left Africa and colonized the rest of the globe far earlier, and for different reasons, than previously thought. As for Homo sapiens, we have planet Earth to ourselves today, but that's a very recent and unusual situation. For millions of years, many kinds of hominids co-existed. At one time Homo sapiens shared the planet with Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and the mysterious "Hobbits"–three-foot-high humans who thrived on the Indonesian island of Flores until as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Arch&eacute;ologie Andennaise

Archaeologist

Anthropologist

Max Planck Institute, Leipzig

University of Li&iacute;¨ge

Geneticist, Anthropologist

Last Human Standing: Many human species once shared the globe. Why do we alone remain?

Nothing is more fascinating to us than, well, us. Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA's comprehensive, three-part special, "Becoming Human," examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives—putting together the pieces of our human past and transforming our understanding of our earliest ancestors.Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists, each hour unfolds with a CSI-like forensic investigation into the life and death of a specific hominid ancestor. The programs were shot "in the trenches" where discoveries were unearthed throughout Africa and Europe. Dry bones spring back to life with stunning computer-generated animation and prosthetics. Fossils not only give us clues to what early hominids looked like, but, with the aid of ingenious new lab techniques, how they lived and how we became the creative, thinking humans of today.

Unearthing our earliest ancestors.

Becoming Human Episodes

Becoming Human Part 1

Becoming Human Part 2

Becoming Human Part 3