[calm music]
[narrator] In every corner of the world today are humans.
Seven billion of us.
How did we come to so dominate our planet?
It's one of science's greatest mysteries.
Amazing new evidence suggests
it began with a single tiny group of people
who left Africa on an incredible journey.
[lively music]
[narrator] Using bones, stones, and genes,
we'll uncover the trail their descendants left
across the world,
and find out how their journeys transformed our species
into the people we are today.
This time, the conquest of the world's great land mass,
Asia.
It was the toughest challenge
to the survival of our ancestors,
ferociously hostile conditions, with unimaginable cold.
How did they survive
and start the most successful civilization on Earth?
And we investigate
one of our story's biggest mysteries,
what happened on the journey
to cause a change in their appearance,
from looking African
to Chinese?
[tranquil music]
[wind howling]
[narrator] Northern Siberia,
inside the arctic circle.
Temperatures here can drop to nearly minus 70 in winter.
It's hard to find a colder inhabited place on earth.
[howling continues]
[indistinct dialogue]
[action music]
[narrator] This is Ulun Yok.
This remote region is home to the Evenki,
an isolated people
who live much like their ancestors,
the first Siberians.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] And they have the distinctive features
of East Asia,
the mark of a lost past they share with the Chinese.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Today is a special day.
The scattered nomads of this area
meet up once a year
to celebrate something that has been sacred
for over 40,000 years,
the reindeer.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] It seems incredible
that early humans could have survived
in this harsh climate.
As the archaeological record is so sparse,
perhaps the best evidence for solving this mystery
can be found in the way their descendants,
the Evenki, live now.
[speaking native language]
[narrator] Piers Vitebsky has spent much of his life
studying the culture of small tribes,
from India to Northern Siberia.
[Piers] The way humans were able to survive here
was to make themselves as much like animals as possible.
So they saw that the animals were in these furs
and that they could move around even in the depth of winter.
So, we had to become the animals,
fill... pour ourselves
into the shape of animals, if you like.
[Piers] Each fur has its own property.
For example, there are different kinds of animals' furs
that seal the cuffs and collars
to stop ice crystals building up in your face.
But for the main part of the body,
reindeer fur is by far the warmest.
Because every hair of a reindeer is hollow
it has a different internal structure
from the fur of any other animal.
And so it actually retains more heat than any other fur.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Learning to adapt to this climate
couldn't have been more challenging
for a species which began its existence
in the tropics.
[tense music]
[narrator] The best evidence suggests
that the first humans left Africa
around 70,000 years ago.
Crossing the Middle East,
it's likely they followed the great rivers
and mountain ranges into Central Asia.
It's incredibly hard to pick up the echo of their footsteps,
but they did leave a thin trail of tantalizing tools.
Refined stone tools discovered in Southern Siberia
hint at a human presence here
over 40,000 years ago.
But this site is a long way from where the Evenki are today.
What kept their ancestors moving north?
The answer is simple.
Hunting.
[snow crunches]
[speaking native language]
[narrator] Anatoly Alexseyev is a historian
of his own people.
For him, it's clear how the Evenki came to be here.
[translator 1] In the north, our main wealth
comes from the reindeer.
And it's the deer,
human beings,
the landscape, and climate
that make a nomadic life possible.
The Evenki are constantly on the move.
because of their annual farming cycle.
They have to follow their migrating deer.
[light music]
[indistinct chatter]
[Pier] In this region, vegetation grows
extremely slowly.
It's very easy to overgraze any pasture.
So, the humans have to move their tents
in the summer every few days,
in the winter maybe every few weeks,
to keep up with the deer.
[narrator] Today, these migrations
take the Evenki huge distances.
Every year, they cover a territory
of over 1,000 square kilometers.
By unearthing the traces of ancient fires,
at sites throughout Siberia,
we can tell that early humans moved
progressively north,
following animals across this vast wilderness.
[snow crunching]
[tranquil music]
[whistling]
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator]To build their tents, or choum,
they use larch poles and reindeer skin,
which would also have been available
to their ancestors thousands of years ago.
This new camp will be their home for a matter of days,
somewhere to graze their deer and to hunt from.
[coughing]
[narrator] The evidence shows that this land
offered the first Siberians,
a much larger variety of game to hunt than today.
Archaeologists have found bones
with signs of spear marks and scraping
at various sites in Siberia.
These tell us that early humans hunted woolly mammoths,
wild horses, rhinos, and tiny birds.
But they also hunted reindeer,
just like their descendants today.
[speaks native language]
[narrator] Marina Nikolaeva is the driving force
behinds the camps in this area.
As a hunter herself,
she believes that it's vital not to upset the hunting spirit
known as Bayan Ai.
[translator 2] You must be good to nature,
not leave any mess behind after the hunt,
or you won't be successful next time.
You should also always share your catch
with people close to you,
or people who don't have much.
Whoever does this is guaranteed success.
[translator 1] And if the hunter boasts
what a great hunter he is,
and says, "We'll have a very successful hunt today."
Bayan Ai will hear that,
and warn the deer,
and the hunters will end up in an empty spot.
[narrator] But today it seems someone has displeased
the hunting spirit.
The hunters return empty-handed.
The wild deer are already far off.
For our ancestors, this would have meant hunger.
But as today's Evenki
herd their own domesticated deer,
they have something to fall back on,
and they select one of these for the slaughter.
[rattles]
[narrator] The skill of using every part of the animal
has been honed over thousands of years.
The hunters use the knives with the blade facing outwards
to avoid cutting through the deep tissues.
It's almost bloodless.
The hide just peels away.
[narrator] The Evenki's ancestors
would only have had stone tools for the job of slaughtering,
but they too could ill afford to spill a drop of blood.
[translator 1]Oh, that's good.
It's very tasty.
It's like French wine.
[translator 2] Whoever likes the blood can drink it.
The liver is also good hot.
And you can eat the eyes,
which are delicious and good for you.
We always eat the raw brains.
They're very tasty and healthy too.
There will be fresh sprouting antlers soon.
The old antlers fall off and the new ones grow.
They're very good for male health.
[narrator] Food is not the only thing
the reindeer provides.
Its fur is the best protection against the cold.
But how did those first humans in Siberia
make the best use of the hides they took
from the animals around them?
[bright music]
[narrator] The Evenki owe their survival
to a very special implement invented by their ancestors.
A bone needle was found in a cave
in Southern Siberia.
Russian scientists think
it could be over 40,000 years old.
Faced with the shocking cold of their new home,
the early humans in this area
invented one of the most important tools
in our human story.
It is hardly surprising that this harsh region
produced what is possibly one of the oldest needles
in the world.
But it's not enough just to have a needle.
The Evenki even developed a way of making thread
from the reindeer too.
[translator 3] I'm using ligaments
to make threads.
We take it from the body of the reindeer,
we dry it,
and we use it to make clothes.
If you use this,
it will be very sturdy.
[Piers] I think in the whole of human history,
nobody has ever invented a better insulator
against the cold than reindeer fur,
stitched and molded around the body.
[narrator] Using their new technology
to defeat the cold,
the early Siberians could now conquer the frozen wastelands
of the extreme north.
[tense music]
[bells tolling]
[narrator] Finally, the reindeer's cooked,
and the Evenkis sit down to eat.
In this frozen landscape, there is very little,
apart from the precious reindeer meat.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] How do the Evenki cope
with such a heavily carnivorous diet?
It seems that, over time, they've adapted.
Having such a high proportion of their food as protein and fat
helps to give them a raised metabolism.
But it seems evolution has also played a part.
Examination of the DNA
of northern peoples like the Evenki
has shown that their body cells
actually produce more heat than those of other humans.
During the meal,
the conversation turns to the big question,
where we all come from.
[translator 1] There is a Tungus Evenkian myth
about the origin of the world.
A bird called a loon
dived three times into the primordial water,
and at the fifth time,
it succeeded in breaking up a bit of mud,
and from that mud, the earth arose
and then the mammoth came along.
And with its tusks raised the earth still further,
and formed the rivers and mountains.
This is our beautiful story about the creation of the earth.
[narrator] Despite a few trappings
of modern life,
looking at the Evenki opens our eyes
to how our ancestors might have lived and survived
in such tough conditions.
And it makes sense of the thin trail
of ancient artefacts
strewn across Siberia.
[tense music]
[narrator] New archaeological finds
reveal that by 30,000 years ago,
the early humans had covered thousands of miles
across the freezing wastes of Siberia
to the arctic ocean,
the furthest north they could go on the Asian continent.
[wind howling]
[narrator] But then, a catastrophe occurred
which would change the course
of our ancestors' journey through Asia.
[howling continues]
[light music]
[narrator] Using computer climate modelling,
scientists can calculate
what the prehistoric climate was like.
Over a few thousand years, global temperatures plummeted.
In Siberia, it got even colder.
So what happened to the people of Siberia?
[grandiose music]
[narrator] St. Petersburg,
the former Imperial Capital of Russia.
The hermitage is one of the world's greatest museums,
home to glittering works of art.
[grandiose music]
[narrator] But behind these beautiful galleries
are store rooms filled with exquisite treasures.
They could unlock the secrets of the ancient Siberians.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator]What's most revealing
is that these treasures were found in just a few sites
in the south of Siberia.
This suggests that the worsening climate
forced these prehistoric people into the few refuges
where it was still possible to survive.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] One of the places they took refuge at,
near Lake Baikal,
is the site of Mal'ta.
Some archaeologists think humans lived here
at the peak of the ice age.
What do these objects reveal about how our ancestors coped
in their battle against the elements?
[tense music]
[narrator] Some archaeologists believe
that even the size of these blades
is a result of the appalling cold.
With harsh conditions
making the quarries difficult to reach,
early humans made more, smaller blades from each stone.
[tense music]
[narrator]These bone figurines
are thought to be amongst the earliest depictions
of people wearing fur
as protection against the extreme cold.
Even these carved birds
may have been a response to the cold.
The flight of the water birds
coincided with the appearance of the first deer of the season.
So some archaeologists think these tiny carvings
may be hunting charms.
A cry to the spirits in a time of stress and struggle.
[wind howling]
[tense music]
[narrator] We've traced how early humans first came
to the frozen wilds of Northern Siberia,
and how they survived the hostile conditions there
before being driven south by the cold.
Our ancestors in Siberia
endured the extremes of the ice age,
and around this period
something dramatic happened
the appearance of the people changed.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] This is the closest we can come
to what our African ancestors may have looked like.
This head is based on a woman's skull,
dated to around 100 thousand years ago.
According to the Out of Africa Theory,
a small band of people like her left Africa,
eventually, some of their descendants
making it to China.
So, at some point on the journey,
is this what happened?
[tense music]
[upbeat music]
[narrator] From Siberia to China,
we come face to face with the results of this change.
[upbeat music]
[narrator] This altered appearance
is a phenomenon that today
is of huge interest to the cosmetics industry.
At L'Oréal's research center in Shanghai,
they're building up a database
of the features of the Chinese face,
in the hope of tailoring their products
for a booming new market.
These East Asian features including the low profile nose,
flat face,
and an increased layer of subcutaneous fat
in the eyelid.
[camera shutter clicking]
[narrator] But the most iconic of these features
is the almond-shaped eye.
Ironically, this cosmetics company
seems to believe there is a market
in minimizing this typically Chinese feature.
[Liu] Crystal, she has a very traditional Chinese eye.
And what I want to do for her
is to make her eye looks bigger and more attractive.
[lively music]
[narrator] But the differences maybe more than skin deep.
L'Oréal's researchers claim that not only do Chinese
and European faces look different,
they actually age differently, too.
[playful music]
[Chen] According to our study on the wrinkles,
we find that the appearance of crow's feet...
Uh, they begin ten years later
for Chinese woman than for the European woman.
[Chen] After the appearance of the crow's feet wrinkles,
for Chinese women,
they will catch the European women.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] So what might have caused
these East Asian features to emerge?
One theory, first developed in the 1950s
by American anthropologists,
put their emergence down to the cold of the ice age.
It was thought that the almond-eye shape
was a way of shutting out the glare from the snow.
That the subcutaneous fat layer
could be vital insulating tissue,
and the flatter nose
might reduce the risk of frostbite.
It's a neat idea,
but many in China believe that they look different
because they are fundamentally different.
Many Chinese claim that they're descended
from a completely different branch
of the human family,
from an ancient human creature
which lived in China over a million years ago.
[calm music]
[narrator] We know that before modern humans existed,
there were earlier species of human.
One of these was Homo erectus,
a bit more ape like than us,
with a heavy brow and a smaller brain.
Around one-point-eight million years ago,
some Homo erectus left Africa.
And it is believed, Homo erectus in Asia
eventually died out.
But over a million years later,
Homo erectus in Africa evolved into our own species,
Homo sapiens.
[clacking]
[narrator] The latest evidence suggests
that around 70,000 years ago,
a tiny group of our species left the continent,
their descendants spreading out across the world.
But many Chinese scientists disagree.
[light music]
[narrator] They believe they have evidence
that instead of dying out,
Homo erectus was their ancestor,
not African Homo sapiens.
Zhoukoudian, just outside Beijing.
It's one of China's most popular archaeological sites,
where the largest collection of Homo erectus remains
on Earth was found.
[overlapping dialogue]
[narrator] Chinese schoolchildren learn
that the Homo erectus bones found here
prove that they come from a different branch
of the human family.
[light music]
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] Excavations began here in 1921.
An international team of archaeologists
dug deep into the limestone
to peel back the layers of human habitation.
In 1929,
an incredible find was unearthed from deep in a narrow pit,
an ancient human skull cap.
It is thought it could be up to an astonishing
500,000 years old.
It would come to be known as Peking man,
and was one of the first fragments
of Homo erectus ever found.
[light music]
[narrator] Over the next few years,
more remains were found.
And it turned out that our own species,
Homo sapiens, had also inhabited this cave.
For scientists examining the remains,
there seemed to be a strong link between Chinese Homo erectus
and modern humans.
Thirty-year old Wu Xinzhi joined the excavations in 1958.
Half a century later,
he is still dedicated to proving that Chinese Homo erectus
is the ancestor to all Chinese living today.
The idea that the ancestors of the Chinese
are so deeply rooted in China
underpins their whole culture.
-[crowd cheering] -[drum beats]
[narrator] As a philosophy,
it was even embraced by Mao.
His "Little Red Book" declared human history
to be a million years old.
Today, Professor Wu
is one of China's most revered scientists.
And he believes,
he has identified important similarities
between modern human skulls and this Homo erectus skull.
[tense music]
[Wu] This skull has some, uh, common features
with the other skulls in China.
For example,
uh, the face is flat,
the, the nose is flat,
not very protrude,
not very protrude as in Europe.
And, uh, this part...
is also flat.
And the face is more forward.
[narrator] And this is the modern Chinese skull
that was found,
Homo sapiens.
[Wu] So...
you see this skull is 30,000 years old,
but, uh...
But it also have the more flat face,
and the not very protruding nose.
So, similar to the Peking man.
[narrator]So, for Professor Wu,
these apparent similarities
mean that the modern Chinese inherited some of their features
from Homo erectus.
He believes that erectus
was the forefather of today's Chinese.
And that the last ancestor his people shared
with the rest of the world's population
goes back one-point-eight million years,
not a mere 70,000.
[tense music]
[narrator] Many Western scientists disagree.
They don't see the similarities,
and argue that this modern Chinese skull
looks like an African or European one
from the same date,
and nothing like Homo erectus.
But in China,
the argument is far from over.
[tense music]
[narrator] This is partly
because of another piece of evidence
that Chinese scientists believe supports their case.
And it comes from stone age tools.
[man chanting]
[narrator] In Europe and the Middle East,
archaeologists have found clear evidence
of the arrival of modern humans from Africa,
a dramatic improvement in stone tools.
But in China,
there's almost no sign of the change
scientists would expect.
[tense music]
[narrator]Some Chinese experts have seized on this
as further evidence that modern Chinese evolved
from Homo erectus.
And that they did so without updating their tool kit.
But there could be a simple explanation
for the lack of sophisticated stone tools
in this area.
[narrator] The bamboo forest of Central China.
[clucking]
[narrator] The villages here look
as though they've been here for centuries.
[upbeat music]
[narrator] Experimental archaeologist,
Jo Kamminga,
spends much of his time in Southeastern Asia
trying to replicate primitive tools.
[upbeat music]
[clinks]
[narrator] The stone tool he's making
is similar to a typical, ancient,
and very basic Chinese chopper.
So why does he think tools here remained this basic
for so long?
We're in a completely different part of the world here.
In Europe, there are different resources,
different plants, different animals,
and different kinds of stone.
And you have very large cobbles of flint in Europe.
But you don't have very large cobbles of flint here,
in Southeast Asia and South China.
[narrator] They may not have the right stone,
but in bamboo,
they do have a very different material
which is flexible yet extremely strong.
And in this region, it grows everywhere.
[Jo] It's a very resilient material to use,
and it's used for knives,
and it's used for the sorts of things that,
uh, you would use stone for.
So, uh, cutting implements are made with bamboo,
and why would you go to so much trouble
to make a sophisticated stone tool, beautifully shaped,
when you can just take a piece of bamboo
and use that and throw it away when you've finished with it.
Because it's everywhere, you can always get it again
next valley along.
[narrator] So in China, unlike Europe,
basic stone tools could have been used
to make more sophisticated bamboo tools.
If the theory's right,
the Chinese did have sophisticated tools
typical of Homo sapiens.
It's just that they were made of a highly perishable material,
long since decayed.
[calm music]
[child speaks Chinese]
[clucking]
[rasping]
[narrator] But the best way to test this theory
is to try to make a bamboo tool using a stone one.
[narrator] We set Jo the task of making a bamboo knife
that could butcher a fresh chicken.
[rasping]
[Jo] This is...
a perfectly good knife.
A much more preferable...
uh, knife to one that you invested a lot of time
in making out of stone.
[narrator] The knife works very well.
This is a possible explanation
for why we see so few advanced stone tools in China.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] But it doesn't prove either way
where the Chinese came from.
[light music]
[narrator] In order to resolve the question
of the origins of the Chinese,
we need to look at a completely different strand of evidence.
And that's genetics.
[light music]
[narrator] Professor Jin Li
is head of the main genetics laboratory
at Shanghai's Fudan University.
In 1997,
he set up a project with the aim of demonstrating conclusively
that the Chinese are descended from Homo erectus.
Before the, the project started,
I was, uh, hoping that I could identify
or could be able to find the evidence
that supported independent origin of Chinese in China.
Because I am a Chinese,
and came from China.
And through the education process,
I always believed that there...
there is something special about Chinese.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] In search of evidence,
he singled out a genetic marker
which came out of Africa with modern humans
around 70,000 years ago.
[machine whirring]
[narrator] It's a marker which Homo erectus,
arriving in China over a million years before,
could not have had...
and neither could their descendants.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] So, the critical question was,
do today's Chinese have the "Out of Africa" marker
like everyone else in the world, buried in their genes?
Jin Li searched blood samples
from over 12,000 men
from 162 different ethnic groups across Asia to find out.
The results were completely unexpected.
[Jin] We did not see
any, even one single individual that could be considered
as the descendants of a local origin in China,
rather everybody was a descendant
of our ancestors from Africa.
[narrator] The results were not what he expected.
For Jin Li, at least,
it is clear the Chinese trace their ancestry back to Africa
not through Homo erectus but Homo sapiens,
like everybody else.
[static]
[bright music]
[narrator] But what effect
did such a shattering revelation have on him?
After I saw the evidence
that we generate in my laboratory,
I think we should all be happy with that because, after all,
modern humans from different part of the...
part of the world are not so different
from each other and that we are very close relatives.
[bright music]
[narrator] Genetic research now shows
that the ancestors of the Chinese
arrived not just from Siberia,
but also along the coast of India and Southeast Asia.
But if the features of the modern Chinese
don't come from Homo erectus,
why did they change in this part of the world
around the time of the last ice age?
They may have come about by chance.
Random genetic mutations
cause the appearance of new features,
like hair color or dimples.
It is often the more distinctive features
that become fashionable or desirable
amongst a group of people.
And if that group goes on to flourish,
those features become widespread.
So perhaps, the almond-shaped eye
and low profile nose
came about as a result of this evolutionary process,
known as sexual selection.
[tense music]
[narrator] Our species had reached the Far East,
survived the ice age,
changed their appearance, and spread through the mainland.
But this was not the end of their journey.
It was just the beginning,
because the descendants
of those small groups of hunter gatherers
would begin one of the earliest
and most successful civilizations on Earth.
So what happened on the great journey
to transform the way those early Chinese lived?
[eerie music]
[narrator] Around 13,000 years ago,
an event known as the Younger Dryas occurred.
[eerie music]
[narrator] Temperatures around the world
rapidly plummeted.
The winters in China became colder again,
and food became scarce.
It's been suggested
that the harsh climate forced the hunter gatherers
to find new sources of nutrition.
And it's around this time,
the first evidence appears
for a leap forward in technology
that may have made this possible.
The clues are deep in South China.
[tense music]
-[water trickling] -[birds chirping]
[narrator] Guilin.
These exotic limestone hills
are the result of millions of years of erosion.
Today, this landscape is one of China's centers for tourism.
but 12,000 years ago,
it produced the first signs
of an important new development in human prehistory.
[light music]
[narrator] The Zengpiyan Cave.
Excavations here revealed that it was once inhabited
by hunter gatherers.
And in 2001,
an incredible discovery was made.
[tense music]
[translator 4] I remember, it was raining very heavily,
and it was muddy.
About seven or eight of us were digging.
And then, we found these little pieces.
They were a different color from the others,
a bit paler.
So, our team leader, Professor Fung,
asked us to stop.
And after examining them carefully,
we realized that
they were both very ancient bits of pottery.
[narrator] Carbon dating revealed these pot fragments
to be an astonishing 12,000 years old.
[translator 5] Judging by the shape
and the tests we have run,
we think they are the earliest pottery pieces in China.
In fact,
they are probably some of the oldest pieces of pottery
in the world.
And of course, this is exciting.
[narrator] The significance of this pot
was that it ushered in
an advanced new method of cooking
for the hunter gatherers.
[speaks Chinese]
[narrator] They could now boil food,
rather than roasting it or eating it raw.
But what made this technological step
forward possible?
The answer lies buried in the landscape.
[both speaking Chinese]
[narrator] Wang Haotian is China's leading expert
on the technology of ancient ceramics.
Today, he and his assistant
are going to try to make a prehistoric pot,
using the same techniques
as he thinks his forefathers would have.
[laughs]
[narrator] The ingenious step
was to combine locally abundant calcite rock
with clay.
[rasping]
[translator 6] In this part of China,
the natural resources are quite rich.
and you can find calcites all over the hills.
[clacking]
[speaks Chinese]
[narrator] Adding calcite chips is crucial
because it means the pots can withstand firing.
[rustles]
[translator 6] If you put in too little calcite,
it might crack.
If you put in too much,
it won't be sticky enough.
So you've got to get it just right.
[both speaking Chinese]
[narrator] For the firing,
Wang Haotian has engaged some experts.
Two brothers from a potters' village
on the Vietnamese border,
where they used a method of firing
that is thousands of years old.
[fire crackles]
[translator 6] We are preheating it now.
You mustn't let the temperature go up suddenly.
it will make the pots explode.
[fire hissing]
[narrator] Once the pots have been preheated
it's time to increase the temperature.
Modern kilns produce heat
of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.
This one barely reaches 250.
[suspenseful music]
[speaking Chinese]
[narrator] Will it be enough to fire the pot?
[fire hissing, crackling]
[speaking Chinese]
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] While the heat is too much
for some of the pots,
it looks like Wang Haotian's is still intact.
[translator 6] Today, about ten percent
of the pots exploded
because of the weather.
It is very windy, and the temperature is not even.
Without the wind, they wouldn't have exploded.
That one is the best.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] The experiment has been a success.
[calm music]
[narrator] With this new technology,
it became easier to cook food
such as vegetables and these river snails.
And boiling introduced a whole new type of food
to the hunter gatherer's diet.
Cereals, including wild rice.
[indistinct chatter]
[calm music]
[narrator] It was their skill at cultivating rice
that helped the Chinese
build such a successful civilisation.
But working out
how to harness this obscure wild grass,
would require one more piece of inspiration.
[peaceful music]
-[both speaks Chinese] -[water sloshing]
[narrator] Rice grows in a marshy environment.
But, strangely, when it's deprived of water,
it starts to produce seeds in large quantities.
The hunter gatherers must have realized this.
They discovered they could artificially
create the conditions of drought
by flooding the fields with water,
and leaving it to evaporate.
This tricked the rice into overproducing.
[narrator] And with a surplus of food
those early Chinese
could start to trade and create wealth,
the fundamentals of civilization.
[peaceful music]
[narrator] So rice represents the end of the journey
for the Chinese hunter gatherers,
and the beginning of something new.
Farming and civilization.
It's no exaggeration
to say that this development
was the foundation of the most successful group of humans
living today.
[peaceful music]
[peaceful music continues]