[woman chanting]
[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.
Using bones, stones and genes
we'll uncover the trials their descendants left
across the world,
and find out how their journeys transformed our species
into the people we are today.
This time, we trace the pathway into Europe.
We meet our ancient rival, the Neanderthal.
And we come face to face with one of the first Europeans.
How did these people overcome the odds
to claim a continent?
On the eastern edge of Europe,
in the wilderness of Romania,
lies an underground labyrinth.
Known as the "cave with bones."
So important is this cave
that we can't reveal its precise location.
[man]
[Narrator] The cave with bones earned its name in 2002.
A group of intrepid divers were exploring its depths
when they stumbled upon a human jaw bone
or mandible.
The time of the discovery of the mandible was just...
just sitting there waiting for, uh...
for somebody to discover it.
[Narrator] But this was no crime scene investigation.
The jaw bone didn't look like that
of any European living today.
It was in fact, one of the most important discoveries
of the last hundred years.
An excavation of the cave was launched,
but it was no easy task.
[Narrator] Every day the excavation team
had to negotiate a network of water filled tunnels,
scuba diving part of the way.
But eventually, their struggle was rewarded.
Amongst thousands of animal bones,
the team found more treasures.
[Narrator]The face of the skull was almost intact,
but with the rest in tiny fragments,
it was a huge challenge to reassemble.
[Narrator] But who was it, and when did they die?
The clue was in stalagmites surrounding the bone.
By dating a mineral known as calcite
above and below where the skull was found,
Dr. Constantin was able to work out
how long it had been there.
The result was a big surprise.
[Narrator] At around 40,000 years old,
this is the skull of the oldest known European.
[Narrator] You can tell it's a teenager
by looking at the last molar.
The wisdom teeth have not yet pushed through.
But what else do we know about this person?
And how did they get here?
One theory is that around 70,000 years ago,
a small group of people made an intrepid crossing
out of Africa and into Arabia.
This tiny band of pioneers
became ancestors to the rest of the world.
Exactly how humans crossed the deserts
that separated them from Europe,
no one knows.
But it seems possible for thousands of years
after we first left Africa,
the world briefly became warmer and wetter.
[thunder rumbling]
[Narrator] Deserts retreated
and swathes of green gradually spread through the Middle East
towards Europe.
We know people reached as far as Turkey
because of the discovery of beads made from shells.
And a new type of evidence helps us fill in the picture.
DNA analysis allows scientists
to find echoes of the past in people living today.
Amazingly, as many as ten percent
of today's Europeans
carry DNA that can be traced to a group of settlers
who arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago.
Today, Asia and Europe
are separated by the Bosporus Strait.
But when our European ancestors first saw it,
lower sea levels meant they could have walked across
and into a whole new world
From here, it's not far to the river Danube,
a magnet for animals,
which the hunter-gatherers may have followed west.
Perhaps it was this that led our European ancestor
to their hiding place in Romania.
But can this skull reveal more?
In the right hands, it could bring the past to life.
Richard Neave is a forensic artist.
He is an expert in facial reconstruction,
a skill he's used to help the police solve murder cases.
It's a precise art form.
[Neave] There are reasons for doing everything.
I suppose, primarily from my point of view,
I need to be able to stand in the witness box
and say, "I did this for that reason."
[Narrator] He's been working on a cast
of our oldest known European ancestor
to reveal what they looked like
for the first time in 40,000 years.
I followed all the rules, right the way through,
and that's what's come out at the end.
And whenever I do this
I never know what's going to come out at the end.
I can never get a preconceived idea
of what the face is going to look like.
So it's as much of a surprise to me.
But you have to do what the bones tell you.
I feel reasonably confident that...
this person,
if they had family or people who knew them well,
if they were to see this they would say,
"Oh yes, that looks a bit like..."
[clicks tongue]
and you can imagine this face laughing,
smiling or being cross and upset,
and it's 40,000 years ago.
[Narrator] We don't know for sure
whether this was a man or a woman.
And their facial features
don't quite match any one group living today.
[Neave] It's almost as though it's a face in flux,
in a state of...
uh, change.
It's got features which could go in any direction.
It could become Negroid,
Southeast Asian,
European.
There's the potential
for all those different directions
and that's what I find...
uh, so exciting about it.
[Narrator] But as these people made their way to the colder
alien territory of the north,
they were in for a surprise.
Something...
or someone...
had got there before them.
Europe 40,000 years ago, was the land of the Neanderthal.
A distant cousin related to us via a common ancestor
who lived up to 700,000 years ago.
Archaeological evidence suggests
Neanderthals were already in Europe
when our species was just emerging in Africa.
And by the time Homo sapiens arrived on the continent,
the Neanderthals had made themselves
thoroughly at home across the entire region.
Their existence was the greatest challenge
our ancestors faced as they entered Europe.
Nicholas Conard is running an excavation
in Southwest Germany
that's helping us find out more.
[speaking German]
Neanderthals and modern humans
were definitely both here, over there,
both using this cave
but also using a number of other caves
in the Lone valley where we are.
The Neanderthals
who were the indigenous people of the area
had a very sophisticated technology,
certainly, command of fire,
and knew how to get along in their environment.
We're certainly at the top of the food chain,
had everything 100 percent under control
and did very well.
[Conard] And what is very clear
is that Neanderthals and modern humans
were really occupying the same niche.
[Narrator] So what would have happened if they met?
I think the scenarios played themselves out
in different ways.
[Conard] The first thing you're going to do
when you see a strange human population
and you don't know who they are,
is you're going to be very, very cautious.
I think mutual avoidance
was probably the most common scenario.
The problem is you can't always avoid strangers
because you're in your home, you need the resources.
[Conard] When the new people came in, resources got tight.
It's easy to imagine situations
where there is potential for conflict,
where there could be a degree of violence.
[Narrator] So just how much of a threat to us
were our distant cousins?
We can learn a lot by looking at their bones.
The Max Planck Institute in Leipzig
is one of the leading centers for Neanderthal research.
Based at the institute is Katerina Harvati,
a paleoanthropologist
specializing in Neanderthal evolution.
[Katerina] Neanderthal skeletons are much more robust
with very strong muscle attachments,
uh, on the long bones,
indicating very strong musculature
and very, very active individuals.
[Narrator] So, they were physically strong,
and their bodies gave them other advantages.
The Neanderthal has a stockier body,
shorter stature, and limbs that are shorter.
And related with that is the shape of the rib cage,
which is very wide and sort of sloping out,
as opposed to a very narrow and straight rib cage
in the modern human.
And this probably also relates,
together with the body proportions,
to climatic adaptations to colder climates.
It's been calculated
that if you put a naked Neanderthal
and a naked modern human
out in the landscape of glacial Europe,
what the Neanderthal would feel
would be as if he or she were wearing a business suit.
[Narrator] A layer of clothing may not sound like much,
but it could make the difference between survival or death.
Contrary to popular perception,
there's no reason to think Neanderthals were stupid.
Examination of Neanderthal skulls
shows their brains were at least as large as ours.
With so many factors stacked against us,
it's surprising we lasted very long at all.
So what's the explanation?
Some have suggested
we must have had a technological head start,
something in our weapons and tools
that gave us the advantage over them.
Wulf Hein has been experimenting with ancient tools for 25 years.
He's able to recreate Neanderthal tools.
Neanderthals made their tools from flint stone.
This is a typically flint nodule as you can find on the beach.
And they cut off flakes with a hammerstone.
Just...
preparing the rim
and then giving it a short blow...
and you have a tool.
[Narrator] So what were these tools capable of?
It's much more sharp than...
steel.
And you can use it for butchering meat,
you can use it for cutting leather,
you can use it for...
cutting down trees,
but this is very small for cutting down trees.
For that purpose they used hand axes.
[Narrator] And new research suggests
Neanderthals could produce some tools
just as efficiently as our ancestors.
So it's difficult to claim it's our tools
that gave us the critical advantage.
[fire crackling]
[birds squawking]
[Narrator] Maybe instead, it was something
in the way that we used our tools,
in the food sources that we sought out.
Some scientists have claimed
that only our species was capable of real flexibility
in our diet and hunting techniques.
But in one of the southernmost points of Europe,
an exploration of a Neanderthal stronghold
is finding some surprising results.
We get the feeling it's almost like a,
you know, the nearest thing to a Neanderthal city
you're going to find anywhere.
On a hunch if you like, based on the number of caves
and the size of the caves how much it would fit,
I would imagine the rock
would have had maybe a hundred Neanderthals,
maybe a bit more.
[Narrator] With sea levels much lower than they are today,
Neanderthals lived in these caves for 100,000 years.
And the evidence they left behind
shows they were fearless hunters.
[Clive] This is an oryx which is wild cattle,
the big bulls that you see illustrated sometimes.
I think that to tackle an animal that size
with those horns,
probably would have required a lot of planning
and clearly an intelligent predator like Neanderthal.
And to get close, you know, with thrusting spears,
I mean it must have been quite an awesome thing to do,
to face one of these things coming at you.
[Narrator] Even more intriguingly,
professor Finlayson has found unusual evidence
that Neanderthals were gathering food from the sea.
[Clive] The most surprising thing is that
it wasn't limited just to terrestrial foods.
Um, we're finding increasingly here lots of evidence
of limpets, mussels, shellfish,
um, which they're probably collecting from the beach.
We were finding things like this,
which is, this is a monk seal,
and we're finding a number of individuals of monk seal.
Many of them are young juveniles so,
so does this indicate that
the Neanderthals knew about seasons,
about how animals behaved
and when they would come close inshore
to have their pups and be most vulnerable.
It's a possibility.
[Narrator] It seems Neanderthals
were more than capable of competing with our ancestors
for food sources.
So if it wasn't our tools or our food
that ensured our survival,
what was it that really set us apart
from Neanderthals?
The answer may be much less obvious.
At Nicholas Conard's excavation, a clue was found in tiny pieces.
At the beginning, when I found the first piece
that had these, uh...
beveled edge
and these notches on the edges,
and it was also interesting
how other people react when I was telling them
it could be a part of the flute.
[laughs]
[Narrator]If Maria was right,
this flute would be a unique discovery.
The first time she showed me a fragment of the whole,
she came in and said,
"Nick you know, I think we've got an ivory flute."
I said, "Ah, you know, but be a little careful."
It was not easy to convince them.
I had to fit these pieces together.
She then proceeded to fit 31 fragments of ivory together
and, you know, it became completely unambiguous
that the remains of holes again in these beveled forms,
uh, it's obvious that it is a flute,
and is probably the oldest evidence
of, well, musical instruments that we know of worldwide.
[flute playing]
[Narrator] The flute is about 35,000 years old,
and this is the sound of a replica.
[music continues]
Especially in the context of human evolution
it's a work of genius
like the work of a Michelangelo or Rembrandt
or something along those lines.
And to come up with that kind of innovation and creativity
is remarkable and I think also very characteristic
of our own species, Homo sapiens.
[Narrator]The flute is just one
of a whole collection of artistic creations
found in the region.
There's an ivory mammoth,
and this figure of a man with a lion's head.
Music and art may seem like unlikely weapons
in our competition with the Neanderthals.
But it's not just the objects themselves that are revealing,
it's where they were found.
For example, the lion man and mammoth
are not the only such figures.
Very similar ones have been found
scattered across the region.
Evidence there was communication
and a bond between different family groups.
The modern humans here and for instance,
in the neighboring valley,
make the exact same artifacts,
and they're definitely part of the same group.
There's no way that it's chance that you get
identical artifacts at sites,
you know, 20, 30, 40 kilometers away.
And that tells us that populations
with a shared identity were fairly large,
covering fairly large areas,
presumably interacting, meeting one another,
helping each other.
And Neanderthals don't seem to have had
that kind of symbolic communication
and seemed to have maintained smaller social networks
than modern humans.
[Narrator] Extended networks,
the exchange of ideas and symbols of identity
meant we had a source of strength
the Neanderthals don't ever seem to have had.
And it's this, some now argue,
that may have been the defining factor
in our survival.
Over several thousand years,
Neanderthal numbers diminished
and those that survived
were pushed to the outer edges of Europe.
But what finally killed them off,
allowing us to succeed?
Gibraltar,
today home to a different species of primate,
may have been the last place on the planet that
Neanderthals ever lived.
A team of archaeologists are looking for evidence
of these Neanderthals
and for why they eventually disappeared.
But as sea levels are so much higher today,
what was a wide coastal plain for the Neanderthals
is now the sea floor.
So the search has to take place underwater.
Well, as far as we know this is the first time
that anyone's trying to find Neanderthal evidence,
um, in a cave under water.
Today we're going to be hopefully be lifting a rock
to expose a sediment section
which hopefully will show us
what's happening under the sea bed.
[Narrator] They'll be working at a depth of 24 meters.
At this depth, the body can suffer from narcosis.
Anything could happen.
You really have to think things through.
You have to plan your dive very carefully.
And it does happen that sometimes things go wrong
and you have to call it off, and that's it,
and you have to come back to the surface.
Keep our fingers crossed, you know. You never know.
[laughs]
[tense music]
[Narrator] Today's task of moving a rock
to reach the soil of the sea bed
is no small challenge.
[dramatic music]
But eventually, success.
[Geraldine] It's got water in it.
Okay.
[indistinct chatter]
So we're gonna send the rock to the lab now.
-[Geraldine] Yeah. -And have them test it.
Yeah, quite well, quite well.
Very, we're very pleased with today.
[Narrator] So what does the evidence they've found so far
tell us about what happened to the last Neanderthals here?
The leader of the excavation,
Professor Clive Finlayson,
believes one factor in particular
played an important part...
climate.
We know that the climate then,
there's, there's a really bad spell.
It's the coldest and harshest environment
of the previous quarter of a million years.
So something may have happened in a short time scale.
Maybe there was a series of droughts
associated with cold conditions
that may have knocked them over the edge.
[Narrator] In such circumstances,
a small group would have been very vulnerable.
It may have been a numbers game.
There were so few left
as would happen to populations of endangered species today,
like the panda or the tiger.
Just random fluctuation in numbers
can bring it down to zero
and there's no recovery from zero.
[Narrator] So, if the meeting between our ancestors
and our distant cousins was a conflict,
it certainly wasn't one we were destined to win.
It looks like ultimately it was subtle advantages,
like our larger social networks,
that meant we survived and they didn't.
By 20,000 years ago,
it seems we were alone in Europe.
Between 20 and 30,000 years ago,
further waves of people began to enter Europe
from the east.
And based on the discoveries made in Dolní Vestonice,
in the Czech Republic,
it seems something extraordinary was happening.
The new waves of people
coincided with one of the most spectacular periods
of prehistory,
a flowering of culture and innovation
that shows just how sophisticated
our stone age ancestors really were.
Professor Jirí Svoboda
looks after an impressive array of artifacts,
which allows us to glimpse
the thinking of prehistoric Europeans.
[Jirí] They'll think it's strange,
it's on a mammoth tusk,
and we think that the patron has some meaning.
The question is what kind of a meaning.
[Narrator] Jirí has a theory.
[Jirí] That this is a meandering river
and this double circle would be the site,
and this probably some slopes of a mountain or whatever.
We think that hunter-gatherers
had a very good sense of space,
sometimes better than many people have today.
[chuckles]
And they were able to present it graphically.
[Narrator]So this could be one of the world's first maps.
And the people living here
had also mastered the art of working clay.
[Jirí] Oh, this is one of the most finely carved,
modeled and carved, uh...
heads of a lion.
We've got several lions at these sites,
lions' heads always.
But this one has the finest features.
I think it was, uh...
I don't know at first. [chuckles]
But what I think is that lion was an animal
that they had respect for.
[Narrator] And even more intriguing object
has been found here.
This is the Venus of Dolní Vestonice.
No one's quite sure what she is.
A fertility figure, a strange doll?
Professor Svoboda has one interpretation.
If you look at the bottom
you clearly see the shape of a female sign,
the pubic triangle.
If you look at the upper part,
you may imagine that this shape turns
to a male symbol.
And in this case
in fact, the figurine as a whole
combines the female symbol below with the male symbols above.
I think there is kind of fun in it
but you may also say that it is a deeper symbolics
and there is no fun with it.
[Narrator] But there's a greater significance
to this Venus figurine.
It's not alone.
Many similar figures
have been found right across Europe.
From France in the west...
to Russia in the east.
It's evidence of a shared culture
across the length and breadth of Europe.
In the space of a few thousand years,
our species had gone from being a tiny group
facing tough competition with the Neanderthals,
to dominating the continent.
But the challenges weren't over yet.
This land held further threats
that would test our ancestors to their limits.
Europe was experiencing devastating change in climate,
what's known as the Last Glacial Maximum,
the peak of the last Ice Age.
Massive sheets of ice
were grinding their way south,
turning the north into a sterile frozen no man's land.
[ice crackling]
[Narrator] The fact that there are people alive today
who are descended from early Europeans,
means that some of them must have survived.
But where?
[man chanting]
The best chance of survival lay in the south of Europe,
like in this valley in southwest France,
away from the extremes of the icy north.
Professor Randall White
has been excavating in this region for 30 years.
Even during the coldest periods of the last glaciation
between 22,000 and 18,000 years ago,
this valley continued to be occupied.
[White] It's one of the reasons why
we have a continuous record in this area
because there was never a time
in which people abandoned this area to move further south
and away from the...
the expanding ice sheets.
[Narrator]Caves like this one
gave protection from the elements.
[Randall] This valley had very deep rock shelters in it,
six, seven meters deep,
which created very large protected surfaces
under which people could live.
And in addition, the shelter ceilings were very low.
They're not 15 feet above your head.
They're very low,
which means that there's a much smaller space to heat.
[Narrator] With the help of warmer temperatures,
and natural hideouts,
this region of southern France
seems to have become a refuge for our species.
But for people of the ice age,
the caves may have been much more
than mere barriers against the weather.
Because this region of southern France
is home to some of the most beautiful
prehistoric rock art in the world.
[dramatic music]
[clinking]
[Narrator] Dr. Michel Lorblanchet
is one of France's most distinguished
cave art experts.
And he believes these caves were important focal points
for the nomadic bands of hunters who roamed the area.
[speaking French]
[translator] The cave was effectively a fixed point,
because of course, by its nature, it didn't move.
Today, people in villages from the whole area
tend to gather around a church.
The caves were a bit similar.
They were the symbol of a whole tribe
that lived in the region.
[speaking French]
[Narrator] And the paintings they made
were more than mere doodles.
[Michel speaking French]
[translator] These caves are natural temples,
which are decorated by nature.
In other words,
the temples present natural fantastical shapes.
And I believe that for prehistoric man,
caves were the places of spirits.
And these shapes in the caves already suggested forms,
animal shapes and sometimes human shapes.
So it inspired man himself to paint
and to create these pictures.
[Narrator] Dr. Lorblanchet has carried out research
to find out how our ancestors
could have made such beautiful art.
[blowing rapidly]
[Narrator] And he's found a surprising technique.
[Michel speaking French]
[translator] To do the great panel
of the Punctuated Horses at Peche Merle,
all the painting was done by spitting.
In other words,
it was done entirely by blowing the paint
out of the mouth.
[Michel blowing rapidly]
[Narrator] And to test this out,
Lorblanchet recreated one of the panels in Peche Merle.
It took him an entire week,
but he's found there are practical
and spiritual advantages
to painting by spitting.
[speaking French]
[translator] This technique allows you to paint
on any kind of surface,
because you don't actually touch it.
So you can paint on crumbly,
fragile or particularly, on irregular surfaces.
It's a tiring job
because you have to blow constantly and spit.
[blowing rapidly]
[speaking French]
[translator] But it must also be said
that this technique has a symbolic significance,
because the painter,
the person who creates the image, blows.
And in a sense, he projects himself onto the wall.
[blowing rapidly]
[Narrator] These paintings were created by generations
of artists who were inspired by the world
in which they lived.
But just as these artists left their mark on Europe,
it seems Europe was making a mark on them.
It's a legacy that's still visible today,
in the color of European skin.
For over 100,000 years,
since the birth of our species in Africa,
our ancestors' skin had almost certainly been dark,
protection against the sun.
So why, as they migrated into Europe,
did it turn from brown to white?
It's a mystery.
But a clue might lie in a single vitamin,
vitamin D.
Vitamin D is produced
when sunlight penetrates the skin.
It's crucial for the formation of bones,
and lack of it can wreak havoc on the body.
These remains in a museum in Paris
show what can happen in serious cases,
where bones grown bent and misshapen.
It's a particular problem for pregnant women,
where a distorted pelvis
can make natural birth impossible.
So in Europe,
where there is less sunlight available
than in tropical regions,
having dark skin may have been a disadvantage,
as the darker the skin,
the more sunlight it needs to produce vitamin D.
And over thousands of years
a series of minute genetic changes
may have caused our European ancestors
to evolve pale skin,
driven perhaps by the need to absorb sunlight.
[ice crackling]
[Narrator] But as the world warmed once more,
and the ice sheets began to retreat,
even bigger changes lay ahead for the survivors.
Changes in the way that people lived and worked
that would alter the course of the human story.
At oöbekli Tepe in southern Turkey
is a site that shows
just how far reaching these changes were.
[man chanting]
[indistinct chatter]
[Narrator] Professor Klaus Schmidt
has made what could prove
to be the most significant archaeological discovery
of the period.
It's a series of monuments
over twice the age of the Egyptian pyramids.
With distinctive T-shaped pillars,
each one seems to represent a human figure.
The upper part is the head
and the shaft represents the body.
[Klaus]
So here we have an example of the depiction of an arm,
which is going down here, and the fingers,
the hand and the fingers are not excavated yet,
but it's clear they will appear when we continue to work here.
[Narrator] And on these stone figures
there are intricate carvings,
not unlike hieroglyphs.
[Narrator] Professor Schmidt believes this could
be the world's first purpose built temple.
[Narrator] So, what does this mean?
[Narrator] Some of the sculptures
are carved out of a single rock,
similar to those one might find in a medieval cathedral.
For Schmidt, the discovery has huge significance,
because it suggests
that this particular society of hunter-gatherers
was developing new behaviors.
[Narrator]And Schmidt believes this increased organization
led to a revolutionary development.
Genetics shows this region
is home to the closest wild relative
of the first domesticated forms of wheat,
suggesting that this was where farming in Europe was born.
[Narrator] After over 100,000 years
of being nomadic hunter-gatherers,
humans began to settle down and farm.
The journey to this point had been no easy ride.
There had been huge challenges to overcome.
Our ancestors faced extreme climate change
and many must have perished.
Just like our cousins,
the formidable Neanderthal.
But with the arrival of agriculture,
food resources became more reliable,
allowing populations to expand.
Gradually, these ideas spread into Europe,
paving the way for large scale settlement
and ultimately, for the birth of European civilization
as we know it.
[closing theme music]