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0:00
This really is a treasure trove. So this is hundreds of thousands of years old. What do you think eventually wiped them out? Well, this is it. This is the place. Because this is where the earliest human remains in the entire world were discovered. It's been really difficult to find it. It's taken us four hours to walk here, and we've been a circuitous route through the bush. And it seems really strange that there's nothing to mark it. Because this is such an important place in our story,
0:37
and it's as close as I can get to where we all began.
0:44
Amazing.
0:58
And this is what the archaeologists discovered.
1:04
This is a cast of the skull that was found here and which was dated to 195,000 years ago. I think, considering it's so old, it's remarkably complete. OK, the fragile face bones are missing. But most of the brain case is here. We can see the size of the brain and we can see this very characteristic forehead. No other remains of our species even approaching this age have been found anywhere else on the planet.
1:44
This is as near as we can get to the origin of our species.
1:57
There's something very special about sitting here looking out at the Omo. I could be on the banks of any African river, apart from the fact we know that this landscape has been home to humans – people like you and me – for nearly 200,000 years.
2:21
I'm heading along the South African coast to a place called Pinnacle Point.
2:31
Today, it's a playground for the rich.
2:35
But during the construction of this golf course, archaeologists discovered something amazing deep beneath the fairway.
2:55
This could be the oldest known dwelling of our species anywhere in the world.
3:06
So this is where you've been digging. This is the oldest part of the cave. What are the dates here then, as we go down through these layers? These layers date from 130,000 to 167,000 years ago. - It's just so incredibly ancient. - It's amazing. - Did you know how important what you were excavating really was? Not until we got those dates. But yeah amazing stunning.
3:36
The evidence in this cave reveals that those ancient families were behaving in ways quite unlike previous species of human.
3:47
Well, Kyle, that's not from this cave, is it? Because I recognise this. This is a hand axe, isn't it? That's correct. Now, that's more typical of what you would find from about 1.5 million years ago to about 300,000 years ago. So what sort of thing were you finding in the cave, then? OK. Well, tools like these blades and points are much more typical of what we find in this cave. Made on quartzite, locally available on the beach down here.
4:10
And in our oldest levels here, alongside these types of tools, we also have these very small bladelet tools. - These are tiny! What could such minute blades have been used for? Obviously, these weren't used just in your hand like this. So how would they have been used? It's more likely that those were set in some kind of a handle to make a compound tool, maybe something more like this. This is a series of small blades set into a handle for use as a knife. Yes, I think that would work.
4:42
So you think that's how these stone tools were used then, as a knife? - That's one possibility. And it's also possible they would have been used for hunting weapons.
4:54
Kyle and his team have discovered you can make some lethal weapons with these bladelets. This one looks particularly vicious, I think. - This is one interpretation of how those small back blades might have been mounted.
5:10
The advantage to this would be that there's these barbs that would prevent the tip from pulling out immediately and would inflict a greater injury.
5:25
Well, I'm going to be spending the night out here in the bush, presumably something our ancestors did all the time. But years of living in civilisation have softened me.
5:36
I've got a big torch here, so that if anything comes by, I can get a better look at it in the dark. And I've got this little camera so I can make a video diary throughout the night and talk about what comes along. I'm doing this for real. I'm going to be out here all night and I really am quite scared.
6:26
(WHISPERING) It's just amazing the amount of noises you suddenly hear. About a half an hour ago, there was a sound, really distinct sound, of something lapping water.
6:36
Maybe a hyena, maybe a leopard. It sounded like a big cat. Literally, like a cat lapping at milk.
6:45
Hopefully, nothing can get through that.
6:55
Suddenly feel really vulnerable as an animal which is designed to be out in the daylight. I mean, can't see very well at night. Hearing's all right. Just about enough to get you feeling scared.
7:11
And sense of smell is, well, compared to all those other animals, might as well not have it.
7:23
(ANIMAL YOWLS) Did you hear that?
7:29
I'm scared now. (YOWLING CONTINUES)
7:36
(SUSTAINED YOWL) Is that a...? Is that a lion? Is that a leopard? (YOWLING CONTINUES)
7:50
Is that...? (SUSTAINED YOWL) Is that a hyena?
7:57
(YOWLING CONTINUES) Oh, I don't like that noise.
8:04
That's really spooky. (SUSTAINED YOWL)
8:17
That's got to be one of the most frightening nights of my life. I did get some sleep. But then I got woken up by these horrendous noises. Sometimes, it was hyenas. And then there was something that sounded like a stand-off between a hyena and a leopard or something. I don't know what it was. Awful noises. Really, really scary.
8:50
With the return of the crew, I pluck up my courage and look for signs of the animals that I heard in the night.
9:01
Oh, just look at this. This is a big male leopard paw print, and there are large hyena prints as well. So these predators, these carnivores, were literally here about 25 metres away from where I was sleeping, underneath that tree. They sounded really close during the night, and I can see now that they were.
9:38
So it looks as if small groups of men, women and children made that first push into America about 13,500 years ago. Using their sophisticated tools, they made the most of their new home and spread right across the continent, from coast to coast.
10:01
Until recently, this was the version of American prehistory that most experts agreed on. But a new discovery here in Texas is threatening to rewrite the entire story.
10:24
Archaeologist Mike Collins is a very patient man.
10:34
For 15 years, he's been digging away in this small field near Austin,
10:42
and he's found something that no one expected.
10:47
So Mike, what sort of dates have you got coming out here? We have the entire prehistory of central Texas represented at this site. The kinds of artefacts we find and the few absolute dates that we have tell us that people were here from 500 years ago back 13,500 years ago. Even more importantly, we have stuff below that. - Below Clovis. So, older than Clovis. - Older than Clovis. Pre-Clovis. - Right. - Right here at this site.
11:16
- But for years, archaeologists have thought that Clovis was the first culture in the Americas. Yeah, most archaeologists have thought that but there's a few of us that have known better. And over on the other side of the site, you can see the Clovis level and you can see artefacts below it. You want to see that? - I'd love to see it. Let's go see it.
11:43
Mike, this is an incredibly deep test pit. Yes, it's a deep test pit. And we're really interested in this part of it right here. Because right through here, we get Clovis artefacts. But as we dug down, we continued to get artefacts below that for about 20 or 25 centimetres more. A nice flake here, for example, with a platform and good flake scars on it. We have one date from down here of 14,400 years. 14,400? Yeah. So that's pre-Clovis. By 1,000 years.
12:16
I mean, that's amazing because that makes us rethink all of our theories about early Americans. Yes, we have to rethink our paradigm. We have to come up with a new accounting of the peopling of the Americas. Mike, how sure are you about the date of these artefacts? It's just one date. So you need to corroborate it with further evidence. And that's what we're working on.
12:53
Now, we can only draw tentative conclusions from the evidence emerging here, but our grand theory about how humans first got into North America is starting to look decidedly dodgy. Because if there really were people living here at Gault as early as Mike says they were, then there must have been another route into the Americas because the ice-free corridor wasn't open yet. But what I need is more proof. And if the claims coming out of South America are to be believed,
13:25
then they may have even earlier and more compelling evidence than I've seen here in Texas.
13:33
The finds from Monte Verde are nothing short of miraculous.
13:48
It's quite strange. There's no evidence at all of it ever having been an archaeological site. There are sheep grazing. There's nothing obvious at all.
13:58
But a few years back, local villagers came across something strange sticking out of the riverbank –
14:06
bones from a mastodon, a prehistoric relative of the modern elephant. It was a bank just like this that the animal bones were originally found in that alerted people to the fact that this was an archaeological site.
14:25
As experts dug down, they discovered much more than just ancient animal bones.
14:35
Layer by layer, the remains of an entire human settlement emerged,
14:42
home to a community of perhaps 20 or 30 people, with shelters, work areas and rubbish tips. A unique relic of our prehistoric past.
14:59
The main structure on this site was a very long hut, 20 metres long. I'm going to have to go at measuring it out, but, er... I think I might come into some difficulties because of where the stream is today. Because this log is actually around about seven metres long.
15:19
10 metres is going to take me up to there. I don't want to go any further because I don't want to end up in that very cold stream. But you can imagine how far this hut extended.
15:30
And amazingly, we know how this hut was built, because the remains of the wooden stakes and the animal hides that covered it were preserved in the waterlogged ground.
15:42
And inside this long hut, the archaeologists found hearths. And in them, the remains of nuts and berries and seeds that people had been eating. The hearths were lined with clay and in part of this clay that presumably was wet at some point, there was somebody's footprint.
16:07
About 30 metres away was the strange outline of what was perhaps another much smaller hut. Outside it, there were butchered mastodon bones, but inside it, there were some very intriguing finds indeed. Some plant remains, a few of them seaweeds that are still used by the Mapuche Indians today as medicines.
16:32
Incredibly, the team even discovered the remains of potato skins. It's the first evidence anywhere in the world of humans using, eating potatoes. It's amazing to have this degree of preservation on an archaeological site. This really is a treasure trove.
16:58
Monte Verde gives us an incredibly rare and wonderful window into our ancestors' daily lives. But for all that, what's most astonishing about Monte Verde is its age.
17:18
But that's nothing compared with the ice-free corridor 13,500 years ago.
17:28
Any families coming through that corridor would surely have faced a hellish journey…
17:35
..huddled against the howling wind in a land of torrential rivers and floating ice.
17:51
So did anyone try? And if so, did they make it?
17:59
The answers to all these questions lie in that direction.
18:09
Because right across North America, archaeologists have been finding thousands of objects like this.
18:19
They're called Clovis points…
18:29
..and they date from just a few hundred years after the corridor in the ice appeared.
18:38
So this could have been the way in.
18:44
But what kind of a world would these pioneers find on the other side of the ice?
19:02
The tools themselves are important clues and to find out how, I'm meeting archaeologist Andy Hemmings. So these are these really classic stone Clovis spear points. - Yeah. It's important to understand about Clovis, though, that they aren't just stone points. They also made some very lethal and effective bone and ivory points as well. These are state-of-the-art lethal killing machines from 13,000 years ago. And what sort of animals do you think they would have hunted with them?
19:31
The most common that we've found them directly associated with are mammoths, bison and mastodon, in that order. But at Clovis sites across the New World, we've found more than 125 species of plants and animals. So they're general hunters, but you really think they were hunting mammoths? Oh absolutely. The best example probably is a site in south-east Arizona where eight Clovis points were found with one mammoth body. Five of them were found behind the back of the head
19:58
and in front of the shoulder blades, any one of which probably would have been about a lethal wound. [Alice] Andy shows me how he thinks they did it.
20:11
Andy, that doesn't look much like a mammoth to me. There's no animal in the Pleistocene that had a hide that tough. And if we can poke a hole in that, if you can poke a hole in that, we could have eaten anything, just like the Clovis people did. Right, so I've got my spear thrower. - Let's see what you can do.
20:30
A glancing blow. You've slowed him. - Got his feet. - Try again.
20:37
- Ooh. Scratched it.
20:40
Do you want to show me how it's done, Andy? I'll give it a try.
20:45
- Oh, my God.
20:50
Well, that's made a hell of a dent in this metal door. - I hit it pretty cleanly and you can see, I just destroyed the end of my spear. It would have stuck in the hide of a mammoth or a mastodon. - Yeah.
21:02
The mammoth and mastodon, two of the mighty animals roaming this vast landscape.
21:12
But little match for people with a weapon as deadly as the Clovis point.
21:22
Some think that these pioneers of the new frontier plunged into an orgy of slaughter, wiping out ice-age animals like the mammoth.
21:35
The evidence is questionable, but that image of the mighty hunter has stuck.
21:44
St Petersburg, the former imperial capital of Russia.
21:56
The Hermitage is one of the world's greatest museums, home to some of the most celebrated works of art.
22:12
But there's something else here, too. It's not on display, but it's every bit as precious.
22:23
Here in the storerooms are a few objects that could unlock the secrets of those Siberian families struggling in the depths of the ice age.
22:37
What is really striking about these objects from the height of the last ice age, is that they're found in just a few places in the south of Siberia. Which is interesting because it suggests that as the climate worsened, these prehistoric people retreated into refuges where it still would have been very cold but they would have been just able to survive.
23:00
People vanished from the frozen wastes of northern Siberia to the south. One of the refugees they gathered in is now called Mal'ta.
23:12
So can the few remains found here tell us anything about what happened? Just look at these tiny blades from the ice age. They are unusually small. And the archaeologists think this is because the appalling cold made it difficult to reach the quarries. So the stone itself was such a precious resource that they were using it to its utmost, getting as many blades as they could out of it. So the blades themselves got smaller and smaller.
23:46
And something extraordinary was happening during this period. In spite of that struggle for survival, there was a blossoming of art.
23:56
Now, we may never know the meaning of this beautiful pair of swans to the people that made them, but archaeologists have suggested that they might be hunting charms. That when the first swans flew, the first deer would appear and it was the beginning of the spring hunting season. And how they must have longed for spring.
24:23
Many of the objects in this collection are mysterious. This unique plate is made from mammoth ivory.
24:32
Some have suggested it's a map showing the physical and spiritual worlds, with the connection between them symbolised by a hole in the middle.
24:48
These precious bone figurines are amongst the earliest depictions of people wearing fur. Further proof that plenty of these Asian pioneers could sew clothes by this time.
25:15
And finally, there are these delicate and beautiful little statues of women. And some of them are pierced, so they may have been worn as pendants, perhaps amulets.
25:28
It's possible that they're fertility symbols, really underlining the importance and difficulty of producing children during such harsh conditions.
25:39
And, in fact, some archaeologists see this entire, very beautiful collection as a cry to the spirits in a time of stress and struggle. Finally, I'm allowed in to see the plaster casts of the Homo erectus skulls from the Lower Cave. And Professor Wu has a surprise waiting. Ooh. - Look at this, see. This is the original specimen. - That's the original? - Yeah, it's the original. As you know, most of the original specimens lost during the war. I didn't know any of it had survived.
26:11
Yeah. After the war, we have done some new excavation and got some new specimens. - Can I... Can I hold it? Yes yes.
26:25
I honestly thought all the specimens had been lost. But this is an actual fossil of Homo erectus in China. Found in 1966. - So this is hundreds of thousands of years old, isn't it? - So this is another piece.
26:45
It's just amazing for me to... I mean, to be holding in my hand this actual fossil, which is hundreds of thousands of years old. I honestly thought all I would see is casts, is reconstructions. And this is the actual fossil. - And now you hold the original one. That's amazing.
27:06
But even more important is what Professor Wu has spotted in these fossils.
27:13
First, he shows me some features of the ancient erectus skulls that he believes are typically Chinese.
27:21
- The face is flat, the nose is flat. Not very protrude, as in Europe. - Yep, yep. - And this part is also flat. - So this part of the cheekbones is sort of rotated. Then he shows me the much more recent Upper Cave skulls and picks out the same distinctively Chinese features. - But it also has the more flat face and the not very protruding nose. - So the features that you're looking at in these skulls are really the features which characterise modern Chinese people today.
27:59
They're the sort of differences between your skull and my skull. - Yes. Yes. So... So your face here is like this and mine is like... - Flatter. - Yes, definitely. - And your nose is flatter here than mine. - So we inherited some features from our ancestor. - Professor Wu sees a clear line. Homo erectus evolving into Upper Caveman, becoming today's Chinese. For him, these fossils prove that the Chinese come from a completely different branch of the human family.
28:35
But I can see significant differences between the skulls.
28:41
The whole skull shape of Homo erectus is quite different from modern humans. And even those features that Wu pointed out, the nose and the cheekbones, don't seem that similar to me.
29:02
Professor Wu, I mean, you've spent a lifetime studying these skulls and I'm a complete novice in comparison. But I look at this modern skull here, this 30,000-year-old skull from Zhoukoudian, and this looks quite similar to me to other skulls from Europe at the same time. So I don't think... it doesn't look Chinese to me. - But the profile in Europe is different. - It's quite subtle, though, isn't it?
29:38
I'm still not convinced that the Chinese are so fundamentally different from the rest of us. Professor Wu's so knowledgeable and his arguments are so persuasive, so maybe I'm missing something.
29:54
What was it that turned hunter-gatherers into empire builders?
30:02
I'm travelling through the awe-inspiring landscape of Guilin in south China in search of the key to their success.
30:29
This is the Zengpiyan cave. Excavations here tell us it was once lived in by hunter-gatherers.
30:38
And in 2001, a wonderful discovery was made.
30:51
These fragments are so precious that I'm not even allowed to touch them. They are what remains of one of the oldest pots in China. In fact, one of the oldest pots in the world.
31:15
So, who made this pot? Well, the people living in this cave so many thousands of years ago would have been nomadic hunter-gatherers, still living an ancient lifestyle in many ways. But those insignificant-looking, crude pieces of pot mark a great technological leap forward.
31:36
So prehistoric pottery has also been found in this cave?
31:39
Pots are something we take for granted, but for those ancient hunter-gatherers, pottery was part of a completely new way of life.
31:51
So how did they do it?
31:57
I'm meeting a team of experimental archaeologists who think they might have the answer.
32:03
The first breakthrough must have been finding out how to stop the pots cracking when they were fired, tempering them by mixing calcite rock with the clay. And they even have an idea how the pots might have been shaped thousands of years before the invention of the potter's wheel.
32:21
This is very clever. They've dug a pit here to basically give us the form of the pot, almost like a mould. And then we're pressing this clay in little slabs down into the pre-formed pit.
32:34
Transforming clay into hard pottery requires firing at a high temperature. Today, this is done at 1,000° Celcius in a kiln, way beyond the capabilities of those hunter-gatherers.
32:52
They would have had open fires, which only produce temperatures of about 250°. I'm quite doubtful this is going to be enough.
33:06
So how's our pot? Ooh, I think that's it. I think that... I think that's our pot there. And it looks OK!
33:21
Fantastic.
33:26
There are many different theories about why the Chinese hunter-gatherers might have started making pots. Some people say it was a symbol of prestige, but the Chinese archaeologists think that the explanation is much more simple. Cooking.
33:41
Pots meant that a wider range of food could be cooked and stored, vital in hard times. And by 9,000 years ago, there was another innovation – farming. One of the things that those early Chinese potters would have been eating was wild rice. Now, it certainly wouldn't have been the main source of food because it was hard to collect and actually didn't give much energy in return. But despite the availability of other vegetables, it was rice that became more and more important,
34:14
and even crucial to the early success of the Chinese.
34:21
Oh, I've seen pictures of the great cave at Niah, but nothing really prepares you for the sheer scale of it.
35:15
This part of the excavation was known as "hell trench" and stepping down into it, it's easy to see why, because it's suddenly very hot and humid. But all the hard work and the discomfort paid off, because the archaeologists found something that was quite phenomenal. It's a human skull. It was in many pieces when it was first found, which have been carefully fitted back together like a jigsaw. And this is the top of the skull. It's unmistakably a modern human. It has a high-domed forehead.
35:51
The skull has been dated to nearly 40,000 years old. The oldest confirmed remains of our species in South East Asia.
36:04
But Niah Cave also offers us a clue as to how these people survived in the challenging environment of the rainforest.
36:18
As you move just a little bit deeper into the cave, it becomes significantly cooler and more pleasant. And it just feels like an ideal place for those hunter-gatherers to have set up their camps and then they could have gone off roaming into the forest. The archaeological evidence shows that they were bringing back a huge range of different foods to eat, from monkeys and pigs and lizards, to shellfish, yams and sago palm.
36:43
Compared with other species, we're incredibly adaptable. To survive, we humans will eat just about anything. And as if to make exactly that point, in another corner of the cave something really unusual is going on.
37:01
I've arrived at harvesting time for the ingredient used in the Chinese delicacy bird's nest soup. It's made from the nests of rare swiftlets. And today, these men are attempting a death-defying feat to gather them. I mean, this is human ingenuity, isn't it?
37:30
A sweet little tiny swiftlet's nest that has just been built out from the wall of the cave, made of saliva.
37:39
It feels a bit like resin or something. It's very odd.
37:43
I can't believe that anybody would want to make soup out of it. This is a reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, and generally speaking, the skeleton is very similar to ours. Having said that, there are definite differences. The shape of all the bones is subtly different, and anywhere that muscles attach on this skeleton is much more prominent than it would be in a modern human. So this would have been a person who was much more heavily muscled, generally much more rugged-looking than us today.
38:20
They would have been formidable competitors.
38:39
So, Neanderthals were tougher and better cold-adapted than us. And some of them even had bigger brains than modern humans. On the face of it, then, it seems quite surprising that our species lasted very long at all.
38:54
So how did we overcome the Neanderthals?
39:01
Maybe our tools and weapons were just better than theirs.
39:05
Well, for decades, that's exactly what the experts thought.
39:14
But this idea hadn't been thoroughly tested until now.
39:20
So how are you doing? We're doing all right.
39:26
Bruce Bradley and Metin Eren spent over a year making thousands of basic cutting tools.
39:36
So you've got these two tools, this one, a basic tool made by a Neanderthal, and this one, a basic tool made by a modern human at the same sort of period. [Metin] Correct. Now, they're obviously very different-looking. This one's long and thin and this one is round. But are they different in terms of function, in terms of what they're used for? They were used for the same kind of tasks. Mostly cutting tasks. - So, for example, I mean, both are really sharp. If you want to use both of those to
40:01
cut some pretty thick leather here. [Alice] This is a typical Neanderthal tool? [Metin] Exactly. You can see that it just cuts through this really thick leather very smoothly. That is incredibly sharp. Look at that. Wow! [Metin] And this is really tough leather. [Alice] Effective, isn't it? That's brilliant. [Metin] Yeah. Now, let's try the blade. Hold it very carefully, because... [Alice] Yes. This is the sort of thing that was made by modern humans. [Metin] Exactly.
40:28
[Alice] If anything, I would say that flake is a bit... I mean, that's cutting, but just, you know, just picking up the tool and using it immediately, I'd say the flake's actually a little bit easier to use. - When we created thousands of tools, we found that the technology of the Neanderthals actually produced more cutting edge overall. It wasted less raw material and you could produce more tools than the blade course of modern Homo sapiens. Now, Metin, that's very new, isn’t it?
40:56
That's quite remarkable, because you're telling me that the Neanderthal technology is just as good – in fact, if not better – than the modern humans'. I mean, that goes against everything that people have said for the last few decades. That's true. And it was a very exciting result.
41:15
[Alice] It's just one study on one aspect of tool-making.
41:21
But I still think it's important.
41:26
This is fascinating and it means that the long-standing theory about modern human technology being superior to Neanderthal stone tools just doesn't stand up.
41:42
I'm in Gibraltar, a naval stronghold for centuries. And new evidence from these rocky shores suggests that thousand of years after they disappeared from the rest of Europe, the Neanderthals were clinging on here.
41:58
When Neanderthals lived here, sea levels were up to 100 metres lower. So much of the evidence from that time could be underwater.
42:12
A team of specialists is probing the ocean floor, looking for traces of the Gibraltar Neanderthals.
42:22
We've come to a stop now because we are over the archaeological site. It's about 20 metres below the surface of the sea below us. The divers are all getting ready. And these are divers but also archaeologists, so they're going to be excavating the sea bottom in search of Neanderthals.
42:44
These divers are up against poor visibility, with a limited oxygen supply. Underwater archaeology is always challenging.
42:57
But Clive Finlayson has already made a series of significant discoveries in the sea caves nearby.
43:06
[Clive] This is where the last Neanderthals made their last stand, if you like, 24,000 years ago.
43:15
We get the feeling this is the nearest thing to a Neanderthal city you're going to find anywhere. We've got fossils, stone tools, animals that they'd been butchering, all kinds of evidence, hearths, you know, Neanderthal barbecues, if you like. It's very, very special site.
43:36
[Alice] They think that Neanderthals may have held on here long after they'd been wiped out in the rest of Europe.
43:47
But after the Neanderthals finally disappeared from Gibraltar, there was a gap of 5,000 years before we turned up.
44:00
So it looks as though whatever finally killed Neanderthals off, it wasn't us.
44:09
What do you think eventually wiped them out?
44:12
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 tiger, that just random fluctuations in numbers can bring it down to zero. And there's no recovery from zero. So it could have been that. It could have been disease, inbreeding. A whole range of factors that can affect a small population and knock them over the edge.
44:40
I find it very moving to think that one day the last Neanderthal might have been sitting here, staring out to sea and perhaps waiting for their companions to return. Or maybe he or she knew that they were the last of their tribe or their family. But they can't have known that they were the last of their entire species.
45:07
So that was the end of the Neanderthals.
45:12
Or was it?
45:17
Some scientists believe their descendants are still walking around today.
45:25
If our ancestors interbred with them, some of us could be part-Neanderthal.
45:38
But they may not have survived at all had it not been for this –
45:46
the rock shelters and caves that riddle the landscape.
45:54
And deep underground, they left something that we still marvel at today.
46:33
I'm in a cave called Pech Merle, which is stunningly beautiful naturally, but look at this. This is real artistic expression, something that defines us and sets us apart as a species. And Pech Merle is unusual because artists were coming here to paint these images both before and after the peak of the last ice age. Generations of them returning to the cave as the world outside froze over.
47:05
This is a very beautiful image and it uses the contours of the rock. The horse's back sort of curves along a bulge in the rock, and there's an echo of the horse's head on this right side there. And it's obviously a very stylised horse as well. And I love the way those spots carry on into the background, as though the horse is sort of camouflaged against the rock.
47:30
And there's a hand placed against the rock just above the horse's back. I mean, that is amazing, isn't it? That's an ice-age hand. (SHORT, REPEATED SPITTING)
47:43
Michel Lorblanchet has devoted his life to studying the art found in caves like Pech Merle. (REPEATED SPITTING CONTINUES)
48:01
I think I naively imagined that you'd just take a mouthful of charcoal, bit of water and just spit it at the wall, and that would be it. But of course, all that would happen would be that the mess would run down the wall and obscure the stencil that you were trying to do. So you have to do it like this, using an almost dry mouth and just building it up, very gradually, with a fine spray.
48:29
Monsieur Lorblanchet did a recreation of the horses at Pech Merle using this technique. It took him a whole week. Is it finished? - Yes. Yes. - It's finished? - Yes. That's right.
48:41
- But what drove these people, struggling just to survive, to paint? The vast majority of these images seem to be animals. There don't seem to be many representations of humans. - No. That's true. They are mainly animal figures. And for them, of course, animals were not only game, but also spirits. Symbolic – so the animal figures are in fact symbolic figures. And going into Pech Merle, I mean, it's such a beautiful cave, with all the stalactites hanging down. - That's right, yes.
49:18
It does feel as though it was, I don't know, almost a temple. Yes. That's right. This is a natural temple, if you like. They are sacred sites. They are not painting just for fun. By painting a cave and having a sanctuary, it is a way for them to say, "Here is our sacred place." The painted cave is symbolic of the whole tribe.
49:48
- Being bound together in this way may have helped our ancestors survive the kind of climate change that only haunts our imaginations today.
50:00
The discovery was made by a young Aboriginal Australian.
50:18
So major that as soon as it was revealed, the site was buried again to protect it. It's still secret today?
50:41
But I've come here on a special day. Because for the first time since the site was reburied, local Aboriginal people and archaeologists are gathering once more to check on their discovery –
50:59
over 500 human footprints.
51:04
This is the heel here, and you can see the way that the foot sort of lifts up here. That's where the arch of the foot would be. And then the big toe is just there. So this is a right foot. It's amazing to see something which is so ephemeral, sort of normally here today, gone tomorrow. This is looking like a pretty big footprint. He was well fed.
51:28
It's incredibly hard, this layer, isn't it? It feels really stony. Is it a type of clay? [Man] It's just like our pottery. [Alice] And it must feel pretty personal as well because, you know, this is... I mean, this is your own heritage, isn't it? One of the oldest cultures in the world. So, it's very special and unique.
51:52
[Alice] But who do the footprints belong to?
51:56
Tanya Charles was here when they were found.
52:01
- Other people that was with us, they were saying, they belong to the farmers that were here. And we're like, nah, they're ours. You fellas wear shoes, we don't. We didn't back then. We just knew in our hearts. We knew that they were ours.
52:18
[Alice] Scientists and Aboriginal trackers have interpreted the prints of men, women and children walking and running around the edges of what was once an ancient lake. The most bizarre track seems to have belonged to a one-legged man. Like, we sort of knew that he only had one foot, but we didn't want to believe it. Because, you know, one-footed men way back in them times is like, oh, scary. And he was chasing a kangaroo and, erm... on his first throw, he actually missed the kangaroo.
52:49
- Right! - Yeah. On his second throw, he got him and dropped him down to one knee.
52:55
[Alice] How long ago did these people live?
53:04
With a new technique called luminescence dating, scientists could measure the tiniest glow when grains of sand from the footprints were analysed. And from this, they could calculate how long the footprints had lain buried. The results were stunning.
53:23
The footprints were around 20,000 years old.
53:35
There's something really intimate about this, because it's just a moment in somebody's life,
53:41
when they walked across this landscape and it just looks like it could be a footprint made yesterday. And yet, it's about 20,000 years old.
53:55
So is this when people first reached Australia, long after we colonised Europe and Asia? It would certainly make sense, given how far away Australia is.
54:10
Today on Flores, local people still tell stories of strange, human-like creatures – the cave-dwelling Ebu Gogo.
54:21
So I'd really, really like to know more about the story of Ebu Gogo.
54:29
[Translator] According to our ancestors, there were Ebu Gogo in our land, in our village, a long time ago, around the 15th century. - Are they humans, I mean, are they... Are they like us?
54:42
[Translator] They had two distinctive characteristics. They were like monkeys, but also like humans.
54:52
Their physical features were short, hefty...
54:59
..with long hair on the head and chest. And the females' breasts were big and long.
55:08
If they wanted to walk, they usually threw their long breasts over their shoulders.
55:19
- But nobody's seen one for a couple of hundred years?
55:24
[Translator] They really did exist and they were destroyed by our ancestors about seven generations ago.
55:37
There were two reasons for the elimination. Firstly, because they stole food and secondly, because they kidnapped our children.
55:49
[Alice] This sounds like the sort of spooky myths you might hear anywhere.
55:55
But believe it or not, this story may actually have some truth to it.
56:06
Archaeologists were excavating in this cave on the island, looking for signs of the earliest modern humans, when they made a startling discovery. A small-bodied, small-brained creature – a type of human that nobody had ever seen before. It quickly became known as "the Hobbit".
56:31
So this is the skeleton of this minute woman that the archaeologists found in the cave of Liang Bua, on the island of Flores. And she is just absolutely tiny. When she was standing at her full height, she would have reached to about a metre tall. She seems like an odd combination. Some bits look like us, but in miniature. Other parts look like more ancient human species.
56:56
People still are unsure about exactly who she is. Most people believe that she is indeed a different species. So it really does make us rethink what we think about ourselves and what we think about the whole human family as well.
57:12
Could the Hobbit have affected our ancestors' journey? Dating of the bones shows they were here around the time of the migration of our ancestors through Indonesia.
57:24
So would they have encountered this race, this population, of very tiny people? And what would have happened if they did? I don't know what they would have thought about Homo sapiens.
57:40
If they really were the vicious Ebu Gogo, our ancestors might have been best advised to avoid Flores.
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