Science

The Incredible Human Journey episode 5 – The Americas: Alice Roberts investigates how humans may have reached North and South America, looking at routes across the Canadian ice sheet and from Australia across the Pacific. For Stone Age people, reaching North and South America seems impossible – on each side vast oceans, and to the north an impenetrable ice sheet that covered the whole of Canada. So how did the first Americans get there?       Dr Alice Roberts discovers evidence for an ancient corridor through the Canadian ice sheet that may have allowed those first people through. But

The Incredible Human Journey episode 4 – Australia: Dr Alice Roberts looks at our ancestors’ seemingly impossible journey to Australia. There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet.      

The Incredible Human Journey episode 3 – Europe: In Europe, Dr Alice Roberts investigates how our species coped with the rival Neanderthals and the Ice Age. There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo Sapiens came to

The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 – Asia: There are seven billion humans on earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet.       The journey continues into Asia, the world’s greatest land mass, on a

The Incredible Human Journey episode 1 – Out of Africa: Dr Alice Roberts travels the globe to discover the incredible story of how humans left Africa to colonise the world – overcoming hostile terrain, extreme weather and other species of human. She pieces together precious fragments of bone, stone and new DNA evidence and discovers how this journey changed these African ancestors into the people of today. Alice travels to Africa in search of the birthplace of the first people. They were so few in number and so vulnerable that today they would probably be considered an endangered species. So