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 quest to discover how early hunter-gatherers managed to survive in one of the most inhospitable places on earth – the Arctic region of northern Siberia. Alice meets the nomadic Evenki people, whose lives are dictated by reindeer, both wild and domesticated, and discovers that the survival techniques of this very ancient people have been passed down through generations. Alice also explores what may have occurred during human migration to produce Chinese physical characteristics, and considers a controversial claim about Chinese evolution – that the Chinese do not share the same African ancestry as other peoples.
The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 – Asia
The evolution of the Chinese people has a long and complex history that spans over thousands of years. The Chinese people are thought to have originated in East Asia and have a genetic ancestry that is distinct from other populations in the region. The earliest known human fossils from China, which date back around 500,000 years, are of the Homo erectus species. Later, around 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) are thought to have migrated to China from Africa and other parts of Asia.
Over time, the Chinese people have developed their own unique physical and cultural characteristics, as a result of both genetic and environmental factors. For example, the Chinese people have a higher frequency of certain genetic markers, such as the M130 marker, which is associated with East Asian populations. The Chinese culture has also been influenced by a number of different factors, including geography, religion, and the influence of other cultures. For example, the Chinese language, which is a part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, has been influenced by a number of different language groups over time. It is important to note that the process of evolution is ongoing, and the Chinese people, like all human populations, continue to evolve and change over time.
Humans
Until about 12,000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The Neolithic Revolution (the invention of agriculture) first took place in Southwest Asia and spread through large parts of the Old World over the following millennia. It also occurred independently in Mesoamerica (about 6,000 years ago), China, Papua New Guinea, and the Sahel and West Savanna regions of Africa. Access to food surplus led to the formation of permanent human settlements, the domestication of animals and the use of metal tools for the first time in history. Agriculture and sedentary lifestyle led to the emergence of early civilizations.
An urban revolution took place in the 4th millennium BCE with the development of city-states, particularly Sumerian cities located in Mesopotamia. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BCE. Other major civilizations to develop around this time were Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilization. They eventually traded with each other and invented technology such as wheels, plows and sails. Astronomy and mathematics were also developed and the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. There is evidence of a severe drought lasting about a hundred years that may have caused the decline of these civilizations, with new ones appearing in the aftermath. Babylonians came to dominate Mesopotamia while others, such as Poverty Point cultures, Minoans and the Shang dynasty, rose to prominence in new areas. The Bronze Age suddenly collapsed around 1200 BCE, resulting in the disappearance of a number of civilizations and the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages. During this period iron started replacing bronze, leading to the Iron Age.
In the 5th century BCE, history started being recorded as a discipline, which provided a much clearer picture of life at the time. Between the 8th and 6th century BCE, Europe entered the classical antiquity age, a period when ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished. Around this time other civilizations also came to prominence. The Maya civilization started to build cities and create complex calendars. In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum overtook the declining Kingdom of Kush and facilitated trade between India and the Mediterranean. In West Asia, the Achaemenid Empire’s system of centralized governance became the precursor to many later empires, while the Gupta Empire in India and the Han dynasty in China have been described as golden ages in their respective regions.
Dr Alice Roberts – The Incredible Human Journey episode 2
Alice May Roberts FRSB (born 19 May 1973) is an English biological anthropologist, biologist, television presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been professor of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK between January 2019 and May 2022. She is now a vice president of the organisation.
After graduating, Roberts worked as a junior doctor with the National Health Service in South Wales for eighteen months. In 1998 she left clinical medicine and worked as an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Bristol, becoming a lecturer there in 1999.
She spent seven years working part-time on her PhD in paleopathology, the study of disease in ancient human remains, receiving the degree in 2008. She was a senior teaching fellow at the University of Bristol Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy, where her main roles were teaching clinical anatomy, embryology and physical anthropology, as well as researching osteoarchaeology and paleopathology. She stated in 2009 that she was working towards becoming a professor of anatomy.
In 2009 she co-presented modules for the Beating Bipolar programme, the first internet-based education treatment for patients with bipolar depression, trialled by Cardiff University researchers. From August 2009 until January 2012, Roberts was a visiting fellow in both the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Department of Anatomy of the University of Bristol. From 2009 to 2016 Roberts was Director of Anatomy at the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery and also an honorary fellow at Hull York Medical School.
In February 2012 Roberts was appointed the University of Birmingham’s first professor of public engagement in science. Roberts has been a member of the advisory board of Cheltenham Science Festival for ten years and a member of the Advisory Board of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath since 2018.
Writing in the i newspaper in 2016, Roberts dismissed the aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH) as a distraction “from the emerging story of human evolution that is more interesting and complex”, adding that AAH has become “a theory of everything” that is simultaneously “too extravagant and too simple”. She concluded by saying that “science is about evidence, not wishful thinking”. Roberts and Aoife McLysaght co-presented the 2018 Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution in London. She is president of the British Science Association; her term started in September 2019. In January 2021 Roberts presented a ten-part narrative history series about the human body entitled Bodies on BBC Radio 4.
