All language subtitles for BBC - Ape-Man, Adventures in Human Evolution 1 - Human

And I'm losing track of where I end and
here begins.

Dr. Edsel Cardenia is a clinical
psychologist employed by the American

Department of Defense.

His research is into altered states of
consciousness.

And Janet Crossley has a special talent
for self -hypnosis.

Anything else you can tell me at this
point?

Through Janet, Dr. Cardania is hoping to
connect with the minds of our most

distant ancestors and enter their
primitive world.

Coming back home after a long time away.

For over a hundred years, we have
searched for traces of our earliest

to find out how our species emerged.

Were the cave dwellers of the distant
past pre -human creatures or were they

all like us?

Hidden inside this French cave, 19th
century archaeologists found a tiny

of a human -like head.

Called the Venus de Brassens -Puis, we
now know that she is 25 ,000 years old.

But who were the creatures who made her?

Were they our species or something else?

When did people like us first appear on
the Earth?

Today, archaeologists need to discover
the first real humans before they can

understand our deepest origins.

A team from Bordeaux has come to explore
a small area where the cave roof once

opened to the sky.

Searching through the filth, the
archaeologists come across a hoard of

First, a flint fragment.

And then more.

Another flint, but with a sharpened
edge, like a blade.

There's a fox's tooth.

and the bones of other animals abandoned
on the cave floor just a few meters

from the place where the venus was found

at

their site office the archaeologist
analyzed the large collection of animal

bones from the cave.

They hope that these bones will tell
them something about what went on there.

Looking closely at them, they see minute
cut marks, the telltale traces of de

-fleshing.

Flint tools were being used in the cave
to get at the animal meat.

These bones are domestic rubbish.

The cave was perhaps the home to
creatures intelligent enough to make

to use tools 25 ,000 years ago.

The bits of bone and the bits of stone
that archaeologists excavate are not

important in and of themselves.

Archaeologists look at the relationship
between these objects, look at the

patterns that we see in them, and then
create some significance to these

And it's by looking at those patterns,
looking at those relationships, that we

can start asking questions about the
people who made them. Not only asking

questions about the people who made
them, but also about ourselves in

relationship to these people. And we can
start thinking about, were those people

like us in any way?

To the Garonne floodplain from Brassens
-Puy are the foothills of Kersi.

And here our ancestors have left another
kind of evidence that may help us

understand what kind of creatures they
were.

Once again in caves, there are traces of
their physical presence.

A footprint.

And something else.

Markings on the rock.

Drawings.

They're the same age as the bones the
archaeologists have discovered.

It looks as if the painters drew the
animals they saw around them.

Strangely, the archaeologists have found
nothing to suggest that people ever

lived here.

And 200 metres from the entrance of the
cave, there's something more.

a pair of horses covered with a halo of
red and black dots

and adorned with the painter's
handprints

but

there are no other remains

nothing at all it seems they came
painted the horses and left

Sometimes it's very frustrating looking
at these images.

It's like a story with illustrations.

We don't have that story from the
ancient minds that made these paintings.

We have to think of some other way of
trying to understand what that story is,

what it is that those ancient people
were trying to portray in those images

they painted on the walls of the caves.

If we could make sense of these images,
for the first time we might understand

how the minds of our ancestors worked,
if they were at all like us.

But until now, the archaeologists have
failed.

The meaning of the images remains a
mystery.

On the other side of the world, Thomas
Dawson and his colleague David Lewis

Williams believe they're on the verge of
a breakthrough in understanding the

European cave paintings.

It's based on discoveries made high in
the cliffs of the great South African

escarpment.

Here, too, there are pictures on the
rock.

Paintings of antelopes cover the
sandstone walls.

The connection between these and the
French caves is something that has

people for many, many years.

Like the French caves, these are
paintings, a lot of animals, beautifully

painted animals.

They are done one on top of the other in
superpositions.

Sometimes they are... interacting, as it
were, with the rock face.

More than half the rock paintings are of
the eland antelope.

But the pictures are so complex that
only by tracing them can the

know precisely what is there.

Further up the cliff, Faith, is an
extraordinary painting of an eland

with some human figures.

Here the painter has captured an instant
of time with uncanny accuracy, the

moment of the eland's death.

When an eland dies, it staggers on its
front legs, its weight pushes down the

front legs, its head comes down, the
neck comes down like this.

and its head swings uncontrollably like
that as it loses control of its muscles.

And here you can see the eland is
looking directly at us with its hollow

The artist's observations are precise.

Here the eland's legs are shown crossed
in death.

But now the painter records a moment
which is quite unreal.

One of the figures is holding on to the
animal's tail.

His face is completely unhuman.

Like the eland, his legs are crossed.

He even has eland hooves.

It's almost as if the human figures in
the painting are imitating the dying

eland.

Explorers reported that these pictures
were the work of scattered groups of

hunter -gatherers who once lived in
these mountains, the Bushmen.

Like the early European cave paintings,
the pictures seem to describe a complex

world of stories and mythology.

But these were made only a few hundred
years ago, almost within living memory.

The archaeologists believe that the
stories behind these paintings could be

way into the lost world of the cave
people 25 ,000 years ago.

I'm going to help you to go into an even
deeper state of hypnosis.

And I'm going to help you by just
counting slowly from 1 to 30.

0 represents being wide awake.

1 to 10 represents feeling slightly
different than normal.

Dr. Cardenio's investigation into the
human mind involves 28 specially

volunteers with a very rare talent.

Like Janet Crossley, all are gifted at
self -hypnosis.

From 41 onwards, very deep hypnosis,
open and that you can go as deep into

hypnosis as you want.

So very slowly now, it's one, two.

But this is an unusual kind of hypnosis.

Cardenia will be making no suggestions
to Janet.

Instead, the aim is to shut down her
awareness of the modern world around

leaving her mind free to function on its
own.

Six. In hypnosis, you are in an enhanced
form of suggestibility. So if you give

a suggestion, the person, at least a
highly hypnotizable person, is likely to

experience it. So the question is, if
you minimize the suggestions or

them, is there something that very
highly hypnotizable people may

when they say that they are in a state
of hypnosis?

After 20 minutes... Janet begins to have
experiences which have nothing to do

with the real world.

She's in a state of altered
consciousness.

There is a pulsating white light, but
it's becoming more colorful.

Dr. Cardenia believes that this may be
what he's looking for, mental events

which derive solely from the workings of
the human mind, not from experiences of

the modern world.

State?

Forty.

Okay.

Psychic. tunnel of colors and it feels
like I'm going up through a tunnel of

colors.

The mantis was the one who put Komanga's
shoe in the water.

In an archive in Cape Town there's a
collection of Bushman stories.

Then the mantis made an eland with
Omonga's shoe.

It's a record of the ancient spoken
language of the Bushmen.

The eland et, causing himself to grow
with the mantis's

honey.

The stories are very obscure.

They emphasize eland, just like the
painting.

But for Lewis Williams, the language of
the stories offers a clue.

The language that the Bushmen spoke is
now extinct.

Nobody speaks that language anymore, so
this is the only record that we have of

it. But it's only one of a whole family
of Bushmen languages, not just one

Bushmen language.

And other languages like Qong and Tui
and Qong, those

languages are still being spoken far to
the north in the Kalahari Desert.

Until recently, the Kalahari Desert was
inhabited only by small bands of nomadic

hunters.

These are the Djukwantsi, people who
still speak a bushman language.

They no longer live by hunting in the
old way, but their beliefs are still

traditional.

We knew that they had never made
paintings, but from the work that

anthropologists had carried out in the
Kalahari, we knew that they were living

fairly traditional lifestyles.

The Dutuanthi live hundreds of miles
from the Drakensberg rock shelter, but

Dauphin has brought tracings of the
paintings to show them.

These are copies of pictures from the
Drakensberg.

. .

.

. .

For the Jituansi, the island has sacred
power, which people at Kunta can hear.

And what about this figure here?

The Pitwanchi dance at night to summon
the Elan power.

The elan dance lasts for several hours.

As it continues, something strange
happens to Kunta.

The noise and the rhythm begin to shut
out reality and send him into a trance,

into a state of altered consciousness.

In their trance, dancers see the spirit
of the elan as visions in the darkness.

and believe they take on its power.

Anthropologists call this kind of ritual
shamanic.

Kunta is a shaman.

What we've been seeing here is a classic
shamanistic trance ritual.

And this relates to very similar
experiences that people have all over

world. And this is because the kinds of
experiences that shamans have in an

altered state of consciousness are the
same.

The way in which they talk about them is
often very similar as well. People talk

about traveling underground, going
through a tunnel, dying and coming alive

again. They talk about flying, a sense
of weightlessness, floating above

everybody around them.

They also use animal spirit helpers in
order to go on these journeys to the

spirit world.

The colors, what shape?

Do they have any shape?

They keep changing and mixing.

It's like they're flowing through each
other and on top of each other.

Sometimes mixing and making new colors
and sometimes not.

I feel like I'm going to be able to
float up into the colors soon.

Like Kunta, Janet Crossley is also
experiencing hallucinations.

Have you seen any shapes, forms,
anything of that sort? Any other

Yes. Can you please tell me more about
them?

trying to figure out if it was a fish or
if it was something else, and I think

it was something else.

Once their awareness of the outside
world was gone, all of Cardenius'

saw visions of some kind.

They would go into a place where they
may see a number of unusual images,

surrealistic type of landscape, a vast
sea of darkness, or they may see just

colors, bright colors, very rich,
intense, vivid imagery.

For Lewis Williams and Dawson, the
Drakensberg paintings depict just this

of imagery.

To them, the pictures record
hallucinations seen by shamans in

The paintings are not just paintings of
everyday life.

They depict the trance experience and
the beliefs associated with it. But

are also a lot of hallucinatory elements
that could only have been seen by

medicine men in trance in the spirit
world.

ways of letting everybody know what
those experiences were and helping to

belief in the spirit world possible for
everybody in the community.

The South African archaeologist began to
wonder if the French cave paintings

might also be evidence for belief in a
spirit world 25 ,000 years ago.

In France, the cave at Pesmel has begun
to reveal its secret.

Detailed work by the French
archaeologists has identified the

the cave painters used to get their
characteristic airbrushed effect.

The painters took the pigment in their
mouths and spitting it in the wall and

using their hand as a stencil to realize
the outline

and then feel the figure in the same way
by spitting the pigment.

And the French archaeologists have
noticed a strange thing about the

in Peshmel.

The animals are often painted right on
top of one another, with no reference to

what was there before, just like the
South African pictures.

There are a great many similarities
between the paintings made in France and

those made in Southern Africa.

Looking at those similarities, you start
thinking there must be something

similar about the processes that
produced these images in the first

Dawson's sense of a connection between
the French and South African cave

paintings is strengthened by an unusual
drawing in Peshmerga.

It's hidden away at the end of a narrow
passage.

It looks like a human being.

with painted lines coming out from its
body, like arrows or spears.

Worn by time, the drawing has been
called the Wounded Man.

Archaeologists have always found it
puzzling.

The drawings of men, of human beings,
are very rare, and usually it is in a

hidden place.

What does it mean? We don't know.

The meaning of the wounded man could be
explained by the trance dance of the

Jutwansi.

It involves intense pain in the stomach
and kidney.

. . . .

.

Kunta's pain seems to match the picture
of the wounded man.

The archaeologists suspect that the
drawing in the French caves is also a

shaman.

They're more spectacular.

Cardenio's study has produced some
extraordinary results.

At a particular stage in the trance, all
his volunteers see the same kind of

hallucination, strange visions of
abstract geometric shapes.

They move and they flow into each other,
and sometimes they mix and

sometimes they don't.

What I found was that across
individuals, and again, please bear in

these people were not in contact with
each other. They were not in the same

class. They did not know each other. I
found out that there seemed to be more

less a general pattern.

When people are experiencing unusual
altered states of consciousness, they

some geometric patterns.

There are about four or five constants.

A number of them have to do with grids,
just geometric figures that have to do

with grids, spirals.

funnels, tunnels, figures of that sort.

Grid patterns are one of the most common
forms of hallucination.

They even appear to patients with eye
disease.

Edmund Gowler thieved these grids
spontaneously in areas where his vision

blank.

Doctors believe it's because the brain
is starved of information from damaged

parts of the retina.

just as it has starved of visual
information in a trunk.

And then you have another series of
straight lines like that, which have got

lines across them to give you a grid of
patterns.

What we think is happening is that it's
something to do with the way the brain

is wired up, something to do with the
architecture of the visual brain.

And really, to develop that theme
further, we have to look at the brain as

working. We have to capture a
hallucination in a brain scanner.

see which parts of the brain are
actually lighting up during a

These hallucinations can last up to five
minutes.

The scanner captures a minute slice of
the patient's brain each second.

The scientists are able to see which
parts of the brain are active at any

moment.

This is a patient who's having grid
hallucinations.

This is when there's no hallucinations
taking place. He's lying in the scanner.

He's waiting for one to occur.

When one occurs, he presses a button,
and these are the areas of the brain

light up when he's hallucinating.

We can see these little red dots here.
They're in the back of the brain in the

occipital lobe. They're in an area that
we would expect to light up when grids

were hallucinated.

These grid hallucinations aren't just
caused by eye disease. They also occur

people with migraine, strokes, and other

conditions.

They are a universal product of the
physical structure of the human brain.

No one's ever systematically looked at
the exact geometry of these experiences.

So the surprising feature was that when
patients drew them or described them in

more detail, they all turned out to be
the same experience.

Deep in the prehistoric caves, the
archaeologists have found more than just

animal paintings.

The cave people drew a lot of abstract
images.

Some are geometric rows of colored dots.

And many of the others are grid
patterns, very like the ones observed in

brain scanner.

No one has really studied these abstract
markings until recently.

But now their significance is becoming
clear.

Exactly the same kind of grids and dots
appear in the Bushman paintings of their

trance experience.

Once we found out about the research on
altered states of consciousness and the

way in which people see hallucinations,
we saw those kinds of images in the rock

art of Southern Africa.

We then started comparing that with the
images that we found in the French

caves. And one of the most striking
comparisons we can make is this image

where you've got dots superimposed on an
eland's body.

There's also a grid painted into the
eland's body, very, very similar to this

horse that we find in Peshmel in the
French caves, where the dots literally

cover the body and go beyond the body of
the horses.

Now, for the first time, the scientists
had hard evidence to suggest that trance

and hallucination were the key to the
cave paintings.

In many of the French caves, the
archaeologists have noticed a strange

relationship between the pictures and
the rock itself.

What is fascinating is the way they use
the rock.

Sometimes the whole body of the animal
is contained in the shape of the rock.

It's just like they have been inspired
by...

by the detail, the shape.

They just pass through and see, well,
this is a mammoth, this is a horse.

We found this everywhere.

In looking at the Southern African rock
art for a long time, we thought that

they were just painting images on the
rocks.

We then started realising that they used
specific natural features to enhance

the image in some way.

Some images come out of cracks in the
rock. In this instance, it's not so much

crack as a line which they've drawn on
the rock, and then they have a human

the knee, the calf, and a hoof at the
end coming out of this line in the rock.

The archaeologists suspect that the rock
face played the same role in the French

caves, that it's significant.

with spiritual.

Perhaps the spirit world lay beyond the
rock face, and these paintings were a

way of bringing the spirit world and the
real world together.

After years of studying the South
African art, Dowson and Lewis Williams

believed that at Pashmeltu, the rock
wall was a sacred place.

The rock face itself is important, and
that is why we have handprints placed

onto the rock, not just to make pictures
of hands, but more to it than that. And

the interesting thing is that here we've
got handprints.

This lower one here, somebody would
probably have had to lie down on the

to make it. And then there are two other
prints up here, one here and one here.

And the important thing is the way in
which these handprints were made,

when they placed the hand there and they
blew the paint over the hand, the hand

was then behind the paint.

So people saw the black, and it's only
when they took the hand away that you

the print. But the ritual of making it
was that the hand goes behind the paint,

and hence the hand reaches through into
the spirit world.

The rock, as it were, disappears.

The membrane's gone, and we've made
contact with the spirit world.

For Lewis Williams, the paintings at
Pethwell are dramatic evidence of

where shamans sought power through
visions of the animal spirits behind the

rock.

I think they're looking for animals,
both with their eyes and with their

So the vision comes, and then they paint
the vision on the rock, but the rock

suggests the vision in a way, and
they're seeking it.

So there's a constant interaction going
on between the person and the rock,

which is a membrane between this world
and the spirit world. So it's an

interaction of two realms.

Two, not quite yet, but you will be
fully alert.

And one, you can open your eyes.

Fully alert.

How are you?

Fine. What can you tell me about your
experience now, just general impression?

It's wonderful.

A feature of altered consciousness is
the euphoria that many people experience

afterwards.

People talk about heaven and I think
that's what it's like.

How real did the experience feel?

It was real.

Yeah, perfectly real.

Do you sense that this has any kind of
aspects to it? Is it helpful

to you, perhaps to other people?

I know it's helpful to me.

As far as to other people, I don't know.

If other people could go there, then it
would be good for them, too.

It's their way of healing people who are
sick.

But whatever it does for their health,
it makes them feel good.

The need to make sense of what the brain
makes us feel is a universal quality.

It's a function of our modern human
mind.

It's experienced and profited all over
the world.

Even though these are very different
cultures, geographically distant, what

we're having is not some kind of
cultural diffusion.

What we're having is people who are
talented at getting into their own

experience and being able to come back
to us and report about those voyages,

that those people were in South Africa,
they were in France.

and they were in a hypnosis lab in the U
.S. and anywhere else.

I think this is a very important point
because then it tells us there is

something essentially human about this
experience.

We can see that these people were
thinking about not just the world that

were living in, but also other spiritual
worlds, other realities, not just the

physical reality of their day -to -day
existence.

And not only that, but they were using
graphic ways of portraying those

different realities.

We do that in our art today. We do it in
our archaeology. We do it in all sorts

of different ways of thinking about
other realities.

Maybe these people who made these
paintings so long ago were very much

ourselves today.

When the early archaeologists first
discovered the Venus of Brassens -Puy,

felt they were dealing with pre -human
creatures.

They were wrong.

Today, we know that the people in this
cave 25 ,000 years ago had minds

identical to our own.

From this moment on, we know that we
were truly human.

In the next episode, we'll go back to
the very start of the human story.