Original subtitles

It was called Homo erectus.

It thrived for a million years in the tropics of Africa and Asia, but it had

never come north, into Europe.

Beneath a hillside in Italy, scientists have found an extraordinary new link to

our prehistoric past.

A strange glimpse into an ancient world.

Paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello is at Altamira for the first time.

20 meters into the rock the tunnel opens into a labyrinth of passageways carved

out over millions of years by subterranean rivers Okay, so now we are

through this narrow passage

80

meters from the surface This last passageway comes to a sudden end.

In front of you. Oh, my goodness.

Embedded in the rock wall, covered with mineral deposits, is the unmistakable

shape of a primitive human skull.

The arrival of the first human ancestors in Europe is a transforming moment in

our evolutionary story.

Here at Bilsingsleben in eastern Germany, scientists have uncovered

human -like activity almost half a million years old.

Along the banks of a prehistoric river, they have found over five tons of

objects.

Made from stones and broken animal bones, these remains lie scattered

ground.

But the most revealing discovery has come not from the objects themselves,

from the positions they were found in.

The strange circular pattern they made together.

Three of these circular groupings have been found at the site, all surrounded

what looks like the debris of human -like existence.

half -made tools, stones, and broken bones.

Archaeologists believe that these circles with bones scattered around

edges are the outlines of small round huts. They have found a kind of camp.

For a million years, our distant ancestors have stayed in the warmth of

tropics. But now, here was evidence that human -like creatures had arrived in

the hostile north.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, water dripping through the cave has

the Altamira skull with a thick layer of limestone, disguising many of its

features.

But the skull was not all that was found.

Yes, I can see the femur and then also the tibia, the lower leg bone. Another

tibia, please, please.

Laid out in front of the skull were the bones of an entire skeleton.

The other, another femur, the other femur.

The complete pelvis, is that?

Yeah.

From the shape of the pelvis, they knew that the creature was male.

And the leg bones are also quite big and robust.

This was quite a big person when he was alive.

The large, robust bones confirmed that this was a primitive ancestor.

The skeleton could have been here for as long as half a million years.

But no other clues were found in the cave, and the face, thick with

hid its identity.

Was this... Homo erectus, finally at large in Europe.

In the south of England, archaeologists have found more evidence of hominid

activity, also dated to half a million years ago.

Careful excavation has uncovered thousands of fragments of flint

what was once prehistoric grassland.

In the laboratory they tried to make sense of what they had found.

One by one they tested 20 ,000 fragments of flint against each other.

By meticulously matching pieces of flint found in the same location the

scientists discovered something extraordinary.

The flint fragments began to fit together.

From all over the field, the pieces of flint connected together,

slowly reforming

into the original stones that the flint had once been chipped from.

But inside each stone, a large piece of flint was missing.

And only when the archaeologists cast the shape of the missing piece did they

see what they had really found.

The shape of a hand axe.

The stone tool that a human creature had once chipped from the rock.

Evidence like this shows us that all these tens of thousands of pieces of

that we've recovered from the site all come from tool manufacture and the

production of hair necks.

Hundreds of hair necks.

This prehistoric meadow was once a kind of factory, a place where hundreds of

stone tools were manufactured.

The sheer number of these tools assigned that the creatures who made them had

not only arrived in Europe, but were thriving here.

Unable to remove Altamira Mann from the cave, his identity could only be

discovered using detailed photographs.

A first clue was visible on the face itself.

One of the most important things here is the shape of the cheekbones. We can see

that they're very smooth, going from the side of the face towards the front.

Now, this is a characteristic that you wouldn't find in Homo erectus.

But Professor Aiello found another, more conclusive detail.

It was on a photograph taken from underneath the head of Altamira Mann, a

of the back of the skull.

This is the Homo erectus, and in Homo erectus, the ridge runs from side to

across the back of the skull.

The occipital torus is where the neck muscles attach to the skull.

On Altamira Man, this ridge was different.

In Altamira Man, the important thing is that it's broken.

It's separated into two parts, and this is never found in the erectus.

He's not homo erectus. The question is, what is he?

Many features of his anatomy would suggest that he would likely belong to a

of early human called Homo heidelbergensis.

And Homo heidelbergensis is really quite rare.

And what's exciting about Aldo Moro Man is we have a complete skeleton.

Altamira man belongs to a mysterious species, Homo heidelbergensis.

Scientists know very little about this creature, only that it arose in Africa

and must have migrated north into Europe.

Half a million years ago, a remarkable evolutionary advance had taken place

Altamira man and his kind... were still alive.

Heidelbergensis was not alone in Europe. There were other unfamiliar creatures

at large.

Europe half a million years ago was a very different place from Europe today.

It had a range of large carnival species, which today we would think of

entirely African in distribution.

Things like the lion, the leopard, spotted hyena.

There were two lineages of elephant.

And they were accompanied by animals like the wolf and the brown bear and the

-called cave bear, an extinct form of very large bear.

Formidable creatures like the cave bear confronted Heidelbergensis in this

hostile world.

You've got a range of predators and prey, a whole structure of the

larger mammal fauna, very different from anything occurring on the Earth today.

and very different from anything that occurs in Europe.

On the high plateau of central Spain, there is still evidence of this

prehistoric Europe to be found.

Traces of the time when the land was populated with large predatory

A quarter million years ago, it was a lake all over here.

The lake that was once here has gone, but the sediments from it have been left

undisturbed by erosion, preserving evidence of animals half a million years

We excavated here more than 100 animal bodies of different species. They

were big elephants, aurochs, horses, and red deer.

Over 100 animal carcasses were buried in the sediments, but that was not all.

It looked as though Heidelbergensis had been here too.

we found stone tools, big stone tools.

So there is no doubt that Homo heidelbergensis also came here just to

from those animals.

The valley appeared to be a place where heidelbergensis had once scavenged meat.

At Boxgrove, a hoard of animal bones has begun to reveal what Heidelbergensis

was actually doing on the prehistoric plains of Europe.

Among the stone tools left behind, archaeologists have also found the

extinct kinds of rhinoceros, elephant and horse.

Under the microscope, they found the bones were covered with strange marks.

And there's one coming into view now.

These are long linear features that run across this pelvis.

The lines are cut marks made half a million years ago by flint tools.

They're defleshing the meat off the pelvis.

But there were other marks on the bones This

is a tooth puncture mark from the tooth

of a carnivore, in this case a wolf

But

then they found a cut mark and a tooth mark together

There's the cut mark made by a stone tool.

There's the tooth puncture mark.

And the critical thing is that the cut mark has been broken through

by the gnawing mark.

And this suggests that hominids got to the carcass before the carnivores.

These tiny marks have a huge significance in the mystery of how our

survived in prehistoric Europe. It implies that the hominid made the kill.

For two million years, our ancestors had been scavengers.

But here was evidence that this species was not feeding off carcasses left by

other animals.

Something new had turned Heidelbergensis into a killer.

The internal volume of a skull can be measured by a simple technique using

beads.

It's a method used to estimate brain size.

The brain size of modern humans is over 30 % larger than the brain size of Homo

erectus.

To measure the brain size of Homo heidelbergensis, scientists used a skull

in Greece.

Although they expected to see a larger brain than erectus, what they actually

found was beyond all expectations.

Half a million years ago, Heidelbergensis had a brain almost the

own.

The prehistoric camp at Bilfinkleben has begun to give an insight into the day

-to -day lives of these large -brained early humans.

The outlines of three huts had already been found, marked out by circles of

bones and stones.

But the objects were grouped so precisely around each hut that

began to wonder if there might be more to these clusters of objects.

And as they looked closer, it was clear that they could begin to reconstruct the

daily life of the camp.

The bones and the stones are organized and arranged to clearly show us where

specific activities took place.

And we get a wonderful impression of a moment in time, just a few minutes.

of activity happening several hundred thousand years ago.

There are rocks which appear to have been used as anvils to smash open the

leg bones of elephant and rhinoceros to get at the marrow inside.

Pieces of bone were adapted to make tools.

Long blades were chipped and polished.

to make scrapers for cleaning the animal hides.

Here the antlers of red deer have been deliberately broken.

The shape would have made a useful digging tool.

And there are areas where flint was chipped into tiny tools, some with fine

cutting blades, and others that may have been used to pierce holes in animal

skins.

From this evidence of camp life, archaeologists

can picture a group that was thriving in this hostile world by working as a

community.

Earlier human ancestors in Africa and Asia had scavenged meat, feeding off

left by other predators.

But meat was only a part of their diet.

The tropical climate provided a year -round supply of plant food.

But by half a million years ago, groups of Heidelbergensis were surviving right

across Europe.

a continent of freezing winters and wild predators.

When we think of the first humans coming into Europe, it's clear that they were

coming into a Europe which presented them with very harsh conditions and made

life very difficult for them.

They came into a Europe where plant foods were not available in the form

humans would want them for six months or so of the year.

And so it's pretty obvious, I think, that meat would be of primary importance

them.

Only meat would guarantee survival in the long winters without plant food.

To get the meat, there's really only two possible ways, either scavenging or

hunting.

Scavenging brings them into competition with all the large carnivores that are

around, the lion, the leopard, the wolf, the hyenas.

Hunting, of course... means that they have to deal with the large animals

themselves in order to hunt them. Things like the rhino, things like the

elephant, or something like this, which is the ancestor of the modern cattle.

Standing about two meters at the shoulder, a large aggressive animal.

And it's very hard to imagine them hunting something like this.

The fighting bulls of Spain still possess the aggressive instincts of

prehistoric ancestors.

In front of beasts like these, it's clear that humans did not evolve as

predators. They lacked the speed and strength to face animals in the wild.

Yet it was animals like these that Heidelbergensis had to confront to

prehistoric Europe.

Scientists looked for hard evidence of how Heidelbergensis might have tackled

Europe's violent animals.

Stephen Mython has studied collections of tools buried in the vaults of museums

across the continent.

As he looked, he began to notice that the hand axes made by earlier types of

ancestor were all extremely similar.

This one's from South Africa, near Cape Town.

It shows the basic principle very well.

Very frequently they're a pear -shaped artefact and they are worked alternately

from both sides of the nodule. One flake coming off one side, another off the

other. the other side.

Now, there's sounds throughout the old world. This example here comes from

India. You can see it's near identical.

But when he examined hand axes made by Heidelbergensis in Europe, he found that

a million years of identical tools had come to an end.

This is a, what's known as a ficrol.

Remarkable type of hand axe. Large, elegant, it's beautiful.

The axe has been worked far more than was needed for something purely

functional.

That tools were no longer just for cutting meat was confirmed by an

extraordinary discovery.

It's the largest hand axe that's ever been found.

It's quite an enormous piece, and in Flint it would be extremely heavy,

impossible to manipulate for any utilitarian, useful function.

There's no way this is intentionally made just for butchering animals or

chopping up plants.

There's something new going on here.

Scientists believe that this was an object made for others to look at,

vital clue into the mind of Homo heidelbergensis.

Not only does the species know its own mind, it also knows the minds of the

other people in the group, because it's trying to change those minds.

A tool that was no longer a tool, but a beautiful object made to influence the

minds of others.

Evidence of a complex human -like ability to communicate.

Complexity suggesting Heidelbergensis had an early form of language.

We don't know how complex the language was. It could have been very simple,

more simple than our own.

It would have allowed them to be actually successful in exploiting this

environment, primarily because they could talk about past experiences and on

basis of those, plan for the future.

On the high plateau of central Spain, evidence for language and planning by

Heidelbergensis is buried in the ground.

Hundreds of animal bodies were found by the shores of the prehistoric lake, and

there are now signs for human involvement in their deaths.

The methodic excavations by squares showed us that

there is a peculiar distribution of findings.

The bones of different species of animals were found grouped together.

And in two particular points, there were a concentration of different species.

Species that Professor Aguirre believes would not normally be found together.

We were convinced.

that this distribution was not natural.

Around the shores of the prehistoric lake were muddy swamps, the perfect

to set a trap.

Humans brought the animals, pushing them to the natural traps

into the mud of those swamps.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, bands of Heidelbergensis left the safety

their camps, to come here and hunt.

Then in the north of Germany, scientists found a unique trace of that violent

ancestral world.

It was dug from an open strip coal mine near Hannover.

Ground conditions have made possible a miraculous act of preservation.

What the scientists found here is exactly as it once was.

half a million years ago

it's

so incredible to hold part of a pier in your hand which is

about 400 000 years old and it looked so fresh that

you could have Find it five minutes before in your garden.

Nine of these spears have been found.

Each was cut from the trunk of a small spruce tree.

The point sharpened at the base where the wood is hardest.

They're over two meters long and balanced to fly through the air like a

javelin.

These spears are evidence of a new kind of intelligence that could control the

violence of nature.

For these beautiful weapons were made with a single, simple objective.

To kill.

They're completely defleshing the carcass. They're going for

every sort of facet that's a meat -bearing bone.

At Boxgrove, further examination of cut marks on the bones revealed that

Heidelbergensis was no longer crudely butchering the animals they killed.

This is the top of a deer's backbone, and this is very interesting because

you can see we've got these very clear cut marks running

down the side where they're removing what are effectively the neck fillets.

And it's likely with this that this is the last vertebra before the head, so

they've probably taken the head off.

and then they're removing these neck fillets.

In fact, all the bones they had excavated showed the same signs of

systematic butchery.

And the result of this butchery is enormous amounts of meat.

But the meat wasn't just for the hunters themselves.

for scientists had found evidence that there were now others who depended on

hunters to provide food.

This is the jaw of a young chimp, and it's about three years of age.

And what's interesting about it is the first permanent tooth here, the first

molar, has just erupted.

The reason this is important is this really marks the end of infant

The little chimp is equipped now to eat an adult diet.

and it can begin to forage and survive on its own.

There is a precise relationship between the brain size of a species and the year

the first adult teeth erupt.

In the chimpanzee, these teeth erupt at three years and the infant's dependency

on its parents ends.

In modern humans, the much larger brain size delays tooth eruption until six.

We know that Heidelbergensis had a much larger brain size than the chimpanzees.

And in fact, the brain size was close to humans.

So if we follow the line across for Heidelbergensis, we would expect that

first molar tooth would erupt somewhere between five and six years of age.

Now this extended period of infant dependency would have been a real

them.

With their large brains, Heidelbergensis would have had to care for their

children for longer than any previous species of human ancestor.

scientists believe that meat was butchered at the kill site and brought

others who were looking after the young the meat was taken away taken away to

hominids that weren't at the kill but part of the same social group

Altamira Mann would have had dependents, others who needed him to bring back

meat from the kill.

Altamira Mann's most important relationship was undoubtedly with his

female, perhaps their joint children, individuals that he felt very close to.

Altamira man's species came to Europe from Africa half a million years ago.

They were hunters, confronting danger with cunning and invention, and sharing

the meat they won with their own kind, creating the ties of family life that we

still feel today.

There was a bond.

Perhaps this bond involved trust, a feeling of loyalty, empathy.

Maybe it even could have been love.

These feelings had to originate somewhere in the fossil record.

And here with Altamira Man, we have all the ingredients.

We have him here where he died.

It looks like he just simply fell into the hole.

We can't really see enough of the bones to know whether he broke a leg or

otherwise was disabled by the fall.

He basically just couldn't get back out of the cave.

As he lay dying in the cave, Many thoughts could have been going through

mind.

He may have been feeling very strong emotions.

He may have been feeling a sense of loss.

He very likely could have been feeling love for these individuals who were

to miss him, be in serious circumstances without him.

On the plains of Europe, human evolution had entered a new phase.

Half a million years ago, our ancestors became human -like in mind as well as

body. And in these emerging minds lay the future power of the human line.

In the next program, we discover a species which emerged 150 ,000 years

small beach -living population who are the direct ancestors of every person

alive today.