All language subtitles for First Humans The Cave Discovery Channel 4 2015 MVGroup EN Sub

Ever since Darwin put forward
the idea that we evolved from apes,

scientists have been searching for
evidence of the first creatures

that left the ape world
and crossed into ours.

The so-called missing link.

But these bones are extremely rare,

allowing only fleeting glimpses

of how we slowly changed
from ape to human.

Now, deep inside remote underground
chambers in South Africa,

not one but two new
species of hominids,

our ancient ancestors,
have been discovered.

There it was, right there.

One of the most spectacular early
hominids ever discovered,

lying on the surface of the cave.

And not just a few bone fragments...

..there are thousands.

It's everywhere.

Ah, beautiful!

The first thing that came through
my mind was Howard Carter's

anecdote about opening
Tutankhamen's tomb.

It was Lord Carnarvon in the back
saying, you know, "What do you see?"

And Carter says,
"Things, wonderful things."

We have found a most remarkable
creature and a most unexpected one.

This is the story of a discovery
that could rewrite

the history of our evolution

and transform our understanding
of our human origins.

We realised all of our preconceived
notions have to be tossed aside.

And this unique find is already
throwing up revolutionary

new theories about how our earliest
ancestors lived and died.

It looks like they got in there
because somebody put him there.

Now, if we say that,
you have to understand,

that's a very
controversial thing to say.

Were these primitive creatures
burying their own dead?

Right now, it looks
a lot like that.

Will it hold out to be that?

That will be a mystery
I'd want to see solved.

In Autumn 2013, cave enthusiasts

Rick Hunter and Steve Tucker set out

to explore a deep cave system near
Johannesburg in South Africa.

It's called Rising Star.

It's an amazing cave.
It's got a bit of everything.

There's tight squeezes, some great
climbs, beautiful formations.

Rick and Steve were planning
to document Rising Star's

spectacular crystal stalactites.

But they were about to find more
than they bargained for.

I wanted to show Rick a great climb

in the cave called the
Dragon's Back.

And in the process of taking
some video of the formations

at the top of it,
Rick wanted to get past me.

So I went down a small crevice,

basically so that Rick
could crawl over me.

I was just getting out of his way
and, as I went into it,

I noticed that there's still
a little bit continuing down.

As Steve squeezed into the crevice,

he realised there was
a void beneath his feet.

He'd stumbled onto
a hidden chamber,

undiscovered by previous explorers.

So, my legs were dangling down
this last little bit,

and you don't feel anything below
you, and the only way to climb down

is actually to keep on lowering
yourselves until your arms are

almost fully stretched out, and then
you start to feel a couple of rocks

which you can actually
put your feet on.

Curious to explore this unmapped
part of the cave system,

Steve and Rick dropped
into the hidden chamber.

Above their heads,
they saw rare rock formations.

But the real discovery
was beneath their feet.

We saw, at first,
one bone lying around.

We looked around a bit more
and found another bone.

We actually spotted teeth
in the rocks and realised

that we actually
had found something.

Followed by a skull in the ground.

And, finally, one of the most
interesting ones, the mandible.

With four teeth in it.

The cavers had no idea what kind
of bones they were looking at.

They decided to take
photographs of their find

to a leading expert in the study
of human origins.

Lee Berger is a professor
of palaeoanthropology

at the University of the
Witwatersrand in South Africa.

For 18 years, he'd been searching
for the elusive remains

of our apelike ancestors.

But nothing prepared him
for what Rick and Steve

were about to show him.

They flipped open a computer,

and I saw...

..something I don't think
I ever dreamed

I would see on a computer screen.

That was a mandible...

of what was clearly
an early hominid.

The teeth just perfect.

The next picture had a skull in it,
of a hominid.

I could see it in outline.

There were bones everywhere.
They'd take...

Every one of them, I could see
in the image, were hominid.

I was a bit in shock,

because it all went like a car crash
for me, you know, it really did.

Black and white. And I have only
visual, not audio.

Lee instantly recognised the bones
were from some kind of hominid,

creatures from the human
evolutionary line.

These early human fossils
are probably the rarest

sought-after objects on earth.

We in palaeoanthropology sit in
one of the few fields that probably

have more scientists
studying objects

than there are objects to study.

In fact, the vast majority of people
who do what I do

will never find a single piece of
one of these early humans.

And if they do, it's going to be
an isolated tooth.

Probably 80 to 90% of our record

are just little bits
of isolated teeth.

The photographs from the chamber at
Rising Star suggested Rick and Steve

had stumbled onto a treasure trove.

Could this discovery illuminate
one of the great mysteries

about our origins:

Exactly how we evolved from apelike
creatures into human beings?

There's a big gap in the
fossil record

with only a few little fragments.

The fossil record suggests that in
that million year gap,

between two to
three million years ago,

lies the birth of the genus, Homo.

It's perhaps the least understood

and most important episode
in our evolution.

On one side of the gap
is Australopithecus,

an apelike creature
with a tiny brain.

They walked upright, but belonged
to the world of the apes.

An Australopithecus is sort of
like a bipedal ape.

If you went back in time and saw
them walking around the savanna,

you would see animals that stood up
and walked like we do

but they would have been smaller in
body size. Their brains wouldn't

have been as big so their heads
would have looked smaller.

Their jaws and teeth
were very large.

Scientists believe that between two
and three million years ago,

these Australopiths evolved

into the first recognisably
human species,

Homo erectus.

They have big brains
and small faces,

adaptations for using tools.

So what went on in the transition
from the apelike Australopithecus

to the humanlike Homo erectus?

Lee Berger hoped the new discovery
in the chamber at Rising Star

could provide crucial new evidence.

The only way to find out was
to bring up the fossils.

I had to make a decision,

and about...oh, just before 1am,

I decided that...

..history would never forgive me
if I did not act right then.

Recruiting a team of anthropologists
capable of excavating the bones

and bringing them safely to the
surface was not going to be easy.

The remains lay far underground
in deep, inaccessible caves.

In places, the chamber entrance was
less than 20 centimetres wide.

I put a callout on Facebook, saying,

"I need skinny scientists

"who are not claustrophobic,
who were cooperative,

"who can work together

"in a dangerous and difficult
environment."

I saw Lee's Facebook post,

actually, and, on a whim,

I applied for it,
and the next thing I know,

I got asked to interview,
and from there,

just things started
happening really quickly.

I saw a call that came out
on Facebook from Lee that was

looking for "skinny scientists",

skinny palaeoanthropologists that
weren't claustrophobic,

and that would be able to fit into

a slot that was about 18
centimetres.

And that was very intriguing.

I thought I'd get three, four,
five applicants.

I really did. I mean, how many
people in the world

could be qualified and fit that
criteria?

Within ten days,
I had 57 qualified applicants

from all over the world.
Most of them women.

It really seemed perfect. In fact,
when I read the callout

to my husband, he said, "Well, they
might as well have just meant,"

you know, written,
"Marina is wanted over here." So!

Then I got the e-mail
that said that I, I got it!

And, characteristically,
I bust out crying.

And just kept reloading my e-mail
to make sure, refreshing it.

Just, like, "Really? It's really
there? It's really there?"

Just five weeks later, Lee and his
team of skinny scientists

were setting up base camp
at the Rising Star cave system.

Working 25 metres underground
would be difficult and dangerous.

Safety lines, lights, cables
and cameras had to be installed.

A command post was set up from where
Lee could watch

virtually every part of the cave.

I really began to get a feel
for what I was putting

these young women into,

as the cavers who were laying over
2km of cable,

and I think they were terrified
and I was terrified.

They were still untested.
We took them through the caves,

testing their capabilities
in this system.

Marina, Becca and Hannah
had been chosen to go down first.

Still no one knows
exactly what they will find.

The descent is difficult
and, as I looked down,

I thought, "Oh, you know, I don't
know if I can do this!"

So you start by descending down,
you know,

a fairly narrow shaft
and some tunnels.

You get down into an area here.

The team christened this
the Superman crawl,

a stretch so narrow that they were
forced to crawl on their stomachs

to get into the first main chamber.

This is what
we call the Dragon's Back,

so that's the ridge climb

with a sort of four or five metre
drop on either side.

At the top of the Dragon's Back, the
scientists faced a vertical shaft,

dropping 12 metres down
towards the hidden chamber.

Marina is the first to enter the
deepest reaches of the fossil cave.

There was a little bit
of trepidation, I have to confess,

and a lot of excitement to be the
first of the advanced scientists

to go into the cave.

The first thing that came
through my mind

when I went through the final slot
into the actual final chamber

was Howard Carter's anecdote

about opening Tutankhamen's tomb.

I think it was Lord Carnarvon
in the back saying, you know,

"What do you see?"

And Carter says,
"Things, wonderful things."

And then I saw them
enter this chamber.

We got the camera set up

and you could see their feet
moving...

..and it was surreal.

The cave is beautiful,
just geological beautiful,

and then you looked down
and there was just a sea of bone.

And it was obviously just not
regular bone.

So, yeah, it was amazing.
Amazing.

expedition to recover the fossilised
remains of our early ancestors.

The expedition leaders watched
the recovery team

working in a narrow chamber,
25 metres below them.

And then the process started.
The process of doing science began.

So we'll put pin number one
right beside the mandible,

and that's where we'll concentrate.

OK. OK. Das ist super.

OK, thanks. Bye.

Yeah, that's perfect right there.

OK, good to start scanning?
OK, scan.

Laser scanners and cameras
are used to record the size,

shape and position of each
precious bone fragment.

It's mapping right now.

Ah, there, they're coming, yeah.

I see what looks like a mandible
in the middle there, on the right.

That looks fantastic.

Finally, it's time to bring up
the first fossil - the mandible.

APPLAUSE
All right! We have it.

You got the fossil.
Yes, we have the fossil.

There we go,
and we have everyone else.

Everyone's out, Rick is out safe.
They're all out.

They went out. They're coming.
Well done.

With the jawbone safely
brought to the surface,

Lee Berger can get his first
close-up look at the fossils,

and there is a surprise in store.

And when they opened that
little box,

and we unwrapped this thing that
they had collected,

every great idea we had went out
the window.

Gone. You know?

Suddenly,
we didn't know what we had.

When he had first seen the jawbone
in Rick and Steve's photos,

Lee had decided it probably
belonged to an australopith -

the ape-like creatures that
eventually evolved into humankind.

Australopiths had large jaws
and teeth,

but as they transitioned into
the genus homo, their faces shrank.

Jaws and teeth became smaller.

When he finally had
the jawbone in his hands,

Lee saw it was too small to be
an australopith.

It seemed quite human.

Could it be a new unknown species
that might

help scientists fill in the missing
links between australopiths

and early homo?

He had these molar teeth,

and a very strange use of the front,

frontal part here.

And luckily, we got another piece,
so, with these two pieces,

we have a hemimandible
which is complete.

Then, we can put on
the mirror image,

and we have a sort of outline.

This is pure confusion.
We don't know what to make of it.

We realise all of our preconceived
notions have to be tossed aside.

We can't go into this thinking
it's going to belong in this group

or belong in that group.

We just have to start from
literally scratch.

The laborious task of piecing
together the bones will not

only tell the team what these
ape-men looked like,

it may also reveal
new insights into how they lived.

Lee Berger knows how a find
on this scale

could revolutionise our understanding
of hominid behaviour,

because, remarkably,

this isn't the first time
he's discovered a new species.

In 2008, he made a smaller
discovery in the Malapa Valley,

just a few miles
from the Rising Star site.

The Malapa find has blown apart
one of the most controversial

theories about early hominids.

The story all began
on August the 1st, 2008,

when I came into this valley,

following targets, which were these
trees above my head,

that I could see on Google Earth.

I walked up that old lime-miners'
trackway,

which wasn't
quite as clear as it is today.

Mostly overgrown. I came into this
grove and found this little hole.

Lee had brought his nine-year-old
son Matthew,

and his dog Tau along with him.

I stood at the edge of this bit
and said, "Go find fossils."

And with that, Matthew
raced off into the bush here.

I thought he was going to get
a chased giraffe or zebra

or something like that,
with Tau in tow.

And a minute and a half later,
he shouted, "Dad, I found a fossil."

Sitting right over by that
lightning-struck tree,

he had stopped and
found a little rock,

and I almost didn't go and look,

cos I knew he'd found
an antelope fossil,

cos that's pretty much
all we ever find.

I saw a fossil.

I didn't think it was hominid,

I just thought it was an antelope,
cos we find thousands of those.

I started walking towards him,
though,

cos I had to see what he found.

And five metres away,

I realised that sticking out of
that rock was a hominid clavicle.

I couldn't believe it.

And what I saw stunned me.

I climbed down the pit
and looked right over here,

and there, sticking out of the wall,

was the proximal humerus
of a hominid.

I couldn't believe it.
I did my PhD on them, in fact.

I climbed closer,
and as I got closer,

I realised there was a scapula
of the shoulder blade in place.

And I came even closer,

and put my hand on the wall
right here,

and two hominid teeth
fell into my hand.

One by one,
they took out blocks of stone

they thought might have
hominid fossils in them.

The blocks were all taken back to
Lee's research laboratory

at the University
of the Witwatersrand.

OK.

Lee's wife Jackie, a radiologist,

ran the blocks through a CT scanner,

allowing the scientists
to peer inside.

Higher.

There you go, OK. That's good, yeah.

Inside one of the blocks,
a stunning discovery.

A slice came through,
and you could see an entire skull.

I was dumbfounded.

I could not in my wildest dreams
believe an entire skull

could be sitting in this
little rock.

Its small brain
and forward-projecting face

made it clear that it was
an australopith.

But details of the teeth
and other parts of the skeleton

made it unlike any found before.

This appeared to be
an entirely new species.

Lee called it
Australopithecus sediba,

after the wellspring near which
it was found in South Africa.

The team radioactively dated the
limestone layers in the Malapa Cave.

The layer containing the sediba
skeletons was 1.97 million years old.

That makes these creatures
among the last of their kind,

living right at the end of
the fossil gap

between australopiths
and homo erectus.

Here, at last,
was a creature that could tell us

something about that transition.

And the bones were
not just fragments.

Here were two remarkably complete
skeletons - a female and a child.

Sediba was exciting from the get-go.

Right away, we knew that we had
parts of the skeleton, and we had

parts of the cranium, which helps us
figure out who this animal is.

So, that was really,
really exciting,

and initially, these upper
limb bones looked very primitive,

so we knew that we were dealing
with something that looked

like it would be a good climber,
kind of an ape-like creature.

The next step was to reconstruct
sediba's skeleton.

Unlike past fossil finds, here,
the skeletons are so complete,

there doesn't have to be
much guesswork.

By scanning and mirror imaging,

missing bones can be
filled in with great accuracy.

Layer by layer,

a 3-D printer then slowly prints
the ribcage in fine plaster.

Wow, beautiful. Yeah.

Finally, the skeleton is complete.

It is highly unusual.

All australopiths
are a mix of ape and human,

but sediba has a unique mosaic of
features scientists have never

seen before in the same creature.

The arm is very long,
like in a chimpanzee.

But the hand is with short fingers
and a very long thumb,

like a human hand,
which was never found until now,

because this is the most complete
hand ever found in this period.

From the reconstructed skeleton,
paleo-artist Viktor Deak

can start to create a lifelike
digital painting.

I have now gone ahead
and created a body for it,

and if you want to see, we can check
all that by going transparent,

and seeing,
making sure that the bones

and everything
line up in the proper spaces.

So, here we have a concept
reconstruction of how sediba

potentially could look like.

For the first time in almost
two million years,

the face of Australopithecus sediba
looks out on the world.

But what kind of creatures were they?

Sediba's bones would reveal secrets

that challenge one of the darkest
theories about human evolution.

The fossilised remains of sediba
are so well preserved

that they're giving us
unprecedented insights

into how the creature lived.

And they may help to shed new light

on one of the most
controversial theories

about our evolutionary origins.

In the 1920s, anatomist Raymond Dart
was studying broken animal bones

that had been found alongside
hominid remains.

He became convinced that the
bones were used as weapons

by our primitive ancestors.

Dart had been a young medic
in World War I.

He'd seen firsthand the barbarity
humans are capable of.

Raymond Dart's experiences
in the World War

may have coloured his interpretation
of what these bones and teeth meant.

It gave him a view of the dark side
of humanity

and the violence of humanity,

and he came up with this idea that
Australopithecus had figured out

that bones and teeth were hard

and could be used as weapons
to kill other animals,

this sort of killer ape theory
of early humans.

Dart believe that the more
aggressive of our apelike ancestors

abandoned their forest environments
and moved into savannas.

There,
they became meat-eating predators.

According to Dart,

this transformation
into violent killer apes

was a key step on the long journey
to becoming human.

MUSIC: Also Sprach Zarathustra
by Richard Strauss

Stanley Kubrick made the killer ape
theory frighteningly real

at the beginning of his epic film
2001: A Space Odyssey.

Broken animal bones quickly became
weapons for control and conquest.

So will the fossil remains of sediba

back up Raymond Dart's
killer ape theory?

Researchers at the Max Planck
Institute in Germany

hope that sediba's teeth
may tell them more

about what these animals ate.

The tartar that built up around
the teeth may contain minute traces

of the foods that they were eating.

This is the first time
that we've had direct evidence

of the kinds of foods
that any Australopith ate.

We've had proxy information before,
we've had sort of vague categories,

whether food is harder or tougher,

but this is direct evidence.

That's exciting.

Trapped in sediba's tartar
are microscopic remains

of many different plants.

We have phytoliths from grasses,
we have phytoliths from the bark

or woody tissue of plants,

and we have phytoliths possibly
from fruits,

so all the evidence suggests
that the foods

that this individual was eating

was coming from closed forested
regions,

so eating fruits,
maybe chewing on stems,

eating the grasses that are growing
in that area.

The tooth evidence from sediba
indicates a diet

very similar to today's chimpanzees.

While they may have eaten some meat,

there is little to back up
Raymond Dart's theory

that they were killer apes.

Now, the latest discovery
at the Rising Star caves

is revealing even more
about our transition

from apelike forest dwellers
into the first humans.

And the sheer scale of the find
is becoming clear.

Good luck, everyone, have a blast!
Thank you, will do!

All right, go get 'em!
Good luck, happy hunting.

'It was probably
a couple of hours into the first day

'when we realised it also wasn't
one skeleton.' Another femur.

'If I remember right,

'it started with a second femur
from the same side.'

Since there's never been
a three-legged hominin,

we knew there were two

'and then there were three.

'I think it was by day two,
there were four.

'And we realised we were in
something very, very, very special.'

All right, good luck with that,
we can wait to see you.

Initially, Lee had been expecting
to find the remains

of just one individual. Now,
the team saw evidence of many more.

It's everywhere!
It's all strewn all throughout.

Not just the chamber,

but the passages leading to it
are littered with bone fragments.

Oh, oh, oh,!

'By the afternoon of day 14
in the expedition,'

we were overwhelmed.

I'd started with one safe to hold
one skeleton.

'Day three, we had two safes.

'Day four, we had three safes.

'Day six, my people were going,
"We need more safes."'

LAUGHTER
Whoo-hoo!

'By day 14,
as we would get fossil after fossil,

'we were getting
40, 50, 60, 70 elements a day.'

All that was flashing through
my mind as I was doing that

was that famous scene in Jaws
where Roy Scheider is chumming

and hadn't yet seen the shark.
And he's in there chumming

and all of a sudden, this gigantic
shark appears and he goes,

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

As the fossils accumulate
in ever greater numbers,

a picture of the creature of the
Rising Star Caves begins to emerge.

This is part of a juvenile pelvis.
Yeah.

Thigh and hipbones tell them
it walked upright,

but its gait was primitive.

From what they can see of
the exposed skull, it's small,

not much bigger than a chimp's.

But the teeth and jaws seem
more advanced, Homo like.

It's beginning to look

as if Lee has found a second new
species from the dawn of humanity.

To prove it beyond doubt,

they must retrieve a treasure
still buried in the cavern below.

The skull will be crucial
in telling them

whether the creature of Rising Star
is australopith or Homo - human.

We're going to go ahead and bite the
bullet and take that skull out, OK?

Yes, yes, yes! If only
because it gets it out of the way.

Not because you want it out
to see it or anything.

There are a couple of reasons
why we want to get it out.

One - the skull can tell you a lot.

It can tell you cranial capacity,

you start getting an idea
of the shape of the skull.

Is it australopith-like and pinched
in the front,

or is it rounded, more like a human,

or is it something in between?

We want to see that skull.

So there was all this tension

and it was a lot harder to extract
than we thought.

The skull is extremely fragile.

Every tiny piece of bone has
to be carefully retrieved.

Finally,
the skull begins its slow ascent,

leaving the cave for the first time
in possibly millions of years.

'And all of those scientists
piled back in,

'all of the people that had spent
so much time

'and so much energy coming to this
moment went back in there.

'And they lined up in
the most difficult places

'where they knew there was a risk
that it could get damaged.

'If dropped, it could get destroyed.

'Huge tension watching this passage
on the cameras until there it was.'

There you go, folks,
let's go get him.

'A great moment.'

LAUGHTER

We had some rocky moments.

Would you hate me if I took this
before I hugged you? PLEASE take it!

Oh, well done!

It's the moment everyone
has been waiting for.

They hope the skull fragment will be
the tell-tale piece

to identify the creature
as either an australopith

or a member of our own human genus.

Looking at a left frontal,

so it's this part, the orbit,

and then part of the brain case
just behind the orbit,

and that is a very important piece.

Large orbital ridges
with indentations behind them

would indicate australopith.

Smaller brow ridges with evidence of
a more rounded skull would say Homo.

We do have our genus. We do?

We have our genus with that.

It is indisputable Homo. Yes, yes!

The team's verdict is clear.

They have a new member of our genus

and, deep underground in
the Rising Star chamber,

they are about to make
a shocking discovery

about how these apemen
might have lived and died.

from more than 12 individuals found
in a deep cave in South Africa.

Now Lee Berger's team have to piece
together and analyse these remains.

The Rising Star discovery is
one of the most startling

and amazing discoveries in all
of hominid evolution.

To have that many fossils
in one place is unprecedented

and took everybody by surprise.

As the expedition winds down,
the fossils are carefully transported

to the University of
the Witwatersrand.

At a conference six months
after the excavation,

researchers meet for an intensive
analysis of the recent finds.

The bones from the Rising Star
cave are finally ready

to be presented to the world.

We've got a new species
of early human

in the genus homo, and that's
tremendously exciting.

We've never had anything
in that transition period

between the late Australopiths
and the earliest members

of our genus,
in any kind of abundance,

and, boy, we have it
in abundance now.

The fossils suggest a creature unlike
anything ever found before.

We are looking at creatures
that are humanlike in their feet,

humanlike in their hands,
humanlike in their teeth.

Everything that interacts directly
with the environment is Homo,

and everything that's
sort of central -

the trunk and the architecture
of the vertebral column, the brain -

those sorts of things
are more primitive.

It's like evolution is crafting us
from the outside in.

The new genus from Rising Star
has been given the name Homo naledi.

It's a strange mosaic
of ape and human.

Small brained and small bodied
with chimp-like arms,

but with human hands, teeth,
small brows and long legs.

Possibly a long-distance walker.

Naledi is a surprise
in very many ways.

It's got an incredibly tiny brain.

A brain that's more than a third as
small as a modern human's brain is,

yet it's clear when you look
at the cranial shape, the dentition,

the legs, particularly
the feet and even the hands,

that this thing is part
of our genus.

Here are creatures on the cusp
of becoming human

but still very close to the
Australopith world.

And six months into the analysis
of the hidden chamber

where they were found,

there's a puzzling new twist
in the investigation.

It was pretty surprising that
something completely normal

to every other excavation I've ever
been in wasn't happening here.

We weren't getting anything else
other than hominids.

There are no other
animal remains in the cave.

All the fossils are human ancestors.

This is unheard of.

In every other hominid discovery,

they are found alongside the bones
of other animals

that have wandered in and died,

or been dragged there by predators.

They're mixed with antelopes,
generally in huge abundance,

and then you get, depending on
the circumstance,

some carnivores and other bits
and pieces,

and rodents,
and this stuff that accumulates

when things die and are eaten
and are dragged into caves.

So how did these hominid bones
get into the Rising Star caves?

The chamber is very inaccessible,
deep in the dark zone of the cave,

and with no entrance other than
the long, narrow chute.

The team believes it was probably
just as inaccessible

two million years ago.

It's starting to look as
if the bodies might have been

intentionally placed there.

Could this possibly be some sort
of burial?

At the early stages
of this expedition,

they look like
a cemetery population.

Very young individuals
and very old individuals,

and nothing in the middle so far.

That's what you see in a cemetery
when you dig it up.

Right now it looks a lot like that.

Will it hold out to be that?

That will be a mystery
I want to see solved.

Until now, the earliest known burials
are from about 100,000 years ago,

and a much more advanced
form of early human.

The team does not have an
accurate date yet

for the fossils of Rising Star,
but it seems unthinkable

that such a primitive looking
creature

could be disposing of its dead.

It looks like they got in there
because somebody put them there.

Now, if we say that,

you have to understand it's a very
controversial thing to say.

And so we approach it
very conservatively.

We can show that there
is no signs of predation.

We can show that there is no
predator that accumulates

only hominids in this way.

We can show that they didn't
all get there at once.

We can show that there's not
a flow of material into the chamber,

and that's where we leave it
scientifically.

We can say the best hypothesis
we can come up with is

they were put there.

If this is true,
its implications are profound.

The team now know that
the Rising Star hominid

had a brain size just slightly larger
than a chimpanzee's.

So, if in fact the Rising Star
hominids are purposely

disposing of their dead,
we're talking about

some small brained hominids who are
doing this, and that begins

to change our thinking
about the cognitive attributes

and the neural machinery
that you need to engage

in that kind of behaviour, and that
becomes really interesting.

If the skeletons had been
intentionally disposed of,

it would indicate highly advanced
social behaviour,

at a much earlier stage
in our evolution

than had previously been thought
possible.

And that here,
at the dawn of humanity,

the complex social bonds that
mark us out as human

had already begun to take shape.

As yet, the question of exactly
how these fossils

fit into the story of human
evolution is not clear.

The remains from Malapa
and Rising Star

may or may not prove to be
our direct ancestors,

but they point us towards a new way
of thinking about our origins.

We have a strong tendency to want
to draw simple lines

between species
and make nice family trees,

and we have to understand that
that's our need, that's our desire.

That's not necessarily
the way that nature works.

Evolution is bushy.

There are different experiments,

populations try different
adaptations,

they try different ways of being
about the world.

These earlier finds and the new
naledi species

have a mosaic of
Australopith and Homo features.

They seem to show
that at the dawn of humanity,

there were multiple evolutionary
experiments,

with small-bodied, small-brained,
upright, walking apes.

Thanks to the work of scientists
like Lee Berger,

we know some of these varieties
of late Australopith and early Homo

existed simultaneously,
and some may have been interbreeding.

So, imagine in your mind
a glacier in the top of a valley,

and what happens as it melts,
it creates many, many rivulets,

and some of them are large
and some are small

and they all move off
down the valley,

and almost inevitably at the end of
that valley is going to be a lake.

Of which some, maybe the majority,
but not all, are contributing to.

I think we have to begin looking
at the species we're finding

as almost individual channels
in a braided stream.

It's clear they have something
to do with the end population,

and that's us, the billions
of human beings alive today,

but it's hard to tell which one
is the most responsible

for us being here.

The recent finds on the plains
of South Africa are adding

a vital new chapter
to the story of our origins.

The tantalising gap
in the fossil record

at the beginning of our genus
is being slowly filled in.

Finally, there is light
at the dawn of humanity.

Subtitles by Ericsson