Original subtitles

They roamed the planet for longer than modern man...

Neanderthals.

Neanderthals were superb survivors.

They survived in a treacherous world.

They really dominated ice-age Europe.

Fearless hunters who possessed superior strength

and surprisingly advanced tools.

It's perhaps one of the most efficient technologies

we've ever seen in the entire Stone Age.

But then suddenly they vanished and no one knows why.

It's still one of the most wondrous mysteries.

Was it a clash with modern humans?

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This may be the best case of a Neanderthal murder victim.

Around the globe scientists are searching for answers.

This is a modern human with Neanderthal features.

And they find clues in unlikely places...

..an ancient volcano site in southern Italy...

The ground at the moment is rising.

..in the Greenland ice sheet,

far from the grounds where Neanderthals once settled...

There's a cluster in here... thin layers.

Mounting evidence reveals a surprising new theory.

It was not war with modern man that killed off the Neanderthals.

It was an apocalypse... That's the ash. That is the ash.

..that might have sealed the fate of our closest human relatives.

And what happened to them could easily happen to us.

New archaeological evidence

has upended our vision of the Neanderthal

as a brutish, unintelligent, cave dweller.

We're just getting a little glimpse

of the sophistication that Neanderthals probably had.

Neanderthals, it seems, were very much like us.

And in one of the world's most remote and inaccessible fossil sites

archaeologists have unearthed evidence

of a far greater connection between our species.

In the Carpathian Mountains of Romania

a team of archaeologists is preparing to return

to the site of a landmark discovery,

a location that proves modern humans and Neanderthals

once coexisted together peacefully.

The exact location has been withheld

to protect the site from fossil hunters.

Here in 2002 cavers stumbled on a human jawbone.

This led to a three-year excavation

conducted by a group of archaeologists

trained in cave exploration.

It's absolutely pristine.

You can study a site

which was completely new, undisturbed,

which is very, very rare

in the life of a scientist.

The scientists uncovered evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals

may have inhabited the cave at the same time.

The team retraces their steps

down dark passageways and through an underwater river.

As they venture deeper into the mountain,

the cave walls narrow and the water rises.

There is no other way in the cave

except this cold, wet place

and very dangerous too.

In the murky waters they feel their way blindly forward,

drawing on past experience to guide the way to the other side.

Once through, they enter a large cavern

with passages to smaller chambers.

The team surveys the area.

Then they head deeper still

towards the chamber that yielded their greatest discoveries.

But the route is blocked by high waters

that have flooded the cavern below.

You are in a narrow passage, absolutely alone.

If you are stuck there somewhere, there is no way to escape.

(Man calls out and grunts)

So if something happens you are dead.

Safety concerns force the scientists to cut this expedition short.

But a decade ago, the team made it through the precarious passageway

into a remote chamber.

This revealing footage is from an expedition in 2003,

a mission that paid off.

The team enters a chamber deep inside the cave

called "the Gallery of Bones".

The floor is covered with animal bones -

the remnants of bear and other large mammals

prized by prehistoric hunters.

And I've already taken out several encased with sediment here.

But scattered among them are human remains,

mostly small fragments of fossilised bones,

dating back 40,000 years.

It was absolutely crazy.

We were... I was so excited about everything around me.

The bones in good state of preservation...

It's absolutely astonishing what is in that cave.

On this dig, in a dark corner, a team member notices something.

That... That looks like human over there under that.

A fragment of a skull...

It will become part of a larger landmark discovery.

The skull was really something shocking,

very special for the history of humankind.

Now housed at the Institute of Speleology in Bucharest,

the treasure is kept under lock and key,

closely monitored by palaeontologist Silviu Constantin.

When you look at this skull as a whole,

this is a modern human with Neanderthal features.

It's that sort of discovery which happens once in a lifetime.

This skull was recomposed from 40 pieces.

It took Constantin and his team three years to reconstruct the skull

and determine the exact features.

It has a long face, which is not encountered in modern humans.

The teeth are different too.

The size of them is too large

for a modern sapiens.

It is much closer size of the teeth of a Neanderthal.

And then, the most telling feature of all...

When you look at the back

you'll find you have this occipital bar.

This protrusion shields the occipital lobe,

where visual information is processed,

the one area where Neanderthal's brain is larger than our own.

It's not typical for sapiens but it's typical for Neanderthals.

This may be the missing link,

the link between sapiens and the Neanderthal.

For Constantin, the possibilities are tantalising.

Imagine modern humans having love affairs

with their Neanderthal neighbours.

From this ancient skull a new image emerges,

that of modern humans and Neanderthal interbreeding.

It is the catalyst for ground-breaking discoveries

about the mysteries of our own origins

and who we are today.

In a Romanian cave scientists unearth a mysterious skull,

a modern human bearing distinct traits of Neanderthal.

This raises the question...

Are we somehow related to Neanderthal?

What are our relationships?

How do we fit in

with the Neanderthals?

To me, it's still one of the most wondrous mysteries

that we have about our origins, where we came from.

At the University of Washington

scientists are searching for traces of Neanderthal in our own DNA.

DNA is this wonderful, incredible informational molecule.

It's almost like reading a book

where stories of our past have been written in it.

And the challenge right now

is sometimes interpreting the words in that book.

Coiled up in our cells,

long strands of DNA molecules determine and control our traits.

A cell's complete set of DNA is our genome.

The genome specifies the development of the body plan,

of the physiology of the organism.

It's what makes humans human

and Neanderthals Neanderthal.

In 2010

scientists mapped the Neanderthal genome.

And when they compared it to the genome of modern man

they made a surprising discovery.

Essentially, everybody outside of Africa

had Neanderthal ancestry.

That number varies a little bit by population

but probably, per individual,

it's between 1.9 and 2.1 per cent of the genome.

Within our own cells

the Neanderthals still live on.

We inherited those sequences directly from hybridisation

and not because of just shared ancestry

that dates back to half a million years ago.

The hybridisation or inter-breeding may date back to 60,000 years ago,

when modern humans first encountered Neanderthals.

The descendants of the hybrid offspring spread,

eventually inhabiting much of the globe,

but like Neanderthals themselves, never settled in Africa.

It was essentially zero per cent Neanderthal ancestry within Africa.

Akey and his team have systematically searched

for parts of our DNA that we inherited from Neanderthals.

In 2014

they compared DNA recovered from Neanderthal bones

to the genome of more than 700 living people.

What's interesting is that the two per cent of my genome

that I've inherited from Neanderthals

might be different than the two per cent that you've inherited.

Adding up the different Neanderthal genes carried by people today

reveals that much of Neanderthal's genetic legacy lives on.

Collectively, about 30 per cent of the Neanderthal genome

can still be found in individuals today.

But where does our Neanderthal heritage truly show?

We found about 10 places in the genome

where we inherited a beneficial Neanderthal sequence.

And quite strikingly,

many of these regions contain genes important to hair and skin biology.

One example is a gene known to influence skin pigmentation.

Among people of European descent,

fair skin is a trait possibly inherited from the Neanderthal.

So European individuals at this place in the genome

are more Neanderthal than they are modern humans.

Straight hair may be another Neanderthal trait we inherited.

It's clear that something about hair or skin biology of Neanderthals

was beneficial to our ancestors.

Maybe it helped our ancestors

survive in these more cold-adapted climates.

But not all traits passed down from Neanderthal

are necessarily beneficial today.

Some studies suggest that Neanderthal sequences in Europeans

play an important role in genes that influence fat biology.

Today, this ancient trait may be contributing to an obesity epidemic.

But in their ice-age world

this adaptation enabled Neanderthals to build up fat reserves,

advancing their survival

and perhaps that of our ancestors as well.

As we spread into these new environments,

hybridising with Neanderthals

allowed us to pick up versions of genes and sequences

that were already sort of adapted to that local environment.

And it was a way for our ancestors

to quickly adapt to these very different environmental conditions.

But this only adds to the mystery of Neanderthal's disappearance.

If their genetic adaptations helped us survive,

why did the Neanderthal perish?

Climatic causes, population causes...

There could be disease causes.

There could be differences in the way that you use resources

as a cause.

It really is a mystery why their disappearance

took the process that it did.

They had a long run and then they were just gone.

One clue may lie with where modern humans and Neanderthals lived.

40,000 years ago

modern humans inhabited Africa, Asia, Europe, even Australia.

Their population had grown to a few hundred thousand.

Neanderthals never numbered more than 100,000.

Confined to areas in Europe and Asia,

they were more vulnerable to regional events.

The Neanderthals succeeded in that environment.

They evolved their special adaptations to cold

and they were successful over time there.

But at the same time that was a challenging environment.

Is it possible the environment grew too severe,

too harsh for even the Neanderthal to bear?

This volcanic lake near Daun in Germany

contains sediment dating to when Neanderthals inhabited the region...

a pristine record of the environment going back over 100,000 years.

Here, paleo-climatologists from the University of Mainz

bore hundreds of feet below the surface

to extract sediment core samples.

Each layer, only a fraction of an inch thick,

is a yearly record of climate and environment, captured in mud.

TRANSLATION: What is unique about these core samples

is the fact that there is no oxygen at the bottom of the lake.

So sediments are undisturbed.

We are able to analyse layer after layer

and can reconstruct the climate of a single year.

Three feet of sediment represents a 1000-year climate record.

Dark layers contain traces of decayed plant life,

a sign of times when forests covered the area.

Lighter layers mark colder periods,

when the land became a barren, frozen expanse.

TRANSLATION: We see here rapid climate changes...

Warm, then cold. It changes within 10 years.

The Neanderthal here lived in a world with open forests

and then it's open steppe.

40,000 years ago

the Neanderthals' world is rapidly disappearing

as their traditional hunting grounds turn to hardened permafrost.

And the worst is yet to come.

40,000 years ago

centuries of drastic climate change have ravaged much of Europe,

turning Neanderthal hunting grounds into barren fields of icy earth.

To the north, countless Neanderthals perish from exposure and starvation.

But others turn

to one of Neanderthal's oldest survival tactics.

They move...

sometimes hundreds of miles away from their traditional lands.

Far from the protection of caves,

Neanderthals erect tents fashioned from hides.

Adaptations, survival strategies and skills

developed over the course of 300,000 years

see them through the era of drastic cooling and encroaching ice.

It was a challenging environment.

It was challenging in terms of climate.

And they were fulfilling those challenges.

They survived those challenges.

But the centuries of unrelenting climate change do take their toll.

They deplete the Neanderthal population

to possibly no more than 20,000,

pushing the species towards a precarious tipping point.

My suspicion is that the population of Neanderthals

were probably very highly dispersed in the landscape

and very, very small.

And this lends you to the possibility

of chance events affecting you, even catastrophic events,

a volcanic eruption or a tsunami if you're on the coast.

These things can really have a significant impact

when your populations are that small.

And volcanic eruptions in particular

have changed the course of human civilisation time and time again.

April 10, 1815.

BOOM!

The eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia

is the largest volcanic event in recorded history,

killing over 10,000 people in its immediate vicinity.

The ejected ash and gas circle the earth and block out the sun.

The following year is known globally as the year without a summer

causing crops to fail.

Livestock die off.

All told, an estimated 90,000 people perish worldwide.

Lake Ilopango...

In 535 AD

a volcanic eruption in El Salvador

buried 4000 square miles in three feet of ash...

stopping all agriculture for a decade,

nearly wiping out civilisation in Central America.

But Lake Ilopango or Mount Tambora

are not the only global volcanic disasters,

nor are they the largest.

Lake Toba, Indonesia...

This is a super-volcano,

one of nature's deadliest killers.

Its placid waters cover a collapsed caldera

spanning across 440 square miles.

74,000 years ago

molten rock and super-heated gases expanded.

until the earth's crust could no longer withstand the pressure.

The blast produces a mushroom cloud of sulphuric acid and gas

100 times greater than the Mount Tambora blast.

That catastrophic eruption changed the climate,

probably wiped out a lot of populations in that area.

It spreads ash across Asia,

the Arabian peninsula and even Africa.

India, over 1000 miles from the blast,

is buried in up to 18 feet of debris.

The Mount Toba eruption altered the environment

for decades, if not centuries, to come

with deadly consequences.

You could have a perfectly genetically fit population,

which could disappear overnight because of a volcanic eruption.

No matter how fit genetically they are,

they've gone and they've gone forever.

Did a volcanic eruption seal the Neanderthals' fate?

The Greenland ice sheet may provide the answer.

The ice here forms a frozen vault.

Locked within its layers, years of ancient climate data.

So we're flying over the mountains. It's really beautiful.

Accessible by special air force transporters,

the Summit Camp research centre sits at an altitude of 10,000 feet,

atop a literal mountain of ice.

Here, scientists like Jim White drill thousands of feet down

to extract core samples from deep below.

Imagine that snow never melted.

Imagine that snow just keeps piling up and piling up and piling up.

In places like Greenland

where we have a metre of snow per year accumulating,

those records go back maybe 150, 160,000 years.

That's a long enough period of time

for us to get a good snapshot

of what the Neanderthal had to deal with.

When extracted, gases and sediments trapped in the ice

will paint a vivid picture of our planet's history.

We measure temperature, things like the amount of dust that comes in,

the composition of the atmosphere, how much methane, how much CO2..

So if there's a very large volcano that goes off,

it puts ash in the atmosphere.

It also puts sulphate in the atmosphere.

And if some of that sulphate falls, as it probably will,

in a place like Greenland or Antarctica,

we're able to go back and measure that

and say "Yes, there was a volcano at that time."

Ice cores retrieved from the Greenland ice sheet

are taken to a deep-freeze storage thousands of miles away...

the National Ice Core Lab, in Denver, Colorado.

It houses 60,000 feet of ice core samples,

waiting to be analysed.

This is the Fort Knox of ice cores. This is our gold, if you will.

This is the most precious stuff we have.

Geologist Jim White has secured access to an ice core sample

from the approximate time of Neanderthal's disappearance.

So that's the core from roughly 39,000 years ago?

Yeah. Okay.

White has been at the forefront of ice core research since the 1980s.

He knows how to interpret clues hidden within this frozen history.

So the Neanderthal were alive when this snow fell,

which is kinda cool and very interesting.

This time, he's looking for chemicals and compounds

linked to volcanic eruptions.

Ash, shards of volcanic rock, sulphur compounds,

all distinct markers of an eruption,

may be trapped within this ice core.

This one has several bands.

There's a couple of nice thick layers

that may be potentials for the volcanic event.

Yeah... So you can see there's a cluster in here.

Thin layers...

And another one right back in here.

The clusters are unusual.

They appear to be dark bands of microscopic deposits

suspended in the ice.

When we run that in the lab, we'll watch for that.

That's something interesting.

Back in the lab, the ice core is melted,

layer after layer.

What actually is happening here is we're peeling off

week by week, month by month, year by year, the snow that fell.

And that's then going into the machine and being measured.

It's like leafing through the pages of a book one page at a time.

In this particular case, we're probably looking at...

one year for every 10 centimetres or so.

So it's a pretty detailed record that we're getting.

Particles and chemicals previously trapped in the ice

are isolated and evaluated.

I can imagine that the Neanderthals would've been very much surprised

by everything they see here,

but probably no more so

than surprised by the fact that we know what's gonna happen to them.

Finally, the ice reveals its long-hidden secret...

remnants of a volcanic eruption.

We can see the sulphate from the eruption.

We don't see ash or anything in Greenland.

But we see the sulphate.

We know that it occurs right at that same time

where you have this very sharp cooling in the ice core

right in here.

A clear indicator of a massive eruption

with far-reaching consequences.

That was a volcanic event

that was certainly one of the largest

in the last couple of 100,000 years.

That would've been a very challenging time to live.

Is this the smoking gun?

Could it finally explain the mystery of Neanderthal's disappearance?

In the south of Italy

scientists investigate the possible culprit,

one of the largest volcanos in the world

and the largest in Europe.

This sleeping giant is known to have erupted 39,000 years ago.

And it may be waking up again,

threatening the lives of millions today.

Naples, Italy, stands on shaky ground.

Mount Vesuvius looms six miles away.

But Vesuvius is not the greatest threat

to the area's four million residents.

A much larger, deadlier volcano rages practically underfoot.

Campi Flegrei...

Europe's largest and most dangerous volcanic site.

Its caldera is eight miles wide,

most of it hidden under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea.

This is a super-volcano.

At the volcanology observatory in Naples

scientists scrutinise every inch of the raging cauldron.

Tidal gauges measure the exact level of the seabed,

while seismographs search the ground for any signs of underground quakes.

Within the caldera

noxious sulphuric gases rise from cracks in the surface.

In pools, volcanic mud boils...

super-heated to over 300 degrees.

Scientists register alarming signs of activity.

In the past 30 years

the ground around Campi Flegrei has risen by more than six feet.

The volcano is so active

it has already forced residents from their homes.

Follow me.

Sulphur and gas have forced their way up through the floor

and into the walls.

But the most troubling signs are further afield.

In the hills nearby Naples

Antonio Costa and Roberto Isaia

are searching for remnants of the volcano's violent past...

traces of an ancient eruption

that may be linked to Neanderthal's extinction.

(Speaks Italian)

These cliffs are over 200 feet high.

They're composed of volcanic debris deposited during a single eruption.

Their height alone points to the sheer power of this blast.

Ash from this cliff has been carbon dated

to approximately 39,000 years ago,

the time of Neanderthal's disappearance

throughout most of the world.

But was this eruption powerful enough to wipe out the Neanderthal?

I think that an eruption in Italy could have been significant.

My question then would be...

What is the extent, the geographical area?

Is it greater than we've suspected?

The answer may lie in the ash.

Scientists can gauge the strength of an eruption

by measuring the thickness of ash layers

in locations far from the volcano.

In Romania, 700 miles away from Campi Flegrei,

geologist Daniel Veres searches for ash from the ancient eruption...

a clue to the blast's power

and perhaps, the cause of Neanderthal's extinction.

He's joined by fellow geologist Ulrich Hambach.

Let me take a sample and have a closer look.

It's really... It's much lighter than the loess.

I think it can be volcanic ash, Dan.

Really? It does.

It has the consistency of volcanic ash.

Hambach and Veres are one of several teams

investigating the size and impact of the Flegrei blast.

This ash may get them one step closer to the answer.

The thickness of the ash at this particular spot

is one metre and 10 centimetres and it's even increasing...

To the left, to the centre of the depression,

which is at the moment covered here by the debris.

By measuring the layer's height

they can begin to calculate the power of the blast.

Here, over 700 miles away,

the volcano dumped four feet of ash on the region.

I mean, this is a very unexpected find.

The eruption that created this particular layer

must have even been of a very powerful magnitude.

If this is the eruption of the Phlegraean Fields in southern Italy,

as we suppose it is,

it certainly proves that that eruption,

which was considered as the largest in the last 200,000 years,

has been likely even of higher amplitude than expected.

Veres and Hambach are not alone in this work.

Throughout the Mediterranean,

up to Russia and into Asia,

scientists have collected and measured ash

dated to 39,000 years ago.

Samples are sent to the University of Bayreuth in Germany.

Here, Ulrich Hambach analyses them

to determine if they originated from the Campi Flegrei eruption.

All volcanic ash has a specific chemical fingerprint

that is unique to the blast that deposited it.

Using an electron scanner and an X-ray beam,

Hambach and his colleagues create a specific chemical profile

of each sample.

We are really curious

and we hope that the results will match the eruption in Italy.

The tests reveal the chemical components of the ash samples.

Each sample has an identical chemical profile,

a profile that matches a single eruption...

the Campi Flegrei blast.

It's the same for the sites we investigated

and it's the same for the sites colleagues investigated

from Russia down to Libya.

The research shows the terrifying scale of the blast.

The eruption spread ash across three continents,

encompassing large swathes of the territory

where Neanderthal once lived.

Back at the Naples volcano observatory

Antonio Costa is preparing a computer simulation

of the Campi Flegrei eruption.

Once complete,

it will reveal exactly what happened 39,000 years ago.

At the observatory in Naples

Antonio Costa and Roberto Isaia are generating a computer simulation

of the Campi Flegrei eruption 39,000 years ago,

the cataclysm linked to Neanderthal's extinction.

The simulation reveals the sheer power of the eruption.

Using this simulation, the scientists can piece together what happened

39,000 years ago.

The Campi Flegrei volcano looms above the land.

It will soon come crashing down.

Neanderthals nearby feel the first signs of an imminent eruption,

a barrage of tremors emanating from the volcano.

VOLCANO RUMBLES

It's the most powerful eruption in Europe in the last 200,000 years.

Pyroclastic flows burst from the volcano...

rampaging over a 40-mile range.

The cascade of gas and molten rock, superheated to over 1500 degrees,

travels at speeds approaching 500 miles per hour.

A mushroom cloud of volcanic gas and fiery debris

rises into the earth's atmosphere.

A thick layer of ash engulfs much of southern and eastern Europe.

Within days, the cloud spreads to Central Asia and the Middle East.

But where the modern human population is spread around the globe,

Neanderthals are confined to Europe and Central Asia,

the regions most impacted by the blast.

For most, there is no hope of escape.

The cloud of debris blocks the sun for weeks.

Ash rains down on an area

that stretches from Russia to North Africa.

In the ash zone

Neanderthals and modern humans face a slow and torturous death.

The smothering ash blocks sunlight and oxygen.

It also contains high levels of fluorine,

a deadly chemical for plant life.

Many Neanderthal wither away and slowly die from starvation.

Others develop symptoms of severe fluorine poisoning -

chronic fatigue, nausea

and eventually death.

The first ones to die are the children and the elderly.

But deprived of food and light,

even the strong do not survive for long.

Vast forested lands where Neanderthals lived for millennia

are now desolate...

inhabited by dying members of a doomed species.

Across much of Europe

modern humans and Neanderthals are completely wiped out.

Only Neanderthals on the outer reaches of their territory

survive.

The place they survive the longest,

the Rock of Gibraltar.

For another 15,000 years they live on as they always have,

unaware they are the last of their kind.

So they just carried on living their day-to-day lives

as best they could.

Gradually their numbers dwindled and one day they just disappeared.

Leaving behind their caves and their remains

for our own species to discover...

a species that could face the same fate.

Today, 39,000 years after the catastrophic eruption,

Campi Flegrei continues to rage.

Another super-eruption is not likely to happen any time soon

but if it happens it could decimate an entire continent.

And volcanologists are on high alert.

And even for those who live far away from this monster

there's every reason to be alarmed.

This is by no means the only active super-volcano

or the most dangerous.

Super volcanoes dot the globe,

23 total,

threatening populations on almost every continent.

And the most powerful of all is in the United States.

North-west Wyoming.

Yellowstone National Park

spans over 3000 square miles of pristine wilderness,

untamed wildlife and unique natural wonders.

The park contains half of the world's geysers,

one sign of the violent forces raging beneath the surface.

This is the world's largest active super-volcano.

Yellowstone has produced three eruptions

in the last 2.1 million years,

at least two of which would easily qualify for super-eruption,

and perhaps all three.

Park geologists estimate

that the volcano erupts every 600 to 800,000 years.

The last time was 640,000 years ago.

Yellowstone is due for another blast.

We know that the magma chamber is close to a point

at which it could be eruptible.

Based on US geological survey projections,

an eruption would have catastrophic consequences.

Searing ash and molten rock would surge across the land,

destroying everything for miles.

Billions of tons of volcanic debris

would jettison upward into the atmosphere,

forming a vast cloud of ash.

Carried by the wind,

it would travel over 2000 miles from the blast zone,

enveloping most of North America in a coat of ash.

A super-eruption would literally change the face of North America.

There would be ash accumulations we couldn't deal with.

There would be infrastructure costs which would be prohibitively high

so we would have to be very careful, prioritorise how we rebuilt.

These are some of the obvious things.

Across the country crops and livestock would perish,

depriving North America of food.

(Woman talks indistinctly over radio)

Noxious sulphur compounds would poison the water supply.

Buried in ash and debris,

roads and infrastructure would be obliterated,

cutting off the life-line to major cities on the east coast

and relief for survivors of the cataclysm.

In a matter of weeks

the world's greatest superpower would crumble

and the devastation wouldn't be confined to North America.

Super-eruptions put up a tremendous amount of material

into the atmosphere.

That could definitely be felt globally.

Around the world the sun would appear to dim,

its light diffused by volcanic debris lingering in the high atmosphere.

It's a precursor to the darkest phase of the cataclysm -

volcanic winter,

a period of cooling that can last for years.

Experts believe a Yellowstone eruption

would result in the devastation of global agriculture

and lead to severe food shortages and mass starvation.

It would threaten the very fabric of civilisation.

It would be a changed planet.

But I think I think the human endeavour is resilient.

I have great faith in our ability to survive these kinds of things.

And the chances are we would live on

for the same reason our species survived the eruption

that doomed the Neanderthals.

We inhabit every corner of the globe.

We can withstand a cataclysm that devastates two continents.

Neanderthals, a species without our global reach, could not.

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And one population made it, which is us.

They did not die out because they were intellectually inferior.

They lived lives that were very much like the lives that people live now.

They didn't have some of the ways that we organise large societies.

But when you look at what they achieved with those limitations,

it's very human.

They roamed the planet for 100,000 years longer

than modern humans so far.

Certainly, if there was a hall of fame of humanity,

the Neanderthals would make that hall of fame.

In a sense, we owe them our lives.

We should be pretty grateful to Neanderthals

because they helped us survive and reproduce

as we migrated out of Africa into these new environments.

So they played an important role in human evolution.

And so their legacy lives on within us.

Perhaps we can say

that we have met the Neanderthals and they are us.

The Neanderthals reigned for 300,000 years.

Whether we survive as long is a big unknown.

I think it's a matter of chance and like I often say, you know...

if it had gone another way, we would be Neanderthals now

talking about the extinction of the other people.

I don't think we'd be able to recognise the Neanderthals today

if they were out on the street.

Not only would they probably succeed in modern society,

at some professions they probably would've been better than even us.

We are the sole human species on the planet.

But the Neanderthal do live on in our DNA,

perhaps strengthening our ability

to cope with the challenges of life on earth

and survive when they could not.

Captions (c) SBS Australia 2015