The new three part series from BBC Two examines the origins of the human race. The first episode dealt with Neanderthals our distant cousins. It examines their speech patterns and using  their remains to reconstructs  our relatives in incredibly life like models. The second episode went further back into our ancestors family tree to look at our distant relatives, Homo Erectous. Again like the first episode, it looked in incredible detail at our relatives. One of the series’s, strengths is the fact that it can use what on the surface looks like  hardly any information  and manages to spin it into a very interesting documentary series is just incredible. The third and final episode went even further back and dealt with the most famous member of the Australopithecus afarensis species of all, “Lucy” (Named, if you are wondering after The Beatles song ). Once again the team do an incredible job of using evidence that is over 2 million years old  to make a compelling hour long program. Hopefully the BBC realise that series like this are much more worth recommissioning for a second series than the likes of Citizen Kahn.

Related articles

• UK Researchers Create Most Accurate Model of 70,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Yet (medicaldaily.com)
• The Tree-Climbing Girl Who Turns The History Of Man On Its Head (independent.co.uk)
• Early humans ‘still climbed trees 3m years ago’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Recreating Neanderthal man (bbc.co.uk)
• New analysis of how humans expanded out of Africa could explain rise of wheat and milk allergies (dailymail.co.uk)
• Scientists construct the most accurate model of a Neanderthal yet – and he looks just like Chuck Norris (io9.com)
• Early human “Lucy” swung from the trees (cbsnews.com)
• Did Neanderthals Create World’s Oldest Cave Paintings? (history.com)
• Prehistoric Monsters of the Deep: Slideshow (history.com)
• Neanderthals … They’re Just Like Us? (news.nationalgeographic.com)