The Incredible Human Journey
| The Incredible Human Journey | |
|---|---|
Title card
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| Genre | Documentary |
| Presented by | Alice Roberts |
| Theme music composer | Ty Unwin |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 5 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Kim Shillinglaw |
| Producer(s) | Paul Bradshaw |
| Running time | 300 minutes (five episodes of 60 mins each) |
| Production company(s) | BBC |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC Two |
| Original release | 10 May – 14 June 2009 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode, 300 minute, science documentary film presented by Alice Roberts, based on her related book. The film was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK. It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo. Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured. The first episode aired on BBC Two on Sunday 10 May 2009.
In the first episode, Roberts introduces the idea that genetic analysis suggests that all modern humans are descended from Africans. She visits the site of the Omo remains in Ethiopia, which are the earliest known anatomically modern humans. She visits the San people of Namibia to demonstrate the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In South Africa, she visits Pinnacle Point, to see the cave in which very early humans lived. She then explains that genetics suggests that all non-Africans may descend from a single, small group of Africans who left the continent tens of thousands of years ago. She explores various theories as to the route they took. She describes the Jebel Qafzeh remains in Israel as a likely dead end from a crossing of Suez, and sees a route across the Red Sea and around the Arabian coast as the more probable route for modern human ancestors, especially given the lower sea levels of the past.
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