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Walking With Cavemen


Eye-to-eye with your ancestors

A powerful cocktail of extraordinary traits has combined to producean animal that has come to dominate the world.

This is the story of where these traits came from and how they were brought together to create us.


Behind the scenes – Creating the cavemen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Meet your makers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Synopses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Walking With Cavemen on BBCi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Production credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Fact files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Contents


The fascinating world of our early ancestors isbrought to life in Walking With Cavemen, thanks tothe specialist talent of over 111 scientists fromvarying disciplines, including climatologists, stone-knappers, geneticists and primatologists, inrecreating over four-and-a-half million years ofhuman evolution.

Fourteen actors trained over five weeks with voiceand movement coaches and scientific experts torecreate the sounds, movement and behaviourproduced by different apes/early man.Actors wererequired to sit through five hours of make-up eachday before filming and had to bring to life eightdifferent ancestors, ranging from 3.5 million yearsago up to 30,000 years ago. Over 2,000 actorsapplied to be one of the cavemen.

Walking With Cavemen uses the pioneering “deeptimelapse” visual technique which allows viewers towitness incredible scenes of climatic change,geological uplift and environmental turmoilspanning million of years – bringing us back into thepresent and so putting ancient landscapes into amodern perspective, all in a few moments.

A total of 41 filming days were required to shootthe series: four in Iceland, two in Yorkshire, five inthe studio, 29 in South Africa and one in TunbridgeWells. On an average day in South Africa, up to fourfilming units would be shooting at the same time.Locations in South Africa include the AugrabiesNational Park, the Orange River regions and thesalt pans and sand dunes of the Southern KalahariDesert.Temperatures during filming ranged from -11 in Iceland to +54 degrees Centigrade on the saltpans of South Africa.

A total of 1,534 prosthetic pieces were usedthroughout the filming in South Africa.There werefive animatronic heads, each operated by a singleperson and five radio-controlled servos. Twenty-one adult suits and four child suits were made,comprising 600sq ft of hair, 45m of Lycra and 400mof thread.The suits were fastened with a total of1,068 poppers, 2,000 hooks and bars and 60 zips.

The lead Ergaster has his make-up session disturbed

Framestore CFC, who gained worldwiderecognition for Walking With Dinosaurs and WalkingWith Beasts, have once again brought their uniqueskills to Walking With Cavemen. Director ofAnimation Mike Milne and his team created shotsfor the new series, which included the Mammothand Giant Elk sequences.

4Walking With Cavemen

Behind the scenes

Creating the cavemen

The story

Richard: “What the previous Walking With serieshave done brilliantly, and very expertly, is recreateunseen worlds and, in doing so, take the viewer to aplace that no longer exists.That’s what we’ve soughtto do with Walking With Cavemen, and I think it’smade all the more fascinating because this is ourown story – the story of all of us – and what betteropportunity than to recreate the creatures thatcame before us over millions of years.Whatintrigued me the most is how much of the cavemanremains in us today and how much we are shaped bythese bizarre creatures that have come before us.”

Using actors for the first time

Richard: “I think the great strength of computergraphics is their ability to create different kinds ofbody shapes and different creatures, like thedinosaurs, but what it doesn’t do is give a verygood human quality.When you look into someone’seyes, you know what is going on in their head. Noamount of very skilled computer graphics can dothat.This is the story of human beings and abouthow we got to be who we are, so there’s anemerging humanity in all the creatures featured thatbegins with creatures that look and behave verylike chimpanzees and end with us.We felt the only

way to give that authentic human feeling andunderstand them was to use actors as the basis forwhat we were trying to do. It created a whole hostof other problems because we had to change thelook, the faces and the bodies to match those thatour ancestors had, but we felt that making humanslook like animals was a better option than makingcomputer graphics look like humans.”

The key to human emotions

Peter: “There’s a very good technical reason forusing actors.As humans, we have been trainedthroughout our evolution to spot other humans. It’sthe one thing we can recognise very clearly, it’s justpart of our make-up.With a dinosaur or a big beast,we don’t know exactly how they walked, soanimation can seem more real. Human movementanimation is one of the most difficult things for filmor television to animate in a realistic way; any failingson our part would be easily spotted and wouldbreak the magic that the programme is trying tocreate. In addition, we were dealing with a subjectthat requires passion and if you’re trying to getpassion out of something, a very good way of doingthat is to point a camera at the eyes.The eyes canevoke love, hate, despair, and there’s no amount ofanimation work that could recreate that.”

Recreating our ancestors

Richard: “We have pooled together the bestscientific evidence in the world to recreate ourancestors and make them look as realistic aspossible, not in the Hollywood sense of the word,but as scientists know they looked.We’re telling astory that evolves from chimpanzee-like creaturesright up to the way we look today, and at the sametime, trying to show how these creatures areconnected, and that hasn’t been done before.However, on a project like this it doesn’t matterhow hard you work on the look and make-up ofthese creatures because, unless the actor is acting


Meet your makers

Meet your makersRichard Dale, Director and Executive Producer,

and Peter Georgi, Series Producer

in the right way, in the way the creature would,then no amount of make-up is going to matter.

“As a result, we had an enormously complicatedtraining schedule for our actors who worked overfive weeks on several different aspects of behaviourand movement that had to be considered fromhow you might behave if you had no concept of thefuture or the past. If like an animal, when somethingis over it passes from your mind, how does thataffect the way you move? It’s only when youexamine this very closely that you realise howconditioned we are by living in cities and living inthe 21st century and how difficult it is to strip allthat away and to take off the veneer of civilisationto uncover the caveman inside of us. But that’s anactor’s craft and that’s what they train to do.Whatwe did was put them with movement coaches,voice coaches and the very best scientific advisorsto enable them to make their best interpretation.

“The study of early man, our human evolutionarystory, is one of the most hotly contested subjectsin science today. It’s passionately felt by manyscientists and it’s also a very young science, withthe key fossil finds like Lucy happening only 30years ago. Every time a fossil is found the storycreates fresh interest and continues the debate.Tosay we’ve made new discoveries would be wrong;what we’ve made is fascinating connections.”

Acting naked

Richard: “The funny thing about working withactors when they’re naked is that you imagine it’sgoing to be an enormously difficult problem – butit’s only a problem for about five minutes. I thinkit’s the same whether you’re doing a love scene in acontemporary film or filming Homo ergaster wholived naked in Africa two million years ago. One ofthe real pleasures of working with high-qualityactors is that they can overcome boundaries anduse that experience to help them in their job.”

Why do we wear clothes?

Richard: “Walking With Cavemen not only tells uswhat we would have looked like, but also goessome way to understanding how we would have

thought and that’s really interesting for an actorand a viewer.The fact that our actors are nakedraises an interesting question: why do we wearclothes? And at what point in our history did webegin to wear clothes? It wouldn’t have beenbecause we were ashamed to look naked or therewas some kind of moral obligation to do so.Wewould have worn clothes because of the cold, butwhat is surprising is how late in our human historywe would have started to wear clothes, not just tokeep warm, but also to keep a social/moral powerstructure going.”

A scientific collaboration

Richard: “We worked with a whole team ofscientists on the series.About 111 were consultedin total, everybody from experts in weather andstone tool-making, geneticists to primatologists.Weasked them, for example, when our ancestorswould have been able to throw and catch things.Primatologists can confirm that chimpanzees throwand catch things, which we realise means our earlyancestors could throw. Only when you get a biggerbrain do you start throwing things in a moresophisticated way, like a javelin thrower.”

Filming in harsh conditions

Richard: “Physically, the conditions were very hardfor the actors, particularly when they were in bodysuits and full make-up. Often we were working in30/40 degrees Centigrade heat and losing a lot offluids. Medics were on hand to give actors salts andrehydrating solutions to make them drink, althoughdrinking was a bit of a problem in full prostheticmake-up, so there were lots of people walkingaround with straws.These are the problems youdon’t think about at the start, you only find out asthey happen.”

Peter: “The other problem we had was to do withthe number of people we had on location andfilming in such harsh conditions.We filmed in theSouthern Kalahari desert, on a beautiful salt pan,which was 20 miles from where we were staying,which in turn was a tent city which we’d created, abit like a scene from M.A.S.H. By the end of the day,everyone was covered in dirt, nobody could get


Meet your makers

washed, and it was these very normal human thingsthat would cause the biggest arguments.”

The title

Richard: “The title Walking With Cavemen is quite asurprise because we don’t actually start living incaves until right at the end of the story.Wedebated for a while as to what the best title for theseries should be. People’s idea of the past isembedded in cavemen and we wanted to take theexciting idea of our cave past and turn it on itshead and to show people all the things they didn’tknow about where we come from, all the parts ofour past that are a complete surprise.”

The final result

Peter: “The key thing is, it’s a journey, four-and-a-half million years of human evolution, and the bestthing about it is you know what the ending is.Youstart with creatures who have just walked uprightand the end is us, sentient beings who haveimagination and all the trappings of a modernsociety and yet we discover that quite a lot of thecharacteristics and traits our early ancestors hadsurvives in us.As a viewer it’s like watching Titanic:you know the ending, but it’s a fantastic journey onthe way.

“Working on a series like this, we’ve explored whathuman evolution is, and what it was like to be anape-man or caveman. It makes you realise thatpractically everything you do comes from howthese early creatures behaved, from the way theyeat their food to the way they compete forattention. It makes you stop and think; I know nowwhere a lot of my feelings come from.”


Meet your makers

Episode 1: First Ancestors

An afarensis leader quenches his thirst

It’s 3.5 million years ago and, in East Africa, aremarkable species of ape roams the land.Australopithecus afarensis has taken the first tentativesteps towards humanity – and can stand and walkon two legs.

Just a few million years previously,Africa wascovered, almost edge-to-edge, with dense rain forest.Our ancestors almost certainly used all four limbs tomove, live and hunt in their treetop home. Butmassive geological turmoil changed their destiny.Therift valley was forming, and the rainforests dying asAfrica dried out – turning the landscape into amosaic of scattered trees and grass. In this newenvironment, afarensis finds it more efficient to moveabout not on four legs, but on two.

This film follows a close-knit troop of afarensis, andin particular, Lucy and her young infant. Led by astrong alpha male, there is harmony in their lives.They sleep high in the trees and spend most of theday foraging for food. But while drinking from anearby river, tragedy strikes: a lone crocodilesneaks in unnoticed and catches the alpha maleunawares. Now leaderless, a dispute for dominancebetween the two secondary males unsettles thetroupe.Added to that, a rival troupe invades Lucy’sterritory.While not uncommon in their chimp-likelifestyles, the resultant turf war is both violent andextreme and has devastating consequences.

As the troupe’s lives move on, First Ancestors showshow, although bi-pedalism offers only slightadvantages to the afarensis, it opens the door to anastonishing set of new skills and abilities that willchange the shape of human life on Earth forever.

Producer: Mark HedgecoeDirector: Richard Dale

Episode 2: Blood Brothers

The Africa of two million years ago is a crossroadsin human evolution. Half-a-dozen or more differentspecies of ape-men exist alongside one another;each of them has exploited the environment in adifferent way and has developed their own strategyfor survival.

Blood Brothers follows the lives of two species,Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis, who embodytwo alternative ways of ape-man life.Althoughheavy set, with distinctive gorilla-like faces, the boiseiare gentle characters.They live within a strict socialstructure and are led by a dominant male whosestrength and power holds the group together.Theyare adapted brilliantly to the tough conditions inthis dry, arid land.Their huge teeth, four times thesize of our own, and strong jaws mean they can eatthe toughest vegetation. For them, dried tubers andreed roots are rich pickings.


Synopses

Episode synopses

The dominant male boisei

The habilis have taken a different approach tosurvival.They don’t have the specialisms of theboisei but, instead, have developed into thearchetypal jack-of-all-trades, inquisitive scavengersprepared to try almost anything to survive.Tough,active, gregarious and noisy, they are always on themove, and always alert to the possibility of a meal.But in the near drought of the dry season, thehabilis are struggling. It seems as if their way of lifecannot help them when conditions are tough.

However, habilis have a secret weapon; they havecome to use brainpower rather than brawn.They’ve learnt to work together to scare otherpredators away from food, they scavenge for meatand, perhaps most importantly, make basic stonetools – equipping themselves through their own

efforts with the kind of specialist eating equipmentcreatures like the boisei have by nature.

But which strategy for survival will win out – thejack-of-all-trades or the master of just one? Whichof these ways of living is still present in us? As isoften the case in our story, nature has a say:massive geological turmoil means the habilis andboisei environments continue to change.The boisei’sspecialisms have locked them into one way of livingand when their niche no longer exists, neither canthey. But the habilis can adapt to a changing world –their generalist trait lives on in us.

Producer: Mark HedgecoeDirector: Richard Dale

Episode 3: Savage Family

One-and-a-half million years ago, a new breed ofape-man walks the land. In Southern Africa, Homoergaster has taken the next step to becominghuman.They have long, modern-looking noses,which cool air as they breathe, and their hairlessbodies, with millions of tiny sweat glands, mean theydon’t pant anymore to control their temperature –they sweat.And, above all, they have big brains –nearly two-thirds the size of ours.

Savage Family follows the lives of a close-knit groupof ergaster on a hunt and discovers how they usetheir big brains.They are the first ape-man to haveour complex understanding of the natural world,and can recognise and follow the footprints leftbehind by many different animals.They are experttoolmakers and use a highly-refined stone handaxe. But the most important thing they use theirbrains for is the same thing as we do –understanding other people. Ergaster live in largesocial groups and spend their time on the complextask of getting along with each other.Their societyis held together, not by a dominant male, but bythe bonds of family and friends. For the first time,hunters will bring back meat to people left behindfrom a hunt, using it to forge alliances andreinforce relationships.Their extraordinary social


Synopses

world has led to a new phenomenon in our humanstory – the couple, living together, at least for atime, monogamously.

A male and female ergaster share food

Their new-found social bonds and understanding ofthe world have equipped them with skills thatenable them to move away from their ancestralhome in Africa. Over thousands of years, theyspread throughout the Middle East and Asia,reaching as far as China, and are now known intheir new Asian home as Homo erectus.

However, for all their sophistication, theseancestors are still very different from you and me.Jump forward one million years and they are stillaround, and so, too, are their stone axes. Nothingabout their exceptional tool has changed. In amillion years they have made no technologicaladvancements. Compare this with Homo sapiens,who have gone from the steam age to the spaceage in under a hundred years.The ergaster’s brainsimply does not work in the flexible way ours do.For them to become like us requires a majorchange in thinking. It could be we know whattriggered this dramatic change.Towards the end ofergaster’s time, there is evidence that they learnt tocontrol and work with fire as a weapon, forwarmth and as a tool. For the first time in ourhistory, night-time no longer brought danger, butwarmth, security and time for the mind to wander– perhaps time for the mind to change. Fire

certainly revolutionised the way our ancestors lived– perhaps it did the same to how they could think.

Producers: Nick Green and Mark HedgecoeDirector: Richard Dale

Episode 4:The Survivors

Nearly half a million years ago, the most advancedhuman the world has yet to see roams Europe.Strong and powerful, Homo heidelbergensis are fiercehunters, use sophisticated tools and live in close-knit family groups.They look and behave in a veryhuman way – yet something is missing. TheSurvivors, the final programme in the series, followsthree brothers on a hunt.When one brother isinjured, his distraught family spends most of thenight trying to keep him alive.Yet in the morning,the hunter is dead and his family has gone, leavinghim where he died.There is no ceremony and nolooking back. Heidelbergensis can only see the worldas it is, and they cannot, for example, think of a lifeafter death, for they lack the one thing that makesus human – a modern imagination.

Neanderthal elder hunting


Synopses

Heidelbergensis are the departure point for the lastleg of the journey towards Us. Over two hundredthousand years, they become split into twopopulations by extremes of weather andenvironment, and evolve separately into two verydifferent species.

In the north are the Neanderthal, whose physicalpower and resilience is the key to surviving inice-age Northern Europe. In one of the mostinhospitable environments ever, a small group ofNeanderthal is finding things typically tough.Theleader’s partner is expecting her first child and themen must travel far to find food. If they’reunsuccessful, the group will have to move on, aperilous event for the near full-term mum. In theirworld, being strong and tough is the key to survival.If the going gets tough, they just fight back harder.

In the south, the other descendants ofheidelbergensis are finding the going even harder;140,000 years ago,Africa is in the grip of adevastating drought, and something remarkable hashappened to the descendants of heidelbergensis wholive there.The combination of environment andchance has bred in them a unique ability that willchange the course of human history.They havedeveloped a mind capable of imagination – for thefirst time on Earth, there is a creature capable ofunderstanding and anticipating possibilities, with thegift of abstract thought. It very possibly saves themfrom the brink of extinction.

Although the Neanderthal were unbeatable for aquarter of a million years, it will be this small bandof southern survivors, perhaps numbering just afew tens of thousands, who will come to dominatethe world, and be known as Homo sapiens. Us!

Producers: Nick Green, Mark Hedgecoe and Peter OxleyDirector: Richard Dale


Synopses

Interactive television

The Walking With Cavemen interactive TV (iTV)service introduces the audience to the detectivework involved in unravelling the incredible story ofour human evolution.Tackling some of thequestions raised in the series, interactive contentwill reveal a much deeper level of paleontologicalresearch that underpins the findings.

Viewers will be encouraged to join the interactiveservice right at the start of the programme.As theprogramme narrative unfolds, interactive viewerswill be able to watch the show with additionallayers of factual evidence – from facts about the“Lucy” fossil, to theories about our understandingof afarensis behaviour.A variety of options will beavailable, providing a comprehensive summary ofthe science behind each episode.

Following each programme, this dossier of evidencewill be drawn together in an exclusive iTV extra –a 10-minute documentary telling the stories behindthe fossil discoveries that have transformed ourknowledge of human origins.

Website

www.bbc.co.uk/science

The BBC website accompanying the series is anintegral part of the Walking With Cavemenexperience.An impressive stand-alone resource in itsown right, www.bbc.co.uk/science offers visitorsan entertaining and enlightening learning experience.

The highlight of the site is a new flash game, Ape ToMan.The game is split into seven tasks, each onerepresenting a key milestone in the evolutionaryjourney, from the ape swinging in the trees to themodern human.The stages – Standing Tall, Food ForThought, Tooled Up, Firepower, Language, On TheHunt and Imagination – require some basicknowledge of science but are fun and engaging.Players are left with an insight into the order ofkey evolutionary developments, why theyhappened and in which order.

The rest of the site contains fact files on eachhominid, family trees showing the relationshipsbetween the different species, programmesummaries and in-depth, behind-the-scenesinformation. So why not visit the site, play the gameand see if you would have made it as a caveman!


Content on BBCi

Content on BBCi

Viewers who want to find out who they are and where they came from can discover more by checking out the BBC’s Interactive TV and website offerings:


Production credits

Production credits

Executive Producer and Director

Series Producer

Producers

Presenter

Voice Director

Movement Director

Creature Animatronic and ProstheticMake-Up – Early Species

Creature Animatronic and ProstheticMake-Up – Later Species

Composer

Sound Designer

Production Designer and Visual Effects Director

Executive Editor

Richard Dale

Peter Georgi

Nick Green, Mark Hedgecoe, Peter Oxley

Robert Winston

Patsy Rodenburg

Wendy Allnutt

Animated Extras

Carter White Fx

Alan Parker

Kenny Clarke at Loudhailer

Tim Goodchild

John Lynch

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Robert Winston – Presenter

Professor the Lord Winston is Europe’s foremostfertility pioneer. He has been ConsultantObstetrician and Gynaecologist at London’sHammersmith Hospital since 1978 and Professor ofFertility Studies at University of London at theInstitute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, RoyalPostgraduate Medical School, since 1987.

He has written and presented several BBC TVseries including Your Life In Their Hands, The HumanBody, Superhuman, A Child Of Our Time and HumanInstinct, a pioneering look into what it is that makesus human.

He is author of several books including Infertility,A Sympathetic Approach (1987), The IVF Revolution

(1999) and Human Instinct (2002). He writesregularly for scientific publications and nationalnewspapers on human and experimentalreproduction and is a regular speaker in theHouse of Lords on health, scientific andeducational issues.

Richard Dale – Executive Producerand Director

Richard read Natural Sciences at Christ’s CollegeCambridge and joined the BBC as an assistantproducer in 1987, going on to become a producerof Tomorrow’s World in 1989.

As a documentary director, Richard has made anumber of award-winning and critically acclaimedfilms for BBC One and BBC Two, including TheHuman Body.The series was honoured with acoveted George Foster Peabody Award and alsowon awards from Bafta, the New York Film Festival,the San Francisco International Film Festival andthe UK’s Royal Television Society. In 2001, Richardwrote and produced a Large Format Feature Film(IMAX) based upon the TV series. Richard’s otherproductions for the BBC include The Contenders,Tokyo Earthquake and TX – Time Files. Richard hasworked on a wide range of programmes, fromnews and current affairs, to Britain’s most populartelevision drama, EastEnders, and Channel Four’sTeachers, for which he was nominated for a Baftaaward as director in 2001.

Peter Georgi – Series Producer

Peter read Economics at Exeter University andstarted his television career with the BBC in 1990after spending two years as a professional cyclist.

Specialising in innovative filming techniques andcreating distinctive visual styles, Peter produced anddirected the BBC’s first Large Format (IMAX) Film,The Human Body. He also produced and directedone of the more controversial films on puberty inthe multi award-winning series, The Human Body,and was responsible for developing many of thespecialist filming and graphic techniques that havewon the series international acclaim.

His other work includes developing the award-winning, slow-motion photography, which explored


Biographies

Biographies

the hidden beauty of some of the world’s greatestathletes, for the BBC series The Contenders, whichaired in 1995. Later that year, Peter produced theacclaimed film for the BBC One series QED,following the courageous attempt of the half-paralysed, ex-Royal Marine Sgt, Reggie Perrin, toclimb Alaska’s Mount McKinley. Peter also producedand directed the visually stunning film Call Of TheDeep, about breath-hold divers, also for QED.

Patsy Rodenburg – Voice Director

Head of Voice at the Royal National Theatre andGuildhall School of Music & Drama, Patsy trainedat the Central School of Speech and Drama andwas voice tutor at the Royal ShakespeareCompany for nine years. She works extensively intheatre, film, television and radio throughoutEurope, North America,Australia and Asia. Patsy isa published author and has written 11 books basedupon her teachings.

Wendy Allnutt – Movement Director

Wendy is Head of Movement at the GuildhallSchool of Music & Drama. She trained at theCentral School of Speech and Drama and hasworked extensively as an actress and choreographerin the West End, Royal Shakespeare Company,repertory and tours of the USA, UK and Sweden.Her credits include the films Oh! What A Lovely Warand When Eight Bells Toll; on TV, she played Jennifer,Ronnie Corbett’s fiancée, in Sorry, was Cordelia inKing Lear and appeared in Rough Justice. Herextensive choreography work includes She Stoops ToConquer and A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/RoyalNational Theatre), Romeo And Juliet and Private Lives(Mercury), and Brothers Karamazov, Maybe andPrivate Lives (Manchester Royal Exchange).

Tim Goodchild – ProductionDesigner and Visual Effects Director

Tim has over 20 years of experience in productiondesign, visual effects direction and graphic designfor broadcast television and large format movies.Tim’s innovative approach to design and special

effects has been recognised with numerousaccolades, including a Bafta in Graphic Design forThe Human Body, a Gold World Medal at the NewYork Film Festival, two Royal Television Societyawards for Graphic Design and Visual Effects andtwo BDA Gold Awards. Other television creditsinclude The Planets, Tomorrow’s World and TheHuman Face as art director and concept designer.

Alan Parker – Composer

Alan studied classical guitar at London’s RoyalAcademy of Music and was an original member ofthe cult band Blue Mink. During his career he hasworked with music legends Frank Sinatra, EltonJohn, David Bowie, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix.What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Frankenstein, BBCDrama’s Victoria And Albert and Rhodes andGranada’s Tough Love are just some of his film andtelevision credits. His Mass for full orchestra, choirand organ was sung for the first time in TheVatican in a special service celebrated by HisHoliness The Pope.


Biographies

Episode 1: First Ancestors

(Australopithecus) afarensis:

• Meaning: “Australis” meaning “southern” and“pithecus” meaning “ape”.“Afar” is the regionwhere they were discovered in Northern Ethiopia.• Pronunciation: Oss-trah-loh-pith-ek-us AF-er-EN-sis.• Time range: 3.9-3.0 million years ago.• Dietary type: Dominated by soft fruit andleaves, but also loved termites, and bird eggs when available.• Height: Females: 107cm; Males: 152cm.• Weight: 30-75kg.• Modern comparison: Chimpanzees.• Communication:With the face and hands.Their gestures would be percussive, used to make a point.Vocal communication would havebeen limited to emotional responses and perhapssome vocal grooming.• Fossil finds: Lucy, discovered by Donald Johansonand Tom Gray in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia. Lucy wasan adult female of about 21 years. She was about107cm (3ft 6ins) tall (small for her species) andabout 28kg (62lbs) in weight.The first family was alsofound at Hadar in Ethiopia. Further fossils andfootprints were found at Laetoli,Tanzania.

Episode 2: Blood Brothers

Paranthropus boisei:

• Meaning: “Robust” boisei after Charles Boise,an American industrialist who funded Mary Leakey’s work.• Pronunciation: PA-ran-THROW-puss BOY-see-I.• Time range:Approx 2.5-1 million years ago.• Dietary type: Gentle vegetarians.• Height: Females: 120cm; Males: 140cm.• Estimated weight: Males: 49kg; Females: 34kg.• Modern comparison: Gorillas.• Communication: Facial expressions wereextremely important.They could grin, sulk, scowland show worry.They also maintained a constant

low level of communication by grunts, etc. Only inthe case of a potential threat from a predatorwould they raise hell. More charmingly, they alsocommunicate with belches, grunts, barks, hoots,roars and screams … and chuckles!• Fossil finds: Skull found by Mary Leakey atOlduvai Gorge,Tanzania, in 1959, defined a new levelof robusticity, sometimes called “hyper-robust”.Alsofound was a skull from Koobi Fora, Kenya.

Homo habilis:

• Meaning: “Handy-man”.They were thought to bethe earliest known species of Homo, meaning“human”, due to their brain size being significantlylarger than apes; however, this titling is now highlycontroversial.• Pronunciation: Ho-mo hab-i-liss.• Time range: approx 2.2-1.6 million years ago.• Dietary type: Omnivorous.• Height: Females: 100cm; Males: 150cm.• Weight: Under 45kg.• Communication: Facial expression plays a largerole – more so than with any living primates.Importantly, they could read and vocalise aboutsigns and things within their environment. Habiliscould learn to associate vocal or visual signals withparticular objects and give primitive instructions.There would also be a lot of vocal grooming,emotions communications and chatter.• Fossil finds: Remains found by Louis and MaryLeakey at Olduvai Gorge,Tanzania. Complete skullfound by Richard Leakey at Koobi Fora on shoresof Lake Turkana in 1972.

Episode 3: Savage Family

Homo ergaster/erectus:

• Meaning: Homo erectus means “upright man”;Homo ergaster means “workman”.• Pronunciation: Ho-mo ER-ga-STa.• Time range: Erectus – 1.8 million/possibly up to300k years ago. Ergaster – 1.9-1.2million/or possibly600k years ago.


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Meet the ancestorsFact files

• Dietary type: Omnivorous – meat eatersand gatherers.• Height: Females: 160cm; Males: 180cm.• Weight: Females: 56kg; Males: 66kg.• Communication:The most advanced yet – theyhad proper words for things, although theirlanguage was far more basic then ours today.Theycould also follow “signals” from one another – notjust through gesticulations, but also by following astare (they had white corneas, which enables this).With an increase in brain size of 50 per cent, theycould understand one another, too.• Fossil finds: Nariokotome Boy was discovered bya team led by Richard Leakey and A Walker atNariokotome, Kenya in 1984.This is the mostcomplete early human skeleton ever discovered andhas been dated to 1.6 million years ago.The relativecompleteness of this specimen allowed detailedexamination of the anatomy of erectus, and led tomany influential ideas about this species. Other fossilfinds include the Chellean Man, discovered in 1960at Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania, and the Java Man, in1981 near Trinil on the Indonesian island of Java, aswell as the Peking Man site where a large number ofstone tools were also discovered.

Episode 4:The Survivors

Homo heidelbergensis:

• Meaning:The species’ name was originallyproposed for the fossil mandible discovered atMauer, a town near Heidelberg, Germany.Alsoknown as Archaic Homo sapiens.• Pronunciation: Ho-mo hide-EL-BER-gen-SIS.• Time range: 600,000-200,000 years ago.• Dietary type: Omnivorous, skilled hunters.• Height: Females: 157cm; Males: 180cm.• Weight: Females: 52kg; Males: 80kg.• Communication: Basic word communication,and complex social interaction.• Fossil finds: Bodo Cranium – found in Ethiopiaand dated at 600,000 years ago, this sports thebiggest human face known in the human fossilrecord.“Heidelberg Man”, found in the Mauer sandpits, Germany, dated at 400,000-500,000 years ago.Petralona skull, Greece, discovered in 1960 anddated at approximately 250,000 years ago.

Homo neanderthal:

• Meaning: Found in the Neander Valley inGermany in 1856.• Pronunciation: Ho-mo ni-AN-der-taal.• Time range: 230,000 years ago to just under30,000 years ago. Recently discovered remains fromVindija in Croatia have been radio carbon dated to28,000 years ago.• Dietary type: Hunters and gatherers.• Height: Females: 154cm; Males: 166cm.• Weight: Females: 66kg; Males: 77kg.• Communication: Conversations constructed in short sentences, restricted vocal range, nasalsounds, enhanced by gesture-based system ofcommunication.• Fossil finds: “Old man of La Chapelle”discovered by Amedee and Jean Bouyssonie in 1908near La-Chapelle-aux-Saints in France.About50,000 years old, the specimen was about 30-40when he died, and had severe arthritis, as well asalmost no molar teeth.The fact that he survived aslong as he did indicates that Neanderthals must havehad a complex social structure.Also the “ShanidarSite” in Iraq, where Ralph Solecki discovered nineNeanderthal skeletons between 1953 and 1960.They are thought to be between 70,000 and 40,000years old.


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