Children of Adam is edited from two National Geographic documentaries. Follow Dr Spencer Wells as he retraces humanity's incredible journey from East Africa to every corner of the planet.

Every human being alive today shares the same pair of common ancestors: “Y-chromosomal Adam” and “Mitochondrial Eve”. Genetic markers within DNA also show that, around 55,000 years ago, all modern human lineages outside of Africa were terminated except for one family group: “Y-chromosomal Noah” and haplogroup L3. That small band went on to populate the rest of the planet.

Modern humans appeared in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. By 50,000 years ago they were in South Asia and Australia. By 40,000 years ago they had colonized Eurasia and by 12,000 BCE had reached North and South America. The spread of modern humans coincides with the extinction of the megafauna (giant ground sloths, giant flightless birds, American elephants, etc) and the disappearance of all other hominids such as Neanderthals. Modern humans fashioned composite tools, built huts and crafted boats. They also developed religious traditions and accumulated knowledge through oral culture. Most were nomadic moving from place to place as they hunted and foraged but where food was abundant, such as in rich coastal areas, they lived in villages. When Picasso first saw the 25,000-year-old cave paintings at Altamira in northern Spain he was stunned. “None of us could paint like that,” he said. “After Altamira all is decadence.”

'The art of making fire ... is probably the greatest [discovery], excepting language, ever made by man.' Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Around the flickering fire, hominids danced and clapped and voiced distinctive sounds in imitation of bird song, animal calls and warnings. Voiced repeatedly, the ritual noises began to acquire symbolic meaning. The ritual followed the hunt and the new sounds were used for identification, coordination and preplanning. For foragers, they became objects, quantities, qualities and were worked into nursery rhymes. The intellectual was superimposed with the metric in ever greater ordered complexity until, about 200,000 years ago, "Y-chromosomal Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve" were born with a beneficial mutation and fully awoke to the power of language. Designated in the Bible as "the tree of life" and "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:9), conceptual thought allowed modern humans to contemplate and dominate their bodies and the world around them becoming moral beings endowed with free will.

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Children of Adam National Geographic DNA Science History Documentary

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