First Steps

Collects thee episodes of the acclaimed documentary series NOVA
Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors collects thee episodes of the acclaimed documentary series NOVA exploring what the latest scientific discoveries tell us about the earliest human ancestors - and what makes us human today. The first episode, "Selam", shows how clues from the remains of a 3 million year-old child suggest why and how humanity first came down from the trees and started walking upright. The second episode applies forensics to the mystery of "Turkana Boy", a fossil of Home erectus, the first human ancestor to leave Africa and begin colonization of the globe. What caused this African exodus? The final episode, "Becoming Human", examines how human capacities for art, invention, and survival developed, and the mystery of humanity's interaction with the early Neanderthals. Did humans interbreed with Neanderthals, or cause their extermination? Why did "we" survive when other ancestral cousins died out? An extraordinary collection, and a choice pick especially...

Outstanding documentary
I love this DVD. Great visuals, great narration and fairly up-to-date. It's the sort of documentary one can watch many times.

I highly recommend "Becomming Human". Nova does great work and this is one of their best, in my view. This is a brilliant overview of the human story and as humans we should all know that story!

In addition to "Becoming Human," I also recommend the following DVDs:

Walking With Cavemen

Evolution Boxed Set

National Geographic - Search for the Ultimate Survivor

--Guy P. Harrison, author of "Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity" and "50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God" (a skeptical analysis of common justifications for religious belief)

Odyssey in Our Hominoid Past to Meet Our Earliest Ancestors
NOVA does a great job of explaining to its audience how Homo Sapiens ultimately became the "winner-take-all" hominoid species. On location photography, interviews with renowned experts, and computer-generated animation allow viewers to better understand how Homo Sapiens became the final (read current) outcome of a long evolution spread over millions of years. Viewers should not be surprised that this investigation of our ancestors will be the subject of an updated documentary. For example, the researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology recently revised their initial conclusions that there was no interbreeding at all between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis based on their further study of their respective ADN. In summary, NOVA makes a noteworthy contribution to vulgarizing the science of evolutionary anthropology to the attention of a wide audience.

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