Homo Sapiens

Homo Sapiens shows stunning images of forgotten places, buildings we constructed and then left.

The images could be taken from a science fiction film set on planet Earth after it's become uninhabitable. Abandoned buildings - housing estates, shops, cinemas, hospitals, offices, schools, a library, amusement parks and prisons. Places and areas being reclaimed by nature, such as a moss-covered bar with ferns growing between the stools, a still stocked soft drinks machine now covered with vegetation, an overgrown rubbish dump, or tanks in the forest. Tall grass sprouts from cracks in the asphalt.

Discovered in 2013, new and puzzling finding of small-skulled fossils of Homo Naledi has scientists trying to understand whether Homo Sapiens lived at the same time as Homo Naledi, and how Homo Naledi communities may have lived.

200,000 years ago we took our first steps in Africa. Today there are 7 billion of us living across the planet. How did our ancestors spread from continent to continent? This is a global detective story, featuring the latest archaeological discoveries and genetic research. On each continent, we track down the earliest members of our species, Homo sapiens. Who were these First Peoples? What drove them to the ends of the earth?

Nothing is more fascinating to us than, well, us. Where did we come from? What makes us human? NOVA's groundbreaking investigation explores how new discoveries are transforming views of our earliest ancestors. Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists, footage shot in the trenches as fossils were unearthed, and stunning computer-generated animation, Becoming Human brings early hominids to life, examining how they lived and how we became the creative and adaptable modern humans of today.

Why are we the last of our kind? Anthropologist Niobe Thompson takes a journey of discovery in the footsteps of our human ancestors, and unlocks the mystery of our unlikely survival and miraculous emergence as the world's only global species. We evolved during the most volatile era since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Which of the great primates of 25 million years ago is our common ancestor? Is it pierolapithecus? Follow the journey of primates developing into Homo erectus and then to Homo sapiens through the millions of years of evolution and the thousands of miles of migrations.

The Himalayas were among the last places on Earth that homo sapiens came to inhabit. Now, join an international team of scientists as they climb to the world's highest tombs to unearth secrets of the people who settled these extreme environments.

The Shape Of Life tells the gripping and magnificent tale of the beginnings of all animal life. Using innovative camera techniques to capture rarely seen creatures and breathtaking computer animation to reveal stunning detail, this digital high definition series tells the stories of the revolutionary findings and scientific breakthroughs in biology, genetics and paleontology that are rewriting the book of life. The series celebrates the splendors and struggles of evolution, unveiling eight biological designs that are the underpinnings of nearly all animal life. A Co-Production of Sea Studios Foundation and National Geographic Television.