Airdate: The Great Human Odyssey

SBS begins a 3 part anthropology series, The Great Human Odyssey.

This details how tiny bands of hunter-gatherers scattered across Africa eventually reaching every corner of the earth.

Discover the miracle of the human species with anthropologist Dr Niobe Thompson as he tells the ultimate story of human survival. Walking in the footsteps of ancestors, Dr Thompson unlocks the mystery of unlikely survival and the miraculous emergence as the world’s only global species.

Humans evolved during the most volatile era since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Like the many other kinds of human who once shared the world, Homo sapiens should have died away. Instead, the species survived to populate every corner of the planet.

Breakthroughs in genetics, climate research and archaeology are redrawing knowledge of human origins at breathtaking speed. Dr Thompson takes the audience inside ground- breaking scientific research to reveal dimensions of the human journey that was once thought impossible.

Episode One: Rise of a Species
Like other kinds of human who once shared the world, Homo sapiens should have died away. Discover how the species faced near extinction in Africa, and then found a place to rebuild. Explore the birth of a language and art at archaeological excavations scientists are now calling ‘the cradle of the human mind’.

7.30pm Sunday 23 October on SBS.