Program: AMERICAS
Series:	FIRST PEOPLES
Length:	116 min.
Air Times:	Sorry, no times scheduled.
Program Description
As humans spread out across the world, their toughest challenge was to colonize the Americas -- because of a huge ice sheet blocking their route. It has long been thought that pioneers -- known as Clovis people -- arrived about 13,000 years ago. But an underwater discovery in Mexico is forcing the story to be re-written. How closely related were the First Americans and today's Native Americans? It's a matter of huge controversy, focused on Kennewick Man. There are very few other skeletons in the world that engender such strong feelings. Africa - 200,000 years ago, a new species appeared on the African landscape -- Homo sapiens. Scientists imagined eastern Africa was a real-life Garden of Eden, but the latest research suggests we evolved in many places across the continent at the same time. Diversity is etched into our biological blueprint. DNA from a 19th Century African-American slave is forcing geneticists to re-think the origins of our species. The idea is that our ancestors met, mated and hybridized with other types of human in Africa -- creating ever greater diversity within our species.