I have some information that will surprise you for the past 15 years.

Scientists have been using

cutting-edge technology to investigate your family. History. We've been delving into your distant
past and we've discovered something incredible. It's time we shared it with you a long time ago,
your family run the brink of dying. If somehow against impossible, odds, they managed not only to
survive, but to become the most successful people on the planet come with me. And I'll tell you
something that will change your view of the world. It's the story of your family and how they
conquered the Earth.

What if I told you that scientists have discovered a time machine, a portal is allowed us to see back
into ancient history. And what if I told you that for the past 10 years, I've been using this time
machine to gather information that has been rewriting history, your history. And where does this
information come from blood?

It's one of the world's most evocative substances too. Many people. It represents the essence of life,
a religious sacrifice the gift from the gods, but to me, it embodies the past because inside this tiny
Crimson drop is the greatest history book ever written. It's the story of a journey, the Journey of our
species and each of us is carrying the unique chapter, but it's only in the last decade that we've
discovered.

How to read these stories a window on the past. That archaeologists could only dream up a time
machine hidden. In our genes. My name is Spencer Wells and I'm a geneticist the adventure began
for me as a young researcher. When I was lucky enough to work with a special man. I've tracked him
down here in Venice.

His name is Luca cavalli-sforza.

Luca was the first man to realize that blood could be the time machine to reunite us with our
ancestors people to assume is history. Biological evolution is a genetic phenomena. So unless we
look at the genetics, we don't understand our history. We don't understand why we have made the
way we have made. This is how it started in science. Every now and then, a big new idea comes
along.

Happened back in the 50s. What if we could use blood to learn about our most distant ancestors?
The question became an obsession for. Luca, he gathered up blood samples from populations
around the planet. Why to build a family tree for the whole world? We saw that, we could construct
the tree for these formulations. We didn't know what it was supposed to be, but it may seems kind
of since Look at it. Made the first steps toward a Monumental truth that everyone alive. Today might
be related, but his results were still hazy if the 1970s and Luke is out in central, Africa, settling the
blood of the Bianca and booty people. That isolated tribes could give him a clearer picture of our
distant past.

He was right? They could.

Lee was possible to work out distant, Family Lines from blood type and the key land, the blood of
isolated populations.

Flash forward to the early 90s. I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen. Fluke at Stanford
University in California. There was a scientific revolution in full swing and the buzzword was genetics.
While everyone else was talking about the future. We were looking backwards into the past, blood
was the time machine and we're Time Travelers soon. We were taking Lucas work on to a new level
10 years on and we're ready to rewrite history. Will spread across our planet. Not so long ago, our
species numbered little more than 10,000 and their world was a single continent Africa. Then
something happened a small band left, their African Homeland on a journey into an unknown hostile
world. You are one of their children who were these people how did their children come to populate
the entire Earth? I'll explain more about how we know this a little later. We're desperate.

Close to the answers from the verge of understanding the greatest journey in the history of our
species and yet. Listen, I'll be honest with you. I've got a problem. I spent nearly 10 years checking
and double checking, the details of this journey. Till I have complete and total faith in our results.
And the upshot. A story. That's well. Frankly. It's impossible. If our ancestors made the journey, I
believe they did, they would have had to be super humans, the speed strength and resilience
required, to conquer the world defies belief. And yet, there it is written in our blood.

What do you do when 10 years worth of work leaves you with more questions than answers. I'll tell
you what I'm going to do. I've made a decision, closing the door in the lab hanging up my white coat
and heading out into the real world. I'm going to retrace their Journey for myself.

The, my task is daunting.

I know the genetic results, they're supported by clear data, then yet. I still find it amazing. That only
50,000 years ago. The ancestors of all of us. We're still living in Africa. It seems like such a short
period of time, on an evolutionary time scale.

Look at it this way, humans, evolved from apes and apes. First appear in the fossil record about 23
million years ago, a huge expanse of time. So compress it down to a year and that case Apes appear
on the first of January toward the end of October. The first eight men arrived, the first ancestors to
walk upright. Amazingly, it's not until the 28th of December. Nearly the end of the year that the first
fully modern humans arrived on the scene and even more incredibly. It's not until the 31st of
December New Year's Eve that they leave Africa to populate the rest of the world. And by My New
Year's Day. Our ancestors had made it to the farthest corners of the globe. But how could?

They have made such a journey so suddenly, so swiftly. He so successfully.

Yep, bad lady stinger. I didn't, he.

That's what I'm off to find out.

It hasn't been an easy decision. I'm not just leaving my cozy lab. I'll be leaving behind my young
family, too.

But this is a big story and I want to be able to tell it with absolute confidence to do that. I've got to
walk in the footsteps of our ancestors to face. Hardships to feel the elements that's own. Merely
wipe them from the face of the Earth. It's a journey that both of terrifies and exhilarates me.

First, stop the place where it all again, the birthplace of every human being alive, Africa.

Our genetic time machine has revealed a small surviving tribe. The direct descendants of our earliest
ancestors. Unlike the rest of us. They stayed on here and I'm hoping I can learn from them. Why?
Some of their family left to start the greatest journey in history. Let's meet the family.

The Kalahari Desert in Namibia. I'm here to find extraordinary ancient tribal people, the San
Bushmen, our research shows that their distant relatives left Africa and set in motion, the family tree
of mankind from thence. Every color creed and nationality alive today. We know the fathers of
mankind started their Journey from here, but why did they leave? I'm hoping the few survivors. They
left behind the San Bushmen, will help me solve this fundamental question. 50,000 years on. I hear
their numbers are dwindling fast soon. They could be gone entirely. I'm arriving not a moment too
soon. Hello, I'm Spencer. Let's see. A picture of my daughter. I have to explain to them, why I'm here.
But how do I begin first start? What's Bushman for geneticist anyway? I sense. This is really going to
be tough for a lab rat. Like me. I just want to tell you a little bit about why I've come here. It's mostly
to find out about your way of life. I'm really excited to be here. You know, it's such a dream for me to
get to meet the sun people to Bushman. Then we'll go bleep in a way. You carry a secret in your
blood and you can think about it like a family tree.

Explain the tree was just like the family that we all belong to. My family line is one of the small
fractured branches at the very top while there's is the oldest Unearthed the biggest branch of the
base of the trunk. I get the feeling I'm not explaining this at all. Well, but they're way too polite to
say. So this is really quite embarrassing. So it's a great privilege for me to come and meet my distant
relatives and the people who give us a glimpse,

Above all of our ancestors. So in one sense, we're all voice on. We're all son people. It's just that my
skin is slightly redder. This is like a dream for me. Everything predicted and their blood seems to be
written in their faces. It's like looking at a composite model of every face from around the world. The
eye shape of East Asians the high cheekbones. Mongolians, the mid brown skin that could turn
darker or lighter.

Who did what last minute? How do I know that of all the people on Earth? The Sod are direct
descendants of our oldest ancestors. I'll try to explain a little better this time.

I work with DNA, our very own Manual of life. It's in our blood. In every cell of our body
orchestrating our life processes. DNA is a ladder of just for Linked molecules a c g and T strung
together in pairs in an incredibly long and complex sequence. If laid out the DNA from one person
with stretch to the moon and back three thousand times. It ourselves. This chain is broken into forty,
six, bundles called chromosomes, because of its sheer length. DNA is prone to develop small glitches.
In its sequence. They're called mutations. Everybody has them when they occur. We pass them on to
our children. We call these inherited mutations markers, as our chromosomes passed down through
the generations. They carry these markers with them. They write our history. They're the source.

Of our time machine. The way we can see back to our earliest ancestors.

The markers I follower found only in met on their Y. Chromosome, the chromosome. That makes
men men. But, of course, men do travel alone. And the journey of man is the Journey of everyone.

It's walking through the village. And I saw that they had massive piles of these sitting around
everywhere. Got a monkey oranges. They taste pretty good. They're a little bit like the pious, but I
thought it'd be a good idea to use them to explain exactly what we mean. When we say, we're
following genetic markers. This is a man at some point in the past. The thing that makes a man is his
Y chromosome, a piece of DNA that's unique to men when men have sons. They pass on their Y.
Chromosome to those Sons again. It's what

Them Sons. So if we imagine that, this man had two sons, they would have essentially identical DNA
on the Y chromosome to their father. So they would get his Y chromosome in effect.

And if we imagine that, they also have sons.

Those Sons. The grandsons of this. Very first man, would also have essentially the same DNA, the
occasionally, we pass on these pieces of DNA. We get a change in a single letter. In the sequence.
We can call those mutations or markers. And that's what allows you to notice is to trace descent.
Not represented this marker with a little strip of tape, a little black bar, and just like before, all of the
sons of this particular, man will have essentially the same Y chromosome, so they will inherit this
marker. And in that way, the marker acts effectively.

As a batch of dissent, a marker of descent from this particular man, and that's what we follow. Now,
as we move further down the tree, most of the sons will inherit just that single bar, but occasionally,
as we saw before, we will get a second change in the Y chromosome. A second marker, appears
showing descent from a particular man. In this case, this person who has first that marker, which
came from that person back there. But an additional unique change on his Y chromosome, which he,
then passes on to all of his descendants, so, In the people that were talking about living in the
present day, in this part of the tree that got two markers. They clearly Trace their descent from this
man, but the first marker, remember arose all the way back there, all those Generations ago.

The San Bushmen markers are quite unlike any others found outside of Africa. In the world's family
tree. They are branches the first split from the rest. That's how I know. They must be the oldest tribe
on Earth.

And now, I'm here looking for Clues to find out why they're ancient brothers and sisters left this
place. The first thing I noticed was there incredible language they speak with clicks and other sounds
totally alien to me for two and three.

For this strange language of window on the past. Did our ancestors speak like that. Merit ruhlin a
linguist for my old University, Stanford. Push one is the only family which has clicks those kinds of
sounds. None of the other worlds language families have. These sounds. So this is really what makes
Bushman Bushman language is different from all of the other world's languages.

Did you listen to me?

There's a reasonable hypothesis that these cliques are in. In fact, ancestral sounds which have been
lost in all of the other worlds. Languages probably lost just once in Africa. And then the group which
lost these clicks left Africa and spread throughout the entire world. When I ask another colleague
paleoanthropologist Richard Klein also from Stanford, he goes even further. Beaches is more than
just communication. It's also the way you model your world. You can ask what if questions what if I
mounted this piece of stone on the end of the shaft in this way and I put a string across this boat
thing and I tried to shoot the the shaft with this boat thing. What if that kind of question is
something that I probably requires language to be answered effectively. Even if it's just one person
talking.

Styles in their minds eye 50,000 years ago, click was a new and complex language. They've been
nothing like it before, but there were other Innovations to they showed me this. It's a spear tip finely
crafted from bone. That might not seem like much today. But when our ancestors started using it, it
was the last word in technology, the smart missile of its day. Then every detectable archaeological
respect. Meaning the manufacture of art, the widespread use of materials, like, bone and ivory, and
she'll the burial of the Dead with, with ceremony, or with ritual, and every detectable archaeological
respect after 50,000 years ago. You see this burst of creativity is a big difference in Behavior.

Perform is fixed and culture takes off.

So you just want to make it very round, very smooth. Now. We're getting somewhere. When they
left Africa, 50,000 years ago, the ancestors of these new age, people have state-of-the-art hunting
technology and a brand new language to communicate ideas.

How far back?

But they weren't philosophers. They were Hunters. Next, the Bushman showed me how these new
skills were used. Like forensic detectives at the scene of a crime, the San Bushmen read Clues, left in
the ground and get inside the mind of their prey 50,000 years ago. This kind of thinking would have
given them an immense advantage over their competitors. Anyone who couldn't think like this.

Piers letran who's worked with the Bushmen for years. He seen firsthand the best trackers in the
world on the edge of the track of the yet still there. I'm just going to very, very sharp edge. That's
basically that many thing working saying to the age of the track, and then they'll take another half
her size. Could they be ours? Yeah. These are the prints of a wildebeest. Now we are on its Trail. A
lion will wander across 5th Prince without a second thought, if it can't see the animal. It or smell it, it
simply doesn't exist. It would have been the same for a distant ancestors. But 50,000 years ago,
these trackers learn to see into the past and into the future. The hoofprint told them that an animal
had walked this way in the past and if they followed its tracks in the future, they fill their bellies.

According to Merit roulin. Hunting was only the beginning of the advances made.

My language language is basically responsible for all human behavior, whatever it is and and these
new hunting methods and the Exquisite hunting methods that these people have clearly reflects
Advanced language. The advanced language is what allows people to do. All of this extraordinary
complicated and complex, you know, kinds of activities. Its language, lets us do an enormous
number of different things and hunting you This is just one of them.

Back on the trail, the tracks lead us to the prey look under this but she's actually is lying under the
tree. Okay, the Windows like this is what they'll be that difficult, keeping a low profile, but
unfortunately, they never stood a chance. The two great white Hangers On Yaki behind them, Louis
It's not even worth and the skills, our ancestors developed 50,000 years ago. I asked peers.
Absolutely if you take it just on a basis of natural selection and its purest form. You look at every
animal around, it's going to be the survival of the fittest to me. You can use the same analogy for
mankind if you didn't have the brains, sorry.

50,000 years ago, our ancestors experienced a Quantum Leap than thinking, but this doesn't tell me
why they lacked where they driven out. Did they develop a newfound curiosity?

I'm told the answer, May lie, 800 miles south of here on the South African Coast.

Now this is a cave with a mysterious past long before the Quantum Leap. This natural shelter was a
home for humans, then they suddenly vanished. Why dick Elders cave? Contains human bones.
Dating back, 80,000 years. What were these early occupants? Like I? Asteroid and Yates an
archaeologist from the University of Cape Town to describe them to me. That's another job. What's
important? Is the presence of a chin? So this is somebody who would not be very different in
appearance to any human being living today, interested in a suit, stick them in the office. Absolutely.
Nobody would give him a second glass. They may look like us but the people who lived here morning
smart, these people lived here before the Quantum Leap. And thinking Royden, showed me their
tools. You find blade, like pieces. And he's would have been shipped off a core. That's right. Under
that piece of stone. That's right. When you find over here other pieces, which have a natural point, a
bit too developed examples of such as this to be used as a spirit needs to be hafted onto some sort
of stick. Yeah. They are very crude. If I gave you a challenging to through reduce a flag for purple.

He's right. I can't make a stone tool but I'll live with it. The point is that the people who lived here
hadn't thought of using materials like done. These are the kinds of simple stone tools. That humans
have been making for hundreds of thousands of years. But when did they disappear? The dating that
we have shows that little Finnish, people were not in the shelter after 50,000 years ago, so I can
clearly happened there then. Something clearly happened there.

50,000 years ago, sounds familiar, doesn't it? What was it that caused these people to suddenly
vanish?

Richard Klein thinks it's a miracle mankind. Survived at all.

It's extremely difficult to find archaeological sites that big between 60 and 30 thousand years ago.
Animal and plant populations crashed and people human populations would follow so not that they
weren't people there say in southern Africa between 60 and 30 thousand years ago, but there were
so few of them that they have virtually no archaeological visibility.
Julia Leigh Thorpe a paleoclimatologists from the University of Cape Town, explain how the drought
would have caused a dramatic drop in sea levels. Leaving this cave, high and dry. It was a very sharp
drop in temperature around 70, 2000 years ago. And at that point, the sea would have receded quite
rapidly from the site. So the site would have changed to different kind of place. One of these
changes.

Well, the sea was retreating and eventually retreated to about 40 kilometers away. So this place
would have become an inland site and the the set of opportunities that you see around you today
with enormous amount of seafood, which is obviously eaten would not have been available. It's not
possible to carry Seafood. 40 kilometers, what sort of evidence do we have these climatic changes?
Well, we don't really have evidence for sights on.

Water at least not direct ones. But what we do have is a great deal of evidence from for global
climate changes over the long term and we usually extract those from very long. Ice course in, for
instance, Antarctica, and also Marine cause of the coast of southern Africa and all around the world.
We can extract Little Creatures. These are called forums, which are really very tiny. They look like
little grains of sand, but there's a great deal of information. That's locked up in these little creatures.
They made out of calcium carbonate and we can measure the oxygen and the carbon Isotopes and
from that has been extracted the sea level curve for the last couple of hundred thousand years and
that tells us a lot about what sea levels were doing. And what's the ice caps at the North Pole and
the South Pole were doing

Between 70 and 50,000 years ago. Those ice caps were expanding, we're talking about a worldwide
catastrophe, brought about by Monumental changes in climate. The world was in the grip of an Ice
Age. The polar ice sheets, had expanded southwards locking up much of the world's moisture, as ice
deserts in Africa, grew and sea levels. Everywhere dropped, leaving caves on a South African Coast.
Dry. In Labs, Lush pasture land turned to Desert and prey became extremely scarce Hunters. Who
once had easy pickings now found themselves, desperately searching for food.

Humanity was on the verge of Extinction miraculously. Some were thrown a Lifeline that Quantum
Leap in thinking, which meant a small band. It now think the unthinkable and leave Africa forever.
Where'd the next human remains outside of Africa? Turn up the middle east Europe, India. No,
Australia. You think that's impossible? I thought so too. But guess what? That's where our ancestors
turn up next and no one knows how