The Dawn of Man; The Human Journey

Is your significant other more familiar with the contours and buttons on the TV remote control than your own? Well, in a completely unrelated theory, many scientists believe that some 28,000 years ago, when human progenitors co-existed with Neanderthals (third stringers who didn't make the evolutionary cut), a little hanky panky took place between the specie.The possible presence of Neanderthal genes in the Homo Sapiens DNA soup is just one of the many interesting speculations and anthropological tidbits that viewers will discover in two engaging new series that attempt to sketch the story of human evolution, that stop-start tale of amazing finds and baffling dead ends that has taxed humanity's noodle ever since 1859, when Charles Darwin's modest little treatise The Origin of Species led readers to the inescapable conclusion that man and ape, while not necessarily kissin' cousins, were rather closely related.In the 6-episode, 5-hour epic The Dawn of Man, which combines MTV-like re-enactments, interviews with scholars, and archival and modern footage of fruitful archaeological digs, viewers trace the fascinating shift in thinking regarding humankind's origins. Initially, scientists subscribed to Raymond Dart's "killer ape" theory, i.e., the notion that some 3 million years ago our Australopithecine ancestors began evolving bigger brains to become better fighters. Later, scholars realized that they'd put the cart before the wooly mammoth: we now know that human prototypes were the hunted not the hunters. In successive episodes, we follow humankind's incredible journey, stopping for illuminating snapshots from the family album of Homo Erectus (1.5 million years ago), Homo Heidelbergensis (who migrated to Europe half a million years ago), and our own Homo Sapiens forebears of a mere 30,000 years ago. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P.The Human Journey, narrated by erstwhile rocker Henry Rollins, is divided into three stand-alone episodes, beginning with In Search of Human Origins, which covers much of the same ground in a similar format as The Dawn of Man, but with its own particular focuses and insights. One of the most fascinating segments takes us to a Tanzanian plain, where 54 footsteps of three Australopithecine hominids are forever fossilized in the ground--making them the world's oldest footprints. In part two, Tale of Two Species, viewers follow the migration out of Africa into Europe and Asia, as Homo Erectus and Neanderthals co-existed (and, as already mentioned, most likely co-habited). In the final episode, The Creative Explosion, the story takes us to Australia, where arguments for the oldest rock art are mounted, as viewers learn what truly separates us from the other animals in Marlin Perkins' kingdom: the capacity for self-reflection, a newfound drive towards creative expression, and the beginnings of an aesthetic sensibility, as seen in the first rule of art: if you're going to draw naked men and women, give them really big private parts. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. [Note: Speaking of private parts, brief male and female nudity is found in both titles.] (R. Pitman)