Chapter 1: Extended Family

We will begin this first chapter by exploring the origins of our extended family, the primates. To do this, we must go back to the beginnings of the Cenozoic, a time when the world was very different, the continents were shifting, and great mountain ranges were forming.

We will also look through an incredible window into the past in the magnificent oasis of El Fayum, in Egypt. There, in addition to discovering a very distant ancestor, we will have the opportunity to encounter other surprising treasures hidden in its sands.

Chapter 2: The First Hominins.

The earliest evidence of our lineage dates back to around seven million years ago, and to learn about it we will travel to an unexpected place: the Sahara Desert. The discovery of Sahelanthropus tchadensis in Chad was a great surprise, but it has an explanation.

We will continue our journey through the African Rift, where we will meet Orrorin in Kenya, and we will finish at the legendary archaeological sites of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, where more than four million years ago, perhaps even five, Ardipithecus lived.

Chapter 3: Fully Bipedal. Australopithecines.

In this episode, we will visit caves in South Africa and open-air sites in East Africa and Chad to explore the places where the australopithecines lived. We will meet some of them and remember others as famous as Lucy, the Taung Child, or Little Foot.

The australopithecines were already fully bipedal; their anatomy made that clear. However, Mary Leakey discovered an irrefutable and poignant piece of evidence: the footprints left three and a half million years ago by two adults and a child, known as the Laetoli Footprints.

Chapter 4: Specialists vs. Generalists: Paranthropus and Homo habilis

The climate was changing, and the savannah was gradually taking over the forest. In this episode, we will see two very different responses to environmental changes from two new genera: Paranthropus and Homo. The paranthropines specialized in drier habitats, feeding on tougher seeds and grains. Homo habilis, the first of our genus and the oldest, was more of a generalist. Its name comes from its supposed ability to make its own tools: the stone tool industry.

Chapter 5: Smaller Molars, Bigger Brains. Beyond Africa.

In this chapter, we will see significant changes: the first tall hominins appear, and the first migration out of Africa takes place. We will explore iconic sites such as Java, Turkana, Dmanisi, and Atapuerca. The genus Homo, the only one that remains, has spread across Africa and Eurasia, reaching China from the east and Spain from the west.

Homo erectus and Homo ergaster, the hominins that appeared nearly two million years ago, have longer legs, smaller faces and molars, and larger brains. They no longer simply produce cutting edges on their tools; they shape them, discover symmetry, and craft beautiful bifaces.

Chapter 6: Europe in the Middle Pleistocene: Pre-Neanderthals

In this episode, we will take a journey through the rich variety of Middle Pleistocene fossils from Europe, such as Bilzingsleben, Mauer, Arago, Ceprano, Petralona, Aroeira, and, above all, from the Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Burgos), an extraordinary site where the remains of twenty-nine individuals of all ages have been found.

The study of these fossils shows that Europe at this time was home to a diverse range of human populations that were closely related. While many of these groups left no descendants, others continued evolving along the line that would lead to the Neanderthals.

Chapter 7: The Middle Pleistocene in Africa and Asia

Many fossils, a lot of time, and a huge space, so naturally, many possibilities. The simplest idea is that in Asia, Homo erectus continues, with different varieties, while in Africa a new species appears: Homo rhodesiensis. For others, the scenario is much more complex.

The truth is that during this period, on both continents, fossils start showing features that suggests Homo sapiens. And a new development: there is increasing evidence that North Africa, and Morocco in particular, has much to contribute.

Chapter 8: Surprising News: Flores, Denisova, Naledi

Even after nearly a century and a half since the birth of Paleoanthropology, fossils continue to be discovered that shake up the field. Throughout the 21st century, new finds have emerged: Homo floresiensis, Denisova, and Homo naledi.

All of them show unique features that depart from established patterns, opening up new avenues for research and for understanding the abilities that have shaped us as humans.

Chapter 9: The Neanderthals

In this episode, we focus on the first human species recognized as distinct from our own: the quintessential European species, the Neanderthals. The story of our close relatives runs parallel to ours, we coexisted in time and sometimes even lived alongside each other. The relationship was so close that Homo sapiens carry a small portion of Neanderthal lineage in our genes.

For a long time, the “humanity” of Neanderthals was denied, but we will see how preconceived ideas are gradually fading, and the differences between them and us are becoming less pronounced.

Chapter 10: Our Turn…
We return to Africa, because that continent is where the paleontological and genetic evidence of our species’ origins is found. From Africa, we spread across the world: we are the only hominin species to reach every corner of the globe.

And we end up alone; for the first time in the history of our lineage, there is only one hominin species. Our journey continues, and along the way we have radically transformed the planet: we domesticated plants and animals, reshaped landscapes, and brought an end to the world of hunter-gatherers.

Chapter 11: We are this way too. Cooperation and Conflict

We end the season by trying to understand ourselves. Traditionally, this has been the domain of Philosophy, followed by Psychology, and also Cultural Anthropology. Biology and Neuroscience have much to contribute when it comes to innate and cultural behaviors. But fossils and Taphonomy also shed some light on this complex question.

We will focus on cooperation and conflict, two aspects that are closely connected and deeply rooted in our social nature.

Chapter 1: Pioneers in Spain

We begin this season with a geologist passionate about our most distant past, caves and mountains, Casiano de Prado; his work in the Cerro de San Isidro, in the 19^th century, marks the beginning of prehistoric studies in Spain.

We will also make a brief excursion to the 18th century, a time in when the focus on nature and the past began to change; and we will remember an incredible achievement, that of young scientists Jorge Juan and Antonio Ulloa, who were part of a scientific expedition so ambitious that its goal was nothing less than determining the exact shape of the Earth.

Chapter 2: Sowers of culture

In this episode we will see how political circumstances open or close the roads to science. The 19th century was very turbulent and, in Spain, not very conducive to science; but there were brief favourable periods, such as the Sexenio Democrático period that allowed Salvador Calderón to present the first evolutionist PhD thesis. Even a moment of special repression produced an extraordinary reaction: the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza which promoted the idea that knowledge was the best way to achieve social regeneration and fostered the training of magnificent naturalists.

Chapter 3: They were indeed capable. The explosion of cave art

The discovery of the spectacular painted bison of Altamira took a long time to be celebrated, why was there so much controversy?

It took many years for the authenticity of Palaeolithic art to be accepted, but once it was recognized, the passion for it was aroused. This fascination led to the creation of institutions dedicated to prehistory. A large part of the vast number of caves with magnificent cave art were located in the Cantabrian coast, where the best researchers of the time worked.

Chapter 4: And they painted and engraved the whole world.

But it was not only the walls of the caves that were painted and engraved; there is more art than just parietal. In the Palaeolithic, they also created portable art: small animal figures or the famous Venus, but also tiles, “command staffs”, ornaments and even musical instruments. Curiously, these pieces did not arouse the same suspicions as the paintings or engravings in the caves. We will talk about this.

And we will also digress about what art is, how the results change according to the approach to its study … And of course, who, when, and why began creating cave art?

Chapter 5: The Ice Age

We will start in the 18th century and the first documented ascent to the high mountain: Mont Blanc. There, on the high peaks of the Alps, the first signs were found indicating that there was a colder time in the past, an “Ice Age”.

We will review the traces left by ice on the landscape, the factors that cause a glaciation, what happens in that time, how many times it has occurred, how we know about it, and if these climatic changes have an impact on human evolution; we will focus a bit more on the last glacial period, the Pleistocene.

Chapter 6: The sites

The sites and discoveries they provide are the means by which prehistorians attempt to understand the past. But how do you find a site? Often, they are discovered by chance, but they can also be actively sought. We will discuss prospecting (the search) and focus on East Africa, which has yielded so much information about human evolution.

We will go through the different tasks carried out at the sites (fieldwork): measuring, mapping, recording, collecting (both visible and invisible), storing, or inventorying. We will also look at examples of the information provided by fossils.

Capítulo 7: In the laboratory

The work does not end with the excavation, because much more information can be obtained from the pieces and from the site itself by using the help of other sciences such as genetics, physics or chemistry.

DNA analysis has allowed for the confirmation of the African origin of our species, the hybridization between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, and the discovery of new species like the Denisovans. Chronologies have been refined by taking advantage of different properties of matter, such as terrestrial magnetism or radiation. Thanks to isotopes, we can learn what species as distant as the Paranthropus ate or where they lived.

Capítulo 8: What do we have in our heads? Emotional beings

The last episode of this season will be committed to the human mind. Is our species the only fully human one?

The brain has been getting bigger throughout the evolution of our lineage and, therefore, it has been getting “smarter”. But everything has a limit, and that limit is set by childbirth. To know something about the minds of past humans, it is necessary for activities to leave traces; fortunately, some behaviours, such as funerary practices and art, provide perceptible clues.

Chapter 1: We start in the 19th century, when the first questions about the origin of humanity that do not fit into the dominant paradigm of the time are emerging. We begin to sort and correlate, and explore the first hypotheses of findings that perplexed and revolutionised prevailing beliefs.

Chapter 2: Throughout the central decades of the 19th century, important discoveries continued to be made. However, for the advancement of prehistory, the knowledge provided by two new sciences, geology and biology, is fundamental, especially the concepts of deep time and evolution. On the Origin of Species by Darwin is a milestone in the history of Natural Sciences in general and prehistory in particular.

Chapter 3: At last, in the second half of the 19th century, the foundations of prehistory were established when it was recognised that humans had coexisted with extinct animals, that lithic artefacts had been produced by humans and it was established that the relationship between lithic industry, human bones and fossil fauna evidenced a long timeline. Prehistory was born as a science!

Chapter 4: In this way, we reach the named "Golden Age of prehistory". Marcellin Boule made the first great physical anthropological study of a fossil human skeleton (known as the old man from La Chapelle). Neanderthals were thus the first species, other than our own, to be studied; the image created by Boule of a biped not fully erect took a long time to be replaced.

Chapter 5: We started looking for the ancestor of humans, that is, fossils of transitional forms between great apes and humans. However, where would the “missing link” be? We have already seen that Darwin suggested that it must be in Africa; but the search began in Asia, in Java and in The dragon bone cave in China. Then, when it seems accepted that the origin of humanity is in Asia, the Taung Child appears in South Africa.

Chapter 6: We go to the Middle East to learn about a very surprising encounter: the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Dorothy Garrod, archaeologist (the first woman to obtain a professorship at Cambridge University), and Dorothea Bate, zooarchaeologist, will take us to the caves of Mount Carmel… and many other sites.

Chapter 7: It is time to try to put some order among so many names, so many places and so much time. Who are we talking about when we talk about our lineage? We will also take a look at the time scales… Mainly, we will try to put ourselves in the shoes of a palaeontologist by taking a look at their working methodology: how taxa are defined or created; what features are taken into account to classify…

Chapter 8: In the last chapter of this season we will reach the frontier of knowledge. We are no longer talking about stories from prehistory because we will be looking at the research that is underway, at one of its frontiers: funerary behaviour. How can we find out when the rites associated with death begin? How can we interpret the evidence? It is precisely to this exciting topic that the DEATHREVOL project dedicates its efforts.