The Real Eve Page #2

the year that our study

was published saying:

"How dare you?

You know grandma wasn't black!"

Her work is rewriting

human history.

Through it, we now know the first

mutations took place in Africa...

maybe 150,000 years ago,

and belong to our genetic Eve.

Professor Christopher Stringer,

Britain's leading paleoanthropologist...

was involved in the dating of

the earliest modern human skulls.

This skull is

as close as we can get...

to what the face of mitochondrial Eve

would have looked like.

It's a very complete skull

found in sediments in a cave...

dating from about

120,000 years ago.

And we can see here

that it's a modern human.

We've got a high-rounded

vault to the skull...

a face that's tucked in

under the cranial vault.

And this is what she looked like.

Using forensic reconstruction

techniques, muscle and flesh...

have been added to the skull and

provide us with the first glimpse...

of how our genetic mother might

have looked 150,000 years ago.

This is the closest we can get.

Africa is the birthplace of all the

human species to walk this planet.

This vast natural laboratory

molded humans over endless cycles...

of alternating desert and green.

And, it is the climate records

that give us the next clue.

Modern humans made many attempts

to make the long trek out of Africa...

settling in different parts of the

old world, but they didn't survive.

Climatic records indicate a brief,

but devastating global freeze up...

at the time, that turned the whole

Middle East into extreme desert.

Trapped in the northern quarter by

the Sahara, there was no return...

and few places to take refuge.

Neither they nor any

of their line survived.

They would die in severe drought

about 110,000 years ago.

Their bones were discovered

in Qafzeh caves...

near Nazareth,

in Galilee, in 1 933.

13 fragile skeletons.

One a woman,

a tiny baby at her feet.

When these bones

were first uncovered...

they were the oldest complete

modern human skeletons ever found.

The numerous skeletons that have

been found in caves in Israel...

at Qafzeh and Skhul shows that

there were modern humans...

outside of Africa

over 100,000 years ago.

They may have gone out

to the Nile corridor...

through Sinai and

into the Middle East.

But they didn't go any further.

In a sense, they were a dead end.

It would be 40,000 years

before they would try again.

80,000 years ago the world

was cooling down again.

Once again, the ice caps were

advancing, drying out the lands.

Life became much harder.

As Africa dried up,

so did the drinking water.

Ocean records show sea levels

dropping dramatically...

as the world's water

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