[Aztlan] Nova on PBS: Becoming Human

[Elaine Schele]

For those of you who are interested in anthropology and our early beginnings:

Premiers on air and online November 3, 2009. (Check your local listings)
Becoming Human Part 1 on NOVA
First Steps: Six million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path
from ape to human?

Program Description
"Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent
discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA's comprehensive,
three-part special, "Becoming Human," examines what the latest
scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives.

Part 1, "First Steps," examines the factors that caused us to split
from the other great apes. The program explores the fossil of "Selam,"
also known as "Lucy's Child." Paleoanthropologist Zeray Alemseged
spent five years carefully excavating the sandstone-embedded fossil.
NOVA's cameras are there to capture the unveiling of the face, spine,
and shoulder blades of this 3.3 million-year-old fossil child. And
NOVA takes viewers "inside the skull" to show how our ancestors'
brains had begun to change from those of the apes.

Why did leaps in human evolution take place? "First Steps" explores a
provocative "big idea" that sharp swings of climate were a key factor.

The other programs in the "Becoming Human" series are Part 2: "Birth
of Humanity," which profiles the earliest species of humans, and Part
3: "Last Human Standing," which examines why, of various human species
that once shared the planet, only our kind remains.

Here is their website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/becoming-human-part-1.html

-- 
Elaine Schele
PhD Candidate
University of Texas
http://gispalenque.blogspot.com/
http://volunteermayameetings.blogspot.com/