Dawn of Humanity

Dawn of Humanity
150px DVD cover
Genre	Documentary film
Directed by	Graham Townsley
Narrated by	Jay O. Sanders
Theme music composer	Robert Neufeld
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	One episode of two hours
Production
Producer(s)	Graham Townsley
Editor(s)	Emmanuel Mairesse
Running time	2 h (120 min)
Production company(s)	National Geographic Studios
Distributor	Public Broadcasting Service
Release
Original network	PBS
Original release	Posted online September 10, 2015; first broadcast nationwide on September 16, 2015
External links
Website

Dawn of Humanity is a 2015 American documentary film that was posted online on September 10, 2015, and aired nationwide, in the United States, on September 16, 2015. The PBS NOVA National Geographic film, in one episode of two hours, was directed and produced by Graham Townsley. The film describes the 2013 discovery, and later excavation, of the fossil remains of Homo naledi, an extinct species of hominin assigned to the genus Homo, found within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave system, located in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Additionally, the National Geographic Society has multiple videos on its website covering different phases of the discovery and excavation of the fossils during a two-year period. As of September 2015, fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave.

Participants

The documentary film is narrated by Jay O. Sanders and includes the following participants (alphabetized by last name):

• Rebecca R. Ackermann (University of Cape Town)
• Zeresenay Alemseged (California Academy of Sciences)
• Lee R. Berger (University of the Witwatersrand)
• Pedro Boshoff (fossil hunter)
• Steven Churchill (Duke University)
• Viktor Deak (paleo-artist)
• Marina Elliott (paleontologist)
• Elen Feuerriegel (Australian National University)
• Alia Gurtov (paleontologist)
• William Harcourt-Smith (American Museum of Natural History)
• John D. Hawks (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• Amanda Henry (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
• K. Lindsay Hunter (Sepela Field Programs)
• Rick Hunter (caver)
• Donald Johanson (Institute of Human Origins)
• Job Kibii (University of the Witwatersrand)
• Ashley Kruger (University of the Witwatersrand)
• Hannah Morris (Chena Consulting Group)
• Becca Peixotto (paleontologist)
• Rick Potts (Smithsonian Institution)
• Patrick Randolph-Quinney (University of the Witwatersrand)
• Brian Richmond (American Museum of Natural History)
• Peter Schmid (University of the Witwatersrand)
• Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
• Steven Tucker (caver)
• Carol Ward (University of Missouri)
• Celeste Yates (University of the Witwatersrand)

Critical reception

Life timeline

view • discuss • 

-4500 —

–

-4000 —

–

-3500 —

–

-3000 —

–

-2500 —

–

-2000 —

–

-1500 —

–

-1000 —

–

-500 —

–

0 —

water

Simple life

photosynthesis

Eukaryotes

Complex
multicellular life

Land animals

Land plants

Dinosaurs    

Mammals

Flowers

 

←

Earliest Earth

←

Earliest water

←

Earliest life
(-4100)

←

Meteorite bombardment

←

Earliest oxygen

←

Atmospheric oxygen

←

Oxygen Crisis

←

Earliest sexual reproduction

←

Earliest land life

←

Earliest humans

P
h
a
n
r
z
c

P
r
o
t
e
r
o
z
o
i
c

A
r
c
h
e
a
n

H
a
d
e
a
n

Axis scale: Millions of years.
also see {{Nature timeline}}

Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times notes that, "Documentaries about prehistory and paleoanthropology are usually interesting, sometimes even thought-provoking. But you don’t often encounter one that’s thrilling. Yet that is a fitting adjective for “Dawn of Humanity,” a program ... that brings an aura of breaking news to a field that can often seem musty." Brooke Cain of the Charlotte Observer reports that the documentary features "exclusive footage of the hair-raising descent deep into a nearly inaccessible cave to retrieve more than 1,500 hominid fossils."

According to archaeologist K. Kris Hirst, Dawn of Humanity provides "a rich context for the discovery [of the fossils of Homo naledi], setting the historical and evolutionary background so that viewers can understand the significance of the discovery ... [Lee] Berger's charming personality and the hordes of other paleontologists in this video make this contextual effort easily and visually accessible to the public." In addition, according to Hirst, the behavior of apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, largely influenced by the notions of Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey, have been "proven false", since such violent apes have now been shown to be "vegetarians" instead.

See also

• Human evolution
• List of fossil sites (with link directory)
• List of human evolution fossils (with images)
• Underground Astronauts

External links

• Dawn of Humanity at the PBS WebSite
• Dawn of Humanity at IMDb
• Dawn of Humanity – Complete TEXT of the documentary film
• National Geographic blog of Rising Star Expedition members
• Hominid species
• Exploring the Hominid Fossil Record
  (Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology at The George Washington University)
• Video (000:30) – Dawn of Humanity (trailer) on YouTube
• Video (123:00) – Dawn of Humanity (video) on YouTube